01.01.10
The Paperless Society, Are we There Yet?
Not quite to the Star Wars era yet, but we are moving in that direction. With my recycling efforts, I’ve found I recycle paper and cardboard more than anything else, with plastics coming in second. So we have a long way to go yet before trees are not used for paper.
I have spent most of December working on re-formatting my children’s book, Friends in the Meadow-Birds, to fit the formatting for an ebook so that all those tens of thousands of people who got their Kindles for Christmas have access to my book as an ebook as well as others. But before I started that project, I looked into the whole thing, ebooks and ereaders. My question is not a simple one, but is this just another electronic gadget, here today, gone tomorrow? If I determined that it was an electronic fad, then I wasn’t going to bother, as aside from Christmas, this project had dominated the whole month. What I found was that authors and publishers are thinking that ebooks and ereaders will change the publishing business similar to what iPod’s did for the music business. So a publishing revolution is just ahead it seems.
Upon further research, I found that the ebooks were a very hot item for Christmas and the ebook store sites are popping up all over the net. You can get many books for free to download, both classics and modern literature. The cost for those books for sale is about one third or less of the printed books. Many are sold for $1.00, which is not far from the royalties made on printed books sold in the major bookstores.
I doubted that my eyes would hold up to reading on an ereader, as they get very upset with me when I stay on the computer all day. So I went to Best Buy to eyeball the ereaders. From the ones that Best Buy carried, I liked the Sony most of all. I was pleased to see that you can adjust the size of the font to however large you need it so as not to strain your eyes. Most ereaders I learned have E-ink and special lighting so that you can read it clearly with little eye strain even in bright lighted situations. Except for physically turning the page, holding the reader was about the same as holding a book. After visiting Best Buy I felt most positive about the idea of ebooks and ereaders.
After this, I was sure I would find something on the internet to discourage my thinking about the positives of the ereaders. I found three very informative articles that were of most interest to me.
I was very curious to know if the ereaders and ebooks have the potential to really make a positive impact on the environment. I found an article on Epublishers Weekly titled “Ebooks Save Millions of Trees: 10 Ideas for sustainable Publishing”, by Michael Pastore. He is both a novelist and non-fiction writer. He has authored a book on the subject, 50 Benefits of Ebooks: A Thinking Person’s Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution. His article answered my questions in just the title. But he went into enough detail that gives hope that ebooks and ereaders are on the cutting edge of the publishing business and that millions of trees each year can be saved. One example he shared is the newspaper, New York Times. One Sunday issues consumes 75,000 trees and one year of the Sunday issues consumes more than 3,900,000 trees. This is one newspaper. There are millions of books published each year. Mr. Pastore shares that each year the publishing industry in the USA consumes 32 million trees for book. Books and newspapers together consume 125 million trees each year and “emit over 40 million metric tons of CO2 annually; equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 7.3 million cars.” His 10 ideas for sustainable publishing are good ideas for the publishing industry as well as each household in the country to take to heart. Read his full article at
http://www.epublishersweekly.blogspot.com/2009/09/ebooks-save-millions-of-trees-10-ideas.html.
Feeling even better about the whole idea, I went back to the internet to look for ebook comparisons and guides to buying. I found an article written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is titled, “EFF’s ebook-buyer’s Guide to Privacy.” This was the only red flag I found in my research. But it could be a serious one for some people. The article basically says that the ereaders that are made and sold only by certain brands, bookstores, etc., do keep information on the owners, mainly what ebooks have been purchased, what customers are reading at any time and the store can share the information with law enforcement and third parties for marketing efforts or other service providers. Some of the information sent back to the stores reminded me of cookies from different sites that monitor our use of computers, buying habits, etc. The article encourages those purchasing an ereader to read the terms of service agreement very closely before purchasing. If you want strict privacy regarding your ereader, look at what the article calls “open source” ereaders that can download books from a number of sources and does not have a service agreement with anyone, therefore no one is keeping records on the ereader or you. The web address for this article is http://boingboing.net/2009/12/21/effs-ebook-buyers-gu.html. Read it before you buy.
My last question at this point was what was the best one for me to purchase? So the comparison shopping begins. I found a neat chart comparing eight different readers. These included: Amazon KindleDX, Fugitsu FLEPia, Cool-ER, Kindle 2, Sony Reader PRS-700, Sony Reader PRS-505, ASTAK EZ Reader, and IRex Digital ReaderDR1000SW. This will be a hard decision because no one has everything I want. So I will probably wait a year or so while the bugs continue to be worked out and the ereaders become more user friendly. What I want is a reader that the screen size is 6 to 8 inches, has E-Ink with color and great lighting, touch screen, high resolution, weighs about 10 ounces, has a lot of memory or extendable choices, has a long battery life if wireless, but most importantly has as many document format choices as possible. But it must have EPUB, PDF, .Mobi, .PDB, HTML, Javascript, Plain Text, LRF, RTF and more if possible. There must not be a service contract regarding use of it. I do not want to be monitored in any way. You will see when you compare, that right now there is no such critter. But given a year or two of customer feedback, maybe there will be such an ereader or closer to it anyway, and maybe the price will have come down. This chart can be found at http://www.myebookreaderreview.com.
Until then, I can still download as pdf’s and read on the computer. At least I’ll still be saving trees and the environment. Good reading everyone! By the way, I’m getting my eyes checked and new glasses tomorrow. I’m good for another year or so with the computer! But still looking forward to my perfect ereader.
