Kindle, Authors, Booklovers, Thoughts

Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader continues to get people talking -- which always happens when a new technology challenges long-held perspectives.

I wrote a piece for USA Today's op-ed page about how the Kindle might change the profession of being an author.

While researching that piece, I talked to author Traci Lambrecht, who with her mother P.J. Lambrecht make up the writing team of PJ Tracy. She wants to welcome new technology, but also passionately described her feelings of fondness for actual books. Interestingly, after reading the op-ed piece, my daughter Alison Maney -- a super-avid reader -- sent me a similar defense of books. She is 16, which says something about the idea that every teenager would rather view a screen than a printed page. I've attached both their comments below.

From Traci:

I have always loved the concept of e-books, but as an old school gal, I'm just not sold on it, at least as a consumer. I have a very ritualistic obsession with books, which starts with going into a store, searching, and deciding on purchases, and eventually ends with the absolutely magical experience of smelling and feeling a book, and hearing the first crack of a new spine when you open it for the first time and see that pristine first page with the smell of a certain ink wafting up to greet you. To me, books aren't just intellectual property, they are very real, haptic things of beauty that have value beyond the basic entertainment that lies between the covers. I feel the same way about precious gems :), but my emotions are no different, gazing upon a gem of value or a new book I'm anxious to read. I guess that means I'm a cheap date! Or perhaps a book fetishist?

As far as the opportunity to take a 'finished' piece and make additions, subtractions, and changes to make the work dynamic, I guess all writers desire that in one way or another, which is probably why publishers impose deadlines. Writers are never finished, and that keeps us writing! But if Dostoevsky was doing e-books, I'd bet the Brothers Karamazov would still be a work in progress. I guess I believe that every piece a writer completes is a snapshot of the time in history in which it was written, and a reflection of that writer's personal life at the time, and the ability to dwell on a past endeavor, at least for me, would be a tragic derailment of future work, because the next work is always in some way, the next opportunity to clarify your voice, and improve on your technique and philosophy.

God forbid PJ Tracy could ever go back and start editing!

From Alison:

No more book smell... no more trailing fingers along hundreds of spines of books... no more bookstores where you feel surrounded by a million tiny portals to a million tiny worlds, standing on the quiet threshold, able to leap through any of those portals at any given time... no more heft of a book in your hand... only technology. That's so cold. This is a product for people who want to say they have read something, not for people who like to read, and certainly not for people who love books.

Because the physical book is half the experience - checking and rechecking where the bookmark falls, how far have I gotten this time? Smelling the book pages, sneaking just a little bit ahead, thumb randomly picking a page for you, reading a paragraph, and then sneaking back to your original place, the mystery of the future of the book revealed just enough to satisfy your anxiousness for the characters' fates...

And I can't imagine how terrible it would be if you had loved a book, each a constant friend to everyone who loves them, and then went back to read it again to find that it had changed. It would feel like betrayal. It wouldn't be a book anymore. It'd be a blog.