When will all books be available as ebooks online?

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How long will it be until there's a link on amazon.com that says "buy ebook" and you can get that book immediately? Or when will all books be available as PDF downloads from a massive internet library? And then distributed though P2P software and all the books one could ever want downloaded illegally?

When?

Alec

― letsjumpnow (lets jump now), Monday, 23 October 2006 17:38 (nineteen years ago)

Wednesday at the latest.

― milo z (mlp), Monday, 23 October 2006 17:40 (nineteen years ago)

Who really cares? Wouldn't you rather read a book than a computer screen?

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Monday, 23 October 2006 17:42 (nineteen years ago)

When it happens I shan't be joining in. I like texts on my computer screen to be short so my eyes don't start hurting.

― chap who would dare to welcome our new stingray masters (chap), Monday, 23 October 2006 17:42 (nineteen years ago)

i'll do it tomorrow!

― ken noizewater (Pareene), Monday, 23 October 2006 17:45 (nineteen years ago)

mr que - no, for so many reasons. mostly so i could keep them all on my computer and live anywhere in the world and still have all my books with me.

― letsjumpnow (lets jump now), Monday, 23 October 2006 19:07 (nineteen years ago)

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Monday, 23 October 2006 19:10 (nineteen years ago)

Well anyway. That's a picture of a bookshelf.

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Monday, 23 October 2006 19:15 (nineteen years ago)

I thought the world had already decided that electronic books suck?

The only benefit in digitizing all books is to enable the fast efficient searching of them. Like what Google's doing.

― Edward III (edward iii), Monday, 23 October 2006 19:47 (nineteen years ago)

edwardIII: ...and people in less privelaged countries could get better access to books and education. and to provide immediate access to them, like you have to write a paper on something that's due in six hours and you have no other reference besides the internet. and, it would save a whole lot of trees. and notes and highlights could be made public if the reader so chose. and revenue could go more to writers and less to huge publishing companies. and so on.

― letsjumpnow (lets jump now), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

okay seriously did you just get on the internet last week

http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php

― SOME LOW END BRO (TOMBOT), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:05 (nineteen years ago)

x-post - Yup, great for research. Sucks for War and Peace.

― Edward III (edward iii), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

it would save a whole lot of trees.

I don't know about that. In my experience people end up printing out everything they plan on reading anyway, as far as books go.

― GILLY'S BAGG'EAR VANCE OF COUPARI (Ex Leon), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

I killed numerous trees in high school printing out Carlos Castaneda books.

I was a stupid boy.

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:32 (nineteen years ago)

PDFs are only useful insofar as they model the printed page anyway, right?

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 23 October 2006 20:35 (nineteen years ago)

Not for awhile. I'd say in about 20 years.

― def zep (calstars), Monday, 23 October 2006 21:21 (nineteen years ago)

When Apple premieres iTome and people decide its hip to walk around with the book-nano.

Serious answer: when and if they come up with an electronic interface that people will want to read from.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 03:24 (nineteen years ago)

edwardIII: ...and people in less privelaged countries could get better access to books and education.

You don't need electronic books in order to give people in less privileged countries reading material, you just need free books, or at least very cheap ones. It's not the book technology that's at issue here, it's the intellectual rights. Plus books don't require batteries or electricity, which are also in short supply in many underprivileged countries.

and to provide immediate access to them, like you have to write a paper on something that's due in six hours and you have no other reference besides the internet.

I would have a serious word with whoever is springing a six-hour deadline on you and still expecting you to come up with something well-researched.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 07:19 (nineteen years ago)

It's standard practice to get a four week deadline then do fuck all for three weeks, six days and eighteen hours - then panic about tight deadlines.

― ONIMO has fallen into changing screen name HELL (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:15 (nineteen years ago)

I understand that, but that's hardly the fault of the printed word.

Sadly I suspect that this thread is nothing more than an attempt to put together arguments for a school debate, and I have fallen into the "do my homework, ILX" trap, once again.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:20 (nineteen years ago)

urgh, reading a whole book on a computer screen? fuck off thanks.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:26 (nineteen years ago)

otm. i read an awful lot on the internet, but not books or articles over a few thousand words. i really can't see that changing. all the same having all books searchably scanned would be incredibly useful for researchers. but is there any money in it?

― benrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:29 (nineteen years ago)

Sure. Libraries would buy the right to search books, as would corporations, news organizations, law firms and so on. I guess the same kind of organizations that currently pay for premium information sources like LexisNexis and, I'm guessing, the kind of abstracting and indexing and digests and so on that the company I work for provides.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:33 (nineteen years ago)

When e-paper gets better. The Sony Reader's a move in the right direction, but it doesn't have search and the display takes too long to update. Otherwise, it's the same as reading a book: reflective like paper.

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:47 (nineteen years ago)

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