Between Paper Pages and Digital Screens
If you use Amazon.com at all — or the internet, for that matter — it’s a fair bet that you’ve at least seen the Kindle. And if you read blogs and review sites, it’s also a fair bet that you’ve come across the furiously negative reaction to it among many technology-minded book readers.
The Kindle is a representation of the human need to make things more complicated in order to make them simpler. The paperback book is probably one of the most easy-to-use and practical of human inventions — turn a page, get more content. It’s portable, looks nice on display, can be lent out to friends, and just plain feels good in your hand. You can collect hundreds, provided you’ve got the money and the wall-space. Why on earth does the human race feel the need to improve upon this?
Those against the Kindle and other e-book readers will often laud the inherent perfection of books. If nothing else, they remain a source of textual entertainment that isn’t chained to the nearest electrical outlet or wireless internet hub. Well, as long as you plan to read only during the day or invest in candles.
Paperback and hardcover books as they are currently, however, are not the bastions of usability that hard-core devotees will make them out to be. If they were, I would have reached for my dictionary to make sure I was using the word “laud” right — instead, I used dictionary.com.
That’s where the advantage of e-book readers over paperbacks comes into play; not in the readability, but in the accessibility. Being able to search two hundred books with a few keywords is a massive improvement over going through them by hand to find the information you want. It also helps on organization; when the size of your book collection starts reaching into the hundreds, it’s easy to lose or misplace individual books or buy multiple copies of the same book. Digital books provide instant organization and access to your book collection, with just the click of a button.
The other advantage of the Kindle and similar e-book readers, and probably their biggest attraction, is storage. Everyone who regularly reads and collects books suffers from never having enough book shelves. Everyone. The difference in storage space between what’s needed to keep several hundred paperbacks and what’s needed to keep a few scan-disk memory cards is massive. The book collection that currently takes up your living room wall could now fit easily into your purse. If you, too, got teary eyed over the several dozen books you had to get rid of during the last move or are constantly moving book piles around your apartment to accommodate your living space, this is a very appealing concept.
Now on portability. One of the articles I read sneered at the idea of carrying around that many books in your back pocket. No normal person finishes off or looses interest in a book during a daily train ride and simply must have a selection of 199 others to pick from right that second. And yes, when looked at that way, it can seem a little excessive. But let’s not talk about daily bus or train rides — let’s talk about hours long plane flights and week(+) long vacations. I have, on more than one occasion, completely finished off the two novels I brought with me for a weekend trip and had nothing to read on the nine hour plane flight home. Back when I used to travel around with my grandparents in their RV, I could never pack enough reading material to satisfy my appetite. I’m the person who requires a extra piece of luggage to carry all their books when they go on vacation. So, having a selection of two hundred novels whenever I go without taking up more space than a single book? A dream come true.
E-book readers are not without their advantages or future potential. But much the same way PDAs were once vastly over-priced for what they offered in comparison to conventional binder-style organizers, the Kindle asks a lot for giving relatively little back. Above, I list all the reasons why I want one — my reasons for not getting one could be summed up in a $400 price tag.
If e-Books were cheaper or there was a cheap (meaning free) way of getting digital copies of the novels I own currently, that might off-set the cost of the device. Unfortunately, many e-Books cost as much as paperbacks, or even more than it would be to get the same books used. The shelves I buy at Target may not be able to go on the train with me, but they cost a third as much and that’s money I can spend on more books. Or, you know, rent.
There also still remains the fact that while e-Readers offer the advantage of accessibility and portability when it comes to vast numbers of novels, nothing beats a single paperback book when it comes to easy and enjoyable readability.
I think I’ll wait for Version 2.
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I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor
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