Remember when publishers were shitting their pants about these things killing their market?

You can get older books, which are often already public domain anyways for quite a bit cheaper, but everything else seems to cost about the same as physical books these days. E-readers are still fine with me as I save on space and don't read much that isn't public domain.

Wasn't the problem that they were going to kill physical book stores, rather than publishers themselves?

No, I'm complaining because I want more storage, better battery life, faster screen refresh rates, more responsive interface, better and more intuitive software, and an ergonomic design that fits the hand better

And all of it should be in a device that costs

>faster screen refresh rates
This, having the screen flash at me while all the e-ink re-arranges itself is so obtrusive. It's like if, during a movie, the cameraman leaned in front of the camera after every 24 frames and told you that you weren't actually in Vienna in 1945 tracking Harry Lime or whatever.

>can't read manga or comics in color
>PDF support is shit
>no good web browser

That's a tablet.

that's a function of e-ink though. it's impossible to cut out the re-fresh time completely, because it's rearranging.

not quite true.
youtube.com/watch?v=8iFoMhJCCbo

what's your point? That e-readers aren't viable because they're not from the future? that's not how anything works.

only problem I have is when I cant find compatible formats for things, for free or avaliable to buy

I only use irc & edit in calibre

>Rather than completely overturning the publishing field, they've basically turned into a transient technological roadbump that was dropped almost as quickly as it was adopted.

Honestly user I enjoy reading on my phone a thousand times more than i do kindles and other e-readers.

i see it more that most of our generations are used to reading physical copies and thus prefer them, the gen z readers will likely prefer the e-readers

they've been working on a lot of cool shit for a while now, but apparently it hasn't been commercially viable yet, or you bet your ass it'd be on the market.
Do you have any idea how many people would immediately replace all of their tech with e-ink tech if it came out on the market? It doesn't even have to be good, it just has to be new and people will gobble that shit right up. That's a lot of fuckin' money, so if it's not out yet, that probably means there's a problem they're not talking about, that undermines that profit. Like they wear out too quick or some shit.
youtube.com/watch?v=mdXu9jmTI2A

personally, I'm kinda stoked for the e-ink notepad
youtube.com/watch?v=1Z1JoAPkL7Q

But that doesn't mean what we have now isn't good. That's like saying the N64 wasn't a good system because it wasn't a playstation 3. Tech always gets improved on.

Dude honestly fuck off. E-readers are a huge gift to serious readers. I don't even get why you started this thread. There are lots of things in life to bitch about. Go bitch about something else somewhere else. Kindles are pretty fucking great.

The eBook market is incredibly lucrative, though. My pen name isn't even particularly well-known or popular yet I've made over $100 with Kindle. Some are making $5k a month, while other rare cases are up to $15k a month with Kindle. All I really want is $15k a year or $1.25k a month, which is most certainly possible for an even moderately successful self-published author to achieve. If eReaders/eBooks were so useless, I doubt the market would be so valuable. I'll soon be reaching $200 in royalties, no doubt I'll hit the mark sometime in September, and I've also ghostwritten a novelette recently for someone and was paid $100 for it. She plans to self-publish it once she puchases a good custom cover, and is already looking forward to hiring me for another job which will likely be similarly as lucrative.

I'd also like to point out that I don't even write to market. I don't write YA, I don't write vampire or werewolf stuff, I don't release individual erotica short stories/novelettes (which I hear is a pretty lucrative market); I just write what interests me. If I wrote to market I would most definitely be making much more money, but as it is I'm still getting hundreds of dollars and will no doubt eventually reach $1k a month, potentially even within the year at the rate I'm writing. 8 books already done, 6 being novel-length, steadily getting more readers and more reviews, by the time August 2018 rolls around I will probably have 18-20 books under my belt, perhaps half of which being my zombie survival series which I find to be quite fun to write. It's different from most zombie books however, heavy emphasis on survivalism, realism, ammo conservation, keeping fed/hydrated, etc.

Though personally, as for eReaders, I prefer physical copies. To each their own, but just saying that in my experience it seems to be a booming market.

Do e readers hurt your eyes?

>Now nobody cares about them

Everyone here has them, and if you lived in an urban center you would see everyone on a train reading one. Furthermore, on the 3 beaches I went to this weekend it was 50/50 ereaders and books, with old ladies dominating the book side

no, the screen is built to have a experience close to a book.

