Reading an e-book

Interviewer: Every day we hear about new technological advances - mobile phones that tell us where the caller is, or smart houses -even smart clothes! - and those of you that use the Internet may already be familiar with e-books. We have award-winning novelist Jonathan Keene with us in the studio today. Jonathan, can you tell us more?

JK:Well, I can tell you what an e-book is - it's a whole book reproduced on the Net, which you either download and read, or, if you're lucky, you have a portable reading device, like a mini­computer screen, and you read from there.

Interviewer:As a writer of fiction, how do you feel about this kind of technology, Jonathan?

JK:I'm afraid I have to say that I can't stand it! It takes all the excitement out of reading. At the moment, reading an e-book means choosing from a list selected by the publishers. In a bookshop, you choose. And then how do you make that choice? You look at the jacket - it's got a cover design that attracts you, you might like the colours, for instance ... well, then you open the book ... you read what it says about the author on the inside, or read about the book itself, or what the critics have said ... you turn the pages, you read a line here, a paragraph there, you browse ... you may meet a friend and talk ... that's what reading's all about, isn't it? Now, just compare that experience with reading some pages downloaded from your PC!

Interviewer: Sorry to break in, Jonathan, but don't e-books give writers the opportunity to avoid going through publishers? Isn't it going to make more books available to us at a much lower price?

JK: Well, yes and no. First of all, most publishers won't allow that to happen, and secondly, even if they did, the Net would be flooded with writing and it would be impossible for the average reader to find a good read. In addition, the technology involved isn't fully developed yet, and portable reading devices are very expensive. What publishers and authors are expecting people to do at the moment is to download a whole book, or an instalment, from the Web ... and that's where, for me, the whole disadvantage in e-books lies. As I said before, the appearance of a book is part of the experience of reading it. Think of the bedtime story for children, for example. A child wants to touch the book, to turn the pages, to look at the brightly coloured illustrations and to colour them in or add more pictures. Or throw the book down if he wants to. A pile of computer printouts just doesn't have the same magic. If we are concerned about literacy levels and we want to get children reading, we need to make reading attractive on all levels .. and the materials must be cheap and durable.

Books are not just storybooks, either. What about schoolbooks? Not all children have the financial means to equip themselves with portable reading devices, or even PCs. If we didn't have traditional books, thousands of children would have no access to education.

Or gifts. Many books are given as special gifts ... some of them are very beautifully presented editions on art, architecture or travel, which people use as decorative objects in their homes, and pick up now and again to look through. However good the graphics, an e-book can't serve the same purpose.

Or reference books. There are many reference works available online - and to be frank; I think that this is where e-books work best - but still, when you look something up in a real book you always tend to read other items around the one you have searched for, so you learn more. Online, you go straight into the information you have requested and nothing more.

What I really feel is that e-books only serve one purpose - that is, providing information - while the traditional book does that and much more ... it's part of a social occasion. Paperbacks are light, cheap and convenient to carry around with us. E-books, on the other hand, are difficult to handle and aren't available to everyone. And for the time being, it requires expensive equipment to be able to access them. (3 300 )