In A Perfect World

Digital Facts of Life for Book Lovers

I almost fell out of my chair when I read Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' interview with Deborah Solomon in The New York Times Magazine about the Kindle and digital book sales. Think there's any going back to the glorious preeminence of the printed word? 

Forget it. Game over.

Here's what Bezos said: "For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition. It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books. It’s astonishing."

Yes, it is. No wonder there are a lot of frightened veterans in the book business.

But even as reluctant writers must embrace the pixelated world for connecting with readers -- and must be energetic and creative in how they do it -- they can take solace in one reality that will never change: Compelling stories, engagingly told, will always matter.

And one more thing: If not long ago scoring a deal with a top book publisher was the only road to victory, today there are many paths to success. That's good news.

Moby-Dick is on my iPhone

I am a writer. I believe in the printed word. But I've been trying to wrap my head around the idea that there's no intrinsic reason that words are better appreciated on paper. Call it my survival instinct. 

So in a nod to the earth shifting under our feet, I've been exploring various hand-held electronic devices for viewing books. And, to my surprise, I have come to praise the iPhone for reading a book. I'm not saying that I prefer it in every case -- because I don't -- but consider this:

I am having the best time reading Moby-Dick on my phone. 

On paper, it's more than 800 pages and weighs in at nearly two pounds. That's daunting. But in the bite-sized chunks on my phone, it feels less overwhelming ... and fun.

Stanza, the program that I used to get Herman Melville's classic, tells me exactly how much I've read. Page two of chapter 8? That's 6.4 percent. I can change the background, the color, the size of the font. 

And while standing in line waiting with my daughter to get her the H1N1 vaccine, I pulled out my phone and read Moby-Dick for an hour. Time well-spent that didn't require me to drag the massive tome with me, let alone plan to drag it.

One extra plus: The phone has back-lighting. So on a pleasant evening, I can sit outside and read a book in the dark or lay in bed and read with the lights out.

I won't stop buying "real" books, but I will no longer trash the idea of reading a book electronically. And as Nicholson Baker pointed out in a recent New Yorker piece, when the writing pulls you in, questions about format drift away. That's when the magic takes over and you enter the world of the story.