Why is my Kindle Library so unappealing?

Like many other bookaholics I have bought a Kindle and have quite a few books on there waiting to be read. They are historical fiction books that were offered free for a limited time, other books I thought at the time I could not wait to read, and books about my craft of writing. I intend to get around to reading them all, or I wouldn't have downloaded them.

So why haven't I?


The answer is, there is an equally large To-Be-Read pile sitting on my bookcase. These are paperback books. More often than not, if I want a book I will go to this pile, rather than the Kindle. This is because I am in fact browsing again for my choice of book, and in this browsing process of what to read next, the cover and the blurb  makes a big impact on my choice all over again.

Seeing a typed list of which clothes to wear in the morning is not the same as looking at them hanging in the wardrobe.

So very often it is a book from the paperback pile that I will choose, and the Kindle books stay unread unless I am going on a long-haul flight. After all, most of my reading is done at home, and when I am packing to go on a short trip, my choosing is done at home.

This lack of appeal on the device makes no difference to the publishers - after all they have already made their sale. But it does make a difference to writers. If someone buys a paper book, there is a good chance it will be read - or recycled via a charity or thrift shop to someone who will read it. On the kindle, a book can get lost in a list for a long time, and as it takes up little space, may never be read.

The World Book Night Books I gave away

When I gave out books for World Book Day, they were all physical books. A physical book jogs the memory - hey, I'm here! So I like to think many of them will be read, even though I gave them away free. I collected them from Arnside Library where a big part of the Library experience is browsing. I cannot imagine a library where I just read titles.

Arnside Library 

As a writer, I want to be read, rather than just stored on a machine, so it seems to be that the more sensory data there is with a book, the more likely it is to be read. I like to browse my books, so the sooner the Kindle can come up with this browsing function, complete with colour cover image and graphics, the better.

What do others think? Have you many books sitting unread on the Kindle?

The Physicality of Books

Welcome to She-Writes members on the Blog Hop. Sorry if you are not from the UK and the TV programmes I mention in this post are a mystery to you.....

I was un-surprised to hear Claire Balding say on My Life in Books on BBC2 that the physical presence of a book really matters to her. She held up an old gold-tooled tome of "The Myths of Greece and Rome" and asked her fellow guest to sniff it, which he duly did.

And in another episode of the programme Giles Coren talked about how he read from his father's edition of "The Great Gatsby" at his funeral and clearly the fact that it was that particular edition was very important to him.

For me the books that matter to me are inseparable from their covers because I pick up and put down that book umpteen times whilst reading it. I have the opportunity each time I handle it for the cover to go into my subconscious mind, and become indelibly associated with the story.

Each time someone mentions "Jane Eyre" I have a very specific edition in mind - the one my grandma gave me which was in a blue leather binding with a red sewn-in silk bookmark. It was a birthday gift and I treasured it. And if you were to say "Wolf Hall" then it's the black version, not the white.

When I go on review sites such as Goodreads I get irritated if I can't find the right edition of the book I want to review. Which probably explains why, now that I have a Kindle, I have mostly ignored it and gone out and bought the real book instead. I am still more attracted by the actual book itself in a shop than the virtual book, even though the latter may be cheaper.

You would think that now I am moving house I would have learnt my lesson and be a grand supporter of the virtual revolution - here are about half the boxes which are packed with my books ready to move house. And I'm afraid there are more boxes upstairs. And some books I can't bear to pack until the last minute, because I might need them for the research I'm doing at the moment. (By the way, the blur at bottom right is the cat running to escape being boxed with everything else.)

For me books are furniture as well as entertainment. They are my chosen wall-ornament, and I enjoy looking at the nice row of colourful spines and interesting typefaces. For me a room is unfurnished unless it has at least one bookcase. Someone told me it was a rather pompous way of displaying your education and ridiculously middle-class. But putting my Kindle on the coffee table just won't do.

And I'm so glad that I was able to give my daughter the hardback of my first novel - and hope in time it will be an heirloom of some curiosity value. In fact people are predicting that first edition hardbacks will be a very good investment in the future when digital books are the norm.

At Christmas I still wrapped books for my sister even though she has an e-reader. You can't unwrap a digital book and it does not have the same concrete presence. There is just something about the physicality of books.

