Just a Kindle in the wind...
This year I’ve been visiting a lot of bookshops to organise readings/signings for my novel and I’ve found each as fearful and defeated as the next in their efforts to ward off extinction. They are fast becoming as quaint as loose-leaf tea leaves in china pots, but it wasn't until I was standing in Union Square, San Francisco, looking up at the big, empty, boarded-up building that used to be Borders, that I realised we were way past the turning point of how publishing was, to what reading is now.
The demise of books is no reflection on whether people are reading or not. Everywhere I look, heads are down in iPads, Nooks, Kindles – (some gadgets I don't even know the names of and won’t bother learning as it’s all changing so fast). E-readers converted those who already read books and sucked in others who took up reading as an excuse to get the latest toy. Reading, as I knew it, is definitely out, but reading, as it will be, is definitely the new thing.
Never someone to be left behind, I was even on a waiting list for one of the first Kindles in Europe. And this trip was my first without lugging around a case full of books; I could download whatever took my fancy in under 3 seconds, devour it late into the night without having my husband scowling at me, and! nor did I need to take my reading glasses - the print just gets bigger and bigger as I get older and older!
Did I enjoy the books as much as ever? I skim read more, my boredom threshold has sunk to a pretty intolerant low and I missed passing books on. No paperbacks greased with coconut oil, no phone numbers of new friends scribbled on the back, no receipts from restaurants marking pages, all the signs of great beach reads. I always used to take along one ‘Classic’ novel every summer but that’s been replaced with a Mystery/Thriller, the type I would have passed up before. Bookstores are gone, taking with them, patience, time and a certain amount of emotional commitment to the novel. How we read has definitely and irrevocably changed, but I wonder how much of what we read?
The demise of books is no reflection on whether people are reading or not. Everywhere I look, heads are down in iPads, Nooks, Kindles – (some gadgets I don't even know the names of and won’t bother learning as it’s all changing so fast). E-readers converted those who already read books and sucked in others who took up reading as an excuse to get the latest toy. Reading, as I knew it, is definitely out, but reading, as it will be, is definitely the new thing.
Never someone to be left behind, I was even on a waiting list for one of the first Kindles in Europe. And this trip was my first without lugging around a case full of books; I could download whatever took my fancy in under 3 seconds, devour it late into the night without having my husband scowling at me, and! nor did I need to take my reading glasses - the print just gets bigger and bigger as I get older and older!
Did I enjoy the books as much as ever? I skim read more, my boredom threshold has sunk to a pretty intolerant low and I missed passing books on. No paperbacks greased with coconut oil, no phone numbers of new friends scribbled on the back, no receipts from restaurants marking pages, all the signs of great beach reads. I always used to take along one ‘Classic’ novel every summer but that’s been replaced with a Mystery/Thriller, the type I would have passed up before. Bookstores are gone, taking with them, patience, time and a certain amount of emotional commitment to the novel. How we read has definitely and irrevocably changed, but I wonder how much of what we read?
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Kindles are just...better. They are a specific tool for a specific purpose, and done brilliantly. Reading on iPads, laptops, phones, is OK but not as good.The other interesting thing is how well newspapers translate to it - I thought they wouldn't, but I am readdicted to the Guardian since I subscribed to it. More than anything, I suspect that print media will be killed by these devices, not by PCs/Macs.
Thanks Jayleigh, that's a great tip. I hadn't thought of that. Sounds like a really good idea, I'll try it. Happy kindling!Seven Days to Tell You
You're right there Nick. Good to read you!
I don't have a kindle, but I so want one! I love the feel of a book and I love giving books away, passing them on, but I love the idea of the portability of a library or collection of books and once the kindle is in a protective cover, it looks and feels like you are reading a lightweight book.
My Aunt who is also a book fan travels a lot and sometimes will download the same book she is reading onto her kindle so she doesn't have to lug that beautiful, hard-cover book her sister bought her for Christmas. It's practical!
I think e-books have turned books into faster moving consumables, not so great for appreciation of the story/literature perhaps (as much of what is purchased is not necessarily consumed) but fantastic for authors as buying books becomes so much more convenient for those who want the books but don't have the time or inclination to browse. So it behoves authors to ensure that those people who don't go to book stores know about their books through the many other channels that people surf today.
Love that you can read the Guardian on it, I love the Saturday Guardian Review, though I admit I love to get the paper edition of this one section and then keep the reviews and do pass them on to a book loving friend.
To quickly convert a file to Kindle format, upload it to your Kindle and read your work in that new format is much faster than printing a hard copy. You know that you can catch errors in a hard copy that you missed on the computer monitor. It's the same when using your Kindle to proof, and you can mark it up using the Notes feature. I discovered simple mistakes like missing periods or dropped quotation marks when using mine for proofing. During the process of writing my book, I only printed it out in hard form twice.
Not only did it assist in the writing process by catching those types of errors, but it assisted with the feeling of the read. I rewrote sections simply because they read differently on the Kindle than they read on my computer.
I agree that there's a slower, more invested feeling to reading a printed novel, but there is also quite a bit of positives to the eBook versions. I find that I don't skim through them, but I do read them faster, mainly because I can take them anywhere and read while waiting in lines. There is also benefit in, being the ever-impatient person that I am, the removal of the temptation to "flip ahead" to read snippets of what's to come. With the Kindle, I've found that the thought of skipping ahead doesn't even occur to me, especially important if I'm reading a suspense novel.