The Kindle has also allowed me to free up space on my overflowing bookshelves. The London Independent takes that prospect to its natural conclusion, and wonders if the home library will become a casualty to the Kindle, which is one of their less preposterous predictions.
On the downside, as we rush into the world of electronic books, what happens if, say, Amazon’s server farm gets nuked (literally or figuratively). One group in Northern California is building the dead tree equivalent of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, in a case of real-life imitates the ending of Fahrenheit 451.
And what will happen to book covers? When LPs replaced CDs, the album cover went from being a work of art in itself to being a much smaller form. While record companies still invested in gorgeous cover designs well into the 1990s, in many cases, the point was lost if you couldn’t really make out the images. Since at least early in the 20th century, book publishers designed book jackets to help entice sales. You can see some of the more lurid — and fun — examples in the wonderfully titled ‘Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants’ — the Art of the Paperback, a healthy slab of pulpy novel covers from the 1940s through the mid-1960s or so, all originally designed to pop off book store and newsstand shelves.
But today, if you’re a publisher who knows his company’s work is going to be mostly discovered via an online review or a search engine, does that create an incentive to dial back the expense of book cover design to the point of being almost an afterthought? And is relying on software such as Photoshop and Illustrator to design covers for e-books a throwback to the late ’60s and early 1970s, when every book cover seemed to look almost the same? (Those days certainly made life easy for a designer: set type in Helvetica, add abstract graphic image, move on to next project. Rinse and repeat.) Of course for that reason, perhaps “analog” books are about to become luxury items, given at birthdays and at Christmas, the equivalent of giving someone an expensive necktie or sweater. Or these days, a compact disc, for that matter.
As should be obvious by now, I think the plusses provided by e-books outweigh the negatives. But for a more Luddite point of view, naturally enough we can turn to the L.A. Times, for an article whose arguments are quite similar to those made when physical newspapers began to lose out to the Internet. Which dovetails into an observation that James Lileks made in a Ricochet podcast last year at the conclusion of the gang’s interview with Bill McGowan. McGowan is the author of Gray Lady Down, his postmortem for the New York Times, and Lileks noted that everybody longs for that nostalgic Annie Hall-like feeling of having the Sunday New York Times spread out alongside the bagels and orange juice on the kitchen table. Or as Marshall McLuhan, the source of this post’s headline, quipped decades ago, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Similarly, I think everybody has that memory of buying a book, or taking it out of the library, bringing it home, and taking it outside on a sunny weekend day to become utterly absorbed in it. Perhaps that tactile feeling is lost or greatly diminished with the Kindle, but the flexibility it provides offsets it in many ways.
At least I think so. But how has the Kindle, the Kindle software, or another brand of e-reader changed your reading experience? If you’ve made the leap, are you rushing off to replace your back catalog of “analog” books?
oh, for the days when you could really see the individual life of the cow, fondle its skin. And the brushmarks- so individual, the vision- and yet so many lives poured out on each page. Sigh. that gutenwhatshisname has ruined reading for me.
kindles rock. more books, lower prices, rock. instant access rocks. and, reading one book- finding a book group online rocks. and they have other suggestions- like, you know, dead tree books, and books at the library.
in the 1950′s some economist thought we’d found the end of consumption when most families owned a 1000sq foot house and one car. It’s the same with books- there will be more reading, more books, more education. Nobody can imagine how widespread, or how odd, education will be.
Back then, you could get three network television channels if you lived in a place with decent antenna reception. If you had UHF, you might be able to get one local television channel in addition to that. In black and white, obviously.
There was no cable TV, and satellite TV was far in the future.
Nobody even imagined that what was then Arpanet would eventually grow into a venue that would let individuals share their own videos on YouTube.
The networks acted as gatekeepers. If the networks didn’t think something was newsworthy, or didn’t want you to see it for whatever reason, you didn’t see it, and that was that. Things are different now!
For far too long, dead-tree (analog) book publishers have played the same “gatekeeper” role when it comes the printed word. If they didn’t think that the author was sufficiently high-profile to sell the book in huge volumes, or if the book didn’t fit into the publisher’s (usually left-wing) ideological world view, then the book didn’t get published. Now, you can publish your own e-books.
You’re wrong about the “more reading with ebooks”, you know.
One fingered texting by generation(s) raised by visual images and taught by mouth-breathing libertine morons has created a population of non-readers — people who think in images and cannot translate them into words — those people find it onerous to translate printed (or pixled) words into logical thought. They are no longer ‘readers’. They are ‘viewers’.
Digital transfer of knowledge through ereaders is here, shall stay, and is welcome.
Just as the jump from LP to CD led to a jump from Mozart to RAP, the Eloi will not use the ereaders for what you think they will.
