If you’ve ever used a Kindle on public transportation, you’ll be familiar with the hateful stare of the book snob. Everytime you whip it out – and it takes some deliberation to decide it’s worth making Such a public display of early adoption – there will be some glaring luddite looking on, at first shocked That anyone actually owns a Kindle (whichthey ??consider as ludicrous as Glass Google or Amazon Drones) and then disgusted at the sheer postmodern cheek of it, as if you belong in the same camp as the kids playing music out their fiduciary phone’s speakers. “He’s probably reading Steve Jobs’ biography, or 50 Shades of Grey,” they think to themelves, before turning back to the Times Literary Supplement.
I’m exaggerating, but you can not blame Kindle owners for being paranoid. We’ve endured wave after wave of dreary traditionalist rebellion against eBooks, and it still is not abating. Whenever the topic is broached some smug dullard who might as well be wearing pince-nez and carrying an engraved cigarette case pipes up: “Can you smell an eBook? Can you build a beautiful oak bookcase for them to sit on? Can you hand one to a stranger in a Parisian cafe or inscribe one with a heartfelt note still readable when it’s bequeathed to the next generation decades from now? “
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A recent study has got the dead tree defenders all triumphant. Apparently 62 per cent of 16-24 year olds still prefer printed books. “You see,” they are crowing. “Even the Xboxers, the sexters and the cyber bullies prefer real books. They May Be addicted to watching pornography On Their phone, but that does not mean they can not enjoy a first-edition Dickens. “Meanwhile, Kindle sales figures have gone flat, outperformed by hardcovers. The luddites smell blood – they think the eBook is a fad on its way out
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It’s not. Growth May Be slowing, but electronic books are too compelling to that. There are a thousand little benefits, but the one you’ll hear again and again from Kindle owners is this: it makes you read more. Perhaps it’s the lower prices, the huge, instantly available library, or the speed at All which you can tear through large writing (no one keeps Their Kindle text as small as in a paperback), but you do read more. More hours every week. They might even be Encouraging people to write more, too – a quarter of Kindle sales are from independent publishers
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No, you can proudly display your Kindle library into your dining room, or dash off some awful contrived inscription in the front Because you once saw someone do that in a movie, but that’s not really what books are for, is it? They’re for reading, and that experience is even better on an electronic machine than in print.
This argument Should be the end of it, but it does not satisfy the snobs, Because for them books have nothing to do with reading. They are actually material for interior design – bit or incredibly naff “retro chic” pretense, rather than great works of art. Alongside your Smythson writing desk and your collection of vinyls comes a stack of neglected classics, Destined to be Judged by Their only covers. These people off buying Should Be tweed or lobbying for signatures to join a Pall Mall club members, not lecturing on how to enjoy literature.
And by the way, the rise of the eBook does not mean the end of print books. That’s what the sales figures tell you – the two can sit by side, and they are doing it. In the digital age, we use more than one medium to consume the same thing. The book the bores Should Be cheering new stability in the publishing industry, but they’ve missed it because they were out shopping for a new ribbon for Their Olivetti typewriter. So they continued to tell everyone how to read, fighting to defend a privilege no one is denying them.
Read more by Jack Rivlin:
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