ebooks vs real books( notes,hardbacks)

[Jr? Sweeney (the lost boy)]

Name some books or notes you like to read ? Do you love real hard backs or is it ebooks all the way for you?

 

[RickEverhart]

For me, and I don't know why but I like to physically hold a book in my hands and turn the page with my hand...not by swiping or pushing a button. I am not against ebooks but just not very fond of them. Also I think I enjoy "seeing" my progress with my eyes by looking at a book mark getting deeper and deeper into the pages. I have paid money and so I like to have the book up on a shelf in my room...not a piece of data on a kindle.

As far as books I enjoy reading, I am not going to make a huge list because there are already tons of threads naming the best magic books to read or own but I will say I primarily enjoy reading:

Biographies and Autobiographies about famous magicians
I also enjoy psychological books about magic and why are brain perceives magic the way it does

 

[Randy]

Both of them have their strong points and weak points. I personally love holding a book in my hands and reading it, but with Kindle and many other ebook readers you can now have a large library with you on the go, the books never get that yellowish tinge to them and can you imagine trying to carry a bunch of books with you on a long flight and trying to decide on which one you want to read?!

For magic too, Ebooks give you the ability to read that one book that would have cost you $150 and gone out of print within a week.

 

[Colin]

For me there is no real comparison. I would pick a real physical book to an ebook every time.

I can still remember unwrapping my copy of Mark Wilson's Complete Course 28 years ago and it I can still take it anywhere I happen to want to read it. No worries about batteries or format changes. It still has notes I've made over the years (on random bits of papers as I am not one for writing in books but I could if I wanted to).

I would much rather have a book beside me and a tablet or computer screen glaring at my eyes. I can lend them to friends and they just look nice on a shelf when they are not being read.

Ebooks have their uses and there is a lot of great material that is available in that format and I understand that if can be a far less expansive way to get material out there but if I have the choice I want a proper book.

One of my projects this year is working my way through Expert at the Card Table (which has been on my shelf for probably two decades but I've never properly gone through it) and I can't think of a single reason why I would want to look at a PDF over a paper copy and having finally read it has lead me down the Erdnase rabbit hole and annotated editions and biographies (or theories I guess) will soon be showing up in my post box. I never once thought to check if any of them were even available as digital copies.

I have bought a number of Paul Voodini's ebooks but only because that is the only formant that the material is available in and the first thing I tend to do is print out a paper copy so I don't have to read the work on screen.

Books, and hardcover when ever it is an option, all the way for me.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

My mother used to be a voracious reader so I picked up on that pretty hard. I will always go for a hard copy over an eBook if it's available. They are more comfortable to me, easier on my eyes, they look great on the shelf, etc. I like eBooks for the convenience, though. I do a lot of traveling and yes - I can imagine what it's like to have a bag full of books on a plane trip. That's how I always used to travel. Now I have a few dozen on my Kobo and I read them.

I like how books age. I just got a book printed in 1894. It looks amazing. But there's another factor - paranoia. Electronics will fail. PDFs and ePubs and such are, by nature, ephemeral. A book will be here in a hundred years if you take care of it but the chances of all these ebooks being around in 2114 are pretty slim.

 

[RickEverhart]

Speaking of ebooks....I was thinking of getting a Kindle Paperwhite for my upcoming bday and wanted to know.....are there truly THAT many good Magic books available as downloads?

 

[krab]

Speaking of ebooks....I was thinking of getting a Kindle Paperwhite for my upcoming bday and wanted to know.....are there truly THAT many good Magic books available as downloads?

Yes While i'm not a fan of ebooks over paper between http://conjuringarts.org/ and http://www.lybrary.com/ and don't forget that Abbots has the originial Tops Magazine as a PDF you can get some pretty killer OOP books.

 

[krab]

That reminds me i need to buy El Cheapo from Lybrary tonight.

 

[meggisonj]

To me, it's apples and oranges. Oranges are orange.. ebooks are light. They both have their place. So, for me, it's not about what's better and what's worse or which I prefer.. but it's all about.. choosing the right reason to buy each one individually. For example.. A big 500 page book would be best in a PDF form. A 500 page books takes up like 3 times the size of one regular book. And booklets with 10 pages are best in PDF form as well. For this, it's like, "Lets devour the information over and over." The answers (like magic tricks) are never one size fits all.

 

[Craig Browning]

Both of them have their strong points and weak points. I personally love holding a book in my hands and reading it, but with Kindle and many other ebook readers you can now have a large library with you on the go, the books never get that yellowish tinge to them and can you imagine trying to carry a bunch of books with you on a long flight and trying to decide on which one you want to read?!

For magic too, Ebooks give you the ability to read that one book that would have cost you $150 and gone out of print within a week.

