Audio, Digital, and Print Books by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.

Audio, Digital, and Print Books
Copyright © January 2, 2019 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.

Introduction
The purpose of this short article is to briefly review the advantages and the disadvantages of the following three types of books:

1. Audio Books.
2. Digital Books.
3. Print Books.

Audio Books
Audio books have been available for approximately 40 years.

The first audio books were on cassette tapes that could be played on a portable cassette player, or on a combination car radio/cassette player (instead of a CD player that comes with car radios today).

Today audio books are available on CDs, or they can be downloaded digitally using WiFi.

There are three basic types of audio books:

The book is simply read by one person without voice modifications or inflections. This is typical for educational books.
The book is read by one person who changes his or her voice in an effort to sound like the different characters in the book. This is typical for fictional books.
The book is professionally dramatized with sound effects, and with different actors reading the parts of the different characters.

Audio books are very popular for the following reasons:

They enable a person with poor eyesight to enjoy a wide variety of books.
They permit a person to utilize their transit time effectively. While traveling on business, or while traveling to and from their daily job, a person can listen to a book for entertainment, or to acquire new knowledge about a subject the person desires to learn more about.
They can keep a person's mind busy while that person is exercising, such as while walking on a treadmill, or riding a stationary bicycle, or walking outdoors along the same path each day for some exercise. The book may be educational or something that is simply entertaining.
They can be listened to using a headphone set, or ear buds, if you wish to listen in private (or if you need hearing assistance).

Audio books do have two potential shortcomings:

Search: Most audio books do not have a "search" function. Therefore you cannot easily locate a specific topic in the book. However, this is not a problem with fictional books because they are not purchased to be used as quick references.
Bookmark: Some software programs do not have a "bookmark" that the software inserts in the book if you cannot finish listening to an entire chapter at one time. If the software lacks a "bookmark" feature then you will have to start listening to the chapter from the beginning of the chapter the next time you listen to the book. However, an automatic "bookmark" is a standard option on most of the good software programs that are compatible with audio books and the software will automatically insert a "bookmark" in the chapter when you exit the chapter.

Audio books are very popular on portable computers and on tablets using software that is compatible with the device.

Books that have expired copyrights are sometimes available free because a royalty fee does not have to be paid to the author or publisher. Many of the "classics" are now available for free download.

More recently published books still have valid copyrights and they are available for a fee.

Over the years I have occasionally purchased audio copies of the Holy Bible. Recently I purchased an audio copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible for $1.99 and I am more pleased with that audio copy than with any of the more expensive audio copies of the Holy Bible I purchased in the past. The person who is reading the Holy Bible has an extremely clear masculine voice, and he reads at a speed that is easy for the mind to keep up with, and he pauses for exactly the right amount of time at a comma and at a period. He varies the pitch and tone of his voice to match the flow of the words he is reading and he includes the occasional "dramatic pause" at appropriate times in the dialogues. I downloaded the $1.99 audio copy of the King James Version of the entire Holy Bible on my iPad and, in my opinion, it is the best investment I have made in my entire life.

I am also very pleased with the free version of the "LibriVox" app that can be downloaded on an Apple iPad. I would have purchased the paid version of "LibriVox" for $1.99 but the customer feedback on the paid version included so many negative comments that I decided to download the free version instead. The ads appear inside the books that are downloaded in different ways. Some of the ads appear on the screen between some of the chapters and they can easily be skipped. Or if you are interested in the subject matter of an advertisement then you can simply click on it and listen to it. Some of the ads are embedded inside a chapter and they cannot easily be skipped. Fortunately most of the ads I have encountered are relatively short in duration.

The search function within "LibriVox" is very powerful and most of the "classics" are available for free. Each of the classics is read by one person. But many of the more popular classics have been read by different people, and you have the option to download the version you prefer based on customer reviews of each person's reading style.

In addition, many Old Time Radio (OTR) shows are available for free download using "LibriVox." These are professional radio broadcasts from the 1940s and later. They have excellent sound effects and they have different actors portraying the different characters in the stories. May I suggest you download one or two of these OTR broadcasts and listen to them. You may discover that they are almost as entertaining as a movie. Most of the OTR broadcasts are between 15 minutes to 30 minutes in length because that was the time allowed for radio shows many years ago. The OTR broadcasts are grouped by titles. Therefore if you download a "Sherlock Holmes" collection it will probably contain somewhere between 10 to 50 individual radio shows, and you may listen to each of the radio shows one-at-a-time. Most of the old radio broadcasts include the original commercials that sponsored the broadcast. I have personally found most of those commercials to be very entertaining because they provide a brief and interesting "flashback" of what life was like more than 50 years ago.

