I am very excited about electronic book readers such as the Amazon
Kindle and Sony PRS devices. Since Kindle was
released I've read numerous discussions on whether they can replace
real paper and real books. The common conclusion is always: no. This
technology is for now available mostly to Americans and they are the
majority partaking in these discussions, which always revolve around
that issue.
But they are all missing a very important point and probably wouldn't
understand it because any book imaginable is available in their
bookstores and they can even buy paperback editions of any book
for around 5$. Can Kindle replace paper - no, but what if the
paper is not even available to you? The publishers are not interested
in good books, only in good money and so, here in Croatia, they mostly
publish best selling romance and crime novels when it comes to foreign
authors. Let's take a popular writer like William Gibson as
an example, only Neuromancer and Virtual Light were
translated and published here. Both are only a part of a trilogy -
well isn't that a fuck-up but additionally I had to pay
over 50$ for my copy of Neuromancer (which turned out
to be a lousy translation mind you).
That's why electronic book readers are my salvation and if they really
won't be able to replace paper I don't care because I know it in my
hearth and bones that they are certainly the future for me. If we can
ignore the fact that most (even remotely) popular books are already
available for free on-line, as pirate copies, that still leaves us
with most e-books that are sold for no more than 5-10$ by legal
resellers.
In the future I will be able to read any book I desire. It will cost a
few dollars and it will instantly be placed on a device that is as big
as just one book but holds thousands previously inaccessible
titles. Many people already read e-books from their phones, PDA's and
laptops and they've been doing it for years. But for me they all have
too much disadvantages and in the case of laptops there is just no way
I can feel comfortable with it while laying in bed, it's just too
heavy and impractical.
Current technology and software used in these devices still have too
much imperfections and their price is just too high taking that into
account. It's the reason I didn't buy one yet, the price doesn't
bother me as much because I've spent so much money on books that an
e-book reader would in short term be a big expense but in the long run
would save me some serious money. I've been tracking communities like
MobileRead and there are
still much drawbacks and problems (i.e. with formatting of PDF's and
other formats) for me to buy one. But I'm sure it will all be
solved soon, I don't want to cash out for
a BeBook and struggle with
formatting while three months later something called "CeBook"
puts all current models to shame.