To Have and to Hold

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with books.

It began in my childhood with lots of the caretakers of my youth reading to me and with me. I was lucky enough to have parents who took me on adventures to the library and bookstores. My folks also ensured I was one of the kids who got to order from the super cool book magazines at school, and my memory of delivery day is my box was always the biggest.

My Christmas list is regularly littered with must-have books and requests for bookstore gift cards. Of the frivolous expenses in my year, books outweigh everything.

Over the years, I’ve developed a pickiness about the books I read: size, shape, and covers can make or break a spontaneous purchase, and while I never refuse to read a book I’m interested in because of the version available, I have been known to leave a bookstore empty-handed only to make an online purchase of the book I was after in a version I prefer.

A recent example: I decided to buy Crime and Punishment after reading a writing article about a particular element of Dostoyevsky’s book. A day or so later, I was in a bookstore and found a copy of the book, but it was a paperback version with really small font, and it just didn’t give me the warm-fuzzies. I went home, poked around online, and found a hardback copy of medium size which I purchased. (When it arrived, I found it very warm and plenty fuzzy.)

Those of us who love books understand how difficult parting with many of our reads is, and we all suffer the same ailment: too many books and too little space in which to keep them.

Additionally, I suffer from an education-based injury as well: the chronic backache of the book-laden English Literature major.

While studying for the requisite Comprehensive Examination for my MA, I was in constant possession of several books and several binders of notes: every spare moment was filled with studying, and in order to study, I had to have the texts and the notes.

Then, the eBook was born, and shortly thereafter, the Microsoft Reader converter was given life. Much of what I was studying was available electronically (for free), and thanks to the Reader converter, my notes could all be changed into eDocuments as well.

I became a much happier person once I was able to load 60+ texts and the notes about them onto a PDA.

The experience has turned me into an eBook fan, and while most of my purchases remain physical texts, there are times an eBook is what I want. There are other distinct advantages to eBooks: privacy, portability, built-in dictionaries, and backlights in the reading devices for insomniacs like me.

For example, I recently began reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and after buying the physical text, I located a free eText. I keep the eBook on my Treo, and not only do I have the book with me at all times, but also, when I awake at 2 a.m., I can read from the eBook while remaining snug in my bed with all of the lights out.

About two weeks ago, I wanted to purchase several eBooks, and the reason was two-fold: first, there was a blowout sale on some titles I wanted to read in preparation for some writing I am now doing, and save for the sale, I would not have been able to spend the money on the books; second, the books are erotic in nature, and the covers are not the kinds of images I am comfortable exposing while proctoring exams and the like.

I don’t care that half-naked people in extremely sexual positions grace the covers, but some students are so easily offended, I have to be careful. (And then there are those students who simply don’t know better than to say something inappropriate once they see the book’s cover.)

I filled my cart with nine eBooks, and with the kind of giddy excitement I always feel over books, I tried to checkout. Each time I tired to buy the books, I received a very confusing message regarding copyright laws, and after spending several hours attempting to get to the bottom of the issue, I realized the seller’s system was locking me out because it believed my copy of Microsoft Reader to be unregistered.

(For those unfamiliar with eBooks and copyright, the short answer is that many commercially available eBooks have built-in copy protection that is tied into a simple online registration process of the reading software. This protects authors from losing money at the hands of unscrupulous, thieving, shit heads who think copy a text and giving it away is the right thing to do.)

The thing is, my Microsoft Reader was registered.

I wanted those books in the worst way, so I reregistered my laptop’s Reader. Fortunately, I realized my Treo’s copy of Reader was not registered, and that needed to be fixed before I downloaded the books, or I probably wouldn’t be able to get them onto the Treo.

(Again, for those unfamiliar with eTexts, in order to place copies on several devices, each device must be registered and owned by the same person. See the shit head explanation above for the reason.)

I spent TWO DAYS trying to register my handheld device (i.e. the Treo), and each try ended with a failure and a declaration that my device had the wrong operating system on it. This situation was addressed in the Microsoft Reader forums, and there was a fix available for download. Unfortunately, the fix yielded the same failure/error message.

I even completed a hard rest and software reload.

I gave up in frustration, and chose only two of the nine purchases because anything I bought I’d have to read on my laptop which is about as convenient for me as carting around an entire set of encyclopedias.

The missing books weighed on me, and I went back several days later and tried the whole process again, and again I failed.

I installed Adobe’s eReader, and I had the same problem.

There were only three eBook versions available: Microsoft Reader, Adobe Reader, and something I’d never heard of: MobiPocket Reader.

I went to the MobiPocket site, and having determined the reader software seemed legitimate, I gave it a shot: in about 10 minutes I was up and running on both my laptop and my Treo.

Unfortunately, the sale that started it all had passed, and while I decided to splurge on two more of the original nine books I’d wanted, I found the whole experience troubling.

Obviously, several authors (and the selling site) didn’t get my money, and while they might at some later date, they likely will not.

Had I not been ridiculously driven to purchase those eBooks, the first failed attempt might have led to my giving up. I’m going to guess the average consumer might have given up, and if that consumer were trying an eBook purchase for the first time, chances are excellent that person would never try to make a similar purchase again.

Because of all of this, I am sold on the MobiPocket product and intend to avoid the others. As a bonus, MobiPocket also has a converter that I’ve already begun to use to create new items and replace old ones.