The Print Reconversion (and the Problem of Choice Paralysis and Distraction)

I've been going through a phase lately, and I'm not sure what to make of it yet other than that I've decided to just roll with it for as long as possible. Here's the deal:

I'm back to reading more print books now than I am ebooks.

Yep, I love the tablets (I have approximately 6 of them...that still work, anyway) and hundreds of books in both the Nook and Kindle stores, plus lots more through other venues (Google Play and Aldiko most notably). They offer all the obvious conveniences that tablets do when you are a reader, including:
--Easy to read in the dark
--easy to manipulate the font type and size
--extremely portable and you can bring your entire collection anywhere with no effort*
--Most tablets give you at least 7-10 hours good reading time and the proper ereaders last even longer

I've blogged plenty about my love of tablets, ebooks and their conveniences over the years. So....why am I suddenly mostly reading print books again? And why have I spent a few hundred bucks rekindling my mostly anemic print fiction selection again?

At first it seems counter-intuitive. Hell, some of the books I've read in print recently I also had or at least started reading in ebook format. Sometimes I have tired eyes and need to drag out the reader glasses. I have to find convenient places to sit with light. What the hell, man?

I have some theories, though. Here they are in a nut shell: tablets are awesome, but they suffer from two problems that will eventually get in the way of a good time. These are choice paralysis, a problem of the human condition; and distractions, a problem with how the Google and Amazon electronic marketplace wants to sell you things and barter for your time.

The first one is a known problem that people like to wax philosophical on. It is also known that the ebook market lately has been seeing a downward trend, rather steeper than one might expect. Here's my theory: the traditional form of reader requires a structured mechanism by which one finds a book, claims the physicality of it, eventually reads said book, and then passes it on. Some time can pass before this recycling event happens, and the recycling can be where you trade it in to a used book store or give it to a friend, but the important part is that the book exists in your possession for a time and then leaves, to be replaced by a new book at a future date. It does not linger on your shelf forever (in many cases; biblioholics are a different exception here).

I've always liked being able to read and then recycle a book. I have a bad habit of reading one book and then buying ten, but hey....I can always dream of a future in which I have all the time in the world to read, right?

The problem with this notion is that when applied to the ebook ecosystem, I end up with hundreds, then eventually thousands of books. The ebook ecosystem is also designed to drive cheap sales with $1-3 books, hooking you on tons of casual "this looks cheap, I might want to read that" buys. At some point it becomes easy to have twenty or thirty books in your collection you want to read, another hundred or two you thought you'd want to read in the future, and hundreds of additional books that were so cheap or free you couldn't turn them down. (Yes, this is how biblioholics often function, pity us). Before you know it, your tablet or ereader is actually out of room....and you find yourself stricken with the curse that is a bounty of choices every time you pick up the old tablet to read a new tome.

Right now, I have a selection of print tomes I have gathered together and set myself a nice, snug little goal: I will read these ...ah, approximately 25 books over the coming Summer months. Can I pull this off?  Y'know, I feel more confident about these 25 print tomes than I do the 1,000 odd Nook books staring me in the face every time I load up.

I guess I could "load up" my ebook reading list and refuse to look past the first two pages in the Nook library, but that would require discipline...seriously.

The second problem is (in my personal experience) the greater and more insidious issue, and it really boils down to this: when you have 20 minutes to read, are you going to crack open a book and try to plow through a chapter, or are you going to open up the news feed app, or Youtube, or literally any of a hundred other apps on the tablet that can occupy 20 minutes (and more, you realize) of your time more easily and with less effort? To keep a tablet on task you pretty much need to ditch the Google Play store....and forget about the Kindle Fire, it's awesome and all but is so insidiously designed to sell you content that the book section isn't even the first tab you can choose from.

There are other reasons I've decided to make ebooks my secondary thing and go back to print. One of them has to do with screen glare: at some point I got it in to my head that staring at a bright blue-light emitting screen all the time is probably not the best way to keep my eyes healthy. Never mind that blue-light makes sleep harder (and the red-tinted alternative is unpleasant to stare at), just focusing on so much  light emitting tech is tiring. This is, of course, part of the whole current phenomenon of people trying to reduce "screen time" in their lives and I am feeling that screen-fatigue as well. Hell, I feel it right now in front of my giant PC monitor as I type this. I'll be feeling it at work for 8 hours tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe, I can reduce some of that by not feeling it when I'm trying to read?

