Digital Books

A friend read a post here and commented on it on his blog. I was going to comment there but it got long and I figured I'd make a post of it. Read his piece first: My thoughts on the iPad, and more importantly on books.

I'm not sure I buy it. I, like you, don't read as many books as I used to. My fiction reading has mostly been replaced with graphic novels. Those aren't kindle-able but there's talk about having them on the iPad. I'm not so sure.

But while your family might not buy a lot of books retail, some people do. I do because I want to support the industry and the authors. I do buy at a discount and Amazon is great for that. I've gone to book signings but to me its more for seeing the author rather than having a collectable signed.

Last week while waiting in a line for a movie (my native habitat), I was next to an older woman who pulled out her Kindle. I asked her how she liked it and she loved it. She was a voracious book reader and loved having so many books with her. Travel was much easier as she didn't need to carry around so many books. Also it sync'ed with her iPhone so she could always read something and pick up right where she left off. Interestingly, she had tried reading a newspaper on it but hated that experience.

I liked the article's distinction between disposable reading and other things. I would have finished Anathem by now if it were smaller and I could more easily bring it to more places. And after buying the hardcover, I'm not willing to buy it again for the Kindle app on my iPhone.

Here's the place I'd like to be. I want to be able to buy a work (fiction or non-fiction) and get be able to read it on whatever device I own and have it sync between them. Let me read it on my laptop, iPad, iPhone Kindle whatever I have with me. It would be cool to be able to borrow someone else's device and get to my books, but that's not going to happen (how often do you borrow someone's phone for more than a minute). I think that for a while, printed versions should be bundled with digital versions but also digital versions should be available on their own. Over time, fewer printed versions will be sold. That's fine, no one uses a telegraph anymore and AT&T is officially not an acronym and doesn't stand for anything anymore.

I think I'm fine if I can't give a completed book to a friend or sell it on a used market. If someone else is going to consume it, let the author be paid. A digital copy doesn't degrade so there's no reason for a used market to sell things for less. But I do want to be able to tell friends about what I'm reading and send them sections. Maybe a page or two from a non-fiction book (to share info) or the first chapter of a novel ("Hey I think you might like this, give it a try and see if you want to buy it"). I also want to be able to easily access parts of it from my computer so I can blog a review. I think all of the above are fair use and shouldn't have copyright problems and would help publicize the work to others.