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Re:You’ve Got Mail is Ripe for a Sequel by cookiecaper on Friday January 07, 2011 @04:54PM (#2081290)
I think it's ridiculous to assume that all physical books are worthless. There are reasons to prefer physical books, after all; they're easy to carry around, they don't run out of battery or need any maintenance like charging, and they're generally much cheaper than an e-Reader. If you're not a heavy reader, and not many are these days, why would you spend $150 on a book-reading device? You still have buy the books you would buy anyway, and you have much more freedom buying individual books. e-Books may take a cut out of printed books, but I sincerely doubt they'll obliterate them entirely.

On top of all that, used book stores provide much more value than big commercial vendors like B&N because their selection is so broad and so cheap. Used books are in general perfectly fine to be re-read, so people seeking bargains on new books go there frequently; e-Books will generally not be discounted very quickly, there is no such thing as a "used e-Book".

The _real_ reason used bookstores are going to be around for a long time, though, is that there are A LOT of books out there. Even if someone was able to digitize millions of books, there'd be millions and millions more that would only be able to be found in used bookstores, especially with older books. Just go into your local used book store and ask yourself how much of that catalog is available on the Kindle, or will be made available any time in the foreseeable future. It's a pretty small percentage.

Re:You’ve Got Mail is Ripe for a Sequel by jseliger on Friday January 07, 2011 @07:11PM (#2081657)
I think the issue basically comes down to preference: there are advantages and disadvantages, some of which I talked about from my point of view here: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/29/the-last-word-on-this-version... .

I still mostly read physical books -- in part because I'm in grad school for English Lit, and the edition problems with eBooks makes them hard to cite and harder still to cite authoritatively.

But a doctor I know observed that he and his wife switched to Kindles because now they don't have to take 10 lbs of books with them, per person, when they travel. I definitely identify with that.

Re:You’ve Got Mail is Ripe for a Sequel by sedachv on Friday January 07, 2011 @05:24PM (#2081395)
Maybe not worthless, but worth a lot less.

The biggest problem as anyone who owns (buys) a lot of books knows is what to do with them once you've read them. E-readers will continue to get better, more convenient and cheaper. My desire to try to sell used books on Amazon, bookstores or donating them to Goodwill or the library (even though libraries don't actually want your donations) will continue to remain low.

Re:You’ve Got Mail is Ripe for a Sequel by cookiecaper on Friday January 07, 2011 @06:11PM (#2081524)
I think there's probably a group that likes having physical copies for the enhanced accessibility and the ability to do whatever you want with the book afterward. I know I would prefer to purchase a physical copy, because I know that the physical copy is completely under my control, and I can resell it, give it away, borrow it to a friend, etc. without a vendor's permission. I expect many publishers are trying to promote eBooks because they can charge the same without any shipping or manufacturing costs and because they can track and control users much more tightly, preventing used sales and compiling profiles about users' tastes, etc.