There's also a little problem with battery life/shelf life of tablets. One of my Samsung Galaxy S2s is acting a little funny these days, and it doesn't hold much battery life anymore. It is my oldest tablet right now, at about five years of age, so not unexpected.....but the idea that I might want to replace it with an equivalent device (it is a very nice tablet) at a $500+ pricepoint every few years? Nah.

The last reason is insidious but notable. Buried in this article is a compelling point: when you have a tablet in your hand you could be doing all sorts of things, and few of them are reading books. My son is growing up in a world of technology, and he is just now starting to take notice of books, actually enjoy them....but to help him with this, I need to be setting a good example. Tablets don't really let you show a book off, show that you're, you know, actually reading something other than a garbage news feed. They also can't be easily exchanged. You can't hand a good book to your friend to enjoy....even after all this time both Nook and Kindle have been woefully inadequate when it comes to book sharing.

Put another way: physical books allow you to be social in certain ways that ebooks cannot and by design will not let you. This, it turns out, has been really important to me.

Anyway....I never stopped preferring print games and comics, so returning to print fiction and nonfiction isn't really that big a step for me. It will cost me a bit more....but I also feel like I'm returning to a space where I am more likely to spend my money wisely, and not just one the daily bargain basement e-deals. Plus, I get to spend more time actually shopping, in real book stores. There's just something about browsing aisles of books that is immeasurably more satisfying to me than scrolling through random lists of what Nook thinks is relevant. So consider me "back in print!"




*When I started the tablet/ereader journey this seemed like a brilliant notion. Years later I realize I almost never actually get any reading done on most trips, except maybe on the plane; and I've been on the plane only a handful of times in the last several years.

Total Conversion to the Ebook

Well, not total....game books, comics, coffee table art books and graphic novels still remain superior in print form. But for everything else, from the history and science book to the tried-and-true novel? Yeah, I am officially giving up on print.

From prior blogs you might have assumed this was a done deal, or close to it....but I've still been buying periodic print books to supplement my electronic plunder. What has happened, however, is something along these lines:

1. See cool print book in shop, buy book, convinced I will read it ASAP.

2. Book sits at home, where I lament having poor reading light.

3. Buy very nice reading light, book light, and break out the reading glasses.

4. Realize that a significant chunk of my reading is now done in the dark on a tablet while sitting on the patio.

5. Lament lack of ability to read in the dark on the patio with print books.

6. Take a trip. Read several ebooks while ignoring the print books I also brought along. Think about that one print book I really wanted to read that I left at home. Buy copy in ebook format and finish it on the trip.

7.  Finally have a moment to read a real book in perfect lighting with my reading glasses, but now I can't find the book in question. Buy ebook and solve problem.

...etc. etc.

So: I'm giving up on print books. Unless it's an artsy book like I mentioned before (and even then...graphic novels look pretty slick on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 10 inch screen....just sayin') it's pretty much a guarantee at this time that I will engage in tsundoku electronically going forward....my biblioholism may be never ending, but I can at least hide it all inside the walls of my tablet!

Shopping Around: Price comparing Nook vs. Kindle storefronts

Some discussion has been had on more than one occasion about the issue of pricing in the Nook and Kindle stores. The general consensus is that the Barnes & Noble storefront for Nook is more expensive on average, and the Kindle usually has slightly better prices across the board. I thought I'd put this to the test with a comparison of books in both storefronts.

To make this work I'm going to compare three sets of titles: popular current titles, new titles, and obscure titles. I tend to buy heavily from option #3 (obscure) and as a result may see more savings on average with Kindle than Nook....or so my buying experience suggests. So lets get on with this!

1st Comparison: Popular Current Titles

For this entry I'll look at the "top listings" for each store and pick a sampling based on subject mater: sci fi/fantasy for our purposes will be the control measure, using the top seller listings on each site as of 1/3/14. To qualify each book below must be on one of the two top seller lists:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card: Both Kindle and Nook list it for $3.99.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: $4.99 on Nook, $3.99 on Kindle.

A Song of Ice & Fire Five Book Set: $19.99 on Kindle, but $28.47 on the Nook. Interestingly, the Nook has the four-book Nook set for $34.99.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss $6.74 on Kindle and $6.74 on Nook.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. Kindle has this listed for $7.69 but the one-volume Lord of the Rings set for $10 (bwuh?) while Nook has the same exact prices, including a $10 one-volume set.

