Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few books on woodworking. The usual ones on techniques, furniture styles, turning, wood identification and so forth. Now I am trying to downsize so i figured i would sell some of the books. So i advertised some books on Federal furniture, Queen Anne furniture, Mission furniture and Shaker furniture. Didn't get a nibble. Now, I have always gotten information from books and like having a description I can return to while I study the plans. I know Youtube has a lot of videos showing you how to do just about everything, but I always find them a bit superficial. So has the world moved on and nobody reads books anymore or did I just have some titles nobody cares about?
How about you all? Do you get info out of books or is that passe nowadays?
I have just finished the sale of my Mom's house, (sign over is tomorrow).
I have spend the last month desperately trying to give away books, as well as furniture in the styles you mentioned. Did not ask for money, free to pick up.
No interest whatsoever.
Everything went to the dump.
I have cancelled my last magazine subscription, and my plan is to fill a 360 liter recycling bin weekly.
Tools to follow.
I will not build anything that cannot fit in a carry-on, or accept any presents that require shelf space.
Few seem to read these days but some of us do. I once had a supervisor who at 40 years old had NEVER read a single book all the way through. Amazing.
Based on my wife's current count, she estimates she will read around 75 books this year. I read every day. I read a lot of fiction on my Kindles but I prefer paper for books with information: woodturning, flatwood, tools, methods, wood ID, trees, mushrooms, beekeeping, machining, welding, electronics, computer graphics, livestock care, spinning wheels, vehicle maintenance, etc. I've bought three real books from Amazon in the last couple of weeks even though they are more expensive than ebooks.
I continue to build my library - fortunately I added an office in my new shop so most of the books are in bookcases there. Some, in particular several on woodturning, are so useful I have two copies so I can lend one to others.
To me a book is so much more useful than a DVD or a bunch of YouTube videos. The information contained in just one of Richard Raffan's woodturning books would probably fill 100 hours of video. Books can present the how and the why as well as alternatives, while even a good youtube video almost always just shows you the how and usually just one method.
I can't underline passages in a video or ebook, write notes in the margins, and mark the pages with real post-it notes so I can instantly flip to passages a year from now. I can't flip between two passages in the same or different DVDs or even ebooks. It is difficult to even scan the titles as you can easily do on a book shelf.
I love my Kindles (I have four) but can take a book anywhere and "access" it without an internet connection and charged batteries.
On-line content is amazing and wonderful, instant, inclusive. But it is indeed often shallow. Just digging through the mass of information can be a huge effort. As for youtube, it is often difficult to find useful information in the sea of videos by beginners and poor craftsmen. I very seldom view youtube videos any more unless one comes recommended by someone I trust.
Although I purchased them, I don't really own any of the ebooks on my Kindle. I can't easily lend them or give them to friends. When I'm gone I guess they are all gone too, a sort of digital book burning.
I hope not because I've recently signed a deal to publish a book I've written.
I find it interesting that there seems to be something of a resurgence in what some call analogue technology: dead tree book sales are up, whilst digital book sales (if I recall correctly) are down; vinyl record sales are reported to be the highest in something like twenty five years (although that might be only here in the UK); and old style basic mobile (cell) phone sales seem to be making a bit of a comeback whilst it's reckoned by some that smartphone sales have perhaps reached something of a plateau. Slainte.
I consult books regularly in my woodworking. I build Federal Furniture. Where did you try to sell your books? If they didn't sell either you didn't advertise where there was a market or the price was too high.
Books have survived scrutiny by an editor. For example Richard's book to be, described above, had consultants review technical issues during writing and was studied by Chris Schultz who passed judgment on publishing. Experts have decided that information is correct and worth reading.
And then there is U-tube. On U-tube you get to sort through a dozen versions of how to do this and that and decide for yourself if they are all idiots. Works if you got time and already know enough to pass judgment. Not so good for beginners.
And then there is inspiration. When I have a hankering to build something I dig out a foot high stack of books and magazines with furniture pictures- nice large high resolution pictures that I can flip through quickly. They take no time to "load" , they don't eat up my allotment of download bytes, there are no ads that pop up unexpectedly, Google isn't tracking my interest, any seat in the house is an acceptable location, etc.
I have a son-in-law learning woodworking. He doesn't do print. If he spent more time studying reviewed and edited print he would progress faster, in my opinion.
anyone know how to conveniently scale an image off a computer screen? Many of my books have pictures where I have deconstructed images with dividers and scale to get dimensions to build from.
If the grid goes and it's not just down for a day at the most we all might need to worry about more than sitting down with a nice book. If you do you'll read it by candle light because you won't have any electricity at least not from the grid. You also won't be able to buy any new books once you run out of the cash you have on hand.
I am the wrong person to ask about books - we have donated hundreds of our old books to the library. Some were shelved, some were sold at the used book sales.
In terms of woodworking books and magazines - I have a few. I have several types of books. Inspirational - like books on Shaker furniture or Colonial Williamsburg Furniture, shop books (router jigs, techniques), plans and sketches (Windsor chairs, etc.).
I have a deal with our local library - I am slowly culling out my woodworking books. They have agreed to shelve them if they are in good enough shape. It turns out there has been some interest in them.
