I can't think of anything more discouraging and limiting to a love for reading than to confine the excercise to the walls of the classroom.
Maria Zannini, keeper of the newsletter for the Online Writing Workshop for SF, Fantasy and Horror, set my mind along this track. She recently blogged about trends in publishing: The Apocalypse is Closer than You Think. All about e-readers and print trends -- which sent off this train of thought.
I'm finding the trend more than a little disturbing. See, I was one of the poor kids who got hooked into reading by cheap used paperbacks. The fantastic depiction on the cover [A. L. Merritt] attracted my attention at the army surplus store, back when the teachers still had me convinced I didn't know how to read. While my dad searched for the tool he needed, I spent my dime on the book. I still have the poor, battered copy as well as three other Merritt novels. I reread them regularly until when I decided I didn't like the way he portrayed girls. [Now, I re-read one or the other every other year.]
[A side note, the second novel I wrote was a counter to Merritt's need to rescue his beautiful female characters. My female character kept saving the male adventurer protagonist, and, I think, had a scar from getting too close to a knife. Too bad I lost the manuscript over time, but I do remember she had titian hair and green eyes. Wonder, if that was a cliche back then.]
I still have a hard time buying hardcover books, mostly because they don't fit into the chaos of my bookshelves. One hardback I recently bought: Mike Mullin's Ashfall -- about the consequences on a family after the volcano under Yellowstone Park blew its top.
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'Tis the season. I'm making Cavern Between Worlds available for free at Smashwords --
until the end of the season or someone tells me I can't offer it for free.
until the end of the season or someone tells me I can't offer it for free.
You don't have to have an e-reader to read it [or any other epub],
you can download it onto your computer ...
and I know you got one of those.
6 comments:
Well, think about it this way. There was a time, not really that long ago, in the grand scheme of thing, when books were something only the rich could afford. Poor people couldn't afford them. Poor people couldn't afford to read.
But time marches on and education and technology made reading, information and books available cheaply to the masses. The current trend with ebooks and ereaders is just time moving forward yet again.
But ereaders are coming down in price. Many ebooks are more affordable than paper books. If there is any gap between the haves and the have-nots where ebooks are concerned it won't last long.
And honestly, books HAVE to go electronic if literature is to survive the coming generations of people who grew up on iphones and all the other devices. The future is going to be different and if we want kids reading 50 years from now ebooks are a good thing.
Too bad we can't sit down for a cup of coffee. I'm sure we'd have an interesting conversation over all the aspects of this complicated subject.
For the record, I'm an indie e-published author.
I'd have to say I agree with you. I have a Kindle, but I don't use it that much, mainly because I frequent the library so much. I almost never read a book a second time through, so I think it a waste to buy something I have no interest going back to. Thanks for the insight!
Food for thought -- E-readers (technology that specifically performs that function and that function alone) are predicted to be obsolete by the end of this century because of products like the iPad. There will be no reason for an item that functions only as a book. Think about how much money everyone will be shelling out for smarter and smarter technology? How broke does the average household need to be before they have "everything they need"? I prefer the free books on my library shelf.
Mary, technology is one of the things I wonder about too. I look at my Kindle and think 8-track player.
The only hardbacks I buy are nonfiction, which are the only books I'll read more than once.
Ref: Mary mentioned e-readers becoming obsolete.
I agree, but only if technology can come up with a stable e-ink for their "pads". The thing that differentiates (Non-color) e-readers from i-pad and Fire is that it uses e-ink which gives you the same eye-comfort as reading from an actual book. Plus you can increase the type size.
Even the newer e-readers are including limited internet access, so they're already changing with the times. My Nook does Google searches.
Maria, your comments underline how complicated the subject is. And yes, individual preferences complicate matters further.
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