My biggest pb with e reader is not he price but he fact that they are shit with pdf, i don't get why it's so hard to just make them read all format

just convert the files on internet

but the result is most of the time shit

Fuck it, tell me more. Maybe i should just cut my teeth on shit like this for now.

How does one start.

tinfoil says they do it to combat piracy, if they didn't have their snowflake format and actually made their device read pdfs and epubs then their profit margins will drop
i use calibre to change formats

Yes, but at worse, you can read it on your computer. Or else, well you can buy the fucking book.

Still it gives you a sample of a book and you can try reading it before actually buying it.

wonder why some chinese cheap e reader is not available who can read everything

reading on computer or phone is very tiresome for the eyes and i have tons of books who take too much space already

agreed

Nah, tablets still have LED screens.

These elements:
>faster refresh, color, better CPU/RAM, better software
are for better format support. PDFs are a pain to read on most eReaders, since even with high computing power, you're still missing out on color 99% of the time. I think eReaders would also be more in demand with color and format support for comic book files.

>Now nobody cares about them
I do.

Having to turn the page of a physical paper book is a hundred times more obtrusive. Or not being able to hold it up with one hand when you are laying on your back in bed, or not being able to turn pages with one hand.

About a year I thought I had lost my old generation 2 Kindle and got a new paperwhite for christmas. A month ago I found my old gen 2 in the tankbag of my motorcycle. Now I have two kindles, fuck

I gave my old one to my mom. Delete the raunchy shit and gift it to someone who wouldn't buy it for themselves.

Because is slow af and overpriced.
Also normies tend to hate it because "muh warm phisical pages and galleries of books". And its not like everybody read anymore or something

What do you mean 'how does one start'? How do you get self-published? It's piss-easy. Write a book, edit it, make it as good as possible, ideally get a really nice custom cover made or if you don't have the funds then just use CreateSpace's cover creator (it's what I use), and then give CreateSpace the necessary information, upload the interior, fill out the info, and within a handful of days your book will be available to purchase on Amazon.

Be specific; what do you want to know? Also, to get an idea of what kind of covers you can make with CreateSpace's cover creator, you can check my books out on Amazon. Just look up J N Morgan, I've got 8 books finished, soon to start on #9 which will probably be a sequel to Firearm Valhalla. Hell, here's a link to my Amazon Author page.

www.amazon.com/author/jnmorgan

So what do you want to know? To start off with, I should probably inform you that, no, chances are you won't make much if any money starting out. Most self-published authors don't make $100 in their first year, I was pretty lucky to make that much in a roughly 2-month timeframe between mid-March to mid-May, and I actually know one chick who's self-published and miraculously made over $100 within her very first month which is OUTSTANDING! Her book has a female protagonist though, the cover looks quote 'girl power' even though it's not what she was going for, she's completely not an SJW or anything like that but I think she managed to tap into that market, more-or-less. There's a huge market for girl-power stuff. I guess if you want to just make money you could pander to that market, but I write about what I'm interested in.

They're niche products, but as someone who is in that niche, I find e-book readers some of the best things I've ever bought for myself. After a few books it just pays for itself, the reading experience is pretty good and you can also sync it with your phone, allowing you to read a few pages even if you don't have it on you.

I'm pretty happy with it. Yeah, the tech behind it could be better, but I'm happy with it nonetheless.

>More storage
3gb is more than overkill if all you're going to store is ebooks.

>Battery life
3 weeks minimum on a single charge, what more could you want? Would it really be different if you had to charge your device every 6 weeks instead of 4?

>100$
I got a Kindle paperwhite for less than that. Not sure what's your point.

I sort of agree with the refresh rate and the responsiveness, but the rest is mostly just you complaining for complaining's sake.

The ereader is for reading books.

You get a tablet for your animu crap.

If you could read, you'd see the point being made: Ereader technology and innovation has stagnated - and it has.

>the tech shown in the video is almost 10 years old now
>still hasn't come to market

Are these e-ink guys just milking us or what? There's virtually no difference between an e-ink display today and an e-ink display from literally a decade ago. What happened?

>Ereader technology and innovation has stagnated - and it has.
So? So has hammer technology. It does what it's supposed to do.

>given a Kindle Fire last Christmas
>it won't let me install any Google products and forces me to search with Bing
>doesn't have any good Veeky Forums apps
>doesn't even have e-ink like normal Kindles
>had to pay $15 to stop them from putting ads on my lock screen

Needless to say I'm never buying a Kindle with my own money, what should I get instead?

