Amazon Kindle

At Comment Is Free, Alex Stein describes Amazon's brand new e-reader Kindle as "antithetical to what serious reading is all about." Dunno about that. True, I don't own a Kindle but I very much doubt - unlike Alex - that it will bring about the death of the book and at the same time hope it will create opportunities for writers to by-pass the plodding, high street-fixated conventionality of mainstream publishing and get their stories "out there" in new, exciting and more immediate ways. Apparently the Kindle may not work well in the UK due to the wireless network it uses. Should that problem be solved, though, Santa may be hearing from me earlier than usual this year.

Comments

[Jane Henry]

The people who always get excited about the death of the book would probably have been very alarmed by the advent of the printing press and been bleating about how it would kill the art of illuminating manuscripts.

I agree new technology offers us huge opportunities to both diseminate information and stories. Ever since I have been in publishing (twenty years) every couple of years ago some new bit of kit comes along amid gloomy prognoses of books being killed off.

I predict that whatever happens anyone above the age of say 35 will probably stick with books as well as new technology, but the under 35s won't be as hung about books as we are because they have grown up with a different way of looking at the world. Books may well disappear then.

But stories won't.

[DaveHill]

Sound about right to me, Jane. One of my brothers-in-law bought one of the Sony readers a while back. I only borrowed it for ten minutes so can't really judge but it seemed to me it had potential.

[Littlebear]

Thing is, when you buy a book, you own it. When you download to the Kindle, you just sort of rent it. Can't share it, can't sell it. Not quite right since it is often more expensive than the paper kind.

[Matt M]

Serious reading is about the content of a book, not the packaging - how you access the written word is more or less unimportant.

Of course, the ascetic experience of paper is far superior (for many) to computer screen. And as we human beings are such creatures of habit I doubt the book (in its current form) will disappear in any of our lifetimes, no matter how good the technology becomes.

I'm not going to buy an e-book reader any time soon (too expensive), but I suspect that the wave of revulsion amongst "serious" readers is no different to that felt when cheap paperbacks first emerged and the moment an affordable reader with a decent screen / memory appears this English graduate will give serious consideration to getting one.

[Robert]

An interesting point about new technology is that it inspires (or should inspire) new types of writing.

For example, online and on mobile phones we find journalists reporting in pithy paragraphs, filing a hundred reports in an hour. Other people are writing collaborative plays and creating non-linear art.

When looking at a new medium of delivery, it is worth asking whether existing forms of information, fiction or non-fiction, are better suited to the new technology... or (conversely) whether we might be able to create new types of writing which better utilize the medium.

I'm not sure I would want to read a novel on the new machine, but I we might see the rise of "Kindles", pulp, serialized novellas that people can 'rent' and discard on a daily basis. And why not? Dickens and Conan-Doyle started out with serialized stories, but that genre seems to have slipped from popularity recently.

[Matt M]

"the ascetic experience of paper"

Obviously, the main reason I'd want an e-book reader is so I can learn the difference between ascetic and aesthetic.

"I'm not sure I would want to read a novel on the new machine, but I we might see the rise of "Kindles", pulp, serialized novellas that people can 'rent' and discard on a daily basis. And why not? Dickens and Conan-Doyle started out with serialized stories, but that genre seems to have slipped from popularity recently."

I imagine the reader could be coupled with sites like this one:

http://www.dailylit.com/

[Chip Dale]

Mixed feelings. I love technology and perhaps it will change the current state of publishing. But I do fear that it would mark the death of novels in the way that MP3s are destroying the recording industry. Why would anybody buy a novel they can share? If you look in the right places, you can download thousands and thousands of novels in a few minutes. This thing will be unlocked, or a cheaper version without digital rights protection will come out. Everybody will download the latest books and never pay for them. Oh, you might say it will be great to get books out there but how many writers will continue to write if they make nothing from all the work they put into it? I suppose it will demote writing novels to the status of blogging. We work for nothing and get little or no reward.

Of course, I say all this but I can't see myself using one. I like the unplugged feel of a book. It's like going to live in the woods for a few hours.

[Pants]

Hi Dave

Somehow I can't see myself saying 'I'm going to curl up in bed with good kindle download tonight.'

xxx

Pants