Kindle or paper book? Your views please?

[HelenaWojtczak]

OK my Chapman book is almost finished and publishing matters are on my mind.

Several people have advised me not to even bother with a printed edition, just publish on Kindle. People can then read the book on their iphone, ipad, Kindle reader, or on their home computer or laptop via a free program called Kindle For PC. But one friend said he hates reading anything on a screen, and I simply must do a paper edition as well.

So I solicit your thoughts, as I imagine casebook members do a fair amount of reading, and please take part in the poll.

Many thanks!

Helena

[lemonjelly]

Regarding books, my personal preference is for hardback books. There is something tactile & more permanent I feel about hardback books. Yes they take up more space, & are a little more clunky. At the same time, they feel more stable & solid, perhaps robust is a better word. It feels better to hold.

I am not averse to paperback books. Where the choice exists, I prefer hardback. That said, most of my collection (JtR & non JtR) is mainly paperback, and that is due to.....


Cost. The main player in me buying a paperback is the price difference between hardback & paperback. Hence the original post Mike refers to. Does being a hardback really add that much extra value?

I'm not sure, and the thing with books is that frequently you don't know until you've read it.

For music lovers, the analogy I'd draw is that I buy cd's all the time. Occasionally I get an album that is a classic. I fall in love with it. I know it is something I will treasure & listen to over & over again. When that occurs, I want to hunt out said album on vinyl.

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hello Lemon

Thanks for your opinion. I see you did not cast a vote.

I had an estimate from a printer yesterday. Cost of printing my book in paperback per copy will be £3.80 and in hardback £6.38.

Who is Mike and where is the post he refers to anything?

Would you buy a book on Kindle?

What if it was ONLY on Kindle?

Cheers

Helena

[Albert]

Hi Helena, For me, a reference book needs to be on paper, as you can easily go backwards or forwards to find any information you may need - if the book is a novel, then a Kindle edition is good enough in my opinion.
Regards
Albert

[Stevecollins501]

Hi Helena , Me personally I prefer Paperback or hardback books there is a feel about them also you have that ownership in your hand as such maybe just me .......Chapman is my 2nd choice as the Ripper so I look very much to reading your book .........

Also he looks like I would imagine The Ripper to look like ...Evil staring eyes and black vacant look ......defo wouldnt want to meet him down Bucks Row ...

Good luck with your book

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hi Helena , Me personally I prefer Paperback or hardback books there is a feel about them also you have that ownership in your hand as such maybe just me .......Chapman is my 2nd choice as the Ripper so I look very much to reading your book .........

Also he looks like I would imagine The Ripper to look like ...Evil staring eyes and black vacant look ......defo wouldnt want to meet him down Bucks Row ...

Good luck with your book

Hi Steve and thanks for your good wishes.

That is a good expression - ownership in your hand. I personally have quite a lot of Kindle books (only on the PC, I don't own a KIndle reader) and because they are on the PC rather than physically on the shelf, I don't (a) feel as though I own them or (b) remember that I even have them!

Evil, staring eyes? Like this, you mean?


Helena

[Phil H]

I have not voted because no option reflects my view.

Kindle is fine for fiction (stops me skipping!! ) but Kindle is not goos for factual/non-fiction books.

Why?

Because at this stage, it is very difficult to flip back and forth, consult an index, muse on illustrations and text in conjunction etc.

I am a Kindle enthusiast, but I do recognise its current limitations.

Phil H

[HelenaWojtczak]

Kindle is fine for fiction (stops me skipping!! ) but Kindle is not goos for factual/non-fiction books.

Why?

Because at this stage, it is very difficult to flip back and forth, consult an index, muse on illustrations and text in conjunction etc.



Phil H

Hi Phil

I'd say that, as the book in question is factual, your vote would be for a paper book.

Cheers

Helena

[Rubyretro]

Hi Phil

I'd say that, as the book in question is factual, your vote would be for a paper book.

