Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Slate has an article The E-Reader Death Watch Begins / What does that mean for ebook Sales?

The basic premise is that like the iPod for music, single-purpose eReaders are being replaced by more general purpose devices, such as smart phones and tablets.

As it happens, I still use my iPod (because I don't have a smart phone and I've been too lazy to figure out how to migrate my iTunes playlists to my Kindle Fire, and besides the iPod is a lot smaller/lighter than the Fire.)

e-book readers, do you use a single-purpose e-reader such as a Kindle or a Nook, or do you prefer the multifunction tablets/smart phones?

A lot of technology declared "dead" still thrives decades after decades - the best example would be a wristwatch. There is also a good old (and true) argument about a general purpose device not being excellent at anything in particular.

Modern e-readers are much easier on the eyes than LCD displays of tablets. Finally, who would want to do serious reading on a tiny screen of a smartphone?

I think there is merit to both. I have a smartphone and can read books on it if I'm so inclined. This usually happens when I'm waiting for an appointment, or waiting for someone to finish shopping. But my smartphone will never be my primary method of reading books.

And yes, your tablet can read ebooks as readily as a smartphone can. I have owned several tablets and loved the versatility. However- I have found that the tablets that are the most versatile (I can do anything on it like send an email, edit a spreadsheet, surf the web, or watch the latest cute, fuzzy animal video) are weighty little workhorses. It is comforting to type an email on a 2 lb tablet, and know that you're not going to break it, or drop it, or something like that. It is NOT so comforting to hold up a 2 lb tablet to read a book. (Plus, have you ever fallen asleep mid-book, and your tablet falls on your face? OWW.)

But I think there will always be a market for the lighter weight e-readers. I have found that on a sunny day, the sunlight will wash out the tablet screen to where you can barely see what you are doing (or reading). Most e-readers don't have that problem. With tablets- hidden apps running in the background can eat up all your memory and slow everything down to a crawl (just like regular computers). With an e-reader- it's just books. Also with an e-reader- you don't have all the push notifications to distract you. Harvesting your farm can wait, adventure awaits in the book of your choice!

I don't have a smartphone or a tablet, and could not imagine reading on these shiny bright screens if I did. I read on a Kindle paperwhite and the screen is just great for me. I can see myself going for a bigger e-reader or one with a color screen at some point, but it will remain single-purpose (well, mostly-single-purpose, I do have a few games on my current Kindle :)

nope they are not going the way of the dinosaur...i love my kindle fire for its ability to do many things well, but that bright screen bothers my eyes after awhile, despite changeing the page color to a light tan insted of a glareing white and toneing down the brightness. e-readers dont have that problem.

I use specialty devices & will continue to do so, I believe. I've had the same flip phone for almost 8 years with texting turned off & no Internet. Email or call me. I generally use one of my minitower PCs either at work or home. I have one plugged into the TV set. I did give my wife a laptop so she can use it when I'm hogging the home PC. I have a laptop at work that I can take whenever I want, too.

If I need to take a picture, I carry a small Leica C Lux-3 on my belt by the flip phone. For better pictures, I have the slightly larger Leica V Lux-4. For best pictures I have a Canon Rebel with stands, a remote, & several lenses.

I use a Sandisk MP3 player for music & audio books. It plugs into my car & the shop stereo or I can use ear buds & listen even while mowing or weedeating with a set of ear protectors over them.

I have a Kindle DX for ebooks. Like Bryan, I like the epaper. Much easier on old eyes & very visible even in the sun plus it's big - 10.5". The battery lasts for weeks between charges, too. I can't read on my daughter's phone. I read too fast & the text is too small.

All told, I have more invested in different devices, but their purchase is spread out as is the hassle if one breaks. For me, best of breed is better than one device that does it all, but none of it as well as I'd like. I guess I'm just picky.

I believe that for the most part any decrease in sales of e-readers will be from those who are not avid readers but from those who because of the economics of it...will choose to invest/upgrade their smartphone as to them the smartphone is the most important thing in their life.

