Week Nine, Thing 19 : Explore eBooks and Audiobooks

I love the internet, but tend to be skeptical of ebooks. For me, books and magazines are a different animal from websites. When I read fiction for pleasure, I don't want to have to worry about expensive devices. I read mystery novels in bed. If I fall asleep, and the book falls on the floor, and the cat walks on it, there is no loss whatsoever. Heck, the cat can throw up on a paperback, and I'm still only out $9.99.

If the eBook existed, but the book did not, the book would be an extraordinarily vital invention. I would buy these new "book" objects by the dozen, thrilled by the freedom they provided.

That's not to say that I can't see any point at all to ebooks. I can see how a person or organization with limited storage space, or a professional who needed to read a large amount of material while traveling, over a prolonged period of time, could have previously-unmet needs fulfilled by ebooks. For most purposes, however, I believe that the ancient "technology" of the paper-and-ink book is superior to the eBook, or at least superior to any ebook/ebook reader currently in existence.

I think the drawbacks of ebooks tend to be insufficiently considered by those who are especially enthusiastic about them. One important problem, as I alluded to in my first paragraph, is that an ebook reader is expensive. Only extremely rare books come anywhere close to the cost of an ebook reader. I'm not referring to the total cost of buying a large number of physical books, versus a small number of ebook readers, because at some point, if individual titles are cheaper as ebooks than as books, the costs shift in favor of ebooks. I'm talking about the fact that things get lost, or broken, or stolen. It's true that, if one is talking about reading an ebook on a regular computer screen, there's no additional risk to reading an ebook versus using the computer for any other purpose, but then the ebook's portability, in practical terms, for the individual user, is greatly diminished.

Another problem, from a library's standpoint, with ebooks versus hardcopy books, is that ownership becomes precarious. Once one buys a book, one owns that copy, legally, forever. Copyright law of course restricts the reproduction and distribution of the contents, but the thing itself, which happens to include personal access to the contents, is the buyer's, forever. With an ebook, licensing rules can complicate the situation greatly. Moreover, where ebook readers are concerned, it appears that contents are not readily transferable between different brands of hardware. If you buy a Kindle Reader, and your friend wants to share a book from their Sony reader, it can't be done, unless they loan you their reader. You're much better off buying a regular book and passing it around.

Despite my belief that ebooks are not at all ready to replace books as we have known them through the centuries, I was dazzled by the British Library Online Gallery. I did have to download Shockwave first, but the results were worth it. Why do I find this resource so rewarding when my general attitude towards ebooks is so unenthusiastic? I think it's because the British Library here is showing me images of gorgeous books, and their complete contents, which I would not otherwise be able to experience at all. Technology in this case brings me beauty I couldn't access if that technology did not exist. The optional audio also adds to the experience. By contrast, based on what I have heard about ebooks whose print counterparts are readily accessible in "traditional" book format, the traditional item remains superior.