Thoughts about my new Kindle

Whilst at a conference another writer showed me her Kindle, and its lovely hot pink leather cover. Initially attracted by the aforesaid lovely cover, despite my dyed-in-the-wool technophobia, I went over for a closer look. At that point another writer (male) then whipped out his coverless Kindle, and began to outline the advantages of e-reading, its functions and features, gadgets and buttons. I let him try to explain the ins and outs of downloading, whispernet and so forth, whilst dying to ask, does the cover come in other colours?

Anyway, the upshot of the three-way conversation is that I now have my own Kindle (complete with burgundy leather cover). The first thing I noticed when shopping via Amazon was how different the top 100 books look in the US and the UK. In the US - thrillers, cook-books and erotica. In the UK, reprints of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Great Expectations, Sense and Sensibility, The Iliad by Homer, and Mrs. Beeton's Household Management. This is I'm sure more to do with what you can download free than anything else, but it painted a wonderful picture of the States as full of thrill-seeking, hedonists who enjoy a good meal, whilst the English are sensible but with great expectations, a penchant for latin, and with households that need managing in the Victorian manner. (Could there be some truth there, I wonder?)

Anyway, what the Kindle is good for from a historical novelist's viewpoint is that you can download obscure out of print historical documents and books that you might need for reference. On my Kindle I now have an etymological dictionary (downloaded free), several plays by 17th century playwrights such as Kyd and Middleton, (bought for pennies) Pepy's Diary, some obscure papers on sword fighting, and various other research PDF's downloaded from various universities. It is much nicer to do my research with them all loaded neatly onto the handy slim screen, and I can carry most of my research, including the stalwart Wikipedia, now in one volume. What I miss is being able to browse, and the fact that I can usually remember whether a line I'm looking for is on the left or right page as I am reading, thus making it eaier to find.

The Kindle is useless too for those lovely illustrated non-fiction books which show you things like how a flintlock pistol works, or pictures of costume or art and architecture. But for text, I have to say it is easy to read and has some great features like a built in dictionary so you can click on a word you are unfamiliar with and it will give you a definition.

And won't I look cool when I finally get my pebble glasses and zimmer frame and can use an e-reader instead of carrying great sackfuls of Large Print books around!

The cost of e-books is a hot potato right now. In my previous post on piracy I wrote that you can already download a pirated version of my book. In this post from the Guardian, you can see that readers want their books as cheaply as possible, and have been giving expensive e-books by well-known authors 1 star reviews in order to protest at the cost of books for the Kindle. These readers may turn to pirated books if the ebook prices remain as high as they are. But I can guarantee that none of those readers are also writers!

So far apart from out of print or classic works I have downloaded "The Wilding" by Maria McCann at almost the full price of a paperback, for the convenience of having it there whilst travelling. And I have no doubt that if I like it, it will get 5 stars and a good review from me on Amazon. I, like everyone else, want cheap books for my Kindle, but not at the expense of living writers whose work and creativity I am prepared to pay for.

As I am new to the Kindle, any tips, tricks or thoughts will be much appreciated, provided they are in plain english and not in technojargon!

More about Amazon's grip on the book world

I went into one of my local bookshops last week to talk about them stocking my book, and ended up in a very interesting conversation about distributors. My local bookseller had had an argument with one of his distributors because the price they were selling him certain books at was undercut by Amazon. His view (unsurprisingly) was that he would not buy the book from the distributor if his customers could purchase it more cheaply from Amazon than he could buy it from the distributor at cost. Hence these particular books will not appear on his shelves, and the relationship between bookseller and distributor has broken down. Macmillan's distributor is not in this category right now, but it seems as though certain books may never appear in a bookshop but only online, as sellers would make a loss if they stocked them.
There is also an interesting article on Anita Davison's blog about the new Amazon digital text facility that allows anyone to upload a book to the kindle. You can find this on  http://www.thedisorganisedauthor.blogspot.com/
Personally, the editing process has been of immense value to me - and I shudder to think of all those un-edited books available to buy online.....

I have to say, I myself do not think of Amazon only as the bad guy because I use it myself to get those obscure reference books not stocked by my local shop. In a small village like Windermere with an ailing Smith's and only one small bookshop full of tourist fodder and maps of the Lake District, this is often the case. And in a way, if non-fiction books that may not have a big market could be available on Kindle - that would be great, and I hope this is where its strength will lie. Those obscure titles by enthusiasts such as "The Westmorland Slate Mining Disaster" etc, that we novelists find so useful!