I do not own a smartphone but have had a Kindle since they were introduced and for me its a must have device. For those who do the vast majority of their reading on a smartphone...just do not read a lot. "They" have it as their aim to have a one size fits all approach to the everything we need in life being in the "Smartphone" platform or at least having it down to a two line production run with the "Smartphone" and "Tablet" lines to fill the needs of most.

E-readers are not going away anytime soon...as I see it!

Just prior to my own book coming out as an e-book my husband gave me a Kindle Paperwhite so I would know what my book looked like on an e-reader. I don't need to be connected to the internet all the time (it's difficult to read while being constantly notified that I have mail or there is this one perfect item that I should absolutely purchase to be happy, I don't play games on anything other than a real table and a cardboard playing surface. My phone is not connected to the internet either, though I do use it to text some of my family and a few friends (three daughters mostly). I use the phone to talk to people if I am not face-to-face with them and I often ignore the phone when I am 'with' other people.

I love my Kindle - it makes lugging around the 400 page book on verbs much lighter! And I just got an update that allows me to go back and reread a previous section and then return to where I left off (finally!). I can read in whatever lighting I have, though my husband discourages me from reading in the dark. Sunlight does not seem to diminish this feature, either so sitting under the tree or on the porch while reading is fine.

Nope, the availability of one device focused on one task won't go away. They will last longer than those devices which can do everything and are more easily suited to my life-style. I can use it whether or not I have internet connection and because it uses power for only one task the battery lasts longer between charges and I can recharge without or without the internet connection. I only use the internet connection on the Kindle Paperwhite to download books to read and to occasionally post a review of said read books if I will be away from my laptop for a few days.

It's almost as good as the paper versions of books (though easier to read in the dark without using a flashlight or headlamp). The only draw back is the need to have access to electricity to recharge every eighty hours or so (no power needed to read the paper version. ;) Even so, e-readers will be around for quite awhile.

The one thing I wish my Paperwhite had is a replaceable battery so that I could keep a couple of extra batteries charged and ready to pop in when I'm not around a convenient power source or do not want to wait for a charge to complete. Amazon could make more money off the batteries than they do off the sale of a Kindle....win/win for all of us as I see it!!

Allynn wrote: "The only draw back is the need to have access to electricity to recharge every eighty hours or so...

Eighty?

My mom only gets about 15 hours or so out of hers before a recharge is needed.

Their "8 week" claim is based on 30 minutes per day for reading, which comes out to about 28 hours.

Hahaha...yeah I had raised eyebrows at the eighty hours as well Randy. I only get about 25 hours out of mine if I read everyday.

Maybe she has the lightest resolution, so as to conserve battery power?

I used to use my ipad or phone to read ebooks... For Xmas my husband got me a paperwhite... Lighter, can see in any lighting, easy to hold, has a nice screen size and font adjustment, fits in my purse to carry anywhere, battery lasts longer, dont get calls/notifications when reading.... I can't imagine it going away where I'd have to go back to reading on a phone or tablet. I'd rather stick solely to paperbacks if that were the case.

I get a long time out of my Kindle DX with epaper, so long as I keep the wireless turned off. Epaper only uses a bit of electricity to write the page, then no more. It's tough to estimate hours, but I read for at least 12 hours last week & it was down to 3/4 charge when I plugged it in for a charge. If the wireless is on, the power goes down much faster even when it is 'off'.

When my mom had the Kindle Keyboard (which she stole from me, so I had to get a new Kindle), I had her keep the WiFi off to preserve battery power. It was freezing up and misbehaving on a regular basis. At least once a week. I would just restart it.

One time when she brought it to me to fix it, I turned on the WiFi to download a bunch of books I had waiting for delivery, then set it down while I was working on something else.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it reboot at least three times. Presumably getting updated software.

After that, it stopped giving her problems.

So I'm still trying to decide if I want to turn off WiFi on her new PaperWhite.

Turning of the WiFi will conserve power but then I find I have not updated my last page read and then I'm lost when I open up one of the other readers....*SIGH*...then I have to flip forward to what I think is the last page read. So I just leave mine on all the time so I'm current between both Kindles and my laptop!!