Digital Books
I reviewed digital books in an article on my website on May 3, 2017. The information from that article is included below with updates for the year 2019.

Today we have the option to purchase digital copies of many books. In my opinion, this is a fantastic option for a lot of the books that were once only available as a traditional print book.

Digital books have all of the following major advantages:

Lower Purchase Price: Usually a digital book is cheaper than a printed book. However, occasionally you can find a used "Like New" book on Amazon that is cheaper than an e-book even after you include the cost of shipping (if you do not have free shipping).
No Shipping Cost: There is no delivery cost for an e-book because you download it yourself from the internet website.
Immediate Delivery: After you have paid for an e-book you normally receive immediate access to the e-book for downloading. However, sometimes you have to wait for a confirmation email that includes a download code for the e-book.
No Weight: E-books are stored as digital media in the existing memory of your device and it does not increase the weight of your device. However, to access the e-book you must have access to a device that can read your e-book and your reading device probably weighs about one pound or less.
No Size: An e-book is stored in the existing memory of your reading device and it does not change the physical dimensions of your reading device. On the other hand, if you purchase a printed book then you will need some physical space in which to store the printed book.
Quantity: Thousands of digital books could be stored on a portable storage device and they can easily be taken with you everywhere you go. On the other hand, you can only take a limited number of printed books with you from one place to another place.
Portable: When you take your reading device with you, you are also taking your collection of e-books.
Expandable Font Size: It is relatively easy to adjust the font size of the page on your reading device so that it is the optimal size for reading based on how good your actual vision happens to be.
Easy to Read Almost Anywhere: As long as you have a charged battery, or you have access to an electrical power outlet, then you can read any e-book you wish almost anywhere you happen to be. However, a few areas do prohibit the use of electronic devices. For example, on an airplane you are usually asked to turn off your electrical devices during take-off and landing. But I have never been told that I had to stop reading a printed book or a printed magazine during take-off or landing.
Easy to Find: If you keep all your e-books in one or two digital devices then you can find them very easily. However, if you have a reasonable assortment of traditional books, and if you have too many books to store in one convenient location, then finding a specific copy of a traditional book can sometimes take a little time.
Easy to Search: Most e-books allow you to search for specific words or phrases. This is really an excellent feature of e-books. It is also extremely useful in an academic situation if you are allowed to access your reading device during an exam.
Easily Deleted if Desired: If you gradually run out of storage space on your reading device then you can delete the old e-books that you have already read and which you do not think you will read again anytime in the near future.
Listen While You Drive: If your reading device has the option to read the words on each page then you could put your reading device into reading mode and allow it to read an e-book to you as you drive from one location to another. This is a very, very nice option on long car trips, especially if you have several children and every child wants to listen to something different using the earphones on their own reading device.
Learn How to Speak a Specific Language: Some digital readers will highlight each word on the page of the e-book as the digital voice speaks the word that is currently highlighted. This is a very useful learning tool that can help someone who is not fluent in a specific language gradually learn how to read and speak that language.
Not Subject to Deterioration: E-books do not gradually fade and deteriorate the way the pages inside a printed book gradually fade and deteriorate with the passage of time.
Backup Copies May be Available: It may be possible to store an e-book on more than one reading device. However, some e-books only allow for a single copy to be downloaded to single device with a registered serial number. Some college textbooks that are available as e-books are coded to be read on a single reading device.

At the current time many schools are gradually trying to make the transition to digital books for their students for the following reasons:

Reduces the total cost of a student's education without compromising the quality of that education.
The latest most current up-to-date edition is always immediately available at the beginning of each new school term.
Does not involve record keeping and "late fees" if not returned on time.
Does not incur a "lost book fee" because there is no book to misplace.
Does not incur "wear and tear" or damage to a book if it is misused.
In some situations it allows more than one student to have access to the same exact book at the same exact time (a site or school license) and this is extremely useful for brief assignments that are based on one book and that book will not be used again for the remainder of the school year.

School Books: Many school books can now be rented for one semester. In some cases the fee is very reasonable. But if the book is a required textbook for a university course, then the digital copy of that book may only be a little cheaper than the price of a print copy of the same book. The reason the digital copy is so expensive is because a student is required to buy either a print copy or a digital copy of the book. And many students prefer the convenience and "weight" and quality of a digital book compared to a "used" print textbook. The publisher prefers to sell digital books instead of print books because they do not have to manage an inventory of print copies of the book, they do not have to deal with "middlemen or bookstores" to sell the print book, they have no shipping costs, and after the up front costs of the "master copy" of the digital book have been paid, there is no additional expense for each digital copy of the book that is sold.

