Tuesday July 11, 2006

#1 Single

Did you know that the World eBook Fair is going on this month? I didn’t either until BookNinja told me. Basically, Project Gutenberg is celebrating its 35th anniversary by teaming up with other online libraries to give away as many eBooks as possible. This has inspired me to do something I’ve been thinking about for awhile, which is to put out an eBook of my own. Titled Single, it features two of my previously published short stories in .txt, .pdf. and Mobipocket formats. I like these stories. They are two of my favorites. “Miss Tennessee” originally appeared in the Land-Grant College Review, while “The Cryerer” first appeared in One Story—both great journals. You can download the eBook here.

Lest you think I’m asking you to do something I wouldn’t do myself, I’ve been reading eBooks for awhile. I read them on my Audiovox SMT5600 smartphone using the Mobipocket reader. I showed this setup to some acquaintances in the book publishing business two or three years ago and they were shocked. They were sure eBooks were dead. But I have read everything from the novels of sf writer Cory Doctorow to the lesser works of F. Scott Fitzgerald this way. It’s a great way to read, and once you get used to it, you realize that there’s nothing about the written word that demands to be presented on pages between boards.

As Cory Doctorow says in the introduction to the eBook edition of Eastern Standard Tribe: “Here’s a thing I’ve noticed about the present: MORE PEOPLE ARE READING MORE WORDS OFF OF MORE SCREENS THAN EVER BEFORE. Here’s another thing I’ve noticed about the present: FEWER PEOPLE ARE READING FEWER WORDS OFF OF FEWER PAGES THAN EVER BEFORE. That doesn’t mean that the book is dying—no more than the advent of the printing press and the de-emphasis of Bible-copying monks meant that the book was dying—but it does mean that the book is changing.”

Posted by jim at 09:34 AM ||