For ebook devotees, reading is a whole new experience
David J. Loehr, a playwright who lives in southern Indiana, was taking his car to the dealership when a stray on the radio caught his attention. A short science piece about "an obscure subject" gave him an idea for a new play.
Ordinarily, Loehr would have had to make do with(设法应付) jotting down some notes or trying to remember his inspiration. But since he had his iPad with him, he bought a few books on the subject and downloaded them as soon as he got to the dealership. He started his research for the play right there, while his car was being serviced.
"I can have all that research on a single tablet instead of carrying around 40 books," Loehr said.
Welcome to the future of books, where your entire library is as portable(便于携带的) as a cellphone.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center"s Internet and American Life Project reported that ownership of e-reader devices—like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader and Kobo eReader Touch—doubled between November 2010 and May 2011. Now 12 percent of adults over age 18 own one, while 8 percent own a tablet computer like the iPad.
So what does the increasing popularity of these devices mean for the experience of reading? Do we read differently when we can get (almost) any book ever published, whenever we want?
Reading the future
For their devotees, ebooks have transformed the experience of reading.
Michelle Jones, who writes the Consuming Louisville blog, has a Kindle reader and also uses the Kindle app on her Android phone. "Even when I"m walking the dog, I"m always going to have my phone on me," she said. "I"m not always going to have my book bag. It makes it possible for me to read places I never would have before."
For Jones, the tact that her Kindle syncs with her phone—so her book always knows where she left off—makes reading the same book on different devices effortless.
Jones describes herself as an early adopter. But e-readers also have won over some book lovers who aren"t ordinarily enticed(引诱) by gadgetry, like Madelyn Anetrella, a nonprofit development manager for the American Lung Association.
"I don"t know how to use my iPod," she said, by way of establishing her Luddite bona fides. But she does read on a Kindle and on the Kindle app on her phone.
"I"m always with a book of some sort, whether in hard copy on my Kindle or on the phone," she said. And although the gadgets haven"t replaced her physical books, she does find that they come in handy. "Amazon has a lot of the classics for free, so I"ll read a few pages when I"m online."
Brian Leung, novelist and professor of English at the University of Louisville, said that having your entire library with you wherever you go was pretty extraordinary. "It"s having all your books in your pocket, and having all your magazine subscriptions in your pocket."
Although Leung has a strong preference for physical books, he has started to think about buying ebook versions of things he"s likely to only read once. He recently read Tina Fey"s memoir(回忆录), "Bossypants," and cited it as an example. "It"s something that I wouldn"t go back to," Leung said.
Like Leung, some readers who would never give up physical books have started to opt for ebook versions of one-time reads. James Bickers, the morning host for WFPK, is one. "It"s largely a clutter thing," Bickers said. "I don"t let a book into my house if I don"t think I"m going to read it more than once."
Being able to purchase an ebook and start reading it right away without leaving the house—or the doctor"s waiting room—also increases the convenience of the impulse buy.
Jen Woods, founder and president of the local small press Typecast Publishing, said she often buys books she"s not sure about in the ebook version for her Nook. "For those books, I find that I purchase a lot more of them because I don"t have to store them anywhere. If it is only a peripheral (非主要的，外围的) interest and I don"t read the whole book, it"s OK."
Just being able to carry around lots of books, however, doesn"t mean you"re going to read them. Bickers said that one of the things that attracted him to e-readers was the ability to download public-domain classics for free.
"It"s all stuff that you were meant to read anyway. Now I have these electronic versions of Dickens that I cannot read electronically," he said. "It makes me feel good to know I have Dickens even though I know I"m probably never going to get through it."
Some things never change
As we spend more time online, and increasingly turn to social networks for reading recommendations, writers and publishers are adjusting to fit the expectations of new media.
Woods of Typecast Publishing said she"s a fan of the way electronic media allow her authors to connect with readers—even though her books are mostly printed on letterpress, an old-fashioned and time-consuming physical process.
"I really feel like the digital revolution in reading is only one more tool in our belt that we can use to put content out to readers," she said. "We do most of our work very much in the world of printed object, but one reason why we succeed in that is because of the digital revolution."
Writers, too, have been modifying their work to suit the online marketplace. Rick Moody and John Wray are two novelists who have experimented with Twitter fiction. Paul Griner, a novelist and professor of English at the University of Louisville, said that he tends to write more flash fiction—very short short stories—because they"re easier for grazing online readers to digest.
"The available technology often dictates what form writing takes, rather than the other way around," Griner said, citing the examples of Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant, who wrote their short stories to fit the specifications of the newspapers that published them.
Online-only literary journals like elimae (elimae.com), Five Chapters (fivechapters.com), Fifty-Two Stories (fiftytwostories.com) and Guernica (guernicamag.com) cater to the audience of readers at their desks with short blasts of fiction.
At the same time, some things won"t change. Reading is still a quiet, solitary(独自的) engagement between you and the text, whether that text is printed on dead trees or in e-ink on a screen. The experience of getting sucked into a great story doesn"t differ, according to e-reader owners.
If anything, the growing popularity of ebooks shows that readers are still willing to pay for good writing, despite the profusion (大量) of free content available online. In that sense, it"s a reaffirmation of the old publishing business model.
Petrosino doesn"t think the prevalence of electronic media would affect the way she writes poetry, either. "Poetry is one of the forms that defies (反抗，蔑视) the short attention span. Poetry is a way of paying attention."
And although ebooks continue to increase their share of the market, readers will still buy physical books.
"I think I"m 50-50 with reading actual books and reading on my Kindle," said Anetrella of the American Lung Association. "If I"m at a bookstore and I see a book that I want, I"ll buy it."