Self Publishing, Ebooks, and Emotions

My wonderful spendiferous husband surprised me this past Christmas with a Kindle Fire, which I'm loving to pieces. And for my birthday he bought me an Amazon Prime membership which has lots of perks that enhance my Fire. One of those perks is access to the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, where once a month I get to pick an ebook to download, read for free, and then return to get a new one next month. I'm not one to pass up perks, so I wanted to make sure that I'm using my membership to the fullness of its capabilities. 

I perused the list of available books and found one that sounded interesting. It was rated 4.5 stars, I read the sample and the story seemed a little off but decent so I used my monthly allotment and got it. As I continued to read the story was pretty good. There were some grammar mistakes and I thought it really could have used a better editor. But I've picked up lots of books from the library that fell into a similar category (I tend to like these books, just because they make me feel my publishing dream is not a pipe one). Then I got to the end of the book and was reading the acknowledgements. Toward the bottom of the page there was a note that said something like "Thank you ______ for introducing me to the world of self publishing" and it made sense. It felt off and like it needed an editor because it didn't have one and needed it badly. I thought that maybe just because the author could publish the book, didn't mean it was ready to be read. I believe there is value in editors, and agents, and publishers.

As technology advances there is a lot in life that changes. During those changes you have to decide if you are going to embrace the new things and discard the old, or dig in your heals and shun the new things to cling to the old, or find some happy medium somewhere in the middle. In publishing right now there are huge fights between those embracing the new and those clinging to the old. I hope that in the end we have some sort of happy medium.

I love ebooks because they are fast, don't take up physical space, and I can carry my entire library with me wherever I go. But I also love physical books.

I love that this book on my shelf was my mother's.

                                                                                          

When I pick it up, I love that this one

feels different than this one.  

I love looking through my box of books in the basement and how I can remember the person I was the first time I read them just by seeing the cover and picturing where they sat in my room. I love seeing books at my parent's house with the spines split in half so that they could both read the book at the same time. I love to read and part of that is the emotional connection created between me and the stuff the book is made of. I hope that in the change of technology that piece is never taken away from me.