The Modern Bookshelf

With the increasing popularity of ereaders and tablets comes the stance against change.  “I love the feel and smell of books”, they say.  I know, I said it too. 

But if you travel at all, taking 30 books with you in one light little reader is a lot less trouble than packing 30 books.  Or 300 for that matter. And switching (mostly) to ereaders has allowed us to be picky about the books we want to bother keeping. We’ve given away dozens in recent weeks, realizing we won’t ever read them again.  The favourites stay, of course.  And there are a lot of favourites.

The current fragmentation of the market is annoying, though. It’s becoming increasingly frustrating to attempt to buy an ebook only to find out it’s not available in your particular format.  I was careful when I published my ebook to make sure I had the market covered but some authors and publishers choose only one format, and to heck with the rest.  They’ll publish only on Amazon Kindle for example which does us no good because we have Kobo readers.

Remember the early days of computers when Mac and PC couldn’t communicate without a ton of fancy technology dancing? I”m hoping the market will dictate that in the future, the currently incompatible formats for each reader will have to be transferable.  We should be able to download an ebook and choose our desired format, no matter whose site we order it from.  Let the companies duke it out with transfer payments based on sales.  Because right now, when it’s either or it eliminates a big segment of the reading public.  Come on geeks, let’s tear down these walls!