7 thoughts on “EBooks”

1. Yes. Yes, they are. And your (link) point would be?

2. One question comes to mind: which is harder on the eyes – reading a book under incandescent light, or reading an eBook – which is itself a light source – under the same conditions?

   (I specify incandescent because solar would drown out the eye-straining effects of other nearby light sources, and CFLs are themselves eye strainers, being heavy on the blue end of the spectrum which messes with visual acuity.)

   1. My Kindle doesn’t have a backlight, and I like it that way.

3. That was a scary read. The main attribute of books is permanence. How much of what we know is based on research in dusty nooks? How much of history has been rewritten and rediscovered because of books and scrolls?

   Electronic data just doesn’t have that permanence. Ease of copy may mitigate that, but if re-editing becomes common, we lose it again.

   Then the invasion of privacy and tracking aspects? It’s a brave new world.

   1. As far as I can tell, no e-book authors actually re-edit their work after first publishing.. even though most of them desperately need it and it’s apparently simple to do.

      Case in point: I recently read Mark Whittington’s alternative space history books “Children of Apollo” and “Dreams of Barry’s Stepfather”. I very much enjoyed them but the reviews on Amazon are 90% people complaining about the pervasive spelling mistakes and dropped words. I’ve seen it with many other e-books too.

      Reviews are the primary means by which people choose books.. those bad reviews are taking money out of the author’s pocket. Why don’t they fix it? Are they unaware of Fiverr?

      1. Trent, one reason e-books don’t get edited is that they are mainly individual efforts. Penny-ante authors with no resources for getting outside help are often miserable at self-editing. I know. I do some editing for budding authors. Ability to write an engaging story, and ability to edit for grammar/spelling/typos do not always go together.
         I have an e-book novel in the last stages of formatting, should be up on Amazon later this week. I still catch little errors, and this has been pored over repeatedly.
         Beyond that, even books by big-name publishers have plenty of typos. That annoys me a lot more.

         1. We’re on the Internet.. there’s people who will read your book and submit all the errors they find for $5. No really.

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