I love reading, but not e-reading!
By Dave Adamson in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on November 24, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I love reading. Seriously, I do. I have more than a thousand books, covering a slew of genres, and have, embarrassingly, only read about a third of them - perhaps I actually enjoy buying books!
Anyway, the Kindle sells out at Amazon and the world is ready for the onslaught of eBooks again.
See, it sounds ideal, doesn’t it. You can carry hundreds of books around on a device that’s the size of an textbook, and have a wonderful selection of material available at the press of a button. There’s nothing worse than having a book with you, reading it and realising that you actually can’t get into it!
So why aren’t I, a lover of books, excited by the eBook revolution? Why haven’t I been excited by the eBook revolution previously? Why don’t I ever be excited by the eBook revolution unless it is forced upon me?
A handful of reasons, thusly:
1 - No matter what the device, it’s going to be relatively expensive. It’s also going to attract attention. Aside from sniggers, reading a book on a bus or train has never attracted the same attention as whipping out a high-tech reader - I can, however, afford to be relieved of a paperback and not worry too much!
2 - No matter how natural the screen, no matter how remarkable the reading surface, it’s still not a book! I love turning pages, not cracking spines (you won’t believe how much I hate that!), not turning pages down (ARGH) and there’s nothing better than casting your eye over a row of books to find something to read next.
3 - Digital protection and restrictions - it was bad enough with music, but eBooks too. I lost the ability to open the few eBooks I had in Adobe Reader a while back and never bothered to find out why (I do recall it saying that I should click on an option that was greyed out, and that was the only advice it would give me!) I don’t have that problem with print books.
4 - You can almost guarantee that your eBook readers going to go flat at that critical moment!
5 - I can (but don’t!) share books with friends. I could, if I wanted to, hand a book to a friend and say “read this,” or even buy a copy of the book for a friend and say “this is fantastic, I’ve spent money on you so appreciate it.”
6 - I’ve tried eBooks on PDAs, Tablet PCs and laptops and I find it really, really difficult to focus my attention. I think that’s all in my mind, but it’s probably conditioning I’ll have to get over.
That’s it really. It’s a gamut of reasons, not all reasonable, but it’s still the type of thing that I isn’t going to attract me to an eBook reader. What would, though? A book that I really want to read not being available in print… it’s the same with high def DVD formats… I’ll switch when something comes out that I can’t get on DVD!
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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