E-Book Revolution

The digital reader scene first hit my radar back in December '07 when Sony partnered up with Borders to sell their brand new Reader Digital Book--don't look at me, I think it's a terrible name too--soon after I heard about the Kindle made by Amazon (this one is of the Kindle 2 since they took down the link to the first edition). I'm not going to lie, I've been avoiding the whole idea of e-books since I first heard about them. Usually I'm pretty open to new technologies, I had one of the original iPods, got the Nintendo Game Cube, Wii, and DS all when they first came out, not to mention the first Google phone, but electronic books? It just doesn't sit well with me.

As you all should know by now, I'm probably one of the biggest bookworms out there. So intuitively I should be excited for such a revolution to take place, I mean come on, combine technology and books, it should be heaven! At the same time, though, I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to certain things in my life, not many mind you, but a few. One of them, the biggest I'd say, is books. I love, love, love opening a new book, turning the pages, really experiencing the book. Where is that with one of these e-readers? Sure you can hold 20+ books at once all in the palm of your hand, but where's the actual interaction between you and the book? It's not even just new books I love, I absolutely adore the worn down, well read half falling apart of really old books. Some of my favorite novels I have are from before I was born! Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master by Raymond E. Feist are pretty much falling apart on me. Master's back cover has come off completely--this does make me quite dismayed to be honest--and both of the spines are so worn from handling that you can hardly read the spine. And the smell, ah the smell. It might be weird to you guys, but working at Borders combines two of my absolute favorite smells, coffee and new books. When I buy a brand new book I usually open it up, close my eyes, and just run my thumb over the pages so they fan right into my nose!

My weird fetishes aside, I feel that by making books completely digital we're going to lose something humans have had for hundreds of years! Now I can't really bag on the whole thing either. I like to think that I try to be environmentally friendly, but lets face it, I probably have trees worth of paper just sitting on my shelves. Not to mention, as much as I love seeing my books on display, they take up loads of room. Also, from what research I've done, digital books are cheaper than their paper brethren, this makes sense since, after all, there aren't really any materials being used, and with the amount of memory we now have on computers, even a 500 page novel doesn't take much space. Of course, if you know where to look, you can get e-books for free. This is where it gets kind of iffy for me; ethically speaking I have no problem downloading music and even the occasional movie or two, but I don't know how I'd feel downloading books. It might be hypocritical on my end, so sue me I think writing a book takes much more time, effort and passion than that of a pop song or movie. And, unlike movie stars or rock stars, authors don't make nearly as much money, nor does the majority of their profits go to greedy labels. The publishers do get a cut, it's true, but it's not rape like the music industry. And, as a matter of opinion, but authors are much more humble than their media cousins, there are of course exceptions--J.K. Rowling--but the majority I can think of that aren't Opera whores or publishing whores, are pretty cool. I'll be honest, I've downloaded two books in my life time, one was Snow Crash because I was reading it at work and could not wait to find out what happened, the other was Twilight. In my defense, after I finished Snow Crash I bought it, and honestly I couldn't get through 100 pages of Twilight. Besides Stephanie Meyer is now way richer than she should be so one fluke download probably didn't hurt her much.

Ha I just thought of something, with my wide reader base, I'm sure I'll somehow get screwed and have the bored FBI agent browse my blog. If you guys don't here from me in over a month you'll know what happened!

The other downside that I've seen from these digital readers is that they're becoming more than just readers. Okay, so we live in a digital age, and most people can't live without their email or internet connection, but reading is the last refuge against the technological onslaught! People are suppose to curl up in bed or by the fire with their book and just relax, take a break from the almost overly connected world, escape! Alas both the Kindle and the Sony Reader are connected synced to the net, which is okay if all it is is to buy books, but they also have browsers. This isn't so bad for those people out there that go and read blogs and such for their news, but I dunno it just feels.. wrong. Not to mention both readers come equipped with a whole host of other features, such as mp3 capabilities, image storage, even access to radio, and I'm sure it won't be long til both are sporting a camera. When I sit down to read I want to sit down and read, not listen to music, look at pictures, or browse the internet I mean come on! Because of all this extra baggage both the Kindle and the Sony Reader fucking expensive! The Kindle rings in at a whopping $359 and the Sony Reader at a cool $399! Fuck you guys, Ipods are cheaper than that AND have more storage good lord. Everyone says that they pay for themselves quickly, this may be true after a while. I have a hard time justifying burying a $25 brand new hardcover, this is just ridiculous since you'll be at $400 BEFORE you get any books. The other problem with the pricing is that the books really aren't that great of a deal.

Lets take a look, a new mass market paperback book--that's the small ones for all you non-booknerds--is $7.99 in the store. On the Kindle you can get the same book, for $6.19 if its new, if it's somewhat older, but not too old mind you, you can go down to around $3.15. Sounds like a good deal, but consider a used book. Shit you can get most new, bestsellers at a used book store for around $2-$3 easy.. with the advent of these e-books there will never be that cheap a book again! I guess the real savings come in for hardcovers, a brand new hardcover in store will run you anywhere from $20-$35 depending on the content, a fiction usually averages out at $25.99, young adult at $19.99, and non-fiction upwards of $30. On the Kindle, brand spanking new "hardcovers" are only $9.99 from what I can tell, going up or down from there depending on the price. Once again this seems like an amazing deal, but the reason you spend that extra $15-$20 bucks on a hardcover is because you're getting a hardcover, as an e-book there's no difference between a book that's 5 years old and a book that came out this week. It's all text! So what exactly are you paying for? The fact that it's new? Brand new music on iTunes costs the same as music from the 80's and they take up more space. So really are you saving money by buying e-books? Seems more like saving space, and even then, I don't know anyone who hates the way books look on shelves, it's just one of those things everyone inherently likes. It reminds us of old times, of piece and quite, of dare I say sophistication! Granted I think it would be damn cool to have all your books in a neat little folder on your computer, saves space, saves hassle, but wtf are you suppose to do when your computer crashes. I will bet money that neither Amazon nor Sony will let you re-download the book, there'd be way too much fraud. "Oh hey, I uh, my uh computer crashed, I had like, 1000 books, can you give them back to me?" No way pal. If you think about it, books are really hard to get rid of, they're hard to move around, take up a whole hell of a lot of space, and they're heavy, it's really unlikely that you'll lose your entire library.

Now one thing I do support is what Google is doing. They're scanning in, or at least trying to, every single book ever made. It'll take ages and ages, but they have the resources and the security to back up these books that are deteriorating. Whats more is that they're letting people have these books for free. A lot of them aren't the most brand new, or best sellers right now, but you can go to books.google.com and search for books and then download them. They even have a mobile site for you psychopaths that think reading a novel on a cell phone is a good idea: books.google.com/m.

So really I don't know what to think. I love to read, and I think it's a really cool idea to have multiple books on an e-reader or computer, but I don't think it's worth the price. On the one hand you don't have the hassle of carrying books onto planes or having them take up a bunch of space in your house, but on the other they're easily lost and the reader itself is damn expensive. Not to mention all the bells and whistles that are attached to these readers, a book is a book.. not an mp3 player or photo gallery.

For now, I think it's safe to say that I won't be investing in either the Kindle or the Sony Reader, maybe if something comes out that's cheaper and really basic I'll consider it. Even then, though, I don't know how into it I will be, it's always been my dream to have a whole room that's just a library in my house.. but if there really is an e-book revolution, print books may go extinct. We'll see what the future holds I suppose.