Blah blah blah.
These are the cries of tech-averse readers around the globe when they object to the idea of an eBook or audiobook (formerly known as "books on tape"). I hear this a lot when people ask where they can get my book and I send them to Amazon for the Kindle version. Yes, you can buy the trade paperback for $9.99, but why, when you can download the eBook for free (right now, anyway)?
Yes, I agree, I love the smell of a book too. I love the feeling in my hands. The weight — the yellowing edges and the sound of the spine cracking right before pages start falling out. It leaves you full of hope for the greatness it may contain. But do you have the same affinity for that copy of The Firm you paid $8 for in 1993? Do you ever go on a trip and wonder which book to bring, knowing you don’t want to lug five choices along with you? (I believe Allegiant now charges $7 to bring reading material on the plane.) No, a Kindle doesn’t have the smell of your college library during football season (my daughter’s Kindle Fire smells like pancake syrup). You don’t have that heft… or the sound of pages turning. My wife hates the sound of turning pages while she’s trying to sleep. Yet, ironically, she’s one of those “books-on-paper” only people. I get it. But the Kindle has a few advantages.
1. Samples. It’s a damned bookstore in your hand for when you aren't near Inkwood or Haslam's (where I spent $40 last week). My dad will sit and read samples for hours. He’ll tell long stories about great samples he’s read. He’s got a degree in Samples of American Literature.
2. It can carry an infinite number of books.
3. It’s tree-friendly. Go green!
4. It weighs (next to) nothing.
5. You can read in the dark without a reading light… unless:
6. Unless you use the old Kindles without a backlight, whose batteries last for months on a single charge.
There's a time and place for eBooks as long as you support your local book seller because without them, we don't have a society.
You don’t have a Kindle, you say? Yes you do. How are you reading this? The Kindle app is available for Windows, OSX, Android, iPhone, Blackberry (all seven of you), Palm Pilot, abacus and ancient scrolls. I agree that reading War and Peace on your phone isn’t ideal. But either you like to read or you don’t. I read my friend Nate’s outstanding time travel adventure In Times Like These on my iPhone while recovering from surgery in the hospital. Would it have been a better experience if I had been holding a dusty leather-bound collector’s copy? Not really. Sure, I prefer to listen to my music in Bose headphones, but I like music, so I’m willing to listen to it in places that are less than ideal. The point is, eBooks are good for people who love to read. Sticking to books-on-paper these days is like limiting yourself to only listening to vinyl.
Which brings us to the other medium for absorbing literature: The audiobook. I got in to audiobooks when I was spending days in my car as an outside sales rep. I signed up for a $15 per month Audible membership and got some free credits. It just so happened that I had just started reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (one of my all-time favorites.) The book is set in India, following characters from India, Pakistan, Iran and a host of other countries. As a reader, the names were killing me, and it was slowing me down. I downloaded the audio version, narrated by an Australian actor named Humphrey Brower. He mastered the names and the different voices in a way that brought the story to life. (In looking up his name, I just learned that he has narrated a slew of novels by Bryce Courtenay, who wrote another favorite epic novel The Power of One.)
I had a similar experience with the audio version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (again with the funny names), and the male/female narration of Gone Girl was well done. Right now I’m in the midst of perhaps my best audiobook experience with character actor Will Patton reading Kerouac’s On The Road. You know how the book is always better than the movie? Sometimes the audiobook is better than the book. Sometimes the narrator’s voice is better than the one in your head — as George Constanza learned when he couldn’t bear listening to a book that sounded like his own voice.
As a reader, if you aren’t taking advantage of these technologies, you’re missing out. But as a writer, you simply can’t ignore them. I don’t care if you have a contract with Penguin, you need to get acquainted with eBooks. If you plan to publish, ignoring eBooks is like a musician ignoring Spotify. And when you really get your self publishing game going, you will want experience with audiobooks when you take your book to that level. My first book isn’t available on audiobook — yet — but ultimately I plan to be auditioning narrators who sound better than the voice in your head. We will always want hard copies of our favorites, and a good book with an inscription is one of the most heartfelt gifts you can give. Use eBooks and audiobooks to increase your intake, read things you might not normally tackle and support good writing in every form.
When Jonathan Kile isn't using Oxford Commas and drinking chai tea, he encourages you to check out his adventure thriller, The Grandfather Clock, which is currently the #1 Free Adventure/Suspense eBook for Amazon Kindle. The sequel, The Napoleon Bloom, will be out in
2017. He promises. Jonathan gets his email at [email protected].