McLuhan’s insight that new media draws its content from the old media CAN be substantiated by ereaders, but it won’t be used by today’s image-readers.
did you think that e-readers with cross-platform abilities could assist? I’ve seen it with one book so far. People who can’t read get the MP3, then use voice recognition software to interact on fan sites. Then, saintly teachers post encouraging interactions, and give tutorials on how to read a book, how to learn what words mean- really simple, basic, step by step- use a yellow highlighter for this- use a pink highlighter for that- use post-it notes to track symbols and themes. I’ve seen functionally illiterate people learn to read, write penetrating, worthwhile, interesting essays, write excellent, well- researched posts with links to the web,and review books intelligently and cogently.
just b/c the school they attended didn’t have the stories that engaged them, or teachers capable of teaching them, doesn’t mean other books, stories, or plays are forever lost to them.
Technology enables ease and contact. It’s brilliant, and we cannot imagine how awesome it is going to be. I’m being precise- the imagineers at the MIT tech lab literally cannot imagine how technology is used now, or who uses it, or to what purpose, already. The revolution is more private, diffuse, and unexpected. Fortunately, so far, it is more given to faith, loyalty, love, affection, decency, precision, craftsmanship- bourgeouis values that haven’t had a good airing in the market-place since publishing companies centralized at the start of the 20th century. PJM is evidence of this, for instance. Oddly enough, Harry Potter and Twilight fan sites are evidence, as well. BattleStar Galactica, and some Trek sites, too.
I’m a well-seasoned digital techie myself, there at the founding in the 50s.
What you say is basically true — that is, a half truth.
You’re Pollyanna optimism is not helpful to understanding the dark side probabilities which unfold in front of us today at something like 85-15%.
I used to think reading and writing would disappear from the curicula by 2050, and I thought that was positive given the trajectory of technological utilization at the time. No longer.
So here’s a thought for you, Pollyanna. After the Third Caliphate, which the western world seems to joyfully usher in, the players, if they work, will only give the Elois rap and porn, and written knowledge will have long since mouldered away.
reading deeply is hard
the Kindle may open the world’s treasure’s
loved Grant’s autobiography for free
fear Fahrenheit 454 in our future
i crazily keep mp3s and audible book files and my hardcover books in case SHTF
hope my children laugh at me in 50 years because life is still good
cannot tell you how i pray they laugh at my preparations
i pray so hard they will have the good life i have had
hope the kindle improves, expands and our grandchildren drink deeply of the classics
sorry if i doubt it
but some will real the Lattimore translations of Homer, Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, the Aeneid, Dante?
if they do, civilisation survives
I dabbled in Project Gutenberg pre-Kindle but after picking up one recently I immediately snarfed up what was available that is part of the Harvard Classics and Harvard Shelf of Books. A recently deceased inlaw bequeathed me the tree pulp versions of these but it’s much more convenient to read Kindle when I’m on the road.
I don’t get the complaints I’ve been reading about the ‘Kindle experience’. Some yop on fox.com, I believe was falling all over himself about the Nook’s better reading experience. Just made me shake my head. Appeared to be complaining about the Kindle because it wasn’t like reading a webpage. And wasn’t all ipad touch screeny. For me both of those are plusses.
But for a more Luddite point of view, naturally enough we can turn to the L.A. Times
Umm, yeah. I love that article’s arguments for why hardcopy books are better:
1. They can be stolen from the library if the author finds a book she wants.
2. Other people can tell just how inferior they are to the author by what she’s reading.
I’ll stick with my Kindle… I’m reading a LOT more since I got it early this year.
The books I self-publish have color illustrations in them.
Kindle better figure out how to do color, and they’d better figure it out quick!
Kindle does do color images on its apps. The Kindle books I’ve purchased with photo spreads display those images in color on my Galaxy and PC apps.
Cool beans!
Went digital back in the Palm days. Downloaded tons of stuff from Gutenberg. Got to read great classics that I just never seemed to have time for and did it mostly on the subway 20 minutes a day times two. I now do the same with my iPhone. It seems like every second person is reading something on their handheld device. We have bought digital books from Amazon.. But I also download ebooks from my local library. Very convenient. Haven’t read a dead tree book in ages..don’t miss them at all.
I love the writer who’s never used a Kindle telling us how they’re the epitome of evil…
My Kindle is great for fiction and straight up non-fiction. However for books which lean toward references or tutorials (I’m a software developer) its not so good.
For those sorts of titles what I really wish Amazon would do is d some ebook+paper bundling discounts. Computer publisher Oreilly does it.
About the different ‘feel’ of reading on the Kindle, I have one suggestion: get one of the Amazon brand leather covers, which is very trim but solid, and you can read it more comfortably two-handed like a real book.
Good suggestion. And it comes with a built-in light. Pricey, but worth having.
The death of the analog book will come when airlines allow you to use an Ipad or Kindle throughout the flight.
Also, as someone who is just beginning to need reading glasses, the ability to increase the font size outweighs the tactile pleasure of the printed page.
You already can, and could since at least the 2nd generation of the Kindle (I never had a first generation, so I can’t speak to that).
All you do is, from the main screen (with the listing of your titles on it), press Menu, then select “Turn Wireless Off” (it’s the first item on my 3rd generation Kindle’s menu).
Voila! You’re not transmitting or receiving anymore, so you’re OK to use it on the plane. And all the books you’ve already downloaded to your Kindle are still there for your reading pleasure.
