Once Upon Another Time

In a couple of days I'm going to start getting some serious ribbing from my friends and family, so I might as well get ahead of it.

You see, I just bought a Kindle.

Now, some of you won't understand what the problem is here, e-Readers are well loved by many in our circle, but I have been resisting the pull, strongly, vocally, loudly, and proudly. I love my books.  My wonderful, beautiful hardback books on my beautiful wood bookshelves of which I own 4 of (5 when Ian is old enough).

But a couple of things have happened.  The first of which is the large tree of authors I've been reading for years who have provided those wonderful hardback collections has been fading away.  They've passed on, stopped writing, etc.  So I've started experimenting with different authors, and my bookshelves are filling up with experiments (luckily mostly successful).  A lot of them are new, and I'm trying some different directions.  So it seems like the perfect time to move to transition to a digital format, where I don't have to worry about the investment I've put into the physical for all these new authors.

The second is that the economics never took the turn I was waiting on, and you all are to blame.  I've been waiting for people to reject the price point of eBooks so they would drop dramatically.  My dream was that I would buy a hardback book, then for a dollar or two more, I'd get the eBook as well.  A couple of authors I've run into (yes, people besides my sister-in-law-in-law) loved that idea.  But again, you people screwed it all up.  You all decided that the price of an eBook pretty much matching the physical was good enough, and purchased like crazy.  So my dream will never happen, there's no incentive.  You bastards.

Now this doesn't mean I'm giving up my hardbacks.  Brandon Sanderson, you're in, forever.  Brent Weeks, you also get my money for a physical book.  George R. R. Martin's series just feels right as a tome.  I'll re-buy all of Jim Butcher's books in hardback if given the opportunity.  There are some books that you know you'll read for years to come, that you want to hand to your kids, that I feel must be physically owned (and yes, I realize my kids may never agree with me, that's not the point).

So for a year, I'm going all digital.  If I like it, I might upgrade to the Kindle DX format which is much larger and give the smaller Kindle Touch to my wife.  If I don't like it, I'll give the Kindle Touch to my wife.

So basically, the winner in the end is my wife.

As it should be.

And seriously, you should check out those bookshelves.