Eating my words…

“I don’t have an e-reader & would never (although they do say never say “never”) buy one.” – oh how I knew that those words would come back to haunt me! Technically the above is still partially true – I do now have an e-reader, but I didn’t buy it. Does that count? My main Christmas present this year was a Kindle.

Thor – My Kindle

So now it is time to eat my words! Don’t get me wrong, I am not thrilled with the idea of having the Kindle (which is why I’ve given it the name Thor) – I suspect I am going to have a very volatile relationship with my Kindle, so a strong name like Thor is fitting(for those of you who may not know, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning & storms – aka: volatile things).

I’ve now had Thor in my life for 6 days & I have only bought one book – but haven’t started reading it yet (partly because I am in the middle of a really good paperback about Zimbabwe & partly because I feel like a bit of a fraud).  Need to get over that though, because the reason I needed the Kindle was so that I could continue to read review books. I love the idea of being able to read books & review them here on my blog – books that authors have sent me, or books through the various other possible sources (librarything early reviewers, Netgalley, Smashwords, Nurture Book Tourz, etc), but they are all e-books these days. Not having an e-reader meant that I had to read the books off of my laptop, which I just could not do. This has meant that I now have a massive backlog of books waiting to be read, with no chance of them being read any time soon.

So, now I have bitten the bullet & am the owner of a Kindle (but I’m going to dig my heals in & refuse to like it for a little while longer! 🙂 )

E-books & E-readers ~ part II

So, as I mentioned before, I am not a great fan of e-books or the idea of e-books. To me, it just goes against the grain, is contrary to nature, it just somehow seems so wrong. Quite a while ago I did download an e-book (or a version thereof) onto my computer (It was the Hunchback of Notre Dame), because it was free on Google books. I never read it – oh I tried. Boy did I try. It felt wrong & I hated it, so I gave up.

I just know that I am going to be (or at least try to be) the last human on the planet to buy an e-reader. I feel that strongly about them. I don’t want to support something that is attributing to the demise of the book store,  the library & the paper book (ok, maybe we could argue about the first two, but I am right about the last one!). Call me a traditionalist (I’m Ok with that!), but I think that publishers are being short sighted when it comes to the publishing of e-books over paper books. I think they are limiting the audience who will get to experience these wonderful books & in my mind, that is never a good thing. It’s almost like segregation, only with books. Sure, e-books are often (at least in the UK) cheaper than paper books, but the readers you need to read them on sure aren’t. I can’t afford to spend £111.00 on something that will allow me to read books. How many people are being denied wonderful books just because a small portion of the world wants everything to be digital?

Now, one of my favourite authors has just released her latest book (her fourth! 🙂 ) & the only way that I am going to be able to read it is by buying the Kindle version & downloading it onto my laptop. This is the book in question:

– the book that is causing me untold emotional stress (ok, maybe I am exaggerating slightly). I want to read her book, I want to support her, & I want other people to read  her book & support her, but something is stopping me from pressing that button on amazon.co.uk & downloading it onto my computer….what to do, what to do!

How do you feel about e-books?

Do you have an e-reader? Is it a Kindle, a Sony, Fujitsu, LG, Samsung, etc, etc… If you don’t have one, are you considering it? Would you consider it? What are your feelings?

I don’t have an e-reader & would never (although they do say never say “never”) buy one. For me there is just something special about the process of buying a book – going to the book store, wandering around looking at all that loveliness, picking up books & reading the backs, putting them back & moving on to the next before making my choice… That is such a fun thing to do & something that I am not willing to give up.

Then, there’s the whole process of actually reading that chosen book. I love the feel of the book in my hands from the covers, the slide of the paper between my fingers as I turn the pages, the sounds the spine makes as it loosens up a bit from being handled, the smell of the pages, the weight of the book – all things that I love that you just would not get from an e-reader, so strike 2 on buying an e-reader for me.

I only know 1 person who owns an e-reader & I have no idea whether he uses it or not, but the other thing for me is that I look at a computer screen for 8-12 hours a day & the last thing I want to do when reading for pleasure is look at another screen!

From an author’s point of view, I know that for independent novelist e-books are really being pushed as they are so much cheaper to produce than a paper book. For me, this means that I may not be able to read the next book that one of my favourite authors is about to release. She is looking at only e format, which means that she is eliminating me from her book reading public. I get why this is happening, but I certainly don’t like it.

I know that a lot of people think that paper books are going the way of the dodo, but are they? I know more people who say they would prefer paper to e, and surely we are not in the minority? But, even if we were the minority, we are a large minority & can publishers really afford to alienate us?