SF writer: From e-book skeptic to fan
SF writer James Patrick Kelly, skeptical in the past, is now happily e-booking away on his PDA.
I should say here that I have long been one of those saurians who disliked reading for pleasure from a computer screen. But a couple of months ago, for reasons too boring to mention, I popped for a personal digital assistant (PDA) , mostly to keep track of appointments and addresses when I was away from my desk.
As it happened, shortly after I made the buy, I went to Florida to attend the International Conference on the Fantastic and to soak up some rays. On a whim, I
loaded some ebooks into my new gadget. By the time I got off the plane in Fort Lauderdale I’d fallen in love with my PDA as a reading device. Yes, the screen is smallish but I can change the font at will. Maybe it isn’t exactly ideal for the beach because direct light washes out the backlit screen, but my days of sunbathing are over and this thing is made in the shade. Often as not it’s my book of choice for bedtime reading. And if my wife wants to turn in, we can douse all the lights and I can read from that cheerily lit screen.
At the same time Kelly is interested in the digital rights situation:
If in fact ebooks are our future, then we readers are about to step onto the roller coaster that music fans have been riding for the past few years. When you buy an ebook, what rights are you acquiring? You can lend your paper copy of Asimov’s to your brother-in-law when you’re finished with it, but are you allowed to lend him your ebook version of this magazine?
He’s pointing people to Cory Doctorow’s essay on copyright and other e-book issues.
(Via Asimov’s, Boing Boing and ePublishing Blog.)
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