You still gotta turn it off when taking off (to 10,000 ft) and in prep for landing. People still gotta have something to read in dead tree format if they don’t want to use crayolas.
I’m in general agreement with this article. I have a Nook and have taken to reading a wider selection of books than I would otherwise. However, that is due to being a cheap, not a voracious reader. I have an extensive physical library and refuse to rebuy all of those books. I’ve found a number of free sites for classics and have just started downloading/borrowing electronic books from the library.
Two thoughts on implications of this transition:
1- Although I have no stats to back it up, I wonder how many more people are reading classics than would have otherwise because they are not copyrighted and are free.
2- The biggest downside that I see to ebooks is DRM (Digital Rights Management). DRM is a true Orwellian term because it has nothing to do with protecting your rights at all and only serves to give the publisher the ability to limit how you can use the content you’ve purchased. Digital info is notorious for having a relatively short shelf-life. How many files do you have from 10 years ago? I have plenty of books that are that old and want to keep. How likely will it be that you can carry your favorite books forward to the next generation devices or will you have to rebuy them yet again? With DRM, you have no say in the matter. In effect, you are paying to rent an ebook for a limited period of time and you no longer truly own it.
Good insight on the life of tech generations. One EMP can accomplish what the burning of the library at Alexandria did. Shiver . . .
This is the one reason I have not switched over. So much data has been left behind with outdated technology. How long before these digital books are also outdated? By the time they are, I will have forgotten where the files are stored (two or three computers back? Backed up on a cd?) or what company sold them to me. (Where did I purchase those books for my pda? What was my password?)
Apple’s iCloud has some of the same problems. What happens when someone decides to block my access to all that I’ve stored in cyberspace? With the flip of a switch someone can cut me off. To get my books, they’d have to break in and set them on fire. And yes, I’m thinking of that famous scene from Fahrenheit 451.
I see the convenience, but I’ve experienced the impermanence of digital storage.
Great comment about DRM, hate to pay for
many books I already own. In our library there
are very few ebooks available and I was told
they will work with publishers to get more…
May be in 10 years?
On Amazon some ebooks are more expensive than paper ones,
can’t figure why.
I note the September 6 passing of Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook and founder of Project Gutenberg. See http://searchthewayyouthink.blogspot.com/2011/09/by-michael-bowman-michael-s.html for more details, and a reflection on the precursor of today’s e-readers.
I don’t see the “analog book” becoming extinct. Among other things, it is a low-to-zero-energy-demand system with hard storage. EMP won’t hurt it, power failures can’t affect it, and if all else fails you can read it by daylight or candlelight. Either attribute will be handy in event of an environmentalist “Triumph”, and the inevitable consequences thereof. (You know, the ones the environmentalists either don’t believe will happen or are just too ignorant to understand?)
As for resistance to environmental effects, neither a Kindle or a book is waterproof. But if all else fails, you can dry out a book; I suspect a wet Kindle is gone forever. Both are heat-sensitive, too, but short of actual ignition at about 233 C (guess what that is in F?), I suspect the dead-tree book is more resistant than the E-book.
The major virtue of the E-book is portability. The major virtue of the “real” book is permanence. The two complement each other rather than competing.
The thing I find most amusing, though, is that a decade ago, all the experts claimed that not only was print “dead”, but that computers meant that future generations would be even more illiterate than they are today.
Unfortunately for that grand theory, until we develop a workable William Gibson/Bruce Sterling- style direct neural interface, the only practical way for most of us to access the information available on the “Net” is by the old-fashioned method most of you will be using to “assimilate” what I’ve just typed out. Yes, reading.
cheers
eon
I have 17 self-published books available at Amazon and BN. Covers are not an afterthought, they are a marketing tool. While these images might be in thumbnail size, that only increases the need to be cleverly and clearly designed in order to get the reader’s attention.
And as with #4 RKae, most of my ebooks have interior color illustrations, and I recently published one with 36 color photos. A friend published an ebook with 150 images he created for his novel. B&W readers are the past. Tablets are the future–Amazon will release their tablet within weeks, with streaming video available–and added content will be the norm.
However, if you like your deadtree books, you can keep your deadtree books.
Deadwood? Surely you jest. The biggest minus of an e-book is the fact that it is a non-consentual revokable license to view rather than an asset to own, and sell. I never pay full price for a book, and always visit half price books and alibris/amazon dot com to find a battered new copy or battered and dirt cheap used copy. The original owner recoups some of their costs, I pick up a cheap copy, and the publisher gets nothing. Yes, I’m sure the lower sale price of an e-book reflects zero printing cost, but it is coupled with a zero resale value (assuming one doesn’t share the same account with multiple e-readers). If I want the text, I want to own it – for life, not the lifetime of the technology. I have owned 8-track, cassette, cd’s, dvd’s, .aac’s – all of the same item. I’m done paying over and over for the same thing. Your e-readers are fine until the format becomes unsupported by this year’s e-readers. Think the native amazon kindle format 15 years from now.