>$700 for an ereader you can write on with low refresh rates and lag

Why the hell would someone pay that much instead of using a piece of paper? These manufacturers are out of their minds if they think this is going to sell at these prices.

Yeah, I really want it because it's fancy, but then I remembered I'm not in fucking school anymore, so who gives a shit. Either way, it'll be cool once it's been on the market for 15 years and you can get one for 50 bucks retail.

kobo's are the only real competitor

that's what you get for having family stupid enough to get you a meme product. Kindle is for e-readers only.

Pathetic desu

ereaders have been on the market for 15 years and you still can't get the shittiest and cheapest ones for $50.

Look at phones - a 5 year old smartphone is 95% as good as a modern phone, but you'll be paying $200+ for it because nobody manufactures them, and newer phones are all $200+ because they're new.

The only way you're getting an ereader for

>kindle fire

20 dollar tablets are not ereaders

The only issue I have with them is if you want to be honest and purchase a book there isn't a saving off of a physical book. I'm not in a rush to read so I can wait for shipping times, there is more available in physical than digital, and physical has more value per dollar than a digital license since I can sell it back to a used book store. Not to mention the perceived value of a physical thing. Free public domain books are nice though.

But user, you can't show off to your normie friends how much you're well read if the library is in the e-reader.

sure you can

>Rape scenes in your zombie book
Is all self-published work thinly-veiled erotica?

sex sells

Go choke on a dick.

turns out books taking up physical space isnt that big a deal breaker for me

if its a problem I can justt put them in storage or give them away

You don't have to sell anything to me user. I already have an e-reader and I love it. it's to the people that buy pick related that you have to talk to

I use them almost exclusively. I live in Sweden and can get books in any language from the comfort of my own home, I don't even have to go to the library.

There's a French or German word I don't understand? boom translated instantly by just holding my finger on the word for a few seconds.

Travelling and not sure which books to take? np take them all, doesn't take any space anyway

Oh no I need to take notes/find notes I've taken! Oh right, I just have to mark it with my finger and find them with the note index feature

etc. They're useful. That said, a lot of people haven't moved onto them so you're definitely right in that they didn't just swoop in and kill the market.

I actually have 5 zombie books in the series and only two of them have actual rape in them. No wait, three. Er, well, and then a fourth sort of has some molestation... aaaaand then yet a fifth has some creepy vastly underage stuff going on between an old, bearded Muslim husband with his 12 year old Muslim wife whom he has yet to consummate the marriage with. Well shit, so yeah, I guess they all have sex to SOME degree. Then there's "When her 'No' means 'Yes'" however in my defence the review I got for it recently does a good job in showing that it's not just blatant erotica for the sake of erotica; lots of character development and story in that little novel. Then my drama "Another One Please, to Dull the Pain" which deals mostly with men's rights issues has only a brief scene of implied eroticism with a blowjob in a parked vehicle with the dude being utterly passed-out drunk. BUT, finally, Firearm Valhalla, which has no eroticism whatsoever that I can think of even though it's basically a gun porn novelette. Lots of action, a bit of humour, some drama/tragedy, but it's mostly about gushing over firearms and firearm handling.

So, no, not all self-published works are thinly-veiled erotica... in fact I think all my books except WhNmY are so low in smut that it can't truly be called erotica, even thinly veiled. The 'molestation' bit in one of the zombie books is VERY brief and as I recall the only smutty thing that happens in that entire novel.

While this is technically true, it's not the reason I enjoy putting sex to some degree or another in almost all my books. I just fucking love sexual things and sexual writings, even if sometimes it's the kind of thing I don't like. For instance, in one book I include a bit of watersports for the sake of experimented sexual domination. I have no interest in watersports whatsoever, but I ended up throwing it in because it fitted with the story, won't go into deal as to 'why' however.

I also like all the potential snowflake melting that comes with portraying blatant and unabashing rape scenes. My latest book, 'Living amongst the Dead: Will there be No Reprieve' has by far the most overall brutal rape scene I've ever written, and possibly the most brutal I've ever read, though I'm certain there's some works out there that are so intense it would make me potentially gag or wretch. Mine isn't quite THAT brutal, but there is indeed a lot of pain, a lot of blood, and ultimately the desire to be killed outright to end it all. She DID cause 3-4 books of suffering however so I can't say she has my sympathy...

I think the big reason ereaders didn't kill the market is entirely down to price.

