Oh people who are all nobby about books

[LordPalmerston]

"Oh I love a real book". "I can see how much ice got left". Oh fgs ebooks are way better one handed reading. Easy storage. Easy to buy and HUGE FONT option for when you've forgotten your glasses or are drunk

Why do people go into mini orgasm about paper ?

I can't read my Kindle in the bath with a glass of wine.

Also, I want DH to read the book currently on my Kindle. I can't lend it to him without giving him my Kindle, so then what do I read?

you can though - i always read mine in the bath

I am a late adopter of new technology whereas DH is a bit of a nerd techie so I am often forced kicking and screaming to try something I wouldn't never have dreamt of bothering with if left to my own devices.

My Kindle simply grew on me - as Tim Minchin said "like a tumour" .

I am sure the technology will evolve rapidly - my gen1 Kindle is now positively an antique compared to the new ones.

I am sure a rather similar debate was had when 'Moving pictures' emerged: are the better/worse/the end of civilisation as we know it than theatre? Discuss.
Some aspects going to the theatre and seeing a live show will never be replicated with movies, not even with HD and 3D and what-have-you.

Life

CaterpillarCara - ziplock bag.

or A Casual Attitude To Risk

lrd Victoria Barnsely was CEO of HarperColins for the last ten years. But she was sacked earlierthis year.

Her replacement is Charlie Redmayne who runs pottermore.com.

I think it really signals which way the publishing houses are moving. Victoria has made some statementsin the press about hoping HC will remain focussed on the writing and the writers and not on technology and digital publishing. But I fear that horse has already bolted!

dont mention redmaynes

sweats slightly

Thanks word. I don't know anything about publishing so this is really interesting.

Is it nervy for you, as a writer?

I'm less nervy now, TBH.

I started my writing career before the ebook revolution. ebook sales weren't even in my first contracts .

Victoria Barnsely (and lots of other CEOs) didn't really grasp the nettle for the longest time.

Lots of writers thought it would signal The End of trad publishing. Some thought this might be a good thing as we're being squeezed to fuck by our houses and agents!

What has actually happened is that, yes, there is a lot of self published stuff out there. But no, no one is buying it (with a few notable exceptions). Readers are still buying books from the big houses, just in an ebook format.

The bestsellers in ebooks, tend to be the best sellers in paper back.

I personally sell many many more ebooks than paper backs.

What I have noticed is that ereaders have given my back catalogue a renewed boost. Where those books haven't been in the shops for years, ereaders are still buying them and I'll see spikes of sales whcih seem to correlate to nothing much!

I also get lots more contact from readers. I think ereaders are far more likely to email the writer. Or so it seems. Or perhaps that's juts the way society is changing?

Interesting. I can see why, I guess - you feel more in touch with someone if you're reading in a format similar to the one you use for casual communication.

Oooh nooo... am far too much of a butter fingers to be trusted with electronics near water (and too slap dash to effectively seal a zip lock bag if BATH, WINE, BOOK are beckoning).

I like paper books, personally.

I don't sneer at people who choose to read ebooks.

Good analogy LaQueen.

Thinking more about this, I htink a paper book is nearer to reading what the writer actually intended IYSWIM.

Most of us still tend to think in terms of a physical book.

i am going to get myself a kindle for christmas

i read on my ipad recently borrowed friends kindle and really liked it

but it is not the same as being tucked up in bed with a book, can not really explain why and i do not want electronic books to put book shops and library out of business

kindle is good for referencing but something about reading a text book, writing notes, making a note of the page i take more in with an actual book than an ebook

its more of an experience not sure why but for me it is so shall keep to a mixture of both

I love my kindle! Books take up so much room and get destroyed by toddlers. Kindle has all my books in one and can be put on a high shelf away from the small people! Also no one can judge what you are reading :P

I take what you say, wordfactory, about the paper book being closer to what the writer intended, but presumably this is transitional: it won't be many years before the author's minds-eye version of her book is an electronic one.

In a way, e-books already put readers closer to writers than print books do, because they mean that reading is done in a partly similar sort of manipulable, searchable format in which the writing occurs. Styles of authorship have been influenced since the dawn of word processing by the fact that text is so polishable, reworkable, sliceable, repositionable, so completely in flux until the writer has had enough. And yet the reader of a print book is tied to a rigid progression though chapters with a very limited ability to bring one portion of text to bear on another by means of searching. I read dozens of books in Word format on my desktop before I ever got a kindle app, because of the work I do, and I had started to feel weirdly hog-tied by the inflexibility of reading printed format. We will start to be different readers, and novelists will start to be different writers.

Would it make sense to make a comparison with the republication as single novels of stories originally released as periodicals -- Dickens, Wilkie, Collins, and all those types? Stories originally intended for one platform move onto another, where new weaknesses and new strengths become apparent, and styles of authorship start to conform to the revealed needs of a new medium.

It's my dream to fully shelve our study, and have them all in one room
You know this doesn't work? You think, "Oh, I've got some more space, so I can buy that book..."
It's true, we started with shelving the study, more or less floor to ceiling. We have piles in every room, bookcases in the sitting room, bedrooms and the landing.

ButThereAgain I think you're right.

It is that we have certain ideas of what, for example, the novel is, and thus make our writing novel shaped. Perhaps?

We know how a reader will tackle a paper back (having done so ourselves a thousand times) and so our work best uses that knowledge of our readers and their way of coming to our words.

I think, in time, writers will change. Writing will change.

If I think of my own book with the narrative told in document, how exciting it could be for a reader to see them as if they were real, as opposed the ersatz version in paperbacks?

That could happen in the future I think. The writer will be able to play more readily.

But at the moment the technology is not qite there.

I'm happy with books. I own them, they can be handed down/given away, etc. I do reread books, and I've often noticed that I find internet text odd to read. I'm not sure why, but I do. On the other hand, I can cruise through a thousand pages or so in a couple of hours on paper. For me books aren't broken, so why spend hundreds on a kindle, when I can just continue to use my local library for free?

The book has been a very durable piece of technology. I suspect there will always be book lovers - as opposed to people who just want to read something.

I am not sure about our infatuation with/addiction to small shiny portable screens. It is very early days.....