Realistically there will always be books we will pay money for to read in any form, be it text books, reference books, or something that isn’t available any other way and fills some void. The rest will become a self-publishing universe whose quality spans the spectrum from absolute garbage to unbelievable, and will be _doomed_ to have to be free or be invisible. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll start sprouting trusted intermediaries (global book clubs?) .
there are already global book clubs. some I participate in, one needs translation software, and threads for checking the translation with multi-lingual participants.
My reading of a book my wife insisted I read drags on. Past the 600th page and still a novel’s length of paper to go.
Can’t justify spending money again for a book we already own.
Meanwhile I get more reading done in 5-10 minute snatches via the Kindle app on my Android phone. I can read for pleasure or for enlightenment.
I’ll slog through the “analog” book to the end, slowly and only when at home because the behemoth is too portly for portability. When it is done my Kindle will be back in my hands with hundreds of thousands of pages and nowhere near the weight.
My first electronic reading experience was the Lord of The Rings Trilogy on a Dell Axim PDA in 2003. I was hooked. I lived, and still live, in Greece, and you just can’t get good English-language fiction here. At present I have 2 ebook readers. I won’t do the Kindle, though. Too proprietary. I like transferring books from my PC onto the SD card my Ectaco Reader, or using the USB cable on the Sony Reader. And, like the author of the post, I’m reading more. Nothing can replace the reading experience. Stephen King artfully shows how it is a form of mental telepathy in his wonderful treatise On Writing. Books are set to make a huge comeback. Their entertainment value alone (time spent reading an $8 book vs time spent watching an $8 movie) still makes them the best storytelling medium. I’m an old fart and have trying to convince my 27 year-old nephew to make the switch, but he won’t.
I still have and use a Dell Axim X51v. I have a Kindle (inherited from my wife), but that Dell has one major advantage: it fits comfortably in a guy’s shirt pocket. The Kindle doesn’t. Women carry purses; guys by and large don’t.
That’s why I still buy 75% of my e-books from Baen Books. They were early adopters of non-DRM’d e-books, in every format including Word and html. I’ve used the Kindle e-mail to send the copies I already own to my Kindle.
I do 80% of my reading on my laptop, Axim, or Kindle. I travel a lot and that ability to haul my library electronically is great.
Some additional information about the Kindle…
Some complain that you can’t mark the Kindle up like a real book. This is not true. You can highlight important sentences, and they will get saved on your Kindle. More than THAT, your highlights are automatically forwarded to an Amazon web-page (password-protected). ALL of your highlights from ALL of your reading are there!
Another addictive feature for me is the dictionary. I am no longer shy about asking myself “Do I REALLY know what ‘rebarbative’ means?” I just scoot the cursor down to that word and the dictionary lookup is automatic. I actually miss this feature when reading a regular book.
If you have a Kindle, be sure to download the Magic Catalog from Gutenberg. You have to transfer it to the Kindle via USB, but, once you’ve done that, you can click on any one of 30,000 titles and get it downloaded instantly and for free.
If you use ebooks, you should use software like Calibre to manage your library. That way you always have your own back up. And get one that supports an SD card as well. Backups are beautiful plus you’re not wired in, permanently, to a vendor. And you don’t have to go through all the email to-from-and-around to get a book from the Gutenberg folks.
And get an ereader that supports many, many formats.Boox for example. The Kindle 3G has about 4GB which they claim can contain about 3500 books. With a SD card at 32GB that’s about 25,000 books. Or you can load mp3′s and listen to music while you read.
I have a Kindle and if all you’re going to do is read a novel or any other nonfiction book for the pleasure of reading it, then it’s fine. But if you are going to read a book and need to highlight and need to refer to certain sections of it for some other time, then the Kindle can be a pain. And it’s slow retrieving this highlighted information. And I’m still not used to not having page numbers to refer to (that drives me nuts). Kindle only tells you how much of the book you’ve read (the book I’m reading right now only tells me that I’ve completed 33% of the book; what the hell is that?). And for college or high school students that need to underline sections of books and then jump from one section to another in order to answer specific questions about the book, digital books can be a disaster. I’ve even read an interesting article recently that a lot of college students are going back to regular books simply because it is easier to underline facts, bookmark pages, and then jump back and forth between these sections for reports they have to write. Kindle and iPads are not as useful as you may think if you’re a student.
So for some forms of reading, Kindles are fantastic. The book I’m reading now fits perfectly into my “Kindle-reading mode,” which is that I’m just reading the book for fun and don’t have to take any notes that I’ll have to refer back to later. But if you’re a student or any other person who needs to do a lot of underlining and cross-referencing at a later date, digital books can be a big pain.
Also, some of the quality of the digital books I’m getting on Kindle, mainly many of the much older works, is not good. Some text or pictures are incomplete or missing, title or copywrite pages are missing, and some text is actually misspeled. And pictures take forever to load on a Kindle. And I also have one of the more advanced Kindles that say you can view newspapers, such as the New York Times. Go and try it. It takes forever to load, when you can do it. I also live in a town with a lot of internet connections, so the 3G connection should (in theory) not be a problem. But sometimes it really is.
