I’d rather talk about literature than trashy novels :) But I actually think the difficulty with reading digital books is context: there’s too much going on a computer that it’s easy to get distracted, so perhaps it’s well worth trying to read content away from a computer in a comfortable reading context. I never thought I’d like e-books until I got sucked into reading a whole novel (”Pride and Prejudice”, at that) while on the road. And even then, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t give up paper books.

I’m actually somewhat more interested in ways we can couple both the digital and physical experience. For example, a way where I can swap between a paper book and a digital book if I wanted — without paying for two separate books.

@karl — Interesting that you find the re-rendering of the page distracting. The Classics app on the iPhone emulates a page turn — which I like, but I know it puts others off. Stanza does a very smooth scroll, or it can “blink” in the next page. I find that some degree of animation is necessary, almost as if your brain needs to register that the content is changing. Is the redraw line-by-line on books you’ve seen?

As for the facebook study — I didn’t want to focus much on it, but I was reading a few things around it, and found this article from 2003 that’s from a publication of the American Psychologists Association:

Much of the commonly accepted thought about television and children is wrong, says Anderson. For example, there’s no evidence for the popular assumption that television’s rapid-fire editing style has shortened children’s attention spans. Anderson also finds himself having to convince producers that they should focus less attention on how a show looks and more on making its content understandable.

This researcher also looked into having televisions left on in the background around toddlers.

Anderson’s own daughter has helped with his research. The fact that she watched a “Blue’s Clues” pilot 17 times before losing interest prompted Anderson’s research on the effect of repetition. His discovery that repetition reinforces learning resulted in Nickelodeon’s strategy of repeating episodes on five consecutive days.

However, Anderson says his research interest hasn’t made his daughter a television addict. Now 10, Emma prefers to read.

I mostly can’t read paper books at home. I have to be in a cafe or in a transportation system. It’s how I came to love my long commute 2*1h30 a day in the last years. I will have to find a new strategy now.

I have a lot of difficulties to read a cheap printer paper book, as I guess I would have difficulty on a tv screen. BUT on a LCD screen it seems fine for me. The ebooks I have tried in shops have one disruptive element, the time it take to redraw the page (eink tech). but the quality of reading is nice.

The facebook study is not about reading but about attention span when consuming small bits of information changing rapidly.

On one hand, I think e-books are great because so much paper is used in the production of books. I’ll refrain from making any pronouncements on the value of most books relative to the trees used to product them and instead say that e-books make a lot of sense from a conservation and efficiency standpoint, especially in terms of technical publications and frequently-revised volumes. In the e-book model, you might consider offering an “upgrade” of a book to a newer version for a discounted price, which helps you sell the book again and again, like software. Again, in technical and educational situations, this is invaluable and could create an even better stream of income for authors (and their publishers).

On the other hand, I do love holding a book in my hand. I haven’t tried an e-book reader yet, but I find it hard to believe I will enjoy the experience nearly as much, especially as I am a hardcover, first edition fiend. I also find that for technical references, having a print copy of a book is quite handy. I’ve tried using PDF versions of books, but, even with the search functionality and other nifty features, I definitely have a harder time reading and, more importantly, comprehending the prose. When it’s a trashy novel, that may not be a big deal, but we’re talking about technical material, that’s unacceptable.

The one thing I find upsetting about the current state of e-books, however, is the model Amazon has created for themselves. The fact that the author gets only a flat 35% of the sales price of the work seems crazy to me. And that’s for self-publishing. I don’t even want to know what we’d get for each sale of a book published through a major publishing house.

I suppose at some point I’ll pick up an e-book reader, but I don’t know that I’ll ever give up on print.