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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 02 2017, @10:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the some-things-are-just-fine-the-way-they-are dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

New data suggest that the reading public is ditching e-books and returning to the old fashioned printed word.

Sales of consumer e-books plunged 17% in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Publishers Association. Sales of physical books and journals went up by 7% over the same period, while children's books surged 16%.

The same trend is on display in the U.S., where e-book sales declined 18.7% over the first nine months of 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers. Paperback sales were up 7.5% over the same period, and hardback sales increased 4.1%.

"The print format is appealing to many and publishers are finding that some genres lend themselves more to print than others and are using them to drive sales of print books," said Phil Stokes, head of PwC's entertainment and media division in the U.K.

Stokes said that children's book have always been more popular in print, for example, and that many people prefer recipe books in hardback format.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/ebooks-sales-real-books/index.html


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:07PM (19 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:07PM (#503268)

    With tech documents I'm getting used to pdfs, mainly for the search ability. Books to read for fun? Paper all the way.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:12PM (14 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:12PM (#503272)

    To kick myself in the ass for hitting Submit too soon, tech docs don't tend to get re-read once the device driver or protocol stack is written. If the company goes away and the DRM that lets me re-read that doc goes away, well that product is outdated and I've moved on anyway so I'll never notice.

    A good book? I'll re-read a book 5-10-15 years later, if the DRM provider goes away and I can't read the book I bought I'm pissed.

    To summarize:

    A) For pleasure I prefer paper
    B) For tech I'm getting to prefer pdf
    C) I'll never buy anything with DRM around it.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:20PM (#503283)

      DRM on a doc for a device driver or protocol stack? The hell you say! I must be spoiled rotten. I only write to spec from RFCs and the occasional RFC draft.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:20PM (4 children)

      You know, I heard tell there were these websites that had books without DRM on them. I wouldn't know anything about that, of course. Just something I heard.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:29PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:29PM (#503289)

        I heard they have "books on tape" on youtube now, which raises another kind of DRM problem, but fortunately youtube downloaders are readily available to extract the audio.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)

          by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:01AM (#503312) Journal

          It is called "LibreVox", public domain audio books. Try here: https://www.librivox.org/ [librivox.org]

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:16AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:16AM (#503327)

            Bah! Direct links to mp3 files! Where's the challenge? Where's the guilty pleasure of using a third party tool to get to the mp3 files?

        • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:31PM

          by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:31PM (#503689) Homepage Journal

          If all you want is the audio you need no download tool, just a computer with Audacity installed; Audacity is free and supported in Apple, Windows, and Linux. With Windows type mmsys.cpl into the search box, click on an empty space and you can unhide the hidden stuff. Then, just record the audio. There are detailed instructions on Audacity's web site. KSHE plays six full rock albums every Sunday night and I almost always record it. Sometimes I'll record music from YouTube as well.

          --
          mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:16AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:16AM (#503508)

      C) I'll never buy anything with DRM around it.

      That alone is the biggest drawback as to why I never owned a ebook player.

      I saw some on sale in the bookstore, they looked neat, but when I found out how crippled they were, it was almost like Home Depot trying to sell me a screwdriver with a really wacky drive that only drove their brand of screws. And wanted $100 for it. That kinda thing is best left on the shelf at the store.

      I've even had people give them to me... I pass them off to Goodwill. What's the use of the damned thing? Shoulda never been made in the first place. Waste of a perfectly good computing platform.

      Circuit City (Divx ) already showed me what happens when I trust a DRM provider: They shut down the authentication server, keep the money, I am left with a useless trinket.

      I simply fail to understand what folks thought was so cool with these readers. To me it was like going back to having to ask Dad for the keys every time I want to use the car. All I could figure out is some people just seem to love being controlled. Even by a machine. They seem to love saying "yes sir" all the time, and never making a fuss when someone tramples them, takes their money, and leaves them with useless stuff they pay yet someone else to haul away. Some people must really get off on paying bills.

      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:51AM (1 child)

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:51AM (#503550)

        C) I'll never buy anything with DRM around it.

        That alone is the biggest drawback as to why I never owned a ebook player.

        I've owned several and loved them. Never had any DRM, only read public domain books - despite Steamboat Willie's worst efforts, PD's still here. Start at Project Gutenberg and work your way out.