I’ve had a Kindle for several years and still buy both versions of books. I buy analog when it’s a book my husband will likely also want to read (he doesn’t have a Kindle and I don’t like to give mine up.) I buy analog for reference material (including things like cookbooks) that I will likely want to bookmark and write in. I know Kindle has tools for doing this, but they don’t work well enough for me. I also buy analog for books that I’m pretty sure I’ll want to keep, knowing, as others have pointed out, that electronic files are easily lost or that Amazon can change its mind about keeping a book available.
The Kindle ensure that I am never without reading material (the horror!) and that I have a choice, depending upon my mood and circumstance. I am slowly working my way through some weighty classics. I have versions of some favorites from my bookshelves that I enjoy returning to.
Best of all, though, is that I have discovered that I can pull up old, forgotten books for little or no fee. For example, I was reading a social history about the Victorian home in England which often referred to popular novels from the era to illustrate various points. Five years ago, those would have been interesting footnotes and nothing more. This time, though, I went to Amazon to look up a few of the titles and download them for free. Now I can garner the entire context of the historian’s reference to this material and form my own opinion.
E-readers are only just beginning to make their mark and the debate over the value of analog vs digital seems, to me, to be misplaced. Let’s not lament the decline of the buggy whip industry (printing on paper); let’s take advantage of the new technology to get people where they need to go more efficiently and productively.
As a writer, I think eBooks are already leveling the playing field in publishing. In the dead-tree model, authors receive 10-15% commissions on hardback books, maybe 20 on paperbacks. Why? The publishers subsidize the cost of paper, ink, printing, binding, shipping and warehousing their product on the backs of the authors. It minimizes their already low risk. The author? If it doesn’t sell, that’s hours and hours of work lost for little remittance. In an eBook world, authors can garner far higher commissions through Amazon and Google. Dead-tree books are the like radio, when TV first came on the scene. They must re-invent themselves or specialize to survive.
As a reader, I’ve estimated I read perhaps 50% more than I have in the past. My home used to be crowded with bookshelves – 20 or 25 in all, at one point. How many of those books did I re-read? A small fraction. They were more like shrines or displays of literacy (see! I got lots of books!) than a productive use of living space.
My bookshelf is now in the cloud, which is redundantly mirrored across geographically dispersed data centers– if one Amazon data center goes down, it’s on the backup site. If your house burns down– or the local library of Alexandria– the books are gone forever.
I favor my Android tablet for magazines and online items that are enhanced with color pictures or even embedded video (try that with wood pulp), but do the bulk of my “traditional” reading with my Kindle. I estimate between the books I have “parked” in the cloud (not physically on the Kindle or tablet)and now on my devices, I have more reading material than had in those dusty bookcases.
In the future, you are your own library.
By the way, when I tried to donate all my books to the local library they refused them. Said it wasn’t cost effective for them to examine, catalog, label and shelve them. The only physical books we own here now are dead-tree books from author friends who have signed them–they are keepsakes– and cookbooks. Waffle batter and eggs don’t mix with digital devices, although I have been printing out more recipes from eBook cookbooks lately on an as-needed basis
It would be fantastic if the author will net more, but your income is likely to be smaller in the self-publishing world. You’re now your own agent, PR manager, etc, etc. Noone’s paying you for that time lost. You’re also going to get used to paying an intermediary for the pleasure of hosting your bits, and in case your writing targets the smart and poor (College students), get used to having your content stolen on day one and P-to-P’d all over the UnderNet. Suggest you take a real close look at the “Cult of the Amateur” by Andrew Keen and ask yourself – WHERE IS THE MONEY?
I have a sneaking suspicion that the only folks making a dime in the bright new world of publishing are those that made dollars in the deadwood era, and are treating their library of works as an extraction economy, in the same way chapter books are a great way to sell the same book for more money.
Bookworm
Bookworm – quite the contrary. There are authors, both “legit” and self-published that are reaping tremendous dollars off eBooks.
“From Publishing Perspectives:Robin Sullivan…
The author’s husband, Michael J. Sullivan, self-published on Amazon and went on to sign a six-figure contract with Hachette.
There have been many articles about self-published superstars like Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, and John Locke. While these success stories are noteworthy, we should look at them for what they are — outliers in the self-publishing world just as Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer are outliers in the big-six publishing industry. Most authors can never hope to reach sales in the hundreds of thousands for a single month, but there are more than a few who sell anywhere from 800 to 20,000. While selling books at this level would seem extraordinary by traditional publishing standards, the mere fact that so many self published authors have achieved this goal (with more being added each month), indicates that it is not an unusual occurrence.”
Bookworm, the dynamics of eBook marketing have proved to differ somewhat from those of printed-book marketing. Part of the difference arises from the elimination of one of the old markets for fiction: the fiction-oriented periodical.
Time was, short-story writers had to break in through the periodical market. It’s always been a tough market; ask anyone who’s tried to crack it. Well, today, that market has pretty much disappeared. That’s left short-form writers with almost no print outlets to which to turn, as printed-book publishers are notoriously averse to collections, and individual stories simply can’t be marketed in a physical format.
