We’ve actually considered that. Thanks for validating that for me.

Eric

At the time I was dropping easily $700 to $800 a year on tech books. Mostly for the required certifications, but a good many for reference at job sites. Beyond the dollar figure (which often I was reimbursed by my employers), two realities set in. First it was rather unprofessional to cart around milk crates of books at the start of each new contract. Second, these books grow obsolete quickly. (Want a complete collection of Windows NT 3.51 manuals?)

I’ve use a Kindle, but frown on the interface. Eventually I’ll get used to it and reconsider. But probably only for my tech books. There’s a difference in the presentation between a “real book” and the “virtual book.” What presents well in one format doesn’t always work for the user in the other format. It’s really just a “feel” I guess.

Craig.

I also don’t like the proprietary format issue.

I don’t have a decent reader, though – just my laptop. Perhaps I need the Kindle 2.

And I don’t really read e-books for pleasure, or “cover to cover” instead I will look up specific passages as needed. I wonder how I’d like it for more prolonged reading.

I am excited not about the Kindle or devices like it as much as I am about digital access to the world’s great libraries from anywhere. Digital download of OOP/public domain stuff has been a godsend in tracking down obscure material without paying a fortune either buying hardcopies or travel and photocopy expenses.

Dave Powell

Ironclad is not going to make much money by offering these book as e-books, but it is a stream of revenue that cannot be ignored. Many leading Civil War authors already are on amazon’s Kindle 2 catalog.

When I went to college to study papermaking as my undergrad, the “paperless” society was not a concept yet. Now, over the past 10 years, nearly 100,000 jobs have left our industry, and now 80% of the uncoated paper in the U.S. is made by 5 companies (in 1999, there were 15 on the list).

That said, paper books and other paper products will survive, but Eric is correct to face the reality that statistics from the book industry indicate that, despite Harry Potter, fewer young people read or collect books, so to reach them, e-books are necessary.

Newspapers are disappearing for a number of reasons, not to mention their ridiculous leftist bias and shoddy quality choosing online delivery of content over paper. With this new national profound shift to the left and with global warming stupidity and extremism at the heart of it, it’s sure to be the case soon enough that an environmentalist argument will be made that will put book publishers under extreme pressure to limit their “abuse” of trees, and switch to electronic delivery of books.

John Adams was a great marginal notes writer. Every single book in the library at the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy, Massachusetts contains marginalia on almost every page. This is a gold mine for historians and anyone interested in understanding someone who was such a serious reader as was Adams and his son JQ Adams. With the kindle those days are over forever, and I will miss them.

I personally prefer paper in my hands, and a good book well bound. I spend enough time looking at a screen during work hours and when sending emails. Books offer an intellectual, visual, and tactile escape from the gizmos of technology that we’ve surrounded ourselves with. Also, when one walks into a home in the near or far future shall we see empty shelves and no books but a kindle laying about and say, oh! there’s a reader! No. Perusing book shelves is a great way to get to know people; absence of such shelves is always a sure giveaway to a tv watcher or a non-reader.

I personally love books and never want to see them go away. As a neo-luddite, I very much appreciate the potential of the kindle but I also see it as a threat to something I dearly love, books. I don’t have a kindle and I plan on not getting one, ever.

But there’s nothing like the feel, smell, and “personality” of a good book. And there’s nothing more beautiful and welcoming than a well-supplied gentleman’s library – somehow these techno-gadgets just don’t do the same thing for me as do real books. Kind of like comparing instant mashed potatoes to the real thing.

Besides, books don’t crash.

Though I’ve heard of the Kindle for awhile, I actually saw one in the flesh for the first time just several weeks ago. It seems kinda nifty, however I agree wholeheartedly with you about loving the look, feel, (and even smell) of books. They provide a pleasureable experience that goes well beyond mere words on a page, or a screen.
My initial thoughts were similar to David’s – it would certainly be convenient for travel, however I was not aware that public domain books (per Harry) can be downloaded for free. I occasionally have to be a bit of a road warrior for work purposes, and I often take writing projects with me to toil on in hotel rooms. Imagine the benefit of having a 1/3″ thick Kindle with close to a thousand public domain Civil War books on it. It would literally be a traveling library that could easily slip into a briefcase. If the public-domain-books-for-free thing is the case, I then see myself taking the plunge.

Paul