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
        • (Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:18PM

          by gidds (589) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:18PM (#503728)

          That's one very valid approach.  There are some wonderful books in the public domain, and the good people at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere deserve all our praise.  There are also some legitimate non-PD books available (e.g. from Baen Books) which are free of both charge and restrictions.

          A second is to buy unprotected books (e.g. from Baen Books).  This is completely legal and shows support for the DRM-free side of the industry.

          A third is to buy DRM-protected books, but immediately strip the DRM.  (I'm sure I don't need to mention some of the tools which make that trivially easy.)  Once you have an unrestricted format, there's no risk; and you gain the ability to use it on any devices and in any ways you want.  If you've paid for the book (and don't give people copies) then you arguably have the moral right to do this — though the legality may vary depending on your jurisdiction.

          And a fourth is to get books from more questionable free sources on the web.  (They can be fairly easy to find, especially if you know a distinctive phrase or sentence from within the book.)  I couldn't condone this, of course, but it's certainly possible.

          In any case, it's important to realise that a DRM-protected book isn't something you own; it's something you're temporarily allowed to use in certain restricted ways, and which can be withdrawn at any time.  If you care about it, set it free :-)

          --
          [sig redacted]
      • (Score: 1) by Goghit on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:58AM

        by Goghit (6530) on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:58AM (#504164)

        What killed my use of ereaders was my Kobo dying 2 weeks out of its one year warranty. I looked at my bookshelf full of books from the 19th century and decided paying $100+ a year to read my new books was unacceptable, so I threw the Kobo in the garbage, broke the DRM on my purchased books, and never looked back.

        I still use pdfs a lot for technical work, usually printing just the pages I need before working on a machine. It's a bitch getting grease and hydraulic fluid off a tablet.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:18PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:18PM (#503605)

      tech docs don't tend to get re-read once the device driver or protocol stack is written

      Yeah I wish. Maybe for linux cookie cutter ethernet driver number 325626 but for some I2C magnetometer or a A/D converter or whatever, any time there's weird operating conditions or weird results, gotta hit the datasheet. Given the circuit impedances and operating temp is 2 bits of LSB noise for this specific cheap ass A/D converter good or bad? Well it depends on your definition of good, the temperature outside, the circuit impedance today, I guess.

      I'm old enough to remember you'd sweet talk a sales droid or marketing droid out of databooks. You could go to an industry show and run a net profit if you carried home enough databooks. Because if you were a plebe you got to pay for those databooks or pay 10 cents/page to photocopy someone elses databook. Then the internet and PDFs came along and instead of paying a nominal $5 shipping for, like, the 68hc11 programmers reference guide if you were a plebe, you would download the PDF and spend $25 on HP ink and paper printing it out on the inkjet for like 4 hours or pay 25 cents a page for laser printer quota meaning you spent like $25 on a 100 page data sheet to save $5 ordering the book like a plebe or spending $1 on long distance to sweet talk some sales droid in California into mailing you one for free.

      Now a days put those pdf on dropbox or whatever and use the phablet giant phone or the kindle (kindles can read some pdf if manually placed on them, if I recall last time I tried...).

      Its weird how easy kids have it today. In the old days you'd pay $50 to get the data books for something like a iax432 just to figure out the thing was a POS and nope nope nope right out of that project. That was an interesting chip, like in the late 80s can we be more CISC than a late 70s IBM mainframe, why yes we can, well, at least in slow vaporware! Now a days its all free to download PDFs that are also free to read portable in the lab.

      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:16PM (2 children)

        by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:16PM (#503640)

        I'm old enough to remember you'd sweet talk a sales droid or marketing droid out of databooks.

        When I started I had a bookcase in my cube full of databooks. Plus shelves on the cube walls, full of databooks.

        Never had to pay for one except for gas money to drive over and pick one up. Had one guy that wouldn't give me a databook, he wanted to sell it to me. Told the hardware guy about it, within an hour a different chip was being used.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:51PM (1 child)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:51PM (#503655)

          The "having to pay" is stuff like hobby projects.

