Giles Diggle on Twitter @50oakwoods

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Tablets: the saviour of the paperback

It's nearly year since I bought my Kindle. So how does it compare to reading books printed on paper? The Kindle is certainly convenient, easily portable and superb if you want to read several texts concurrently. It is wonderful until it breaks down.

I am on my second Kindle. The first one froze two weeks ago and there was nothing I could do to reboot it. I phoned Amazon. They answered within a minute and  five minutes later  they had ordered me a new one under the warranty. It arrived three days later. Great service. It tells me that they clearly want to support the infrastructure of ebooks and don't want any customer turning their back on their product.

Before the Kindle froze I was reading Kate Grenville's, Secret River, which I had picked up for £0.99 on Kindle's Daily Deal. And that's one of the things that irritates me about my relationship with the Kindle. It has turned me into a book buying skinflint; my greed for a bargain has started to dictate my reading. I was finding the novel somewhat indifferent, so it was a relief to turn to a paperback, The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connolly (which I hasten to add, I borrowed from a friend, which would be difficult to do with a Kindle book.) By the time I had finished it my replacement Kindle had arrived and so I continued with Kate Grenville.

Which was the more satisfying experience? I have to say it was reading the paperback. Why? Not because of holding the book. It was a tatty copy with small print. (I always enlarge the typeface on the Kindle). It was because I enjoyed the story more.

Earlier in the year I had another chance to compare. I read Donna Tartt's The Little Friend on the Kindle. Later I read The Secret History in paperback. (Incidentally, I bought it from Amazon secondhand for a snip inc., p&p.) Which was the better experience? The Kindle, because I thought The Little Friend was a more interesting book.

It is the literature that is important, the medium is less so, though I do concede I still enjoy reading paper books. I shall continue to read both. What I would really like is a paperback book with a code to download the ebook, but that's not going to happen for a while because it would destroy the current business model where readers are subsidised so that profit can be made from ebook sales.

I have yet to acquire a tablet and that begs a question for me? Why buy a dedicated e-reader when you can buy all the benefits of a tablet for not much more cash. That is certainly the case with Amazon products. I ask the question. Will the tablet kill the e-novel, just as the CD killed the cassette tape?

Why have a tablet and an e-reader? If you have a tablet the tendency will be to browse the web, read magazines, explore multimedia titles, play games, watch movies, catch up on tv, and fiddle around social media. The benefits of electronic paper may not be enough to persuade customers to buy a tablet and an ereader.

Ironically, the tablet may be the saviour of the paperback.

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