E-books

Teaching, history and writing I feel are my big focuses in life, but I love technology and science. I'm always looking and reading about new innovations and discoveries for inspiration. That's what I like about sci-fi; I can use existing or upcoming technologies and adapt them for whatever culture I need them.

Here's the coolest new thing I've learned about. This is a device being developed in India that has already attracted a lot of support around the world. Click here for the article.

Anyway, so e-books. I've been slow on catching up with this new trend; I haven't been able to buy a lot of books that aren't textbooks in a while, but I fully support it (not for textbooks, though). My first book is only in e-book form, and my second is soon to follow.

I feel like e-books are just as good as physical books. A story is a story no matter what medium it's told in, whether by mouth, in ink or in pixels on a screen. It's still a testament to the author's creativity and effort.

Just think of the pros of e-books. An e-reader or computer can hold hundreds of books where the physical copies would take up so much space. Instead of carrying only a couple books at a time you can carry your whole library.

One issue I think big companies have with the Internet is people copying and sharing electronic entertainment, whether it be books, music, movies, etc. It's easy to copy and share content on the Internet by its very nature. A great analogy I heard a few years ago is that "creating bits (of data) that are uncopyable is like trying to create water that isn't wet." That's something I've accepted very early in my book's published life. I'd rather people just read an enjoy my work rather than they take the hassle of buying it. That thought leads me to a theory I heard last week that I really agree with, but that's a whole other topic.

Sure, sharing is one thing, but stealing work is another. As a teacher in training, looking out for plagiarism is a big deal to me. That's why I took the trouble of copyrighting my work. To me, its more of a sign that "this is my original work, I did not take this from someone else" than "if you steal this I'm taking you to court." I in no way have the capability or the resources to take someone to court; if someone's making money off of me I'd never know. I stopped caring about money a long time ago.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice day. Short story coming this weekend, and you can copy and share it as much as you want. I'd appreciate your support of my first book and my second book eventually. Editing is going slower than I imagined, but for sure I'll release it this summer.