Discussion
Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions; few are in book clubs
skywhopper: Because they are better in almost every way.
analogpixel: Watching TV/Movies through any device is a bother, I have to sift through all the advertisements/brand placements for that device to find anything, and most of the time it's the same 20 movies repeated over and over in every section.Reading on a E-device is a bother, I have to sift through all the "sponsored" books and whatever other crap the ebook reader company decides to add, and be at the whims of whatever they decide they want to do with "your" device that day.Cell-phones are a bother, they are just devices optimized for stealing your attention, money, information, or all the above.Pretty much everything tech related anymore is a bother.I would love to see someone come out with services for music, movies, books that are just APIs you subscribe to and can use any client you want. Think of the novelty of having an interface where you could ignore movies you never want to see, only show the music genres you care about, and not have advertisements for romance novels on your e-reader.
jrmg: I’m surprised to see digital books are still growing in popularity. I notice way few Kindles in airports and on planes in recent years compared to ten or fifteen years ago.I guess people are reading books on their phones and tablets?
akkartik: I haven't purchased a DRM'd ebook in 8 years.
delichon: Not this American. I have thousands of paper books but have moved almost entirely to audio for fiction. Listening in parallel with undemanding tasks is the big draw. Showering, driving, yardwork, household chores are now "reading" time. My health requires that I strictly ration sitting time, so I need to reserve that time mostly for work. Printed books are now mostly for topics that need too much attention for multitasking.
wincy: This is why I have 50TB of HDD space and a plex server. We tried watching a show on Amazon Prime and it was brutal, so many commercials. My wife skipped backward because we missed a part and were too close to the ad break so it made us watch a second 1:30 reel of unskippable ads. We subscribe to Prime and I still downloaded it. I’m not going to let them boil this frog.
Telaneo: Reading plain EPUBs on whatever device has been a fairly good experience in my opinion, given that that is more or less just going to be the physical book in digital form. Then again, the only way I think people actually find those are through free online downloads and not any actual store front.Given the choice between 'tainted digital experience' and 'plain analogue experience', I can't blame consumers for choosing the latter, but the 'plain digital experience' does exist. It's just not sold.I wonder how long it's going to take before the analogue experience becomes tainted. It's, sadly, not unthinkable to put ads in books. I guess there's little point from the perspective of the relevant people if they can't make those ads personalised, but maybe if the enshittification goes far enough, it could happen.
dyauspitr: I always buy the paper copies of the books (though I wait for a used version that’s between five and eight dollars) and I will use the paper version if I’m reading on a nice day outside but 75% of my reading happens on my phone and I find I can read much faster on the phone because one, I don’t have to deal with the intricacies of holding the book and the pages open and the second biggest factor is the iPhone screen is much smaller so you don’t really have to move your eyes all that much to get through the content and this leads to much faster reading speeds for me. I can easily get up to 600 words per minute on my iPhone.
gyomu: > I would love to see someone come out with services for music, movies, books that are just APIs you subscribe to and can use any client you want. Think of the novelty of having an interface where you could ignore movies you never want to see, only show the music genres you care about, and not have advertisements for romance novels on your e-reader.This exists, but it's not a VC-backed product or public company because the money to be made comes from all the "bother" you identified.
lotsofpulp: I cannot relate to this experience at all. I can open up the TV app on my phone/tablet/laptop/TV and watch almost whatever I want pretty quickly, without ad breaks. It is far more convenient than the old set top box situation. I would say I wait a maximum of 60 seconds, and probably 30 seconds most of the time, to start watching what must be a considerably large portion of all professionally produced media in the US.
