Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/22/walmarts-selling-ebooks-now.html
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After all the stories about people who thought they were buying books and music, but were only renting? Nobody will ever repo my p-books.
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But they could burn in a fire, or get soaked in a flood or just be infeasible to store if you downsize your living space to a small apartment or assisted living. P-books aren’t immune to loss. E-books aren’t tied to a physical medium and if you really care about the DRM issue you can always 1) strip off the DRM (not hard) 2) read any of the tens of thousands of public domain e-books 3) Buy ebooks from one of the non-DRM vendors.
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Some of the best moments in my life have been when people went out and bought a book with the intention of giving it to me specifically because it meant something special to them and they wanted to share it with me. In an age of ebooks that’s become difficult, if not impossible. Making it possible again sounds like a good idea. I just suspect that Kleinzeit and Night Flight, two memorable gifts to me, aren’t likely to be among Walmart’s picks, but it’s a start.
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Do the people of Walmart do a lot of reading? 
I wouldn’t count on the long term viability of a DRMed Walmart e-reading ecosystem.
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Yes. At one time Walmart was the biggest seller of books in the US. Of course, not the place to go to stock up on French New Wave.
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I think the same goes for physical music sales - they sold a lot of a very limited selection thanks to the large number of stores. Yet that didn’t keep them from shutting down their DRMed music servers.
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You may be a digital hoarder.
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This. I’ve pleasantly surprised when I have recently been searching for the book title + “epub” and often found a non-DRM vendor. To me it feels like a much improved situation from just a few years ago.
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Take a look, if you dare, at the horrid squalor of an E-book hoarder:
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Indeed, but as a counterpoint I can still read all the ebooks I have ever bought, even the ones from “the time before Amazon”, but a great many of my physical books have been destroyed by water, and some by rodents.
Mileage may vary, but both forms of books have their issues (and advantages).
Buuuuuuut literally all of that applies to an e-reader, too. They are just like paper books in that regard.
P-books aren’t immune to loss.
I don’t think that’s the point. The advantages of reading books on a device come with real caveats you don’t have with a physical copy.
We also shop at other stores. I buy a lot of my books used, via trade-ins.
Especially art books, which, let’s face it, render the entire concept of an e-reader essentially useless.
(Let’s see a kindle or an ipad handle a tip-out, then, maybe, we’ll talk.)
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So, like, how would you even know if some digital shoggoth hasn’t quietly started removing text files books from one’s e-device? Or, maybe worse, replaced them with edited versions?
I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but I think this is a valid question in a world filled with connected digital devices with occasionally lax security and/or a belligerent nation-states bent on waging culture war.
At least when a book is missing from the shelf I can see the gap.
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Totally agreed, but I’d have thought a digital service would still make more sense; even one which allowed the purchaser to specify the book and print a voucher.
Buuuuuuut literally all of that applies to an e-reader, too. They are just like paper books in that regard.
No, it really doesn’t. At most you can lose your e-reader, which is easily replaced. All your books are safe – they aren’t tied to the reader.
I can also 4) buy homeowner’s insurance.
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That may make the loss less painful, but unless you have detailed records of every physical book you own, I couldn’t imagine you’d be able to replace your books (and maybe not even then; I’ve attempted to replace books that have been lost to borrowing by friends who drifted away and sometimes found no available copies either in my local used book stores or in the big online used book vendors).
Yeah, but the directory structure and inconsistent metadata. shudder
More seriously, I don’t read ebooks but I read papers on the arxiv quite a bit. For those papers which are interesting but not hugely important to me I’m liable to forget that they exist if I don’t print them out.
But those books don’t exist as ebooks in the first place, right?
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