If you know in advance that you will only read the book one time, and there is almost no chance that you will ever read it again, then a digital copy of that book would be a much wiser choice than a printed copy of the book because it will usually be a lot cheaper, and you can easily delete it from your reading device after you have finished reading it.

Some of the most practical e-books would include most school textbooks, fictional novels, current best selling novels, how-to books that will only be read once, encyclopedias and dictionaries. Some of these books are available free online to anyone who visits the website where the e-book is located.

However, digital books do have a limited number of disadvantages:

Dependant on a digital reader that works.
Dependant on electrical power or batteries.
Not as practical for teaching young children how to write neatly.
May not be instantly available when it is desperately needed, such as a first aid book.
May not be practical in some environments, such as on a canoe camping trip, or while trying to learn about woodcraft while hiking through a forest, or when outdoors during extreme weather conditions.
May expire if a renewal fee is not paid.
May be more expensive than a Dollar Store book or a yard sale book or a used book on Amazon.

Professional Handbooks: I recently noticed that some of the good professional handbooks that contain the reference materials that are used by professionals are now available as a digital book in addition to being available as a print book. However, I noticed that some of these professional handbooks now cost more than a new copy of the print handbook. In addition, print copies of the handbooks are now available in very limited quantities. These print copies are very reasonably priced when compared to what they were selling for just a few years ago. I suspect that after these few remaining print copies are sold then the publishers will not be printing more books because of the cost of printing handbooks. Instead the publishers will offer digital copies of the handbook for sale for all the reasons mentioned above (no inventory, no "middleman" or bookstore, no shipping costs, no returned damaged book costs, and no cost to print the book). If you are interested in acquiring a print copy of a professional handbook that you previously have not been able to afford, then may I suggest that you check the price of that handbook online because you may find that the price of a print copy of that handbook is now within your budget. You may also discover that a digital copy of that same handbook is not feasible based on your budget.

Print Books
As I have mentioned many times before, some books are too important to rely exclusively on a digital copy of that book. During a serious hard times event your digital reader or your power supply may not work due to an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that destroys the electronic circuits in every electrical device for hundreds of miles. In a situation such as this it would be really nice if you had a printed copy of the following books and not just a digital copy:

Comprehensive First Aid Manual: This is in addition to the small first aid pamphlet that is included in many first aid kits. An example would be: American Red Cross First Aid and Safety Handbook, Kathleen A. Handal, M.D., 1992, Paperback ISBN: 0-316-73646-5, Hardcover ISBN: 0-316-73645-7.
A Good Medical Reference Manual: This would be a manual written for average people that could help an ordinary person correctly identify and treat a medical problem that may arise when professional medical care may not be readily available. An example would be: The Medical Advisor - The Complete Guide to Alternative and Conventional Treatments, by Time/Life Books, ISBN: 0-8094-6737-2.
Detailed Area Maps: This is in addition to any maps you may have on a GPS unit that may not work after an EMP event. If you had a good map of your area, and you know how to read a map, and you knew you should evacuate your current area then you could consult your printed map and determine the best way to get around major highways that may contain permanent traffic jams.
Firearm Maintenance Manuals for your Firearms: It would be sad if one of your firearms developed a minor problem that could be easily fixed if you just had access to the instructions for disassembling and reassembling your firearm that are on your digital reader that no longer works.
John Wiseman's SAS Survival Manual: This book contains a tremendous amount of information about primitive wilderness survival in a variety of different climates. In my opinion it would be extremely useful to almost anyone who was unexpectedly thrust into a wilderness environment and that person did not have the opportunity to plan and prepare for the experience. This book is offered in two sizes: a small Collins Gem pocket edition ISBN 978-0061992865 (3 x 1 x 4.8 inches, 7.8 ounces), and a larger edition ISBN 978-0062378071 (8 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches, 2.1 pounds). Both editions contain the same basic survival information but the larger book contains updated information.
A Good Book on Home Gardening: If the hard times tragedy event lasts for a long time then you may wish you had a really good reference manual on how to grow your own food, and how to significantly extend the shelf life of that food using something other than canning jars and new canning lids, which may not be available. An example would be: New Illustrated Guide to Gardening, Reader's Digest.
The Holy Bible: Regardless of what you may believe before a serious hard times tragedy event happens, after it unfolds you may wish you had immediate access to a printed copy of the Holy Bible in order to assist you in your prayers.

The above are just a few of the books that a well-prepared family should own in printed form. You could probably easily think of a few more books that you might like to have in the event you no longer had access to all the digital books on your digital reader.

Conclusion
Audio books, digital books, and print books are all good options depending on the book, and on the reason you are acquiring the book.

Respectfully,
Grandpappy.

Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com