Don't have a Kindle. I do most of my reading on my smartphone. It is easy to hold for long periods, goes into my pocket when I stop, and with bluetooth and wifi turned off the battery lasts long enough, especially with spare batteries and recharge packs.

With a 64Gb microSD, it holds all my books, all my music, and a whole load of TV shows and films.

There are no interruptions because I don't have email on my phone and a firewall filters text.

I have a 7" tablet with both Kindle and a generic epub reader. I love it and don't have any problems reading off the screen. I'm also a homebody and don't try to read outdoors so that's not an issue for me. And I mostly read lying on my bed so I can just plug it in as the battery gets low and keep on reading or surfing the web or whatever.

I do have both the reader apps on my phone, but if im out and about I usually listen to an audiobook off my phone.

I agree with Mika. I like being able to separate certain aspects of my life. The ability to carry 20 to 40 (or way more!) books with me in a 5"x7"x half inch device is priceless - especially when I'm traveling. It really cuts down on carry-on and checked baggage weight, too.

ok....this is freaky..
.Latest Post - 4 hours from now....NOT 4 hours ago....my goodreads app has become a time machine....

it says my last post was "6 hours from now"...im not jokeing

if you are reading this: message from 6 hours in your future...the sun has NOT exploded yet

Spooky1947 wrote: "it says my last post was "6 hours from now"...im not joking."

It's OK, Spooky, time travel is one of our favorite topics.

Good to know about the sun, too.

looks like im back in the time stream...i think the clock on my phone was screwy, the Goodreads app must check time against the device you are useing it on....

anyway, i don't think we are in danger of losseing our e-readers...it just follows, long as there are e-books, there will be e-readers. What blows me away is how quickly i became addicted to my kindle. ive been a life-long reader and book-lover. When i first heard of the whole e-reader thing, i thought the whole thing was nuts. But once i tried it, i was totaly sucked in.

Now the "conspircy theory" side of me...right now im reading Stanslaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (enjoying it so far)...all the paper on the planet is destroyed by bug brought back from space. All the books, everything. e-books are slowly becomeing the new paper. e-books live in the cloud. Suppose we have another Carrionton Event (spelling, sorry...back in the 1800s the sun burped, and we were hit by a emp storm so bad sparks flying off the train rails set fire to rail road ties and the telegraph system went down...that happens again we could loose all those cloud servers alond with the e-books that live on them....

Naah. Too many people who save a copy on flash drives and things. We'd get a lot of books back, because there are enough people around to build more computers.

Now- add a plague that wipes out a billion or two people, and you have cause for concern.

how about gobal warming gets so bad our Kindles melt? over 100 heat index all week here....it ain't the heat, it's the humidity....

Then we would all have to demand more kindles and they will LIVE!!!

I don't think they are necessarily dying though... There is rumor of a paperwhite 3rd gen... The nook may die, b&n just can't compete with amazon in the ereader sales and have you seen the difference in the ebook pricing between the 2? Even if you have the membership card with the discounts it's no contest which place I would purchase from... Amazon.

I can show you more free Kindle books than you know what to do with! :)

Skool 'em Randy!!!

as Vera says, the e-reader brands may come and go, but I think Amazon will be last man standing...Kobo may remain, along with one or two genric ankle-bitters, but no real competition. I see Amazon's Kindle competition comeing from e-reader apps for tablets and smart phones. The younger set likes those. However, Amazon has a perfectly fine e-reader app, AND they have the infrastructure to support it. That looks like a winning hand to me. What's more, every time we Kindle users buy a e-book from Amazon, we are committing ourselves more and more to the Amazon e-reader/app...look at all those books you have in the Amazon cloud, Kindle users. Think of all the cash you have invested in them. You WILL think twice before walking away to another new e-reaer....

Amazon has a captive audience. That means a solid income stream. e-readers (meaning Kindles) are here to stay.

and I should be clear...the only reason the ankle-bitters will be around will be because of all the e-Pub stuff floating around...we still have DVD format movies, even tho Blu-Ray has won the format wars.