          I've always been petrified of going to a sales meeting with management "So hows that kilowatt level UHF power linear RF amplifier project doing? We've been giving one of your guys all kinds of databooks and piles of free sample hardware and a really nice eval board" and I don't want to explain that's a home ham radio hobby project. I seem to recall one of the big name RF suppliers used to treat people claiming to be working on hobby projects as being some fascinating classified spaceship project so they just wouldn't leave me alone. "Oh I see you bought a C-band directional coupler from us, hows that working out for you, I was just calling to see if you'd like a qty 1000 quote on our new aerospace rated model, its great for military radar work" and after awhile its like oh god I never should have left my phone number on the order form...

          I remember I took a logic class (EE not philosophy) so long ago, like 1990, that we had to buy a TI TTL databook as a textbook. They taught us how to figure out timing and fan in/out ratios between logic families and stuff. I seem to recall an open book test, maybe a final, was designing a hardware multiplier with some weird mandatory requirements to trip us up and force us to do weird things, and it was a monster of a task. It can take along time for a wide adder to settle if you don't do the look ahead carry thing, the prof tricked us / forced us into a shift-add topology where the assigned family couldn't handle the fan-out ratio, it was a real headache. I don't remember if it had to be pipelined, probably did.

          Nothing takes the fun out of a hobby better than taking a class for credit, other than employment obviously.

          • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:07AM

            by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:07AM (#504112)

            Silly you. My personal projects always used chips that I used for work. Why? A) I don't have to waste my free time learning stuff I learn at work; and B) I get, um, "free" samples for the chip at work. Been 30 years since I've done that, but when I was young and struggling I had no problem appropriating chips.

            / I remember back in, oh, 1981 or so
            // Company couldn't keep memory chips in stock
            /// same chips home computers (TRS-80, etc) used to upgrade from 16k to 64k
            //// after 6 months or so the problem magically went away
            ///// Not saying I know what the problem was, but I had a screamin machine for the time

            --
            Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:43PM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:43PM (#503301) Homepage

    As part of all this "continuous improvement" bullshit corporations are undergoing because of their fear of the iron fist of the ISO, some of them are banning using printed drawings entirely. Digital-only is okay for specs and procedures, but damn-near worthless for troubleshooting large integrated systems (say, pick 'n' place machines or large medical diagnostic devices). Actually, also worthless even for troubleshooting small PCBs on which several subsystems (microcontroller/power conditioning/transmitter for example) were all on that same PCB.

    To do any real hands-on work with hardware you need the ability to print drawings and scribble on them with at least 2 different color pens and 3 or 4 different color of highlighters for tracing paths. Squnting at a laptop running Foxit because your organization is too cheap to buy usable seats of Acrobat won't do. Either will running back and forth from your desktop running Acrobat and the machine you're troubleshooting. And don't even get me started on tablets. You need the ability to print paper drawings, 11X17 size.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:29AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:29AM (#503337)

      > paper drawings, 11X17 size.

      You might like it in Detroit?

      Not only do they drink a lot, they also use full size drawings of cars, pinned up to drafting boards that hang on the walls (and some work areas spread them out on large flat tables).

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:25AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:25AM (#503386) Journal

      *cough*

      I've found the opposite to be true. My eyes are getting worse with age. I can't even see half of our drawings. Fek, I open a drawing up, squint at it, only to discover that I've got it upside down. Flip it over, squint, and realize I have the wrong drawing. Finally get the correct drawing laid out, right side up, and "Is that a gate valve? Hell no, it's the transducer!"

      Those prints that come in PDF are searchable, and I can blow them up as large as the screen - in this case, a 15 inch screen. There's no question which page I'm on, blow it up as large as I need, and I can read it. All of the PDF's I've used so far are printable - I can take that section of the drawing that I need, print out a single copy, or a dozen copies, and carry it out to the machine if I want. And, as an added benefit, I don't have to feel guilty if I smear a gob of grease across the drawing - I'm going to throw the damned thing away anyway.

      It wouldn't be so bad, if the manufacturers supplied full scale engineer's drawings with the machines, but the paper copies supplied with the machines are generally on 8 x 11 paper, with everything shrunk down to - not sure, I guess it would be about 20%? Fek - it would have required a little squinting to read it 40 years ago! In our print table, there are three full scale drawings, a couple dozen 1/2 scale drawings, and several dozens of 8 x 11 or something close. That just doesn't cut it for a half-blind old man.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:45PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:45PM (#503706)

      Or, you need a paper-weight 11x17 tablet: coming out in 2018 I hear.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]