Caveat emptor

I figured out what bugs me about the e-reader craze. 

Now, I do think they're a good idea in general.  Having practically unlimited titles at the tips of my fingers, literally in the palm of one hand?  Superb.  Perfect for so many circumstances.  I'm all for it, especially if the e-reader in question can enlarge print and/or read aloud. 

But--aside from the fact that many of my most beloved books are not available as e-files, and won't be for years if ever (They Stand Together, anyone?  Holding Wonder?  The Name on the Glass, with illustrations?)--I get stuck on the format issue.  Not whatever tug-of-war is going on between formats at the moment, that'll probably shake itself out like the video formats, but the evolution of file formats themselves.  

How many upgrades will e-reader software programs go through in the next ten years?  How about the next twenty?  Sure, for a while, a new iteration of a particular application can read the older stuff, but sooner or later the files are just too old.  Maybe the publishers of e-books think that readers aren't going to want to re-read a given title more than a few times, or hang onto it for long, but I still have books I was given as a child and I know there are plenty of others out there who are the same.  

If I'm going to pay more than a few dollars for an e-book, I mean for it to be something I can keep.  Not something that has a shelf (hah) life that can be measured in years rather than decades.  I have books that are older than my great-grandparents, and yet I can open them and read them with no trouble at all.*  I hardly think today's e-book is going to be available to any reader one hundred twenty-five years in the future. 

Now, if purchasing a regular, physical book included an e-file, I'd be enthusiastic.  Heck, for some books I'd be willing to pay a certain premium for such an addition.  That way I could enjoy the title wherever I wanted, and for as long as the paper held together. 

A book isn't meant to be a one-off.  Stories are meant to last, to be retold and handed on.  A good book read only once is hardly read at all; as the reader changes, so does the story.  Dragonflight is a different story to me now than it was when I first read it, or a decade later, or before the death of the fellow fan who said "Here, you'll like these."  Mary Russell changes each time another book in her series is published, and to not go back and re-read the earlier books would be to miss the nuances.  

So don't put a time limit on the stories.  Only the reader should choose when to put the book down. 


* Yes, some of them I must handle carefully, but the argument stands.  

Caveat emptor

I figured out what bugs me about the e-reader craze. 

Now, I do think they're a good idea in general.  Having practically unlimited titles at the tips of my fingers, literally in the palm of one hand?  Superb.  Perfect for so many circumstances.  I'm all for it, especially if the e-reader in question can enlarge print and/or read aloud. 

But--aside from the fact that many of my most beloved books are not available as e-files, and won't be for years if ever (They Stand Together, anyone?  Holding Wonder?  The Name on the Glass, with illustrations?)--I get stuck on the format issue.  Not whatever tug-of-war is going on between formats at the moment, that'll probably shake itself out like the video formats, but the evolution of file formats themselves.  

How many upgrades will e-reader software programs go through in the next ten years?  How about the next twenty?  Sure, for a while, a new iteration of a particular application can read the older stuff, but sooner or later the files are just too old.  Maybe the publishers of e-books think that readers aren't going to want to re-read a given title more than a few times, or hang onto it for long, but I still have books I was given as a child and I know there are plenty of others out there who are the same.  

If I'm going to pay more than a few dollars for an e-book, I mean for it to be something I can keep.  Not something that has a shelf (hah) life that can be measured in years rather than decades.  I have books that are older than my great-grandparents, and yet I can open them and read them with no trouble at all.*  I hardly think today's e-book is going to be available to any reader one hundred twenty-five years in the future. 

Now, if purchasing a regular, physical book included an e-file, I'd be enthusiastic.  Heck, for some books I'd be willing to pay a certain premium for such an addition.  That way I could enjoy the title wherever I wanted, and for as long as the paper held together. 

A book isn't meant to be a one-off.  Stories are meant to last, to be retold and handed on.  A good book read only once is hardly read at all; as the reader changes, so does the story.  Dragonflight is a different story to me now than it was when I first read it, or a decade later, or before the death of the fellow fan who said "Here, you'll like these."  Mary Russell changes each time another book in her series is published, and to not go back and re-read the earlier books would be to miss the nuances.  

So don't put a time limit on the stories.  Only the reader should choose when to put the book down. 


* Yes, some of them I must handle carefully, but the argument stands.