MajorTakeaway: I just bought 'Psychology and Life' sixteenth edition and pondered just how much worse an ebook version of it would have been or unbearably clunky a pdf version would be as well.The less screen time I spend, the better I feel.
clumsysmurf: I thought i was paranoid years ago, but these days I really have to wonder if Bezos is giving big brother the list of books on my bookshelf and the passages I have read.
loloquwowndueo: > Reading on a E-device is a bother, I have to sift through all the "sponsored" books and whatever other crap the ebook reader company decides to addSounds like you just chose the wrong device. My Boox does none of this. I just put the epub file in the device and read it.
daoboy: Physical books are irreplaceable to me. I love the feel, the smell, and having a house full of them. Just went to a library sale this morning and got even more.I also really need a break from screens, and reading a book is a great excuse to not be on my phone or watching tv.
tayo42: Probably scrolling tiktok... With sound on and no headphones lol
el_jay: On top of all the extremely valid points about the ad-driven cognitive friction inherent to modern device usage: print books can’t get yoinked off my shelf because a rich person with political connections wants that.
walterbell: CheapCharts + iTunes Store + Apple TV (non-subscription) = zero ads and offline viewing.
WarOnPrivacy: > I would love to see someone come out with services for music, movies, books that are just APIs you subscribe to and can use any client you want.It won't happen because the one thing more important (to the powerful) than money, is control.In the 1990s, the recording industry choose to leave money on the table rather than allow digital music to risk their gatekeeping power. It took years for Apple to bully the MPAA into allowing digital distribution.
bentley: > the only way I think people actually find those are through free online downloads and not any actual store front.The other day I commented about my DRM‐free ebook sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684550In my opinion, it’s important to support those publishers and stores that do choose to sell unencumbered media, so that they have some justification to keep doing it.
UltraSane: I read for information and online communication. I mostly consume books via audiobooks which are awesome when combined with good bluetooth earbuds and a local server like Audiobookshelf. Audiobooks are great because I can multitask by listening when I am walking, biking, lifting, driving, or shopping. I've listened to every Discworld novel and the entire Malazan series. I would never had actually sat down and read the malazan series.
WarOnPrivacy: > I have to sift through all the advertisements/brand placements for that device to find anything, and most of the time it's the same 20 movies repeated over and overThat's our new norm too. We still subscribe to a number of streaming services - but we count on piracy to get the experience that we pay for.
Loughla: Reading a book is also relaxing in a way that reading on a screen is not. It just feels more, I don't know, laid back? I have no idea how to describe that.
Loughla: How do you do that without ads? Every single service has ads, even on paid tiers. And sponsored content that is recommended regardless of my actual tastes.This is the reason I buy physical media, rip it to my home server and use Plex. No suggested bullshit. No ads at all.How do you do that with paid services? What does your setup look like? Because I can't figure out how to do that using commercial products.
bentley: I read about two dozen books a year, the majority as audiobooks, most of the rest as ebooks, and typically one or two in print. I quite like print books, but favor ebooks for the minimal size and weight. I prefer ebooks to audiobooks too, but have far more opportunities to listen to an audiobook than to sit down and read an ebook.Even though print books are by far the minority of my reading, I still purchase print copies of books I enjoy, for discoverability. I’ve loved reading since childhood because I grew up in a house filled to bursting with my parents’ books. Nobody told me to read Tolkien, or Heinlein, or Verne, or Jack London, or Greek mythology—I simply took those books off the shelf and read them. And when we visited friends and family, I would read books from their shelves too. None of my young relatives have access to my ebook or audiobook history, and I’m not going to hammer my own interests into their heads… but I’m lucky enough to have lots of space, so I keep my bookshelves overflowing.
WarOnPrivacy: > print books can’t get yoinked off my shelf because a rich person with political connections wants that.Yes except where rich people fund political book-banning groups to do that.ref: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries...
lotsofpulp: Obviously, product placement ads cannot be avoided.The ads at the beginning of a show can be skipped pretty easily.I can mentally ignore sponsored content, but you are right that it is an ad that. I almost never browse though, and just use the search function.Apple tv+, Amazon prime with the extra $5 per month or whatever, and peacock’s higher tier paid through Apple don’t have ads breaks in the middle of the media for me. Neither did Max when I had it a couple years ago.Other shows or seasons that are rented with a lifetime license from apple (what they call “buying”) don’t have ad breaks either.
garciasn: For me, reading is an escape; from both reality as well as technology. I stare at a screen all fucking day; the last thing I want to do is stare at one during my downtime.So; I cordon off time every day to read and not touch my devices. Even though I subscribe to streaming music, I prefer to read while listening to vinyl. I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with anyone choosing to read ebooks or do audiobooks; they're just not my preferred way to do it.