I understand this, kind of agree with it, but loathe it at the same time. To me eBooks are a kind of rip-off in that you cannot resell them like I can my physical collection. Digitally I have over 1,500 books but my physical library is plagued by notebooks from where I've printed off some of those books and bound them so I can grab them and look things up more readily than I can using an electronic device. I can likewise highlight things, make margin notes (I really trash my books because they are for studying, not for looks). I can't do those things with my eBooks nor can I donate them them to whatever group or individual I choose when I finally draw that last breath. . .

How does one legally pass on their library given today's digital addiction?

I've recently been plagued with the .drm suffix on eBooks that more or less require one to work with a Reader service like Readmill or try to figure out how to activate a certain program within Acrobat . . . techies make it sound easy but I've yet to figure it out... but the pain in the butt is, I can't make a physical copy for my personal files -- a hard copy as back-up for those wonderful days when everything crashes around you. . . personally, I'm tired of having to repurchase things I once had on disc and have learned to back things up with a hard copy when they are an article of value. Can't do that with this suffix and it's getting so ridiculous with the copyright laws that we won't be able to do it much longer, period. "They" are trying to criminalize the idea of being a good person that shares with a partner or co-hobbyist, anything and everything.

$150.00 books that go out of print in a week. . . while an exaggeration the truth behind their short life is so as to limit just how many people get the advantage behind the information. Derren Brown (long before his fame) had a book that he made 13 copies of and one I think there were on 6 copies to world wide. They sold for thousands of dollars in some cases. Just like Jerome Finley and Neal Scryer the idea is that a.) only the serious workers are going to pay the price; and b.) only such people will appreciate the nuggets of wisdom being shared because it's all from a PROFESSIONAL perspective. Usually such tomes are marketed with a disclaimer that says only X number of books will be released or that it's a limited time offer. I have several books coming out between now and this time next year that have time limits on them, if you don't purchase them during that time period you don't get the information, end of story. . . and we are adding security measures to make certain these books stay limited.

When it comes to physical books, outside the idea of a limited run, which isn't that unusual, I know of no book that falls under that point you have in this line. . . technically such would be impossible unless the book ends up on those non-existent censor lists. . .

 

[krab]

$150.00 books that go out of print in a week. . . while an exaggeration the truth behind their short life is so as to limit just how many people get the advantage behind the information.

This is why it kills me that I lost my hardback copy of Pallbearers Review my set of MO and my complete set of original Tops in a flood. The cost of pallbearers review is pushing $700 for a good copy. It is one of those I would buy as an Ebook or PDF until I can find a hard copy again. MO just came out as a book so that was a no brainer. As for Tops I picked them up as a PDF just so I could print out what I wanted and not have to have them taking up space. The only thing I ever picked up as a PDF that I already owned as a hard copy was the Original Tarbell. I love having a searchable version of that 1300 page monster.

But yes sometimes strong magic is released in books with a small print run to keep it out of the hands of the merely curious.

 

[Craig Browning]

This is why it kills me that I lost my hardback copy of Pallbearers Review my set of MO and my complete set of original Tops in a flood. The cost of pallbearers review is pushing $700 for a good copy. It is one of those I would buy as an Ebook or PDF until I can find a hard copy again. MO just came out as a book so that was a no brainer. As for Tops I picked them up as a PDF just so I could print out what I wanted and not have to have them taking up space. The only thing I ever picked up as a PDF that I already owned as a hard copy was the Original Tarbell. I love having a searchable version of that 1300 page monster.

But yes sometimes strong magic is released in books with a small print run to keep it out of the hands of the merely curious.

Ever see pictures of the Northridge Quake and that mall that got flattened? What they don't show you is the Storage facility a block over that also got flattend and water soaked. . . I lost my automated Ouija, a Sword that belonged to Erroll Flynn as well as my modern Ninja equipment that included a custom Ninja Tu with a black blade. . . videos, photos, thousands in books and props. . . I literally cried and yet, was ever so grateful that the main warehouse was ok (it housed some of the most famous illusions of magic history; most of the Thurston, Dante and Blackstone shows and then some.

But, I've endured much more over the years. . . life is always a strange adventure.

 

[ChrisWiens]

Both have pros and cons. Generally I like physical books more because of the haptics and smell (sounds crazy?). On the other hand ebooks are easier to read for me (especially some of the tomes I own I would love to see as ebooks) and,as mentioned, ebooks tend to not get OOP. That way I got some books I would never be able to afford.
Our Magic or the Elmsley books for example. Used copies of some OOP-books are extremely expensive.

I agree this will not help in keeping it exclusively and secret. I think it doesn`t matter that much.
If you want to keep something a secret, put it in print. And ebooks still have to be read. Even though the information is easier to access, I`m not afraid anyone without real interest in magic will actually read and study these ebooks.