Cheers

Helena

I agree with the other people who have already replied -paper for reference books, and for the reasons already given.

I have never tried Kindle, but I would probably give it a whirl for a 'throwaway' novel -and then want to buy the book on paper, if I enjoyed it so much that I intended to reread it.

Can you 'share' 'Kindle' books ? That is probably a bad question to ask an Author who obviously wants to sell, rather than have people lending and borrowing their work. Yet I've often gone on to buy work by authors that I'd never have read, if someone hadn't lent me a book by them in the first place.

Someone who makes a point of knowing these things told me that, although Kindle books still sold less than printed books, it was the fastest growing market with sales doubling at an alarming rate.

[HelenaWojtczak]

I agree with the other people who have already replied -paper for reference books, and for the reasons already given.

I have never tried Kindle, but I would probably give it a whirl for a 'throwaway' novel -and then want to buy the book on paper, if I enjoyed it so much that I intended to reread it.

Can you 'share' 'Kindle' books ? That is probably a bad question to ask an Author who obviously wants to sell, rather than have people lending and borrowing their work. Yet I've often gone on to buy work by authors that I'd never have read, if someone hadn't lent me a book by them in the first place.

Someone who makes a point of knowing these things told me that, although Kindle books still sold less than printed books, it was the fastest growing market with sales doubling at an alarming rate.

Hello Ruby, mate

The only way to share a Kindle book is to literally let the other person borrow your computer. They are not like, for example, a PDF file that you save on your hard disk.

Printed books can, of course be shared :-)

Amazon figures show that currently Kindle books sell five times more than paper books.

They don't outsell overall, because there are only 500,000 Kindle books on Amazon compared with 17 million paper books.

Helena

[Ginger]

I'm pretty firmly into the 'Kindle only' camp at this point, except for oversize books with pictures, which I still want on paper. You can lend Kindle books to your friends for 14 days, provided that the publisher enables lending (or that you don't mind hacking the permissions on the book to enable it yourself). I find Kindle more convenient for reference books as I can put my own marks and notes in them and then use the 'go to' function to immediately find what I want. Kindle comes up short when I want to keep several books open at once, but it's not that big of a deal to me, compared to all of the other advantages. I love being able to carry hundreds of books around with me!

[007]

Apparently I still have not posted enough to be able to vote in polls. I'm in complete agreement with the opinion that Kindle is good for fiction, while paper is good for reference/non-fiction. Kindle just isn't easy for thumbing through a book looking for data. Most books I purchase for Kindle are fiction and I enjoy that medium very much. However, I did purchase the JtR book Hidden Suspect by Frank Pearse but found it a bit tedious when I wanted to re-look at specific parts after I'd read it (purely a limitation of the Kindle). A paper copy would have been much easier to find the part(s) that I was wanting to revisit. When purchasing reference books, especially on JtR, in the future I will not be getting the Kindle version anymore, only paper.

[Cogidubnus]

Hello Helena

Paperback for all the good reasons stated by others before me...

All the best

Dave

[EddieX]

Kindle or paperback? I can see the advantages of each of them, but if someone said that for evermore all my books had to be in one form or the other, I would go for the Kindle option.

[Magpie]

I love ebooks (although I just lost most of my library when my computer died), and it's so nice to be able to carry my entire library with me no matter where I go, or to open up a novel on a separate screen at work so I can tune out the background garbage while I work. As an apartment dweller, it also means that I can keep my physical book collection down to something just this side of "fire hazard" (seriously, I got chewed out by a fireman a couple of weeks ago).

That said, I love books, and the appeal of happen a good book in a form I can flop down on the couch and hold in my hands will never be replaced. For topics that I actively collect (like this "Ripper" thing that you may have heard of), then I want the book on my shelf.

What authors should do is offer a code where if you buy the physical book, you can download a ebook backup as part of the purchase--and vice versa if you purchase the electronic version, you should get a coupon for a discount on the real deal. Just a thought.