The only possible threat I can see to Kindle is if Ali-Baba takes it's shot, but they are in China/Asia...I doubt they will try to compete in the USA, but if they did it would be King Kong vs. Godzilla all over again.

What's Blu-Ray?

I do have a double-deck with DVD and VHS. :)

:D

dude, I still have a old tube tv...none of that digital for me...just doesn't look "real" to me..

I think there is a opportunity on the lower price end against Amazon. The Kindle is hampered by one feature that helped it succeed - Whispernet. This is amazon's kindle 3G network. It means that you can download a book anywhere for free - however it is not free, so Amazon take the fee off the authors above 2.99 and pay lower royalties below 2.99 because of it. So if one of the other companies focuses on the sub-2.99 price point, pays proper royalties, delivers only by royalties, doesn't require a mac to publish and isn't in the pocket of the big-5, they might just succeed.

Spooky1947 wrote: "how about gobal warming gets so bad our Kindles melt? over 100 heat index all week here....it ain't the heat, it's the humidity...."

2 days ago we were in the 90's. It's 53 here in KY this morning. Brrr!

I agree with a lot of the comments above, I can't see tablets and mobiles replacing e-readers, not for the majority of regular readers. I know a few people that read on their phones, but not many. I tend only read on my phone if I don't have my Kindle with me or somewhere with poor lighting (have a basic Kindle, waiting for it to pack up and then I'll get a Paperwhite). I sync the book am on, read a chapter or two on my phone, then go back to my Kindle later when it is with me.

I read another interesting article recently from Tim Waterstone - anyone from the UK will recognise the name, he founded the Waterstones book chain, Britain's equivalent of Barnes & Noble. In the article, he suggested that demand for e-books and e-readers would soon peak and some people would start to go back to real books. Now this sounds a bit of wishful thinking on the part of a (former) bookshop owner, but I have noticed a decline in my Kindle reading. I got my Kindle at the beginning of last year, and most of 2013 I only read on my Kindle. This year I haven't read many books on Kindle, I've mostly read real physical books. Admittedly this is partly because I've started using my local library again, and I've read a couple books I've borrowed off other people, but I've got used to reading real books again and quite like it. I'll still read books on my Kindle, daily deals and any 'must have' have books, but Kindle reading has lost its shine for me.

Funnily enough I can see reading on a separate e-reader declining, as it is another thing to carry around, but physical books are even worse bulk-wise. Audio-books and phone/tablet serialisation may be the future.

Overall- the amount of reading I have done outside of work was on the decline. It wasn't until I got my Kindle that I read nine books in a year. (I have an hour commute both ways and a demanding job- my free time was practically non-existant. Belive me- nine books was quite a feat.)

This year I introduced myself (again) to audiobooks, and my total has shot up (I have more time to listen, than I do to read). I am currently at 20 books read this year. Most are audiobooks, but I still keep an ebook on my Kindle for that rare moment of freedom...

Natalie, I'm another who has been captured by audio books & found far more time for listening than reading. In 2011, they were less than half the books I read, but last year & this year, I've listened to more books than I've read in paper or eformat. They make boring chores like weeding & mowing (I have a lot of both on my little farm) go far more pleasantly &, since I can download them for free from the libraries, it's cheap, too.

Best of all, I've found that some books that put me to sleep reading are interesting when read in this manner. I'm listening to Beau Geste now. I've tried & failed to get through it several times over the years, but am quite enjoying it with a good reader. (Wish I remembered more French, though.) Great story, but not my style at all.

Jim wrote: "Natalie, I'm another who has been captured by audio books & found far more time for listening than reading. In 2011, they were less than half the books I read, but last year & this year, I've liste..."

Interesting. I'm the exact opposite. I tend to lose focus with audiobooks. I get distracted and stop listening. Also novels with a lot of characters and dialogue sound silly (to me) read by one person.

