Ebooks, iPad, and a Digital Future

I was initially going to post this tl;dr post on ebooks and digital publishing on Friday, but then the entire Amazon vs. Macmillan kerfuffle came up Saturday. Other people have written much more eloquently and intelligently than me about the subject, so I won’t bore you with my own thoughts.

1. Post from agent Rachelle Gardner about e-rights and digital rights management.
2. Post from Scott Westerfeld about how this affects the author.
3. Post from writer Tobias Buckell about…a lot of things, but I swear this is a really good article.
4. A really great breakdown from John Scalzi
5. Agent Nathan Bransford explains the “agency” model.

Corporate snit-fits aside, the real issue at stake here was the future of digital publishing. Ebooks have been a sticky subject for a very long time.

The Apple iPad

I haven’t yet touched on the subject of ebooks, but after the announcement of the Apple iPad (and please, I’m done with the feminine product jokes) and the fact that Cap’n Sweet Valley was speaking at Digital Book World last week, I feel perhaps now is the time for me to step my toe in the water.

Some caveats. First, I probably don’t need to say that I’m not any sort of authority on the subject. Second, my thoughts come from a reader’s perspective and may not be entirely in line with that of my publishing house. Third, I am a slightly-more-than-average consumer of technological products. Fourth, I am an unabashed Apple fangirl, so some of my opinions may be slightly biased.

Ebooks, EReaders, and EReading

I am not someone who believes ebooks will cannibalize print books; indeed, I believe there is a place for both mediums in the future. Personally speaking, I’m not someone who reads ebooks–I have a Sony EReader, but so far I’ve only used it for work. As far as manuscript reading goes, having an ereader greatly ups my productivity (instead of carrying home one manuscript at a time, I can bring several) and goes a long way in saving paper.

Would I ever read ebooks? I don’t doubt I will; I just haven’t yet. Why? There is a small (okay, a big) part of me that fetishizes books as objects, not just a vehicle for me to absorb a story. The part that fetishizes books as objects loves looking at her bookcases and seeing them bursting at the seams with colorful spines. I realise that not everyone is like me, but there are enough of us out there to warrant a hardcover market.

The other reason I’m not a big consumer of ebooks is because I have difficulty reading longform stories on a digital device. I don’t read word-by-word; I tend to read in enormous whole-page chunks, so being limited to viewing one page at a time drives me crazy. I also can’t “flip” back and forth with ease–skimming is pretty much nonexistent. In many ways, I don’t read in a linear fashion: I read several words at once (instead of one-by-one), so sometimes I need to flip back a few pages to catch up or clarify small details I might have missed. I tend to read books in one sitting before going back and rereading them, lingering over certain parts while glossing over others. An ereader does not let me do this.

An ereader also doesn’t let me skip ahead to certain places in the manuscript. Tomas (my Sony Ereader) is generally pretty good at remembering where I left off, but sometimes there are memory glitches. You know what’s not fun? Having to press the “page forward” button 218 times to get to the page I was on. I can’t just open an ereader to “about where” I think I left off.

That being said, I really do love my ereader. I love its portability. I love that I can bring it out when I’m on the subway or waiting in line. Hardcovers (and even really monstrously sized paperbacks) are difficult to carry around. However, those are the only times I tend to use it (aside from manuscript reading at home). In many ways, the ereader has replaced my need for paperbacks, which fulfilled the same function. I tend to buy both hardcovers and paperbacks, especially for books by authors I love–one for immediate devouring, the other for reading on the go (because toting JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL on the subway ain’t no piece of cake).

The Apple iPad and a Digital Future

I don’t think the Applie iPad is the long-awaited Messiah for publishing (digital or otherwise), but I find it intriguing. In the future, I think there will be less of the paperback trade and more of the ebook trade. The genius of the iPad is that it is not a single-use device and therefore more accessible to the “casual reader”. Someone like my mother, for instance, who at most reads 3 or 4 books a year (ha!). You would never persuade my mother to buy a Kindle or a Sony Ereader; she doesn’t read enough to warrant spending the money.

However the iPad, with its ability to check email and watch movies, would probably fill her needs nicely. She can use the iPad when she travels (and she travels a lot for work). She can check her email, surf the web, and watch YouTube videos of Korean game shows in her hotel room. She could also buy a few books at the airport to read on the plane. Instead of picking up a few magazines and some fastpaced mass market paperback, she would probably go to iBooks and download all of those onto her iPad. Done and done.

I also like the potential of the iPad for graphic novels, comic books, magazines, textbooks, and nonfiction. Reading a comic book on an ereader is unthinkable at the moment. But on a full-color screen with high resolution? YES. I like the potential of nonfiction on a device like the iPad–there can be external links to different websites and sources (and heaven forbid, possible ecommerce?), video clips, sound clips, etc. I still consume fiction via physical books, but I would absolutely read nonfiction and graphic novels on an iPad.

The iPad isn’t without its flaws. I think the backlight might kill my eyes after a long period of time. But I definitely think there is a market for this device and I want one very, very badly.

What are your thoughts? How many of you read ebooks? Do you have devices? Or do you read them on your computer?

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