I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to read books online. Two books on my reading list, Let Their People Come and Economics for Real People (an intro to Austrian economics), are freely available online (here, and here), but I will be buying hard copies, because I know that, regardless of my interest, I won’t read the whole book online.
I read a lot of stuff online, but there seems to be a length limit. I can’t read more than about fifty pages of any one material online. Perhaps it is simply that my chair is uncomfortable, or perhaps having a physical book reminds me to continue reading. I don’t find either of these explanations convincing.
I also wonder how much of the failure of the “paperless office” is explained by this difficulty.
Does anyone have a good explanation?
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September 17, 2007 at 10:35 am
john m
I was just reading about this in the Walrus, by an author who wanted to put his book online. The article is here, you can read it or I wrote out a summary; it’s well-written if you’ve got time.
http://walrusmagazine.com/print/2007.09-media-apocalypse-soon/
The single word explanation he gave was contrast. There’s something about the pixel-quality of computer screens that makes it a tad harder to read and strains your eyes.
This bit of increased effort, the story goes, isn’t terribly noticeable in small doses, but after longer periods of time leads to an endurance problem that becomes worse the longer you read.
Apparently significantly better screens are on the way that don’t have this problem, and once that happens there’ll probably be ipod-like reading gadgets everywhere and the publishing industry will take a big hit, but also hopefully book prices will come down to something within the realm of reason.