As part of this gig I read a lot of stuff about ebooks, ereaders, elibraries, etc. I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the articles I read are just put there to generate traffic, not to make a point out or say anything really useful. Unfortunately, if you are a newbie to the area you might not realize this and take them seriously – or you might be like me and have to plough through them just to get to the useful stuff.
Here are a few examples that come to mind:
Kindle Fire/iPad comparisons: come on – comparing a low end $200 device to one that costs 3 to 4 times more. Who will kill whom? Give me a break. No reason to do this other than to get traffic. Would you even consider reading an article with the title Is the new Timex a Rolex killer?
iPad/iPhone rumors: they always turn out to be wrong and there is never any data to support them. So why publish them? Get traffic. I would love to increase TeleRead’s traffic, but I’m not going to do it by publishing unsubastantiated rumors. Maybe I’ll publish this one later in the week: Analyst says that new iPhone will not be an iPhone!
iPad is distracting/e-ink readers are not: how dumb is this! Just another traffic getter. Think about this for a minute. Let’s leave the iPad aside for a minute and just look at e-ink readers. Here you are reading on your e-ink reader and the phone rings. Headline: E-ink readers bad because they allow phones to ring! Or you are reading on your e-ink reader you want to know what time it is. Headline: E-ink readers distracting because allow you to look at your watch. Or, finally, you are reading on your e-ink reader and stop to listen to the wonderful birdsongs outside in the spring. Headline: E-ink can’t compete with birdsongs. Now think about how great paper books are – when you read a paper book you don’t hear the phone ring, don’t look at your watch and you certainly don’t hear birds singing. Give me a break!
A lot of the stuff out there today is just published for traffic generation, not because it makes any sense. If you are new to ebooks/ereaders please just use your common sense and don’t pay any attention to all the silly articles out there.
Paul, you had me agreeing until the last point. I agree that the telephone is distracting if it rings while I am reading. But today, how many telephone calls do you get in comparison to e-mails and Twits. And if your telephone is a cellphone, you can turn it off.
I’m of the camp, as I’m sure you have guessed, that does think that devices like the iPad are a distraction to a reader. There are too many other things that are available on such devices that are calling for attention. It is too easy to say that a passage in a book is too difficult and decide to take a break and watch a video, answer e-mail, surf the Internet, etc., things that cannot be done (or done easily) on the off-the-shelf dedicated ebook device.
I think that the debate over whether to buy a tablet that can do many things or a dedicated reader is a legitimate debate.
It seems to me that if you do not think it is a legitimate debate, you would also have to conclude that the DRM debate is illegitimate. After all, for most ebookers DRM is a nonexistent issue — they buy their ebooks at the store that sold them their reading device or use a PC application. It is only a (relatively speaking) handful of people who really care about DRM vs. no DRM.
Now, that couldn’t apply to articles like this one, could it? “E-books’ lack of cover could end intellectual snobbery of reading in public”
Excellent article Paul. Unfortunately this traffic generating garbage makes up quite a lot of online blogging of one soft or another these days. The iPad distracting one must be the most inane and dumb faux controversy of them all.
Hmmm, use common sense when reading articles on the web because there is a lot of stuff without any substance, is that the point?
This article was generated in order to provide an example of irony?