On the subject of e-readers, I suspect the world population divides neatly into two halves. On one side of the chasm, hell will freeze over and Accrington Stanley will win the FA Cup before anyone will even touch one. And on the other, that looks like fun, can I have one for Christmas?
I was a member of the first group — in fact, its president and hon. secretary — until offered a Kobo for free, complete with Penguin’s new range of dedicated e-books. Like all sensible publishers, Penguin has already dipped its corporate toe in the e-book market, but this new range of ‘Shorts’ and ‘Specials’ is different, in that none of the titles is available in paper form. Unless they sell in huge numbers, in which case they probably will be.
The assumption behind all this is that we are all so busy, and have so little time to read proper books, that these squibs, none of which would fill more than 70 pages if printed on paper, will satisfy us during a hurried lunch hour or a sweaty commute.
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