UltraSane: We honestly need a new term for listening to an audiobook. But the best part of audiobooks is that you can listen while doing other tasks so they free up many hours a day vs sitting and reading.
WolfeReader: Physical books burn - just ask the Library of Alexandria. Ebooks have so many more ways to be preserved and replicated.
WolfeReader: I buy "licenses" to read DRM'd ebooks all the time. Even though I disagree with DRM, I still want to reward the author/editor/illustrator/translator/etc for their artistry.As for whether I leave the books in their DRM'd state or not? No comment :)
booleandilemma: Physical books are great. No ads, no battery to charge, no worry the content is going to be censored because somebody somewhere decides they don't like what they say. No worry they're going to be removed from my shelf. I can lend them to whomever I want. I can mark them up. The book in its current form is perfect. We don't really need to change it.And then there's the whole experience of going into a bookstore and just looking around. It's wonderful. One of the last things our society has yet to fuck up.
dinkumthinkum: The be fair the parent said "almost." I see this more as a backup of the physical book. Other than search, the experience of physical books is superior, I think, for most people for most uses. You can come up with counterexamples like certain aspects of studying textbooks, etc., but I think this is true in general.
spking: That was a thing already, in the 1960s and 1970s lots of pulp paperbacks had ads for cigarettes and cheap cologne between chapters, for example.
Cider9986: You can solve all the problems you describe; it just takes some setup.>Watching TV/Movies through any device is a bother, I have to sift through all the advertisements/brand placements for that device to find anything, and most of the time it's the same 20 movies repeated over and over in every section.Pirate streaming sites[1] are more convenient, have fewer ads, and offer more selection than commercial streaming; they are much less reliable than the following options, however. Torrents have no ads, highest quality, and the largest selection, but you have to download each file manually. Good for preservation, less convenient. Stremio[2]+Torrentio[3]+Debrid[4] allow no ads, highest quality, a large selection, and streaming. This is my preferred option.>Reading on a E-device is a bother, I have to sift through all the "sponsored" books and whatever other crap the ebook reader company decides to add, and be at the whims of whatever they decide they want to do with "your" device that day.Kindle jailbreak[5] + KoReader[6] + Z-library[7] extension allow you to seamlessly download any book you'd like, directly on your Kindle. No ads, no Amazon connections, and your subsidized device[8].>Cell-phones are a bother, they are just devices optimized for stealing your attention, money, information, or all the above.GrapheneOS[9] comes with zero Google services or telemetry by default, and without stock bloatware or notification spam, combined with robust permissions, it goes a long way toward making your phone feel like a tool. I recommend Olauncher[10] for a distraction-free home screen.>Pretty much everything tech related anymore is a bother.I feel you. All of this takes effort and knowledge that people shouldn't have to acquire just to have a decent experience with their own devices. But these options exist, they are getting better, and the more people adopt them, the less leverage companies have to keep enshittifying.[1] https://github.com/fmhy/FMHY/wiki/Streaming[2] https://github.com/Stremio[3] https://github.com/TheBeastLT/torrentio-scraper[4] https://github.com/Viren070/guides[5] https://github.com/KindleModding/kindlemodding.github.io[6] https://github.com/koreader/koreader[7] https://github.com/ZlibraryKO/zlibrary.koplugin[8] https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/kindle/comments/1s69qnh/[9] https://grapheneos.org[10] https://github.com/tanujnotes/Olauncher
dinkumthinkum: I sort of get your point but I feel like its also a bit curmudgeon-y. In order to have the movies, shows, whatever, it has to be paid for somehow. Also, I think there is something to be said for discovering things. If you just have an API, what is the interface then? Is it like millions bespoke vibe-coded clients? That sounds like a bother too. How do you know in advance if a movie is something you want to see? I guess Dario or Altman can decide for us but what if they become a bother?
