I recently took the plunge and purchased an e-reader. A Nook, in case you’re wondering. I don’t think the Nook is any better than a Kindle hardware-wise, but it does offer the advantage of being able to check out library books and supports a wide range of e-book formats. This basically means you can buy a book from any old place and still read it on your Nook. The Kindle is an Amazon-only environment unless you are willing to strip books of their digital rights management codes and/or perform other acts of digital piracy. I’m not tech-savvy enough to do that, nor do I want to. As a writer and an avid reader, I don’t think there is any upside to stealing books. Checking them out from the library, however, is a must for me.
I read a lot, about a novel a week, plus a few newspapers and magazines and short stories thrown in for good measure. I buy lots of books, because I like owning hardcover books. I like they way they feel in my hand and the way they smell and the way they look on my bedside table. I like paperbacks, too. I like the way they fit in my purse and help pass the time when I’m waiting at the doctor’s office or the DMV. I like the way I can read one in the bathtub without worrying that a little splash of water will destroy everything. I like dog-earing the pages of passages that I might want to read again. I like writing in the margins. I like everything about real, physical books.
I’m less enthusiastic about magazines, however. I hate the way they pile up on the coffee table and taunt me with a backlog of issues. I hate the excess of paper used to make a product that is ultimately meant to have a shelf life of one month or one week. Books are like marriage. Magazines are like one-night stands. This dissatisfaction with the periodicals is what sent me shopping for an e-reader. Well, that and the fact that the airlines are practically charging by the ounce to fly. Gone are the days when I can pack a dozen books for a weekend trip. With the Nook, I can conceivably carry 1,500 books on any trip. That’s not too shabby. But back to the magazines. I used to subscribe to The New Yorker. I enjoyed the Shouts & Murmurs, the Talk of the Town, the cat cartoons, the lovely and lengthy pieces about obscure political issues and, of course, the fiction. The thing about The New Yorker, though, is that it just keeps showing up! Week after week, another content-rich issue would arrive in the mail and I would realize that I had barely cracked open the last issue or the one before that. There were articles I intended to read and I was saving the fiction for a long weekend, but the paper would overwhelm me and I would panic and finally toss it all into the recycle bin to make it go away. So I cancelled my subscription. I missed it; I thought about renewing. Then, it occurred to me, that I could subscribe to The New Yorker and other mags on an e-reader and waste no paper at all. I could carry an almost unlimited number of back issues around and read them at my leisure. And so I took the plunge. I went for the low-end Nook (black and white e-ink reading screen, wi-fi), because the battery life is much better than the color version and because it’s light and small and fits in my purse. I wanted something that felt low-tech, something that would simulate the traditional reading experience as much as possible. I’m now an e-subscriber to The New Yorker. I have three issues on my Nook and I’ve read a few articles and glanced at the cartoons. And you know what? It’s a pretty darn good tool for reading.
Here are a few things that I think could make it better.
- A larger selection at the library. My library (Arapahoe County) has a pretty good selection of books available to be checked out in e-formats, but it’s heavy on the genre fiction. Almost half of the titles can be categorized as mystery, romance, historical or science fiction. I’ve got nothing against genre fiction, but it’s not what I’m looking to read. Books classified as “Literature” make up less than 500 of the nearly 5,000 titles available and many of those are classic titles available for free download thanks to the Guttenberg Project. Still, I’ve found lots that I want to read and I know the availability will grow.
- Literary Magazine E-pubs. I like subscribing to lit mags. I like supporting the magazines. I like reading them, but I do feel guilty about the paper. I’m only likely to read about half of any magazine and I can only let it sit around for so long before I get anxious about the clutter. I would happily subscribe to several magazines if they were available in a nice e-pub format and easily downloaded to my Nook. (And, yes, I'm aware that some can be downloaded as a PDF and then transferred to my Nook.)
- Hardcover/E-pub Purchases. I’m not going to stop buying traditional hardcover novels. If I want to own a book, I’m not going to want to own it exclusively in an e-format. You can't get an author to sign the e-book and, much like music, I fear the formats will change over the years. I don't want to have to continually re-purchase my library to keep up with technology. I would, however, be thrilled to have some books in both a hardcover and e-format. Might I suggest that publishers provide some sort of code with hardcover purchases that can be used to unlock the e-version? It doesn’t have to be free. I’m willing to pay an additional fee to own a book in both formats, much as I’ve done for years with hardcover and paperback editions. I do, however, think it should be discounted to make it an attractive upgrade for those who want it. It can be locked so that the code can only be used once and not spread among the masses and so that publishers can keep track of the number of books sold in both formats. This seems like something that would be good for publishers, writers and readers.
- And finally, but importantly, how about someone coming up with an airtight, waterproof, transparent cover that floats? Now that would make the e-reader really feel like a book.
