We’ve talked before about the choice between Paper and Plastic and the e-volution of the e-book genre. For me personally, I never thought I would end up getting an e-reader. Right now in my day to day life I work with a PC, carry a netbook and have a PC at home. I have a quite reasonable phone that I am sure I could get an e-book onto if I really wanted, assuming that I don’t simply use the various other computers I have access to. There are Kindle and nook applications for PCs so why would I bother?

More importantly though, reading has always been for me a visceral experience. I can feel the weight of the book in my hands while its images play out in my head. I can enjoy the texture of the paper and the memory link to when I first started reading every time I turn a page. As much as the words impart feeling, the whole connection with the book in my hands carries meaning. Touch is a powerful thing.

Then I went and ruined it all by touching the Barnes & Noble nook. It wasn’t just myself that fell for the machine. Both my wife and my mother-in-law now want their own and so we will all be getting our hands on an e-reader.

Why? Well… perhaps my resistance to e-readers hasn’t been all based upon the association in my head of touching my books. Perhaps it was simple aversion to early adoption. New gadgets are a risk after all. Sure there are those who will charge out into the technological frontiers and grab the first run of every new machine that comes out, but I no longer count myself as one of them. In fact had I come across the nook one or two weeks earlier, I probably would have no interest in it.

I have toyed with the Sony E-reader  and felt nothing for it. Had I seen the nook before the 1.3 firmware update, it’d have gone the same way. A cool looking gadget but ultimately passed over. The update however has sold me on what Barnes & Noble are doing. To my mind it is no longer a gadget, it’s an experience. The nook wants you to read and does what it can to help you. If you’re lucky enough to live in North America (currently nook does not ship internationally, but that won’t stop me) bringing your nook into a store on a Friday will net you a free book. No mess, no fuss. Wonder if you want to read that new Dan Brown book? Pop into the store and you’ll get an hour per book per day to read as much of the book as you can manage. Elsewhere you’ll only get some sample chapters. Does your friend have a nook and do you have something they simply must read? The LendMe feature will grab the book from your nook and give it to them for a week or two.

Sure it also does a few games now and has a basic web browser. Sure it can play music and sure people have hacked it to run android apps but none of those ever interested me before. What interested me was how they’ll still bring you to the bookstore and how the nook itself is trying to help you read instead of simply being a flashier method for reading.

I look forward to getting my nook and who knows? Maybe it’ll help me review more books as I won’t have to worry any more about buying a paperback that I may not enjoy and filling my scant shelf space. I will still buy my favourites in print of course, but having touched the nook, I’ve found a place in my library for it.

I hope you had a wonderful time and here’s to 2010 and all that lays before us.

It being a New Year, it is of course time to talk about the future and in particular e-books. Yes again, don’t give me that look. Specifically I’d like to talk about the perception of e-books and readers and mention some of the hurdles ahead. Part of this comes from two articles Regis linked me to and part of it is from good old personal experience.

Starting with the articles we have two big ones in the e-lit world, DIY book scanning and Copyrights & The Blind. In a way both are related in that they each deal with copyright, but both also show a glimpse of a possible future.

We won’t deal with the loaded issues that are DRM and copyrights, rather some of the comments made. There are already e-readers for blind people, but never one to miss an opportunity, Amazon plans to make a blind accessible Kindle. Daniel Reetz, in the scanning article, was prompted to make his cheap book scanner by book prices for his college courses.  As that community grows, there will be more and more available for people to download. It may be free, it may be pirated or it may come from the industry itself.

“There have to be things that you get with an e-book that you don’t get by making your own copies,” says Samuelson. “It’s not such as stark challenge for copyright owners, because not many people are going to take the trouble to make their own scanner system. Most of us want the convenience of buying digital books for the Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader.” -Pamela Samuelson, a professor at University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in digital-copyright law.

Webcomics have even commented on the possibilities of greater uptake in e-readers. Anyone who has ever had a packed commute next to someone trying to read a broadsheet newspaper would welcome Mr. Business getting his news through a reader or a phone. Perhaps it is a little too sci-fi to imagine, but I would love to see school children up to college students being freed of the burden of expensive and oftentimes heavy schoolbooks. That same device could be used for your morning paper and your evening read. Some companies already have readers planned for professionals. Dvd sales nowadays include special features above and beyond the movie, even in the “regular” edition of a disc. Some authors already publish companions to their universes that further flesh out and explain the book in your hand. The one I saw most recently was a fable and folklore book based in the Discworld which can be used to give greater background to Unseen Academicals.

In the end it comes down to how it is used and why. Certainly this is something I ran into with my father this Christmas. Trying to pick a gift for me, he knew I wanted an e-reader. I had my eye on the Sony Reader before they shelved it and re-launched with two versions of the same. I would love to own a Kindle, but they were unlikely to be on sale. My father, who has been a technology early adopter all his life, couldn’t understand why I’d want such a device, or why he’d pay so much for what he saw as a one trick pony. In the end it was easier to tell him to get me something else (I’ll tell you what it is when I actually get it). This Christmas I myself picked up several books. We asked here before if you prefer paper or plastic and people were divided. However e-readers are here to stay and they are no one trick pony, not for long anyway. E-readers are e-volving, if you’ll pardon the pun, and they aren’t just about the book in your hands anymore. I have my novel for my commute beside me and I admit freely that I love the feel and smell of the paper, but I would adore a device to fill in for all the other paper in my life. The paper we’re forced to live with or have to carry for whatever reason.

