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Books, Unread Books, and PDFs

Jeff Brown blogged about SourceBeat.com yesterday. Jeff wondered whether the $29.95 price is too high for an electronic copy of a book. Jeff also mentioned people's preference of paper books over electronic ones.

I commented on the paper vs. electronic aspect, and offered my reasons for why I liked paper books and dislike electronic books.

Matt Riable, a SourceBeat author, reasoned against both the price and the paper vs. electronic concerns.

Here's more of my thoughts:

Books: There are different kind of books. In the "computer books" category there are the heavy-weight ones like the Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming and any one of the compiler books; then there are the best sellers like Thinking In Java, Java in a Nutshell; and then the longer shell life volumes such as the Design Patterns, Effective Java; and then the shorter lived Learn X 1.0.1 in 7 Minutes. There are fundamental differences between the categories. For example, for DEK's books the publisher is willing to wait for decades!

Electronic versions of Real Books: I bought all editions of Java In a Nutshell. I also bought the CD version of the same book at one time. I ended up throwing the CD away. The paper books are heavily used. So my dislike for online books are from my experience. Other people might have different experiences. Last year, when I had the choice to buy either the paper version or the electronic version of Object-Oriented Perl, I opted for the paper edition, even though it's more expensive.

Books Bought But Never Read: I have bought my share of books that I was never able to finish, either because I lost interest in the subject or because they (author, publisher) lost interest in the subject. Struts In Action is an example. I never was on a Struts project and now the version of Struts described in the book is obsolete. I never finished Inside OLE, second edition, either. Almost all of my electronic books (free from TheServerSide.com, etc.) are unread. The exception being Paul Graham's On Lisp (I printed it out) and ESR's The Art of UNIX Programming (It's a website).

Product Documentations: They are not really books although they look like books. I never buy those. They (employer, client, project) have to buy them for me. They have to pay me for me to read them.

PDFs: PDFs are not meant to be read online!

Price: A good book is a good book. Price doesn't matter.

I stand by my claim: the more thought and effort an author put into a book, the more likely I will read it. (I have bought only a couple of Wrox books---Michael Kay's XSLT, and Rod Johnson's One-On-One. I did have the latest Pro JSP :) .)

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Posted by Weiqi Gao on August 11, 2004 8:26:01 AM CDT #


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Re: Books, Unread Books, and PDFs

Comment from Anonymous on August 11, 2004 9:56:44 AM CDT #
Sorry, no you haven't made yourself clear. "I stand by my claim: the more thought and effort an author put into a book, the more likely I will read it."
So Sourcebeat authors don't put thought and effort into their books because it's not written on paper? I don't see how you jumped to that conclusion.
Running a printing press != author's effort.
Reply

Re: Books, Unread Books, and PDFs

Comment from Weiqi Gao on August 11, 2004 11:16:57 AM CDT #

That I don't like electronic books is an attribute of me. Other people might prefer the other way around. I realize that and I'm OK with that.

Authors and publishers who produce electronic only books are ignoring a sector of the readership. They are making an effort to not reach people like me. It's my loss. But it could also be theirs.

I make no assertions about any of the SourceBeat books. For all I know, they are excellent books. I just don't have the urge to buy. Again, it may be my loss. But it could also be yours.

Reply

Re: Books, Unread Books, and PDFs

Comment from Bryan Young on August 11, 2004 2:33:02 PM CDT #
I wanted to point out that with SourceBeat, you aren't 'buying' the book for $29, just renting it. You can only use it for a year. I know everyone is probably aware of it, but Oreilly's Safari offers an electronic book subscription at $10/month for 5 books/month. Averaged over a year (assuming you kept the same 5 books on safari for the entire year), this comes out to roughly the same price as SourceBeat. But because safari lets you switch books every 30 days, and you can choose from many more books, safari is much more useful. (SourceBeat books have the added advantage of being continuously updated, but that only gives it an advantage over paper books. Safari releases each new editions of books as well, you just can’t see it until the author’s done). I bring this up because it brings up a third gray area that Weiqi didn't talk about - using electronic books as reference or for preview and buying a paper copy if you want to read it cover to cover. This is what I do with my safari subscription. I just use it for books that I only need for a week, or to preview those I might buy in paper form. I buy paper copies of books that I want to read cover-to-cover or those that I may need access to continuously for more than a month. I like the idea that SourceBeat allows you to have constantly updated versions of the books, but coupled with their expensive, long-term subscription system, this just doesn’t add enough flexibility to hook me. Maybe if they had more books, and cheaper, shorter term subscriptions, I might try it.
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Re: Books, Unread Books, and PDFs

Comment from Matt Raible on August 15, 2004 10:41:37 PM CDT #
> I wanted to point out that with SourceBeat, you aren't 'buying' the book for $29, just renting it.

Actually, this isn't true. As far as I know, with Safari's books - you can only view them online. With SourceBeat's book - you can download them onto your hard drive. So in essence - they're yours to keep as long as you like.

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