Result One: the prices match, with a couple exceptions. Kindle comes out ahead a bit due to Martin's books.

2nd Comparison: New Titles

For this entry I look at "newly listed" to see how the prices on these shiny new tomes appear. The source is this and this list as of 1/3/14. To be on this list it must appear on at least one of the two new lists, and be available now or preorder in both stores. Bias of Note: I am excluding any book that looks like a "urban fantasy vampire chick" novel from the test set:

The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks. $13.99 on the Nook and $11.84 on the Kindle.

Words of Radiance by Brian Sanderson. $12.74 Kindle edition and $14.99 Nook edition.

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (fyi this book sounds very cool). $13.99 Nook and $10.99 Kindle edition.

Halo: Mortal Dictata by Karen Traviss. $9.99 Nook edition vs. $8.89 Kindle edition.

The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor Part I by Robert Kirkman. $11.99 Nook edition vs. $9.83 Kindle edition.

Result Two: It's like this across the board....in terms of new, Kindle really wants your dollars, and B&N hasn't quite figured this out apparently.

3rd Comparison: Obscure Titles

I am a master of the obscure, as I expect many tabletop gamers are. What follows are a sample of my library, taken from both the Nook and the Kindle, for comparison:

Heavy Metal Pulp: Pleasure Model by Robert Vardeman. $7.59 on Kindle and $7.99 on Nook.

Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. $7.59 on Kindle and $8.99 on Nook.

Resident Evil: City of the Dead by S.D. Perry. $6.59 Kindle vs. $7.49 Nook.

Weird Space I: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown. $4.61 on Kindle and $5.49 on Nook.

Punktown by Jeffery Thomas. $5.99 on Nook vs. $3.99 on Kindle.

I tried comparing recent favorites of mine such as Zombie Pulp and The Hive both by Tim Curran but they aren't even on the Nook store it turns out.

Result Three: the Nook isn't as interested in discounting these mostly obscure titles. The selection I picked was random, but I could unfortunately just keep listing and listing and listing...and it would still be the same; virtually all these obscure titles are a bit cheaper on the Kindle.

The question I might pose to those who self-publish and release books through both storefronts is: why is this? What policy is in place that ends up with a higher mark-up on the ebook at B&N than at Kindle? Do authors and publishers have much control of their pricing, and does Nook have a more difficult "discounting structure" than the Kindle, assuming that's a tool available to publishers? Is it just a market share issue? According to a recent article Amazon holds a 67% market share....could this be the reason?

The Habits of Reading Laid Bare?

There's a very interesting article at the New York Times about a new focus on start-up companies looking to offer monthly subscription services for books, in which the reading habits of the audience are tracked in detail.

I'm not entirely sure how this process would work, at least to garner meaningful data; I've sometimes had to set down my ebook on a given page to take care of business, only to come back some time later; do they have a way of gauging when you're simply fascinated by that chapter, or can they tell when you've been indisposed to handle other business?

Some of the article's data points are interesting, and reflective of the real problem the article touches on at the very end: the fact that tracking such data is going to create a problem for the creative process, when authors start looking for that smoking Chekov's Gun that will insure the readers keep pouring in and reading their book, will it lead to a stiffling of creativity? A sqluelching of risk-taking? Will authors motivated by the urge to get good metrics back from the readership start avoiding ideas which they might otherwise of entertained in exchange for the quick and easy buck?

In fairness, the authors who will use this and react to their audience are the sort who are on Smashwords cranking out the latest erotic not-Anita-Blake vampire porn novel, probably...or the latest zombie apocalypse novel, because after all we clearly don't have enough of those. I suspect that genuinely good authors, or at least those who are pursuing their own vision of their work, are going to avoid this service like the plague, or at best take a callous and morbid interest in it.

Worst case: a good author gets discouraged from even bothering after finding out that his audience only finished his books 4% of the time, and that 90% of them spend too much time lingering on the alien sex scene.

My personal preference is to avoid these services. They will only lead to more of the same (Publishers: this is not something all readers want, believe it or not), will make me self-conscious of my reading habits, and frankly I would personally like to put as many marketing gurus out of business as possible, or at least keep my money from getting into their pockets whenever I possibly can!

