Kindle: the new e-book reader

What is this?
To kindle... to light a fire, to grow flames from very little. Kindling... the small, easily-lit bits of wood or paper used to light a fire. To animate, to inflame.

So, calling a new electronic book reader a 'Kindle' implies... what? That a new love of reading will be kindled by this device? The name certainly hints at something new.

And that 'something new' is where I am divided on this matter.

Reading is nothing new. I myself have been doing it for a good number of years and I am given to understand that others before me have discovered meaning in all those funny squiggles.
I am a book lover. I love books. The very sight of books excites me and I become positively giddy inside a library. It isn't just the words; it is the feel of the paper, the binding, the smell, the weight.

More than that, to own a book is to possess it. There are many, many people like me who cannot bear to part with a book, even if they know they are never going to read it again. To give it away would be like losing a friend. A book is a world more than the words which physically inhabit it.

So how, then, is this electronic device going to kindle something that a book cannot? How can it replace the joy felt when a new book is opened for the first time? How can something so cold and sterile take the place of something so beautifully tactile as a book?

Ah, so back to that 'something new.'

A Kindle cannot replace a book for the simple fact that a Kindle is an electronic device and a book is a book. Printing still has not replaced manuscript illumination. The production of hand made and bound books is enjoying something of a renaissance. The British Parliament still record their laws on vellum as it is far more durable than paper.

So instead, what new experiences can the Kindle offer?

Imagine you were travelling for a year (lucky thing). You would be able to fit every Lonely Planet ever written and several small libraries in your rucksack. You'd feel like a geek on the beach but you'd still have a straight spine at the end of it all.

Imagine you're going to a conference. Before you board the plane you have downloaded all the relevant papers plus background chapters of books. It doesn't matter that you don't have the actual hard copies: you don't want your house filled with books about the hydraulic analysis of unsteady flow in pipe networks anyway.

Imagine you're a computer nerd. Books about C++ and suchlike are out of date by the time they even get to the printers. You can download e-books the moment they become available and delete them when they're obsolete. Without chopping down a single tree.

I would even like to remain optimistic about the future of a publishing industry that has such a low-cost method to reach new readers.

I'm not rushing out to buy a Kindle but neither am I sneaking out at the dead of night, burning pitchfork in hand, to destroy them. Let's see what, exactly, is kindled by this e-book revolution.


Any thoughts?

Most recent rejection letter

My most recent rejection letter was a particularly lovely one.

'Maynard Hill' is vividly imagined and well-written...

This is high praise from an industry where anonymous compliments slips are the norm. I've seen the length of the letter, however, and I know there is a But coming.

... but although I enjoyed reading it I'm afraid to say that it's not for us.

Then there's the usual blurb about the competitive marketplace and the cordial, but standard ending:

We are sorry to disappoint you and wish you the best of luck in securing an agent to champion your work and find you a publisher.

I added it to the pile, feeling that the workshops I have booked onto on "How to Get Published" at the Cheltenham Literature Festival are probably long overdue. I have been sending my novel around the literary agents on the advice of the Artists' and Writers' Yearbook but I can't help thinking that I must be missing a trick. The pile of rejection letters nods wisely at me. Money well spent, it intones sagely.



Certainly I wasn't given the elixir of life at today's workshops and neither was I handed the gilded key to the magical kingdom of The Waterstones' Front Table. I wasn't told much I didn't already know. But. There's something about sitting in a room with the motley crew of the Good Ship Hope that gives the aspiring writer a sense of solidarity. We swap stories, we laugh. We have colleagues!
Writers don't really have colleagues. This can be one of the best and the worst aspects of writing. It's an intensely lonely world. However, I have no competition in my workplace; three days ago I was named Employee of the Month and that was on top of my recent promotion to Chief Writer. Soon I hope to be made Chief Writer Extrodinaire.
I have certainly taken some good lessons away from today's workshops by Jo Herbert, editor of the Artists' and Writers' Yearbook, and Alison Baverstock, who has written books on the subject and used to work in publishing herself. One thing that was particularly hammered home was that we need to wear an entirely different hat to sell ourselves to a world concerned by shrinking profit margins and increasing competition. Forget Keats, think Alan Sugar.
That seems to be one of the main problems for writers: the sort of people who sit in dusty little studies talking over plot developments with their Weeping Fig pot plant are seldom the types who could sell coal to Newcastle (cider to Sommerset, hippies to Totnes).

My covering letter certainly needs revisiting. In the meantime, I have a weekend of Pitching your Writing Idea. A whole weekend? Is that really necessary? The pile of rejection letters nods meaningfully.