E-publishing has reopened the vistas of the short-form writer. He can issue individual stories for a very modest cost — typically, $0.99 US for a single story — and garner a readership directly. More, the online retailers are perfectly happy to assist him, as e-publishing imposes no burden of inventory management upon them. More still, there’s a tremendoes advantage to publishing individual stories rather than collections: Every story published that way adds to the writer’s “footprint,” by which he is known to the reading world.
If Smith reads a couple of short pieces by indie writer Jones and likes them, he just might become willing to risk a few piasters on Jones’s full-length novel…especially as paperback novels are now averaging $7.99, and e-published novels by indie writers are typically $3.99 to $5.99. So a versatile writer, capable of good work at both the short and the long forms, is better positioned and equipped to act as his own promoter than his print-bound colleague. And since the indie writer gets a bigger piece of each sale than the traditionally published writer, he just might outstrip his colleague in dollars and cents terms, too!
It took me a while to grasp the logic of this development. But it seems incontrovertible — and it brightens the indie writer’s future in a significant way.
The authors of my favorite books can feel confident in the fact that I will spend more money to buy yet another copy of their book. For instance, I currently have 3 copies of “The Lord of the Rings”: mass market paperback, trade paperback and hardcover. Soon I will be adding a digital copy to that list. The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien must be overjoyed.
I have done the same with several other of my favorite books where I purchased the ebook version when I already own a paperback and hardcover version. In the future I will most likely stop purchasing paperback books, but I will always buy hardcover versions of the books that I truly enjoy.
Naman – coffee table books are a perfect example a niche eBooks can’t fill, no matter how they try.
I do not have a Kindle or Nook, though I’m looking forward to getting one soon. I do read open source e-books on my laptop (just finished Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce there)
One question I have is the utility of coffee table books. They seem to be a home accessory as much as a repository of experience. I don’t see a kindle laying on the coffee table to pick up and browse. So maybe book publishing isn’t on the way out just yet. And I agree also with Charles and others who don’t trust the impermanance of 1′s and 0′s and their generational reader devices. Kindles are great as long as you have access to a recharger. . .
Hadn’t heard of DRM, but not surprised. Artists and writers are becoming very concerned about the contemporary intersection of intellectual property and easily copied digitial media.
I bought the IPad (not the 2) to test some apps our company produced.
Low-and-behold, there is a Kindle and a Nook app.
Plus? You can take a bunch of books with you (reference books) in my case. You can search the books.
Minus? You pay full price. There is no ‘used book’ pricing.
I notice that I retain better when I have a physical book in hand – but I have gotten seriously used to the IPad.
For me, the IPad makes more sense, as it has Kindle, Nook and tons of other things and only one device goes in my briefcase.
I love dead-tree books! In the bookcase behind me right now is a collection of my favorites, the ones favorite enough to spend the money for leather bindings and such. On the shelves in my garage are 21 boxes of books, mostly hardbacks, some favorites too beat up to put on a shelf in the house, some general reference, some highly specialized stuff about particular interests of mine, some really hard to find Civil War stuff I’ve collected. One of the most wrenching professional decisions I ever made was cancelling my office’s subscription to all the legal reference books and reporters and signing up with WestLaw. Even when they were no longer used, even when I was pretty much the only one left that even knew how to do legal research in books, I couldn’t make myself get rid of the books; the office just didn’t look right without those walls of books. Amazon’s computers know more about me than probably anyone on the Planet because of all the books I bought there. But there is always the stacks and boxes of books to deal with. It really takes a special book to be read twice. So other than the special books I listed above, I’ve gotten rid of all my books; I’m a real friend to the Friends of the Library in Juneau and the used book store here in Anchorage. And now I have a Kindle.
Aging, bi-focalled eyes dictated that I get the big one. Tradition dictated that I get the leather cover so it feels like a book. As Ed posits, real books will become a luxury item for me, collectors’ items. I may buy some picture/coffee table books, but from here on out my reading will be on my Kindle and the only exception is the book that I REALLY want that isn’t available electronically.
I’ve been doing some writing. When you live in Alaska there are two ways to get published: write something about Sarah Palin or hang out with academic lefties and hope you make a good enough impression to get noticed. ‘Course, if you don’t care much about Sarah Palin and you don’t much like academic lefties nor they you, you’ve got a hard row to hoe on the way to selling a book. But, you can throw your Word manuscript on Kindle for free. Pimp the book however you can. Advertise it as much as you want or can afford. Target it to the interest group(s) you choose. And all this without kowtowing to agents and sucking up to editors and publishers.
As a reader, I’ll kinda’ miss the dead tree book, but I can live with it becoming an expensive, specialized product just like the few vinyl albums and the turntable I still have. Sure wish I’d kept that old Dynaco tube-type stereo amplifier and the Lafayette pre-amp with a bazillion knobs and a zillion tubes. But as an aspiring writer, I sure don’t miss the book-publishing industry and will happily watch it die the same well-deserved death that the “authoritative” newspapers and the big three networks are experiencing now.
