Kindles and Other Such Electronic Reading Devices (ERD)

The Reader’s PerspectiveI haven’t personally used an ERD and have only tried to read a novel on-line once, it was terribly hard on the eyes, I know that the new technology has fixed all that and the devices do seem pretty slick but I can’t see myself getting one.

Call me a little bit old fashioned but I like the look, feel and smell of a book. I like the feeling of turning over a page or rustling through the pages trying to find a passage that didn’t make sense until now.

Searching for my bookmark or folding over a page to mark a spot seems like a burden to some but to me it’s all part of the experience. I also like to pick up a book at a store or in the library and look it over, flip through a few pages, read the back, read the flaps it’s kind of like shopping for a car, after all you are going to be spending a few intimate hours with it.

The Conscientious Citizen’s Perspective
If ERDs replace books completely it would increase illiteracy rates world wide as most of the World’s population does not have access to necessary technology let alone something as luxurious as an ERD. Books are hard enough to come by. Things like libraries would have to completely change how they do business and would likely not be able to keep up. On one hand it would reduce waste tremendously as well as reduce paper usage if we stopped having hard copies of our daily newspapers and everything else but in reality the loss would far outweigh the gain.

The Writer’s Perspective
Fuckin’ Eh! I think that these things are the last great hope for the written word. I wondered ever since the beginning of the personal computer how long it would be until getting books electronically would be the norm. Books are getting increasingly expensive and less people are buying them and reading them, if ERDs become reasonably priced and getting books because incredibly easy I think more and more people will start reading again. I think much of the younger generation embrace anything technological and view books as archaic. I personally am going to try to give my little novella to Amazon to have for free for their Kindles, just as an experiment. I will likely fail in trying to do that but what the hell.

I think all writers (except Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling…) need to embrace this technology and try to get in while the technology is still new if it isn’t too late already.
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I would be really interested in the opinions of any other writers on this, weigh in please!