I love when tech writers say something is dead because the explosive growth phase of a new product starts to stabilize. Yes, fewer people are buying Kindles now, because most of the people who are going to buy them have gotten one. Now sales will mostly be replacements and a trickle late adopters. Did they think that sales were going to continue at the same rate until all 6.5 billion people on the planet had purchased one?

tec writers say some gadget is dead becase his editor is screaming for a story, the deadline is closeing in, and s/he can just do a quick rewrite of the last dead gadget story

I love my kindle. I carry it in my bag and pull it out whenever I get the chance. I hadn't been reading much before I got it because time to myself at the library is non-existent, not to mention the fact that books are heavy. I know people who read on their phones, but I have a low-tech phone, and anyway, my nose wrinkles at the thought of reading a novel on a tiny screen. I'll stick with my kindle. Actually it's a fire, but I honestly don't know what I can do with it besides reading books because that's all I use it for.

"Oh dear! I am very glad I've not yet bought one of those 'new-fangled reading devices' if the people reading them are dying!!!"

(I am sorry but I absolutely could NOT resist when I read the title of this discussion!! Haha! "Are eReaders dying?" Too good to pass up! *Now back to all of you who are actually contributing substance to this discussion...)

I did read the last Dresden book on my tablet. I did that mostly because I have a first gen Kindle that doesn't have touch screen capabilities. I wanted to highlight passages and quotes as I went through. Honestly, once I get started reading on my tablet, I don't really notice, but it takes some getting used to. The kindle eInk is more immersive.

Daran wrote: "I did read the last Dresden book on my tablet. I did that mostly because I have a first gen Kindle that doesn't have touch screen capabilities. I wanted to highlight passages and quotes as I went..."

When I've read some on my husband's tablet the quality of the screen bothered me a bit. It was bearable, but I wouldn't want to switch to it long term. Our old kindle or the kindle fire suit me better.

I have a smart phone but I don't like reading books on it. My eyes get really sore & I feel kind of cross eyed afterwards if I read on it for longer than 30 minutes. So I use my kobo for reading books. The screen is bigger & there is no backlighting. I find I read much faster on an ereader than a paper book. It's just so easy to tap to turn the page.

Hazel wrote: "I have a smart phone but I don't like reading books on it. My eyes get really sore & I feel kind of cross eyed afterwards if I read on it for longer than 30 minutes. So I use my kobo for reading bo..."

And you can put it down without a book mark! I hate losing my page...

you can read in the dark on my fire...the other night i turned out the light, lay on my old sofa, and for about five seconds wondered why i couldn't see my paper book....

Spooky1947 wrote: "you can read in the dark on my fire...the other night i turned out the light, lay on my old sofa, and for about five seconds wondered why i couldn't see my paper book...."

Ha! That's funny. I like that about the fire, too. It was real handy when I was sharing a room with my son while we were travelling.

Hazel wrote: "I have a smart phone but I don't like reading books on it. My eyes get really sore & I feel kind of cross eyed afterwards if I read on it for longer than 30 minutes. So I use my kobo for reading bo..."

As I've gotten older, eye strain has become more of a problem. I never wore glasses until I was in my early 40's & since I passed 50, they've gotten worse every year. I think a lot is due to staring at a monitor most of the day & have read several articles saying that it can cause something like dry eye. Drops don't seem to help, although tilting the monitor up & lowering the brightness does. A reader with epaper, not a backlit screen, is much easier on my eyes.

At the risk of sounding like your mother, I'd suggest you younger folks pay attention. Glasses & eye strain are a PITA. I don't know if too much screen time makes your eyes worse faster or not, but I suspect it does. Mom's eyes are still fine & I've generally taken after her. She rarely watches TV & doesn't have a computer.

Mika wrote: "Spooky1947 wrote: "ok....this is freaky..
.Latest Post - 4 hours from now....NOT 4 hours ago....my goodreads app has become a time machine...."

Excellent! Someone needs to write a story like that,..."

Perhaps this could be the topic for one of the short story challenges coming up? Any one want to bite, do we need permission to start one or could we just do it ourselves?