Sunday, October 6, 2013

Vintage Books. Ebooks.

I'm a sucker for vintage books.  The feel of their rough paper, the yellowing of their pages, even the smell appeals to me, draws me in, makes me want to take them home and put them on a top shelve to be admired. 

Today I want antiquing, something I do every now and then, just to browse.  I came across a plethora of vintage books by authors I didn't recognize, but I sudden felt the urge to take each of those books home.  I only bought one, which is good for my wallet, but as I browsed a sadness came over me.  These books, the history they have, the stories they tell not only on the pages but in their creases, scribbles, and rips, belong to someone. The stories they contain were important enough for someone to write down and now they've come into my hands.  I'm holding someone's dream, someone's work.  To me, that's pretty special.  But the sadness came when I realized that one day there may not be vintage books to admire.  One day, vintage books will be endangered.

Ebooks.  Don't get me wrong, I love ebooks.  I love the convenience, I love being able to hold tons of books in my hand at one time through my Kindle.  I love the price of ebooks.  As an author, I really love how easy it is to publish and ebook in comparison to traditional paper publication.  Ebooks can be written, edited, submitted to Amazon and published with extreme efficiency and pretty impressive speed.  Paper books need to be approved, then a proof copy needs to be sent and reviewed, then you get your paper books and whoops you see an error.  In order to fix an error on a paper book you have to start the whole process of publication over, including getting another proof book, whereas on the ebook you can simply upload the new version.  Much easier. 

The problem is I love them both.  I love ebooks and paper books.  I know that ebooks are our future, and I'm excited about all the possibilities of this, but I'm still slightly saddened that paper books will lose their appeal.  It's really just the book nerd in me talking :)

Is anyone else torn?  Which do you prefer?  Paper or Ebook?

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