I foresee the fight between e-reader and print book going on for a while more. It is like the battle waged between digital cameras and film cameras. Both have their supporters and detractors, however going forward the cold plastic device you may imagine a reader to be may not necessarily be trying to replace your warm fantasy printed world. In my mind, nothing will beat a coffee, biscuit and good book in your hands, no matter how many buttons it has. At the same time, I want one. Not for that warm time with a good drink and good book, but for all the other times I’d be carrying material that needs or deserves reading.

Perhaps e-readers will win us over in the end by offering those special features like our movies, earning their place beside the paperback and your favourite cup, the handy tool for textbooks and papers tasked to support our fantasies.

Robot Overlord with laser pirate sword

I read an interesting article in Guardian about authors who pretty much wrote science-fiction, but refused to acknowledge that what they wrote was, in fact, science-fiction. The story might take place in the future, might explore the effects of apocalyptic events… but there are no lasers or robots. Therefore not sci-fi, right? In a way it’s understandable to refuse to be categorized and keep your doors open to a wider audience, but on the other hand it seems crazy to alienate the readership that is most likely to pick your book up. It reminds me a little of when the Sci Fi Channel changed its name to SyFy to become “less geeky.”

We categorize books to help us go to the right shelf and find the kind of books we like, and it also helps publishers who can market their books to the right audience. Without properly categorized books I would probably have my mom buy me Twilight for Christmas with the explanation “it stood between that George Martin and Elizabeth Moon that you like…”

But there certainly is a negative side to categories as well. For example, you wouldn’t get me to pick up a book from the “Vampire Romance” section even if the author had won the Nobel-price in literature. I shy away from some categories like vampires to garlic (sorry, I’ll stop picking on Twilight now), and I can only expect that normal people do the same. How many readers have George R.R. Martin lost at first glance because it’s filed as “fantasy” and seems to be about dragons?

The very same author also has a view of categories that I read in Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective some time ago. He calls it “the furniture rule”, and it basically boils down to that a work is categorized based on the furniture around it. If your hero is surrounded by dragons, knights and wizards then it’s going to be filed under fantasy. If there are space ships, aliens and lasers then it’s going under science-fiction. Of course nothing is never this clear, because where do you file a book about time travelling knights armed with lasers riding on dragons*? Or a detective wizard in our modern world? Or a western gunslinger in a post-apocalyptic world with strange portals?

I’m getting a magazine from my local fantasy/sci-fi bookstore a few times per year, and at first I was a bit surprised when I saw books there like Conn Iggulden’s historical fiction (I love that genre-name) books about Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan. Yes, it’s certainly not fantasy, but I have read them and I enjoyed them very much. In fact, if you like fantasy this is the kind of books you should also like.

No, let a story be just a story. Instead of only reading books from a certain genre search across the boundaries of categorization and sometimes heed the “if you liked this one…”-advice. Who knows, it just might stand in the Vampire Romance shelf.

* Sadly there is no such story yet. But admit, you would read it.

Some of you may be reading this entry on an iPhone or other PDA. Some may have found the few moments at a computer to cast their eye over the site. Alot of the busy world probably does the majority of their reading on a display; as such we have the question.

Paper or Plastic?

It seems the world of literature is hedging its bets, and to be honest I like the option. Some of the staff here had a bit of a back and forth on twitter recently about e-books and paperbacks. No one denies there is something special about having the book itself in your own hands, feeling the texture of the paper and being able to enjoy the story unfolding anywhere you can whip out a book. Others pointed out the ease of e-books and how handy it can be to have a few novels stored in the device you would be carrying anyway that are there to be read at any time.

Two examples of the fence sitting can be found easily. The Book Depository, whom you can be sure I will talk about again when I start wielding the almighty plastic version of paper money, offers free e-books in their newsletters and on the site. Even if you don’t feel like buying a book, you can still get away with a read of some description.  On the other hand we have Galaxy Chocolate, who of course are trying to make money on their treats, but are doing so by promoting and glorifying the idea of cuddling up on the sofa with a treat and a book.

None of the Galaxy advertising suggests you grab a PDA for your indulgent night in and no free e-book over has ever come along suggesting you warm up the printer. Even the world of electronics has seen the trend and reacted accordingly, why else would we have the Kindle and the Sony E-Book reader? Big book shaped devices that could be a quarter the size, but meant to make you feel at home with a “book” that changes its text at the touch of a button.

Either way it means one thing for sure, the indulgence of a paper novel is here to stay. In any climate, in any cash flow there’s always going to be space for a good book away from the computer. In the end, if it’s something you’ve been looking forward to reading; you don’t want to share the brain space with us here do you? Go, find your favourite chair and get away from it all. Paper or plastic, whichever you prefer, it’s all about the holiday away from the world.