Seattlest Roundtable: The Amazon eBook Reader

Clint: Digital music is wonderful because it allows you to bring every CD you (used to) own around in your freaking pocket. Music is sort of dictated by mood. As far as I know, most people don't carry around the contents of their bookshelves in the trunk. Nor would they want to. And you don't read a few pages of one book, then pick up another, then another... People that read (and according to NPR this morning, there are fewer of us around these days) stick with one (or maybe three) at a time. I don't want anything to do with non-book books, even if they are somehow convenient.

Ronald: They have robotic dogs? What a concept!

Seth: I find it interesting that all the music people are so violently opposed to this...what's the difference between that and, say, the audiophile argument that listening to compressed music over an iPod is a violation of all that is good with the universe?

James: I'm going on vacation and I can pack all 12 of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels in paperback, or I can bring an iBook? I'll pick the iBook.

This isn't the kind of thing I'll rush out and buy, but even as a voracious reader I don't know why I'd be hostile to the concept. It'd be more appealing to me if it could handle comics in addition to text, though.

Kim: I would agree with that assessment, too, and didn’t buy an iPod until this spring because of that. But the sheer volume of CDs that come across my desk on any given week eventually pushed me over the edge. As a music purist, I hate the sound of music on my iPod. As a music journalist, it just makes my life easier, because I no longer have to carry around the CDs I need to consider or review. My desk is cleaner, my shelves are less cluttered. I’ve been able to tell artists and their reps that I’d prefer they send me the music digitally, which makes me feel greener, and actually works on occasion…

Oddly, the only people I could see benefiting from a Kindle-like device would be agents and publishers, who are actually looking at several different books at once. But of course my guess is that the books they’re looking at wouldn’t be available on the Kindle…?

The difference between this and an iPod is that it’s the size and shape of an actual book, as it should be, because staring at words on a screen for 30 hours requires that the type be sizeable and legible enough to not make you go blind. If I had to carry around a gadget that was the size and shape of a stack of CDs, I wouldn’t go for that either.

Seth: "I no longer have to carry around the CDs I need to consider or review. My desk is cleaner, my shelves are less cluttered."

Insert "book" in there and this is exactly what I'm talking about.

Jack: Granted, listening to a compressed mp3 is a compromise when it comes to sound. An mp3 will never sound as good as the original. But like Clint mentioned, my listening depends largely on my mood. So I compromise on the quality a little bit for the sake of convenience.

I'm not hostile to the concept of other people using an iBook or whatever it's called. If you're a rare bird like James who actually reads 12 fucking books in a week, then go for it. I'm reading one, maybe two at a time and I'd be just as apt to forget my digital book at home as I am to forget my real one.

For me, it's a matter of sight and touch. I'd much rather see words on a page than words on a lit up screen. I'd much rather feel the book in my hand and the turn of each page, than use my finger to scroll around.

Clint: What Jack said. And power to the Jameses who devour books faster than I flip through a magazine. This does make sense for them.

Regardless, even if Kindle and its kin become the next iPod craze, I don't think real books will ever die. Like vinyl hasn't died.

James: Jack, I'm pretty sure you could read all 12 Reacher novels in one vacation week. I'm not claiming superhuman skill with that one.

While I'm not lining up to buy one of these things, I can imagine the convenience of having 1000 books to choose from at any moment. I may not flit from one to the other -- I doubt "shuffle browse" is going to be a big feature -- but right now I'm on the hold list for about 40 books at the library. If I could just have access to any of them whenever I felt like picking it up, rather than waiting for the system to hand them to me in its own random order, that'd be pretty sweet.

That said, right now, I do prefer books and I'd rather lose a $40 hardcover than a $400 digital device. But I can imagine that a future version of Kindle, or whatever, that had a more comfortable screen and was less expensive, would be something I'm interested in.

A friend of Seattlest: What I find interesting about the discussion is that people really do compare mp3s to ebooks. Personally, I think there's a fundamental difference--mp3s, despite the boosterism of tech companies, are just a new format. Vinyl, 8-track, tape, CD, mp3. There's plenty of quality differences between them, and audiophiles' fear of mp3s is justified only insofar as the mp3 threatens more certainly than the other formats to become ubiquitous. That said, in the end, you're plugging in earphones or listening through speakers. No big diff. But reading off a screen is--which is why it wasn't until e-ink came around that they would try ebook readers. Just so it didn't look that different.

Seth: I'm not sure how "screen" isn't a different format than "paper," just as "8-track" is a different format from "mp3."

I know we've been conditioned through five centuries to think of "books" as synonymous with "literature," but in the previous, what, 55,500 years, literature was an oral tradition. I can imagine people saying "why would I want to read a folk tale on paper? It's so much better coming from the storyteller."

Charles: I was just talking about wanting something like this the other day on the train. I want a device like this, though without the "feel" of a book, it's going to be a hard transition (but an inevitable one I presume). The tech head in me was slobbering as I read this (and any number of other articles about e-readers). So was the environmentalist who knows that I can no longer subscribe to an actual newspaper because so much of it goes unread but who desperately wants more of The NYTimes than RSS feeds. But the reader (and writer) in me thought about my shelves of books and how tactile and beautiful and comforting they are and I already started to miss them.