I think that book publishers will increasingly divide their offerings into temporary offerings (e-books) and books that will last (think the Folio Society).
I loved my Kindle, and love even more using an iPad to read my Kindle purchases.
I now resent being required to purchase a dead tree book, and will often simply decide I don’t need the book if it doesn’t come in an electronic format.
I still like having dead tree books. I love the look of books all lined up in shelves. I find it calming. But, I simply prefer to have those that are special in my library, rather than every book I want to read or have read.
Amazon is working on adding real page numbers to their e-books. I think this is very important, because–as someone else mentioned–without those real page numbers, the books are not really usable for college students and referenced papers.
That, and I wish the Kindle apps for iPhone and iPad allowed the easy sharing of quotes to Facebook or to email that the actual Kindle allows.
Hi, I’m Stan and I’m a bookaholic.
In my younger years, there was no greater pleasure in life than to find a great used book store and select some barely-used hardbacks that I intended someday to read (Churchill’s World War II volumes, anyone?).
My medical school had a fabulous historic library, with first editions of Vesalius, Harvey, and other classics of medical literature. How I loved to sit there and soak up the heritage of the old walnut tables, chairs, and bookshelves. Glorious hours that even now give me pleasure in reverie.
Like others above, I have a storage unit half-filled with boxes of books I will never re-read (or in many cases read).
A used book dealer told me it wasn’t worth my time to take boxes to him, he would only choose a select few and pay pennies on the dollar. That was years ago, BK (Before Kindle).
The internet has also brought forth Alibris and even Amazon’s own distributors, so almost–almost–any book one might finally want to look at again can be purchased online and in one’s hands in a couple of days, if you have that need to hold it in your hands.
Having spent the last 6 years living in various places, our lovely bookshelves are untouched, the overflow in storage, and the likelihood of actually needing to read any of those Gutenbergian marvels diminishes with each new mode of reading e-books. The great majority of my reading now is done on my Android phone, because it is always with me.
And as we are preparing to settle down again for a few years in one house, I find that I no longer need to make room for bookshelves to the same extent as we did in the past, which was, building our lives around our library.
So in practice my wonderful library is useless, and now little more than a reminder of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Unfortunately my wife is even worse than I–anything touched by one of our children decades ago is now sacred.
Yes, I used to puff up with pride a little when guests would comment on our floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I never actually put in the rolling library ladder that was the sine qua non of a true bibliophile, and now I certainly never will.
I even have a few truly antiquariat-quality books from the seventeenth century, given me by a friend. They sit in air-tight boxes with dessicant, because I can’t actually breathe when they are open for reading. I will miss the idea of them.
I purchased an iPad to be able to read books. During my chemotherapy treatments, holding books became exhausting and they seemed heavier than normal. It also allowed me to surf the internet from my bed, which I was stuck in for about 4 months. I would have gone completely crazy without that connection to the outside world. (as it stands, I’m only mostly crazy
) I love my iPad. It has been very helpful to me.
True Story. I have become addicted to the dictionary feature in the Kindle app on the iPAD. Any word I read that I don’t immediately know the definition – just a finger tap and there’s the meaning. This is great and I love it.
Except one day while reading a deadtree book – I tapped and tapped but no definition was forthcoming.
I own a Kindle DX because my wife nabbed my small kindle. Since, I have become a voracious reader. I am currently in Afghanistan for 6 months so I preloaded a ton of books and it has become my security blanket. I also like the way I can download journal articles in PDF form.
Before Kindle, I would buy lots of books but never finish them. Now I am finally going through books like butter. I even get Pajamas Media on my kindle.
As a Nook owner, an iPhone owner, and an eBook reader since the days of the old Palm Pilots (no phone, just the PDA!) I’ve been a fan of eBooks for a long time. They’ve allowed me to read far higher amounts of books than ever before because I’m from the middle of the desert where Library’s are a rarity and even a Barnes an Noble was a hard thing to come by. (There’s ONE in the High Desert. Period.)
I’m sure my daughter will look at our physical books as relics of a dark and HEAVY age. When she’ll have a eBook textbook reader and a pen tablet of some kind to do all her homework on when she’s 14. (11 years from now.
)
I’ve written several text books with hundreds of illos.
I’ve written one story book.
The story book went on Kindle as well as paperback, and it was agony putting it on Kindle.
The textbooks just don’t work on any digital platform out today.
PDF????
PDF is one of the sources for paid Kindle conversion. If you don’t want to pay for the conversion, it goes on with restrictions that make it much less usable to the reader. Useless for a book with technical illos.
If you do the work yourself, you either grow old doing it or produce intermittent garbage which again leads to unusability.
First Law of Info Retrieval: an IR system will be used to the extent that it is EASY to use.
So Kindle (new media) is compatible with new media … Why wouldn’t it be? If you make parking spaces smaller and smaller, pretty soon big cars won’t be able to park anywhere. Another prescient social commentator, Vance Packard, wrote about “planned obsolescence” in The Waste Makers, in 1960.
I buy books and keep them. Just like Kindle. Only they are not small televisions; they are books.
