I feel like I've gone over to the dark side. That image above? It's Liane's Kindle for PC.
You may go ahead and take my temperature. I'm the paper book stoic, the Luddite who dislikes e-books (the platform, that is) on principle - even when said principle gets a bit blurry at times. I don't like the way the digital evolution is throwing life-as-we-know-it into chaos. I don't like that the publishing industry is in a state of flux, although I acknowledge that there is much that's wrong with the status quo and that it's a wasteful, unsustainable model.
I have avowed time and again that I'd never pay hundreds of dollars for a Kindle or any other device of that ilk. Plus, the more I learn about Amazon, the more wary I am of their shenanigans. I deplore the fact that they started off selling Kindle versions of print books at significantly lower prices, then jacked the prices up to the print levels AND BEYOND as soon as they'd sold enough Kindles to establish their market. Compare the cost of producing a paper book to that of the e-version, factor in the price of the reading device, and those prices I see look an awful lot like the book-buying public is being, er, invaded up the, er, ear. For the sake of brevity and circumvention of rants, we won't even discuss the issue of royalty percentages on e-books published by the traditional houses.
Yet I downloaded the Kindle app. on to my laptop. I did it on impulse for practical reasons: (1) I wanted to buy a writer acquaintance's novel and the Kindle price, which she set herself, is a third of the print price (and even less when I factor in the shipping cost). (2) The Kindle for PC is free. (3) I'm flat out of shelf space. Since I'd already crossed the line, I checked out the free books and downloaded some classic novels I'd been wanting to read or reread for ages, including Madame Bovary, The Iliad, Passion in the Desert, A Christmas Carol and Aesop's Fables.
Reading books on my laptop will never be my poison of choice although this new babe of mine is small and light and I can get fairly comfy with it, even in bed. I still prefer to read 'real' books, which for me will always be made of paper.
I feel like a traitor to the paper book cause. I feel like a turncoat. Go ahead. Shoot me.
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