Will printed books go the way of the vinyl record? Hoarded by collectors of curiosities, fiercely defended by aging eccentrics, stacked in musty shops where the bell over the door rings only once a month, if at all? When Amazon announced that its ebook sales had outstripped those of its published books for the first time, it was clear that e-Readers had begun to revolutionize the way we read. This week Mirror Magazine speaks to a few among Colombo’s growing group of e-Reader converts.
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| Pic by M. A. Pushpa Kumara |
“I know a lot of traditional book lovers will hate me for this, but I think the e-Reader is a great replacement for books,” says Abdul Azeez, who paid $139 for his wifi enabled Kindle 3 (K3). (Amazon delivers it to Sri Lanka for free, but customs will set you back about Rs. 4000, warns Abdul.)
E-Readers, he believes are simply the “next level of evolution in reading just like the printing press created a revolution and moved us from the need to painstakingly copy out text, ebooks are already revolutionizing the publishing industry and how people perceive and deal with reading.”
Like many serious bookworms, Abdul juggles several books, switching between them at whim. “Currently I’m reading about ten... I must have way too much time on my hands,” he says, listing The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Do not be Sad by Abdullah bin Al-Quarni, A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin and about 5 others.
There’s also the matter of variety. “I had real problems getting the books I wanted before I got the K3...but now I can get almost any book I need after a few clicks on the computer.” The Kindle bookstore promises its readers over over 950,000 ebooks. Among these, over 650,000 books are supposed to be priced at $9.99 or less and 1.8 million are free.
In John Pereira’s experience ebooks actually tend to fall into the $10 - $15 range; and the free books are more and often than not classics. If they did compare booklists, John and Abdul would be sure find a thing or two in common. John says he’s currently re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series - if they were paperbacks, he’d have to find room for 30 odd books. “I used to go to BC and bring home an armful of books that weighed a ton. Now I can have more than a hundred books in a device that weighs less than 250 grams,” says John. That his battery lasts three weeks before needing a recharge only makes him love it more.
“3.5gb of storage means you can carry your whole library along with you, wherever you go,” says Abdul, though he cautions that not all formats are Kindle friendly. Like a regular bookshelf, the Kindle allows you to order your books based on subject matter, author or title. But how does the actual reading experience compare? Abdul describes the e-ink screen on his Kindle 3 as “almost identical to paper.” John goes into detail: “it’s not backlit so you can’t read it in the night without an attachment, but it’s perfect for daylight reading. No glare or strain on the eye at all. You actually forget you’re reading on an electronic device.” The Kindle has been in the news so often, that it’s easy to forget that other e-Readers exist – there’s the Kobo e-Reader and the Reader Touch from Sony. Then there’s the Barnes and Noble Nook that Keheliya decided to buy, even though he says Kindle has a faster refresh rate and a better battery life “Kindle was the famous one and Kobo was cheap. But Nook had the capacitive touch-screen panel at the bottom, so browsing the web and navigating among bookshelves was easy,” he says. Nook also runs on Android, and can be rooted to install various applications like Twitter and Facebook clients, he says.
The nook cost $149 for the wi-fi only version and Keheliya ended up paying around Rs.18,000 including shipping and taxes. Was it worth it? “I can say it’s the best value-for-money device I have used after my laptop.” He will admit though that he sometimes misses the “tactile feel and whole experience of flipping through the pages of a real book.” Also, an e-Reader isn’t at its best when used as a reference book. It’s easier to flip through pages in a ‘real’ book.
“But nothing beats the ability to carry around, all of the bulky books in your reading list and some more, in a cool device with size of one book,” he says.
Abdul offers the last word: the goods trump the bads by a long way. But I’m still excited about what the next generation of e-Readers will offer.
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