When I graduated from college and got my first non-college place to live, I finally got all my crap out of my mom's apartment. I remember, when, for the first time in years, I had all my books unpacked and around me again. I sat there on the floor of a basement in a house in Greenwood and just looked at them all. I pulled them off the shelves, read bits of ones I loved and just felt so comfortable and at home in a new house in a strange city where I knew almost no one. Those books (the objects, not the stories) told one of the stories of my life up until that point.

With an e-reader, that certainly won't happen. It'll be more like my experience with an IPod where browsing for something to listen to often just leads me to the same things over and over and tons of my music is essentially lost in a stream of unregarded ones and zeroes. For some reason, without all the CDs right there in front of me, the names and titles on the screen are all that I see. As soon as I come to something in the alphabetical list that sounds good, I stop, forgetting about what I was looking to listen to originally. I'd hate to have thousands of books I'd never consume because they get lost in a digital pile I never have to look at.

An e-reader is inevitable in this day and age. And I'm not totally against it, but I hope it doesn't put an end to used book stores, physical libraries and book exchange parties.

Kim: For the casual reader outside of the industry….do you think it’ll really catch on? I wonder at what point people are gadgeted out. If they could make an iPhone with novels on it, maybe, but then you’d have a book-sized phone.

A friend of Seattlest: Seth's correct of course--on one level is it just a different format. But the retraining to read a new way is tough. Much harder than with mp3s. It didn't substantially alter the experience, until and unless you include the iPod, which was really the moment at which the technology gave uses access to their music in a new way. Otherwise, you were tied to a stereo and CD collection, or to a computer.

Charles: "Regardless, even if Kindle and its kin become the next iPod craze, I don't think real books will ever die. Like vinyl hasn't died."

I don't think that's true. Most people, I am willing to bet, don't have a love affair with The Book the way people like us seem to. They read what they like and don't care about how it smells or feels.

Kind of like how I feel about music as a non-audiophile Sure I love records for the same reason I love books, but when it comes down to it, they sound about the same to me (minus the scratchiness) through a pair of $40 earbuds.

The old books will stay around, but publishers will stop printing eventually for any number of reasons like money and sustainability.

Where I DO see this product working for me is in giving me more access to the plethora of reading material out there on the Web already. I often would like to go back to some long article or post somewhere when I am in bed, but I am not ever going to bring a laptop too bed with me. This thing, with it's eInk and more comfortable form factor sounds like it would fit that purpose for me.

James: See, I disagree. I think book fetishists make vinyl enthusiasts look like pikers.

Random House may switch to all-digital publishing, but I suspect we'll see books issued by small presses as long as there's plant life to mash into paper.

Seth: I think that whoever said people who are GenXers aren't as tied to books was right. I love books, love the smell of books, I subscribe to Library of America--when I moved from New York I sent along no less than 15 boxes of books, and that was after selling about half of the ones I had. Still, I'm very, very comfortable with digital devices. Over the last, say three years, I'm sure I've read more words on screen than I have on a page.

Friend of Seattlest: And of course there is the irony that we're all bloggers, yet the majority seem to favor physical books over technology. That somehow gives me hope.

Charles: We GenXers are a bridge generation. We're stuck in between. I LOVE technology and I love getting away from it all. I want both worlds.

Courtney: Jesus it took me 30 minutes to catch up on this thread, and I just read James, who said what I've been thinking since this started. Having just gotten back from a vacation that involved a helluva lot of beach time (having arrived at work this morning, I found sand in my backpack, and had my head stuck in it still trying to inhale the lingering beach smells when a coworker walked into my office), I'd hate to either lose a $400 digital device or have it subjected to the shit I put my books through. Same reasons I fear the still spendy iPhone. Mangle the cover of the new Stephen Colbert book? Ah well. Get sand or worse wedged into my e-book reader? Goddammit.

I've already put my Nano through the wash once, I'd hate to do that to the thing with all my books on it. At least with music, you can still play it from your computer, burn a CD, etc if your iPod bites the dust, but you can't exactly print your ebook out and read it instead...

Plus, and I know this is cheesy but when I buy paperbacks for travelling, I like to leave them wherever I am when I finish them. It's a weird habit I picked up road-tripping with my family as a kid. I hope the next visitors to the Polynesian Shores in Honokowai enjoy What is the What.

Seth: I wonder if Amazon built losing the "Leave-Paperbacks-Wherever-I-Am-When-I-Finish-Them (If-I'm-On-Vacation)" demographic into their business model.

Friend of Seattlest:And furthermore, POD technology makes physical book publishing sustainable. There's no need not to make physical editions available. I think brick and mortar stores won't die entirely, suffice it say that that is my opinion.

Charles: What I think it may actually do, and the book fetishist in me loves this idea, is make the POD business model workable. I read a book on the eReader and love it, am moved by it, want to always have it on my night stand and sometimes curl up with it.... so I order an actual copy. Shoot, I still buy the odd CD because the artist (I'm looking at you Chan Marshall) moves me so much.