I received an email from Amazon’s Customer Service Department yesterday in which they informed me that an ebook I had purchased some time ago, and which had a number of typos and other errors in it  had been updated and those faults repaired.

Why Tell Me?

To begin with I couldn’t work out what the point of the email was, as I had no recollection of the ebook in question (the problem of remembering the titles of ebooks yet again), but on the second reading of it, I grasped what it was they were telling me. I know, I can be slow on the uptake at times, and can only plead my advanced age (almost 70) as an excuse.

What I was being offered was the chance to download the updated and corrected ebook for free to ensure that I had the best possible version of the ebook in question in my ebook library.

They gave me very full and concise instructions on the several ways in which I could do this update:-

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A couple of recent studies in the USA have shown some very encouraging trends in reading there, especially among the young.  And this improvement seems to be linked directly to the advent of ereaders and ebooks.

Most Americans did not really read at all:

About a year ago, I remember reading an article about reading habits in the USA, in which a “reader” was defined as someone who read at least (!) 5 books a year.  Not surprisingly, this figure depressed me no end.  If a country considered that 5 books a year constituted being a reader, then something was seriously wrong in that place. What made it worse was that the Bible was one of the 5 books they read, and very few people actually “read” the Bible, they dip into it, study it, but do not sit down of an evening and read it from start to finish.   And read over and over again, unlike most novels. It is a reference book in fact.

In my view, that figure almost constituted functional illiteracy.  A reader is someone who reads books more or less constantly, and would certainly mean someone who read 5 books in a month, not less than one book a month, as was apparently the case in the USA so recently.

However, things are getting better:

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Deep in the heart of Italy a dream is growing.  An already large, but growing collection of ereaders is being brought together as the start of a planned museum of ereaders.

As a result of a post I wrote about a rather wonderful 1930’s design for an ereader, which elicited a comment from Luca Calcinai  (link to both at bottom of this post), I have become aware of his plan to create a serious museum devoted to ereaders.

Ereader Museum - First Toddler Steps

Sort of just happened:

Apparently Luca repairs ereaders for a living,  and has thus found himself the proud owner of  a number of defunct ereaders, and was persuaded to show of his, at that time small, collection of ereaders, augmented with a number  of borrowed ereaders at the 2009 Book Fair in Turin, Italy. This was the start of the dream.

As you can see from the photo, this was a very rough and ready display, but the seeds of what will come had been planted.

Since then, he seems to have been busy collecting as many ereaders as he can get his hands on, and now has about 100 ereaders of all sorts and types, including a number that hardly even managed to get onto the market before being withdrawn – the Entourage Edge ereader with two screens being a good example of such.

To give you an idea of the range of the collection so far, it includes such treasures as an iLiad Book Edition, an iRex DR1000, a Cybook Gen3 and even the first generation Kindle and also some examples of the original packaging.

Do you have an interesting and rare ereader?

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As a result of the predicted slow down in sales of dedicated ereaders  such as the Kindle and Sony this quarter (as opposed to tablets), it is being said that the time of the simple ereader is nearing its end, and that the future lies with the multifunctional tablet.

Not a view that I share:

As I have written in earlier posts on this particular topic, and what has led friends to accuse me of being a Luddite is that I believe firmly that to be pleasurable, reading is perhaps the one solitary activity we still have in the extremely noisy and distracting world we live in that has to be done in peace and quiet, with no distraction, a total immersion experience, which the multi-functional gadgets such as the Fire and iPad make impossible.

Tried it, but too many distractions.

I have tried reading on such gadgets, and found the endless pings and nudges they gave me, to inform me that I have a new email, or simply seeing (or knowing) that a click of the mouse will bring me to YouTube and some great video of a band I haven’t seen since 1972 really interfered with my pleasure in the ebooks I was reading on them.

When I sit down with either my Kindle or my Sony ereader, open the ebook I am reading at the time, and lose myself in the world the writer has created, with no outside distraction, I experience the true pleasure of reading.   I know, there are other distractions in the world than a machine telling you that an email has arrived…  Kids, friends, barking dogs to name but a few.  But these one can control by simply removing oneself from them.

An article in the New York Times quotes Allison Kutz, a 21-year-old senior at Elon University in North Carolina, who bought herself an iPad in 2010, who says her reading habits have never been the same since buying the iPad:

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In the first quarter of 2012 the world wide sales of ereaders is expected to only be about 2 million units, as opposed to the 9 million that were sold in the last quarter of 2011.  This is being heralded as an indication that people are moving massively over to tablets to read their ebooks on, rather than dedicated ereaders, such as the Sony or Kindle.

Missing the point:

I feel that this interpretation of the reason that ereader sales have shown a slow down – in comparison to the sales of tablets of one sort or another is rather missing the point or several points actually.

Firstly, the first quarter of the year is always a time of slow sales, people have spent all their spare money on Christmas gifts, and are not inclined to buy  much in the first few months of any new year.

Secondly, the advent of more tablets on the market, particularly much cheaper ones than the iPad, such as the Kindle Fire and the much sued Galaxy to name but two models, is still a real novelty for many people, and it has to be said that they are extremely useful devices for almost all computer based activities for people who are on the move a lot.

So, for my part I am not at all surprised to hear that ereader sales are down in comparison to the sales of tablets, and do not find this a discouraging phenomena for lovers of dedicated ereaders.

Multifunctionality is what many people want:

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Not the most up to date or even best ereader in the world, but acceptable nonetheless, the Pandigital Novel 6” monochrome ereader is currently yours for a mere pittance at Amazon.

This pretty basic ereader has been reduced from its original price of $239.40 to $67.90 (how do they arrive at these strange prices) for a new one, or about $50 for a second-hand but good one.

If you want to try an ereader…..

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