typo(s), tendency and text

I recently have become the owner of an e-book-reader. The "nook", which is developed and sold by Barnes & Nobles. I have been hesitating for a very long time if I should buy such a device, and which one. What has been putting me in this position is not that I don't have use for it. Nor that I can't pay for it. Seen from a capitalist market POV, this makes me a customer.

What has been putting me in this position, and what continues to be a great problem for me in acquiring ebooks in a "white" market way, is: DRM on ebooks. The decision-makers in the publishing industry who are dinosaurs. Who think they can decide for me what I can read on which screen, in which manner and on which medium.

I like paper. I really do. I am a big fan of paper hacks, book binding and paper as a note taking tool. But my fandom only bears so far. I do not wish to carry a big stack of heavy paper books with me when I am traveling, which I do. Or when moving. I do not wish to break my back, or the backs of my helpers. Not every book is worth reading twice, and when it comes to design and typesetting only very few books are that beautiful that you want to collect them because typesetter, printers and book binders have done such a good work. So the ever so often sigh of librarians ("but, what happens to the books!"), well... Let's just say, I am not very worried.

So, why the nook. Right now there are only two devices to my knowledge that feature what is important for me in an ebook reader on the market. (Like, really on the market, not long waiting lists for especially interested people.) Both the Amazon Kindle, and the Barnes & Noble nook have wifi and 3G capability. Both of them have a long battery life when reading, and both seems to be somewhat longlasting. Also, both of them have e-ink screens. (I consider the iPad to be crippleware and not an ebook due to little battery capacity and backlighting. I like shiny devices. But not this one so far.)

I like the nook better, simply because he has a touch screen instead of a keyboard. And because he runs with Android as OS, which also runs on my phone. Although I do not wholeheartedly agree with Google on development decisions and privacy issues, Android is pretty great when it comes to smart phones. Its somewhat open character makes problems set by Google and carriers circumventable.

What made me hesitate to buy either of the two devices, was the decision of the two book stores (and others along with them) and the book publishers to lock down the reading material as much as possible. Every ebook you can buy on Amazon are only readable on the Kindle reader. And you can only buy ebooks from Barnes & Noble if you have a US IP adress and a US billing adress.

Of course, there are other book stores. But a lot of pubishers have said no to selling their material outside the US. I fail to find the appropriate words for this stupidity. I am still looking for ways to buy books. Not to talk about checking out ebooks in a library. Apparently inhabitants of Denmark and Sweden can already do that. But in Norway, librarians and politicians are still busy with letting themselves get scared off by the lobbyists of publishing houses.

I don't want to be locked to Amazon. I buy the occasional book there,
because they have almost everything. I knew before about how tightly the Kindle is linked to Amazon. But experiencing how you really can't use any book that they offer in their store on your *reader, whatever reader that might be, made me really angry. And sure, there are ways of circumventing the lockdown of the Barnes & Noble store. But I ask: why should they be able to do that? Why should publishers and book stores be allowed to be so strict? Why would anyone want to prevent someone from reading a book. Let alone a book he or she wants to purchase?

Ebooks can be a great device for students, people with problems in reading can increase the font size to their liking. If people have their books with them, they will have so many good reading experiences, it could actually make reading popular. Or at least better apprehensible for those with attention deficits. You have a full-fledged full text search at your finger tip with every book that you read. What kind of information society locks down reading of books?

People, some of them librarians or teachers, are worried that people read less books now that there is the internet. Well, do you have to kill trees and emit lots of chlorine in the water, not to speak about the resources used for Transportation of physical books? Only to read a texts longer then 20 pages in a proper more or less linear manner?

Even if you are not against DRM in general. Trust me: You don't want DRM on ebooks.