Prime Palaver by Eric Flint

Author:Eric Flint
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2000-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Prime Palaver # 7

Eric Flint

April 26, 2002

In the short time since the last Prime Palaver came out (#6), I've gotten a lot of letters. More than usual, because that Prime Palaver was cited on slashdot and was then spread widely across the internet.

A number of questions were raised in those letters, which I thought I should answer. But rather than answering them individually, I decided to take a number of them as the basis for a new Prime Palaver.

In what follows, the material in italics are excerpts from recent letters, followed by my response.

Much as you have stated in your letter (Prime Palaver #6), I find myself taking books for a test drive via the Free Library or Webscriptions. I will often just read the first couple of chapters and see if the book grabs me. If it does, then I go out and buy the printed book. I buy the printed book because I like to be able to read in various locations as opposed to sitting in front of the computer and hitting the page down key.

However, I wonder how the advent of better electronic reader hardware will affect your argument. Once a reader is produced that is as easy for me to use as turning the page of a book, I will probably quit buying print versions and only buy electronic editions (I have only so much space in my house).

When we get to that point, we can worry about it then. I'm not worrying about it now for two reasons:

1. I think we're a lot further away from an electronic reader which is really equivalent to a book than a lot of people seem to be. I could be wrong about that. But the fact remains that the introduction of e-books was not caused by any great consumer dissatisfaction with paper books. In a very real sense, this new technology is a supply looking for a demand -- and, so far at least, not finding much of one.

It remains to seen whether e-books will be analogous to CDs, which did replace vinyl records -- largely because the recording industry conspired to force them on everyone, by the way -- or to things like automatic transmissions and home food processors. In the case of the first, automatic transmissions crowded aside manual transmissions but did not eliminate them; and, in the case of the second, food processors are now found in some homes but have never replaced kitchen knives.

There's a lot to be said for the sheer simplicity of a paper book, when you get right down to it. To this day, I still find it much easier and quicker to look up a word in a paper dictionary or thesaurus than screwing around with the versions available on my computer.

2. But let us assume for the moment that e-book readers do eventually replace paper books altogether. Even in that case, I think all we'd have to do -- at most -- is adjust the way the Library works somewhat.

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