I submitted the following essay to the Burlington Free Press. I hope you will read comment on. Thank You Bill The Rise of E-Books: Death to the Written Word or Salvation? By WA McLaughlin Recently two Op-Ed letters were published in the Burlington Free Press lamenting the rise of E-Book technology, Amazon and its effects on Small business. One attacked President Obama for deigning to speak at an Amazon warehouse facility. E-Books are a relatively recent technology, only about a decade old. Its origins are in the TV series “Star Trek”. Many such technological innovations such as cell phones were germinated on that series. I purchase a Kindle II the first year it was offered, 2009. I have also owned a 3rd generation Kindle and a Kindle Fire. I went towards an E-Book because as reached my senior years, reading due eye issued was a strain. I needed a solution or reading was no longer going to be a part of my life. Large type books did not offer the ease and variety of E-Books, so I missed old friends among my books and I found them expensive and cumbersome. Most books stores and libraries only had a limited selection or supply, plus living in an apartment their bulk overwhelmed me. I chose Kindle over the Nook, Kobo and Sony because of the selection of 100,000 free titles and Amazon’s great customer service. I broke 5 kindles and received a replacement each time in 48 hrs. Others swear by their favorite brand of E-Book and I encourage you to examine them all before purchasing. One of the Op-Ed writers attacked Amazon for getting into publishing books. When Amazon first began offering E-book it purchased the rights from Publishers and sold them at an average cost of under $10. Many publishers like Random House, Simon Schuster, and Penguin Books conspired with Apple to come up with a price fixing scheme. Amazon is now only the agent of the book, the publishers and Apple set the price. Often times you will find that authors like L’Amour are price higher for an E-Book version than the paperback version despite the fact that there is not cost of printing. Many publishers do not want you to give or loan copies of E-Books you so they do not allow you to do it. Libraries are forced to lease books at exorbitant prices ($85 for a $10 title) for 26 loans. Many times the publisher will only allow one loan copy at a time. Publishers also control who is published. Amazon foray into publishing is breaking that monopoly. Amazon sued Apple and its fellow conspirators and won. Amazon is also publishing new authors some good some not so good but the consumer can chose. I found some real gems such as Evan Currie in Sci-Fi, SJA Turney in Roman historic fiction and RW Peake in Roman historic Fiction. So far I’ve read over 250 E-Books, visiting old friends like Isaac Asimov and HP Lovecraft and making new friends like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku. Most of these books were free or under $10. The E-Book is new technology and it is a threat to old way of doing the business of publishing. Small books must adapt and many are. Kobo is working with independent book sellers to offer its version of E-Books through them. Borders and Barnes and Nobles assault on the small book vender has been stymied by an inability to adapt to E-books quickly enough. Change in ways of doing business is part of the “Free Enterprise” System. Adapt and grow or fall by the wayside. One wag said that an author chooses Font, cover art and binding. While this may be true with some writers the importance of a book is not in how pretty it is but in the internal truths it conveys. Without ideas and substance you might as well own a blank book with a beautiful binding. It has as much eternal value as a blank canvas with a beautiful frame. There may be no comparison to a leather bound copy of an old classic, but if you can’t read it, the value is null. Reading is a fundamental right and must be open to the broadest spectrum of readers. E-Books are a technological toddler that will take its place in our new reality.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 19:16:53 +0000
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