A few days ago, I recognized that I was facing an information emergency which required me to get up to speed on a topic very rapidly. I needed a book, a specific reference-book. My knee-jerk reaction was to place an order for a "tangible" text from Amazon.com and have it delivered overnight, instead of in the usual "3-5 Day UPS" manner.
Now, you might've said, "no, don't do that, just call around to your local Borders, or Barnes and Noble, and pick it up there the same day!" Well, unfortunately, the text that I needed was too specific for those stores (I had surveyed them on previous occasions). It was one of those "long-tail" books that only a dot-com supplier was going to have in inventory.
So, I searched for the specific text that I needed in Google and found that it was available as an "E-book," from, well, Ebooks.com. I ultimately purchased from Ebooks.com, but Amazon.com also had downloadable versions of many of their physical books. And, in hindsight, I probably should have shopped Amazon for the same downloadable book before making the purchase; Amazon turned out to have been substantially cheaper.
Two minutes after making payment, I had the text of my "book" right in front of me on my large, flat-screen computer monitor. My stress born from a lack of information subsided as I started to read, and slowly got on top of the subject-matter in-question.
The Electronic Book turned out to be 360 pages in length. But, as I scrolled its pages upward, one after the other, I realized that I was reading it more rapidly than I would a physical book. And, I didn't have any of the psychological burden that might come from having a large, 360-page book on my lap that I needed to absorb before morning. When my eyes grew fatigued, I zoomed in on the text using the Adobe Reader; my fatigue dissipated. When I needed to "highlight" something in the electronic text, I used the highlight function in the comment section of the Adobe program; no need for Highlighter-Brand markers unless I wanted to get a noxious-fume buzz. I ended up running through 200 pages like they were nothing and finished the whole 360-page text of not-particularly-appealing, non-fiction material before bed. I was resoundingly impressed with the Ebook experience.
Article comments
1 - DrPat
I see the thought behind your choice of link, but how about B00004Y9RU [CD: Slave to the Wage]; B000005DXF [CD: Up Against It]; or even B0000AYGBJ [DVD Deadline, 2002 horror short: "TV news crew, looking for a 'scoop', discover a trashed office space, with only one survivor to tell them what happened. But are they alone... "]
2 - Temple Stark
hey - at least we're not looking at Charles Barkley and his gut in chains on the cover of SI ;-)
3 - DrPat
[shudder]
Man, Temple, I was eating breakfast!
4 - Victor Plenty
What was Chris saying with his choice of link? The mind reels at so many possibilities.
Is it a subtle philosophical point about the tendency for pornography to lead the way into exploiting new technologies for profit? Is it an ironic commentary on the circumstances that led to his crisis of panicky book buying? Is it an important and very personal message to his potential future romantic partners?
Or is it merely a sign that he really didn't look very closely before picking an ASIN, any ASIN, just to avoid getting yelled at by the Blogcritics editors?
5 - DrPat
I loved this in the review: Find out why Romance Reviews Today says, "McKenna is full of compassionate characters, unashamed of their desires and sincerely concerned with others' well-being... wonderful!"
I'd rather find out why "Romance Reviews Today" is reviewing B&D-lit!
6 - chris franklin
I was looking for my Amazon link, right. So I go to Amazon.com and enter "electronic books" in to their search bar. This
-Office Slave- deal was one of the first electronic books that they listed, so I just copied the link info in to this post and hit publish.
"Or is it merely a sign that he really didn't look very closely before picking an ASIN, any ASIN, just to avoid getting yelled at by the Blogcritics editors?" ...Ahh, you are correct!
The book I was talking about in the post was a legal reference book on depositions.
Oh well, anyway, point is, I dig Ebooks.