eBook Convert: Turning A Skeptic Into A Believer

latimes.com:

This is the year that e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook and Apple's iPad are expected to break into the big time. This has been predicted before every Christmas buying season for years. But this time, thanks to the advance of technology and the decline of price (with one notable exception), we may actually move beyond hype and into reality.

Read the whole story: latimes.com

Comments

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

04:14 PM on 12/01/2010

It took me quite some time and a lot of research before I made the plunge. I love my Kindle. I love the ability to browse and download books. The download is so fast I can't hardly believe it.

I still go to the bookstore to browse, but I turn to Kindle when I'm ready to buy

[Tania Shipman]

01:45 AM on 12/01/2010

I've been an ebook reader since 2004. Onto my 4th ebook reader (Tungsten T5) and I love the collection of ebooks I have on my reader. I still have a massive paper book library, but going travelling or to work with 500 books on my reader means I never get bored in a line. I've been buying Sci Fi and Fantasy ebooks from Baen books since 1999, reading on my reader since 2004 and am really happy that FINALLY affordable ebooks are available from other publishers. Baen were the only ones for years to provide affordable ebooks. Thankfully the cheap ebook revolution has started.

[Lev Raphael]

02:30 PM on 11/30/2010

I confess as an author I do sometimes miss the physical sensation of a book in my hands and turning the pages, but I haven't lost that because I can buy a book when i want to. What my iPad makes possible is avoiding overcrowding. I have probably 3-4,000 books and am running out of places to add shelving.

[Schweik]

03:12 AM on 12/01/2010

Ipad is just just a glorified laptop. E-readers are designed for reading and little else.

The idea of staring for hours at a radiating computer screen has very, very little appeal to me

If you're a serious reader get an e-reader like Nook or Kindle. Give I-pad a miss.

[Lev Raphael]

06:29 AM on 12/01/2010

You couldn't be a more serious reader than I am: Books blogger for Huffington Post; columnist for the magazine Bibliobuffet.com, reviewer for public radio in Michigan, former reviewer for The Washington Post and half a dozen other magazines and newspapers. And an author of 19 books. On my recent trip to Germany I did very serious reading on the iPad including Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking."

[Hermione Granger]

01:20 PM on 11/30/2010

I'm an accidental convert to eBooks. I bought an iPad for other reasons, to have Internet access, music, and videos on a long trip. I tried eBooks and became a complete convert. The Guttenberg project is amazing for me, suddenly I have countless classics from science, philosophy, and literature all at my fingertips. Its really made travelling much easier, I used to almost need a separate bag for my books.

The one thing I don't like is that with iBooks its not possible to share your books. One thing I like to do with some books when I'm finished is loan or give them to friends. I asked Apple if that was possible and got a rather snotty reply back that what I was proposing was against the law. I'm curios if with other eBooks purchased from Amazon or Borders does anyone know can they be shared or transferred?

[Schweik]

03:05 AM on 12/01/2010

I believe Barnes and Noble Nook titles can be lent for a two-week period.
This is partially why I prefer Nook over Kindle. trouble- free acess to pdfs and free e books from the library is another reason.

[ZubinTomato]

11:02 PM on 11/29/2010

I'm totally hooked on my new Kindle. And I was a major skeptic. I even had the Kindle here for a few weeks before I tried reading anything on it. Now, I'm tearing through books like never before. What am I going to do with all these dead trees?

[jcop815]

09:21 PM on 11/29/2010

I love reading books and nothing can replace ink on a page but I often found myself carrying large books and lugging them around with me everywhere and so I bought a nook and I love every minute I have with it. To me, it was worth it but I still pull out the occasional book for the feel that it gives. e-Readers will never replace the book. I think that a download of the book for the e-reader should be available with the purchase of a printed version of the book just so people are still buying them.

[Elizabeth A Black]

08:19 PM on 11/29/2010

I'm still a purist when it comes to books - I prefer dead trees - but having read so many documents on the Internet, including papers thirty or more pages long - I could easily adapt to an e-book reader. Not sure if I'd prefer a Kindle or an iPad. I do love to multitask but I also would like the uninterrupted joy of reading a good book now and then. And e-books are cheaper and easier to find than some print books. That makes a difference.

[Schweik]

08:47 PM on 11/29/2010

Kindle is an e-reader. Although I prefer the Nook ( being able to read and store my music scores is a giant plus for me)
i-Pad is a i-Pod on steroids. And equally unsuited for serious reading.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

12:48 AM on 11/30/2010

I'd love to have an affordable way to store lots of music scores. It'd need to be large enough to read at playing distance (and with deteriorating vision from age, this is more important than ever). And, some kind of pedal-activated page-turner would be great. Oh, and I'd need four or five of them when friends are over, but it'd be wonderful to store all my quartet and quintet music on them. Oh, and they'd need to be networked so one person could point out things for everyone else, and reference the score but mainly display just the individual part. And have touch-screen capabilities so you could add comments and notation.

Sigh, with everything I described, I'm sure such a system would cost thousands.

[Lev Raphael]

08:31 AM on 11/30/2010

Not remotely true. I took my iPad to Germany on a book tour and read very serious lit as well as a thriller, and I'm not an Apple person.

[1kant2]

07:50 PM on 11/29/2010

I love the idea of an e-book, but for me, it just does not have the nostalgic feel of 100's of pages in your hands,plus, it is still too digital. You make the screen look like a true book page, slight tan color, no backlighting, easy on the eyes, and, the size of a hardback, and I will buy one.

[Schweik]

08:48 PM on 11/29/2010

I can tell, 1kant2, you haven't checked out e-readers yet.

[1kant2]

09:42 PM on 11/29/2010

My wife has a nook. The screen is too small, and it is still too grey. It is a lot easier to read than an ipad, go eink, but not the same for me yet as a true book page.

[erehwon2]

08:56 PM on 11/29/2010

You're describing e-ink screens: off-white to greyish background, no backlighting, easy on the eyes, the size of a paperback book.

I'm a voracious reader. A few years ago, I dismissed the idea of reading on an ebook reader. I loved the feel and smell of paper books, the feel of turning pages, and figured I'd never prefer an ebook reader.

Well, I felt that way until I got one about two or three years ago. Now I can't live without my ebook reader. When my old Cybook Gen 3 died, I had to run out immediately to buy a new ereader because I couldn't go a single day without one. My, how we former Luddites fall...