Most people balk at the idea of paying $100 (or $400 in the case of a kindle oasis where I am) for an ereader. I know that I thought they were cool, but way too expensive. It wasn't until I actually sucked it up and bought one (and then rooted it - go heck yourself amazon) that I understood what I was missing out on.

Even so, I'm abnormal. Nobody I know reads or has read as many books as I have - and I don't mean this in a bragging sense, but just that normies don't read books. If you read 1 book per month, you're already ahead of 90% of the first-world population. So for the casual readers out there, even $100 is too much to dump on a device that's pretty much just for reading - especially when they rationalize that their phone or laptop can do it too.

If ereaders like the kindle were more like $30 - $50, pretty much everyone would have one.

Unfortunately, there seems to be an e-ink monopoly/cartel that is ensuring limited supply and artificially increased prices in the west. Virtually all e-ink advances are happening in China where nobody cares about IP.

The thing is, is that full price books are like 8-16 dollars on average. Your kindle (~100$) pays for itself if you pirate just 10-12 books, and e-books are cheaper, especially if you're getting classics, which are often free, or just a couple cents.

>100% of people have adopted a thing so it's a failure
Everyone has a tablet so everyone has an e-reader

>for most it's a dead end
That's because the average pleb doesn't even read. You think most people use their iPads for productivity and learning? Hell no, they use them to play clash of clans on the pooper

>iPads on the pooper
Gross

The e-reader is the impossible dream that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was named after

Textbooks and artbooks still have some purpose, but otherwise I cant justify keeping books or CDs or DVDs anymore. It's that obsolete

Only woman and children
>claming books obsolete
>reddit references
Yeah,sure buddy

Everyone has a tablet, even poorfags. I have two desktops three laptops and five tablets all for different purposes.

Are you saying non-Fire Kindles are the only other option? Are they bloated with adware like the Fire is? Do they have apps that let you rent ebooks from the library?

Pill me on the Kobo senpai

>non-Fire Kindles are the only other option?
no, I'm saying that non-fire kindles are perfectly fine e-readers. yeah, they got a little ads, but it doesn't interfere with it's functionality. Also, I don't know about renting because libgen exists, but sure. I'm sure there are.

I bought my kindle after hemming and hawing and comparing kindle and kobo and reading reviews for nearly 6 months. Because I'm neurotic, I'll tell you that it was hard to choose, but in the end I picked Kindle, and haven't regretted it once. As far as e-readers go, they're pretty identical beyond the supported file types. I think kobo has gotten wider, which makes PDFs easier to read. (I made the choice like 4 years ago, so there'll be differences since).

Kobo's are basically Kindles but you don't get ads shoved down your throat by amazon, and you have more control over your device. For example, being able to set wallpapers or change fonts, which you cannot do on a kindle without rooting one.

Amazon also reserves the right to unilaterally remove any books they feel like from your library. They've already done it and they will do it in the future.

And the amazon kindles don't support open formats like epub while kobos do, so you have to use calibre to convert books if you actually want to read any of them.

t. bought a kindle and wish I bought a kobo

Isn't that because anyone that doesn't care about holding a book would just read it on their phones at no additional cost? E-readers failed for the same reasons PDA failed. Phones are basically portable multipurpose computers now. In fact my phone is more convenient to use than my Kindle, my kindle forces me to use amazon bullshit and can't read epubs unlike my phone.

What apps do you use for your phone, user? Most of the ones I've downloaded hurt my eyes or would bug out.

My kindle is my best friend. It's the best thing I could have ever bought when I got back into reading. The vocabulary flashcards that it provides is very convenient as well.
>Instant dictionary explanations when you highlight a word you don't know
>Adds the word to the list of words you've looked up
>Lets you learn the words using flashcards to solidify your vocabulary
I could shill my kindle all day. Not to mention the screen doesn't make my eyes tired and it feels just as normal as reading a book.

It's called flux, download it. Blocks blue light and can lower brightness even lower than your phone's dimmer.

>They're about 30x more expensive than they should've been

Whuht?
My e-reader that I got new cost about as much as 10 books.
I got my money back within several months. I still carry it around.

I think he means as a piece of tech. E-readers are a rip off in terms of the parts and performance for the price. I have bought $50 Chinese tablets with more functionality and better specs.

I have Lovecraft's complete fiction from B/N and I don't regret a thing. It's the only way to have all of his works compiled into one volume. Also it's pretty.