Reader Apps: Aldiko, Nook Reader and Kindle Reader Apps

It's been a while since I've talked about tablets and ereaders. Last year I dived in with a Nook Tablet, and in December last year I snagged a Nexus 7 for myself and my wife. My wife has been addicted to the multitudinous menagerie of freemium apps on the Android Marketplace ever since, while I mostly download an occasional cool non-freemium game, lots of reader apps and the Pulse news app (a fine substitute for the morning paper). So far I've probably spent about $100 on Nook apps (not counting ebook purchases) while my wife has spent....well....I try not to think about it. Anyway!

Android apps in the Google Play store include both a Nook app and a Kindle app. The Nook app easily linked to my Barnes & Noble account, giving me access to my full library of titles through the Nook book store. Kindle was a new experience for me, as I had not previously owned a Kindle and had no apps through Amazon's e-store. I downloaded it, found a few freebies, and mused at how their app wasn't nearly as functional as their actual online store was at suggesting alarmingly accurate recommendations for my buying habits. In fact it doesn't offer any suggestions at all. Oversight? Limitation of the app architecture/programming? Patent issue? I have no idea. It's linked to my main account, so that's not excuse.

Aside from these two official apps I downloaded something called Aldiko. The version I have is free, which means an occasional ad pops up (I hardly ever see them, and never when reading a book). The premium version is $2.99 and I may cave and buy it soon. It supposedly includes some extra functionality, including highlight options, note taking a "home widget feature."

Aldiko easily found and imported my Baen Book collection, as well as my Paizo Pathfinder Tales collection. After some experimentation I determined it could import any and all books though the Nook app which were not locked by password DRM (presumably by the publisher), and it was pleasantly surprising to me to see that quite a few of my Nook store purchases were not DRM-locked. Less surprising was how many "big name" titles were.

The Nook reader app, as well as the Nook Tablet software have some decent customization options, but the Aldiko reader app offered a few perks the others didn't. It's not quite as good at reading some epub file formats as the Nook and Kindle apps are, interestingly....but the ability to do a real day/night feature was a plus (Kindle can do this too....Nook's is more like a day/gray feature). For those of you unfamiliar with this, the idea of a day/night feature is whether you are reading black on white or white on black. Nook does an unpleasant "white on gray," while everyone else does the more eye-friendly and possibly power-saving white on black (is it power saving? No idea).

Beyond that Aldiko works well for reading epubs. It even imported some unusual items like my Resident Evil Art Book that I got with RE 6, although it is an inferior experience to using the Adobe Reader app. And by inferior I mean "horrible." None of these ereaders are good at handling PDF files.

Aldiko cannot see any of the Kindle books I have purchased (I've been picking up Tim Curran's amazing novels...always been a fan ever since The Hive), so they won't import. I am not sure but I think Amazon DRM locks all the content it sells, unlike the Nook, which will make exceptions on publisher request.

The Nexus 7 can drain battery life quickly with some games and apps, but so far all three reader apps are modest in power use and you can read on the Nexus 7 for almost (but not quite) as long as on the Nexus Tablet (which gets me around 11 hours on average).

Aldiko does not have an app on the Nexus Tablet, so I couldn't tell you if it can tie accounts between devices to share your library. Nook Reader app does this, of course, so if I start a book on the Nexus 7 and later resume reading it on the Nook Tablet, it will know where I left off on both devices (provided I've got wifi connectivity during this period). I suspect the Kindle App does the same, for those with actual Kindles.

Although I like Kindle's ease of use, I am surprised at its limited functionality for shopping, being used to Amazon's great site online. The Nook Reader app functions almost, but not quite like the Nook Tablet. It's missing a couple conveniences (it doesn't scan for all epub files and group them together like it does on the Nook Tablet, for example) but the store search functionality is identical to and sometimes slightly more efficient than the same feature on their proprietary device. Aldiko, meanwhile, offers a storefront which lets you search several independent online sellers: Smashwords, Feedbooks, O'Reilly and Romance Books. Not the greatest selection....but better than nothing. Still, given it will take pretty much any epub book and make it available, no matter where that book came from (so long as its DRM free), that means you can shop at Baen Books, Crossroad Press, Paizo or wherever you like and just import it manually.

As a gamer, a parent, an avid reader these apps are all immensely useful. Given that they are all free (or have free versions) there's no harm in having access to all three. Aldiko has proven very handy for managing third party purchases and epub titles that are not DRM locked, and I definitely recommend it.