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By: Rick McCallion
eReaders .... /drool
In one of my earlier blogs, I pooh-poohed the eReader technology. There are a few things about them that I don’t like, but as I see more and more people using them, the more intrigued I am. As someone who reads a lot – and from a portability point of view – there are some real advantages to having content on an electronic device.
As I read the latest Stephen King 1000+ book in bed last night, I thought to myself that the physical size and weight of a book does impact on its readability. Quite often, I will tuck a book into my notebook bag and this is my casual reading at lunch or on public transit. However, I can’t justify lugging around a 1,000 page book back and forth every day. This is one of those cases where having a small and light eReader would definitely be a good thing.
The other thing too is the “shiny factor”. I know that quite often, my posts focus on how one shouldn’t make technology purchasing decisions based on what is new. But gosh, the geeky part of me thinks that it is just almost too cool to resist. I love the thought at being able to click on hyperlinks in a book, or perhaps to highlight a word and have a dictionary pop up.
However, I think there is one advantage I never considered. Publishing books has traditionally been in the realm of the rich and famous in the past, at least in terms of mass distribution. Although there are many vanity publishers, and the price has come down, it still requires a financial commitment to get a book published. The thing people don’t consider is that writing a book is usually just part of the equation. To a certain extent, a writer should write for himself, but the harsh reality for most authors is that maybe there isn’t an expectation, but certainly a faint hope, of sales. Using a vanity publisher only addresses one issue – the creation of the book. The problem then is what to do with the boxes of books?
Where the advent of eReaders may have a significant advantage is that this opens up a whole new world for these self-publishers. Not only can they be in complete control of the production of their material with minimal costs, but there are also a myriad of opportunities available for them to market their material online. As the use of eReaders becomes more prevalent, I expect that the material for eBooks will as well.
Some make ask why I consider this to be an advantage and to answer this, let’s take go to the past.
It is true that the invention of the printing press opened up new doors. However, as this was an extremely expensive proposition, what this meant is that literally only the truly rich – the elite of society – were able to publish books. What does this mean for society? Quite simply, it means that the vast majority of the reading material available to the general public was published and controlled by society’s elite. Not only was there no room for conflicting opinions or alternative views, but there was no opportunity for those to present diverse opinions.
This glass ceiling of publishing has absolutely been shattered and this gives everyone the opportunity to voice their opinions.
However, like anything else, everything has its costs and benefits. The disadvantage of this ability to self-publish is that it not only floods society with exponentially more material to sift through, but it also contributes to what I call the “Wikipedia effect”. This being just because an article is published on Wikipedia, does not make this true fact and the net result of this is we all have more due diligence to determine what is valid and what is not.
In this digital age, we are all “experts”. We need to take everything we read with a grain of salt and challenge everything. That having been said, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I think technology as a whole has made us too lazy to think sometimes. Think back to the store clerk that needed a calculator to figure out the change due from a $10 bill on a $9.28 payment. Thinking is never a bad thing.
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