Sliced any way you want or can — alongside, instead of, in addition to printed books — the Kindle is a power tool. Two short anecdotes: My wife and I live in a tiny village in rural France and Kindle is an indispensable lifeline; we have his’n'hers to avoid fights. And: A couple of weeks ago I was sitting alone reading in the ‘food hall’ of a discount shopping mall near Denver when an employee busing tables tapped me on the shoulder and shrieked, urgently and very very happily, ‘I get mine next week, I’ve been saving for three months.’
Sometimes, only a journalist can miss something that’s painfully plain to the rest of the world.
Oh, and I agree completely about the advice above to get a beefy, book-like cover, whether from Amazon or elsewhere. You will discover a transforming, tactile experience…
I avoided the Kindle at first. I’m repelled by anything with a whiff of hype about it. After a year or two I tried my brother’s Kindle, and was hooked. I find I use my Kindle more for reading web text than books. Free web surfing is huge benefit for me.
In the Kindle browser (Home, Menu, Experimental, Web Browser) surf to http://www.skweezer.com. Bookmark Skweezer, which transcodes normal web pages to be simpler for mobile screens. From the Skweezer home screen you can enter web address and they will be displayed in a simpler format suiable for Kindle or phone. You can then bookmark those on your Kindle. Or you can create a free Skweezer account and create/retreive bookmarks from Skweezer.
Also, Instapaper is like winning the lottery for me. I can skim long web articles from magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc and save them to Instapaper, which can show you the full web page or simplify the page to just plain text. One awesome feature on Instapaper is the ability to send all of your saved Instapaper articles to your Kindle as a “book.” Surf to Instapaper site on your Kindle or PC and click the Kindle icon near the bottom of the page. Then the next time your Kindle is synched all of your Instapaper articles are waiting on your Kindle Home Screen (where you pick which book to read) as Instapaper. Inside that book you next/prev page to move within the article and use the 5-way switch left/right to skip to prev/next article.
I also use Mail2PDA web site to check webmail and POPmail from my Kindle while I’m mobile.
Get a Kindle if you like reading blogs, magazines, newspapers etc. Kindle advertises you can subscribe to newspapers, magazines, blogs, but that costs money. What I described is all free after Kindle purchase. For the small difference in prices between the wi-fi only and the wi-fi & 3G Kindles, get the Kindles with 3G or free cellphone connection. You can save some dough by getting the “Special Offers” Kinlde which shows a small ad at the bottom of the Home screen. Just get a Kindle. Oh, and turn off wireless when you aren’t actively surinf the web or receiving books. Wireless drains the battery. I can surf for a few hours per day and still recharge once per week. With wireless off, battery life is measured in weeks or months.
Wow! Thanks for the info! I had no idea.
Perhaps that tactile feeling
Im not a fetishish, I read book . I dont need to touch them
I dont like the smell of books. So I have a kindle and 259 books on it . In three language.
Friends share. And Pajamas Media is nothing if not friendly. So for no particular reason I thought I’d share with you all the books I’ve read so far this year, for good or bad. I’ll spare you the page counts but a previous (better) year’s average was 330.
And Away We Go!
1) Since Then by David Crosby
2) The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
3) Nemesis by Philip Roth
4) Frost by Thomas Bernhard
5) Hollywood Hills by Joseph Wambaugh
6) Life by Keith Richards
7) I remember nothing by Nora Ephron
8) The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott
9) The Towers of Silence by Paul Scott
10) Djibouti by Elmore Leonard
11) A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott
12) The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
13) Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward
14) Mathematics 1001 by Dr. Richard Elwes
15) The Autobiography of Mark Twain by (not!) Mark Twain
16) Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld
17) The Father Brown Omnibus by G. K. Chesterton
18) Red: My Uncensored life in Rock by Sammy Hagar (w/ blah blah for the ghosts)
19) Dick Van Dyke: My Lucky life in and out of Show Business by Dick Van Dyke
20) Pinheads and Patriots by Bill O’reilly
21) Archangel by Robert Harris
22) Rawhide Down by Del Quentin Wilber
23) I’m over all that and other confessions by Shirley MacLaine
24) The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth
25) Townie by Andre Dubus III
26) Anthony Burgess: A Biography by Roger Lewis
27) Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass
28) The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet
29) Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
30) Sir Vidia’s Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents by Paul Theroux
31) Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas
32) Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
33) 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
34) A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
35) Of Thee I Zing by Laura Ingraham
36) The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough
Inspiring topic, wish I could come up with stuff like that for my blog, LOL.
“As you know by now, a fourth woman has come forward and accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment. This woman gave the details, pretty graphic. She said that Herman Cain tried to put his hand up her. So now when Cain says he is reaching out to the American people, you know what he’s reaching for.” –Jay Leno
“Of course, Cain still doesn’t get it. Like he said he will address all these charges at a press conference tomorrow at Hooters.” –Jay Leno “A Fox reporter asked Herman Cain if he’d ever had to pay anyone money to settle a sexual harassment claim. Herman Cain: ‘Outside of the Restaurant Association, absolutely not.’” –Jon Stewart