I have been an avid reader most all of my life. I did stop taking woodworking magazines as many if not most of the information is repeated from old magazines I already have collected. However I do have a fair assortment of hard back books of woodworking. I will still purchase any I find that don't duplicate those I have. However the younger people, as Bill has indicated seem to use U-tube and internet sites instead of printed material.
Your inability to sell the books may have been caused by your advertising methods. If I wanted to sell any of mine I would turn to the classified dept. here, Ebay and possibly Craig's list type of internet postings and possibly investigate nearby woodworking clubs in order to bring the books to the attention of the people that are interested and involved in woodworking.
Another option, if you are interested in donating the books is to look at local senior citizen retirement communities. In my small town we have Wesley Manor, which is a retirement community. They have a woodworking shop, and I am certain they would welcome any such donations. Another option is (if any of the schools in your area still teach woodworking) would be to donate the books to them. Third option is the local library.
As I was reading your reply, I got a notice from FWW that they are about to auto-renew. FWW is my last subscription and I have noticed, like you, that they don't keep my attention more than about 30 minutes now. I am going to let it go too. The $35 price for 7 issues seems a little steep. Plus, I'll cheat and look through them at Barnes and Noble!
Our local library has a book sale annually. They will accept good used books to sell and they use the proceeds to support the library. My wife is an avid reader, so we end up with a lot of books to donate. I have a shelf full of ww books. I find that I refer to them less and less. So, maybe when we move, I'll find them a new home. Not all of them, but a lot of them could go.
People who can't learn from books are making themselves obsolete. Perhaps more to the root cause, the "educational system" that can't teach them how to learn from books is making our cultural obsolete.
There's an old saying among computer nerds "you can grep a dead tree", e.g. you can't "search" a book. When I am looking for a very specific piece of information, I always go to the computer first.
Richard is very fortunate to have editors. Too many of the books today are only very lightly edited, more for paging and appearance than for grammar, style, or content. To truly insure detailed information like woodworking plans are correct is very time consuming. Witness the large volume of errata published even in the Taunton series. I bought a pop wood book a few years ago that had so many errors in the plans that I threw the book away, thinking it likely would cause more harm than good if I missed any of the errors in application.
Having said that, when color is important, especially in finishing information, you can't beat a quality paper product. And I can't imagine reading the Krenov books or Sam Maloof on my phone.
So, I confess, I have several shelves of treasured but largely unused woodworking books, used mainly to scan the pictures for design ideas.
Interesting replies. Seems like books are appreciated by some but not all. I advertised on our local woodworking site that covers NC and the surrounding states. I was only asking $5.00 per book and some of these are hard bound or large paper back volumes. I will approach my local library and see if they have any interest.
You should try listing them on the WoodCentral Classified Message Board, and of course, let us know here that you have posted the offers there, since many of us who frequent the Messages, Hand Tools and Turning Message Boards don't check the others nearly as often.
>>>When I am looking for a very specific piece of information, I always go to the computer first.
This is true and I do the same thing when searching for a very specific piece of information. I think the usefulness depends on what we are looking for.
When learning how to do something I usually do not have a problem finding the section in a book I pull from my shelf. The index in most books is pretty good. And when learning, I don't usually want just one piece, I want to read or review the whole section.
Having both a searchable digital and readable paper copy of a book would seem ideal.
I have a bookcase full of woodworking books and cannot imagine doing without them. I am not a fan of YouTube. I do not want to see a video, I want to read something - read it carefully and return to the important bits whenever necessary. There are some useful videos, but I agree that many are very shallow and poorly done.
"Too many of the books today are only very lightly edited, more for paging and appearance than for grammar, style, or content."
Hi jesse, my manuscript is what I describe as 'lightly' academically formatted. It uses Harvard referencing, but not onerously so because I've tried to keep intrusive parentheses required for academic texts to a minimum - just enough within the parentheses usually to point a reader to source material, i.e., the author, date and page number with full information available within the references and the bibliography. Heavily academically formatted documents can be a challenging read because they are so heavily parenthesised the text no longer really flows.
Editing is essentially down to the publisher, and I was pleasantly surprised to find they're keen to retain the British spelling even though they are based in the USA. They are the ones looking for consistency in writing style, spelling (etc or et cetera?) grammar, typos that I've missed after countless proof reading efforts of my own and so on, as well as proposing/ suggesting overall appearance, a layout and page style, etc to be mutually agreed.
As to checking for factual errors in the text, it was peer reviewed by respected professionals in their field prior to the manuscript ever reaching a publisher. So, for example, a section on fungi was peer reviewed by a mycologist, a senior lecturer on the subject at a university. I guess I was lucky in being able call upon such people to peer review sections, but it's the sort of reciprocal courtesy extended between academics both within and between institutions. My luck I suppose was that as the leader of an undergraduate programme at a Higher Education teaching facility during the time of writing the manuscript I was recognised as a fellow academic, although I've never considered myself likely to be thought of as a stereotypical academic type being, I think, primarily a down to earth horny handed son of toil character, ha, ha. Slainte.
in the house is an acceptable location, etc.
- we have donated hundreds of our old books to the library. Some were shelved, some were sold at the used book sales.