The feel of books still beats out computers

• Source: Global Times
• [21:04 October 09 2009]
• Comments

What you buy is not the file, but a license to read that file. That license can be revoked, as in a recent case where purchasers of Amazon e-versions of 1984 and Animal Farm awoke one morning to find that those books had simply disappeared from their libraries. Or the license can die with the companies that issued them, as has happened with several companies dealing in online MP3 sales.

Plus even assuming that the licensing glitches are eventually ironed out (or if your books don't come from "official" stores), your library is subject to any computer glitch, or accidental erasing, or to accidentally dropping the reader into the toilet. And assuming you keep backups, those go obsolete. Yesteryear's floppy disk is today's museum exhibit, and today's USB stick will be right next to it soon.

There are also issues of availability. Go to any bookstore in Beijing, you'll see the aisles lined with people, standing, sitting, sometimes sprawling on the floor, all reading. Most of them don't look like they have enough money to buy a single real book, much less an e-book. But all of them can come to the bookstore and browse, and read, for free.

And if they do buy a book, after they're finished that book can be passed on to their friends, and from those friends to others. Somehow I can't see the stores letting all those browsers borrow Kindles for the day.

Finally, there's flexibility. E-book readers are standardized into a very few sizes and shapes. Books come in all shapes and sizes and formats, from tiny matchbook editions to giant full-color coffee-table books. And then there are pop-up books, foldout photo-spreads, textured paper, scrapbooks, books with inserts or hidden compartments.

But, for me, the real reason is still a personal one. We spend so much time in front of computers nowadays, if nothing else, a real book offers an alternative contact with something traditional, something permanent, something that doesn't rely on the Internet, on software, or on electricity, something that will not become obsolete in one year, or outright stop working in two.

E-books will continue to improve, but real books are already good enough.

The author is a Beijing-based freelance writer