What 48 Hours with the Nook Color has Taught Me

Yes, it’s true.

I have crossed to the Other Side. I am now the proud owner of an eReader. Yes, me who loves the feel and smell of paper, of browsing the bookstore, of seeing all of my pretties lined up on my bookshelf (and occasionally thrown across the bed so that I can swim in them like Scrooge McDuck in his money vault.)

I had avoided taking the e-book plunge mostly because until now, there wasn’t an eReader that did what I wanted it to. There was the size issue–I wanted something larger than my teeny iPhone, but yet the iPad seemed like overkill. I needed color because I’m visually oriented, and the Kindle’s gray on gray just didn’t do it for me. I needed a device that was more than just an eReader, because it seems like a waste not to. I needed it to be backlit so that I could read in the dark. And, if it wasn’t too much to ask, I needed all of that for a reasonable price.

The Nook Color offered me exactly those things. And then some. Here’s what the Nook Color has taught me so far:

Reading an e-book isn’t any less intimate than reading a paper book.
Reading is a sensory act, and people bond with their books. There’s the eye-catching cover art, the feel of the paper between your fingers as you turn the page, that new book smell that sends shivers down your spine. Yes, you lose some of that with an eReader, but you get so much more in return. You can customize your e-books to fit you. No longer are you tied to a certain font style, size, or color. This may seem trivial, but to me it’s a boon, because I’ve discovered that I can read sans-serif fonts SO much faster than I can read the serif fonts that nearly every paper book uses. And you know that love you feel seeing your favorite books lined up on a shelf? Imagine having that feeling at your fingertips, everywhere you go, and you’ll understand why it’s far too easy to become enamored with this piece of tech.

E-books will fuel the publishing industry, probably sooner than we think.
Yes, there will always be paper books, but in 5 to 7 years, I’m betting they’ll be more of a novelty than e-books are right now. After a ridiculously long early adapter phase (I’m talking almost decades), e-books have finally hit the mainstream. Tech is cool, and tying tech to reading puts books on the same entertainment plane as video games. This could not possibly be a bad thing. With instant access to millions of titles, formatted in the way that makes it easiest for them to read, people will be reading more books, buying more books, sharing more books–assuming books are priced correctly, which brings me to the last piece of eReader enlightenment.

Consumers are sensitive to e-book prices, and rightly so.
My first ebook purchase cost me $11.99 for a book I already owned in paper, and that came out some twenty years ago. This seemed like too much to pay to me, speaking both as a reader and a writer. It hurt the same way it feels to fork over thirty bucks for a new hard cover. Maybe that’s the point, but for some reason, people get grumpy about having to pay over $9.99 for an e-book. I know that this is an artificial price, but I also think it is a fair price since readers are giving up the permanence and absolute ownership of physical books. While browsing e-books, I saw many frustrated readers giving bad reviews to books simply based on price. Some felt bad about it, but they had no other way to make their voices heard. I’m no expert on this by far, but from the arguments I’ve read about e-book pricing, it feels like authors, publishers, and distributors are arguing over how to best slice a pie while there are three more burning up in the oven. Things will work themselves out eventually, however, at least that’s what my economics classes taught me.

So in short, I guess you can say I’m converted. That doesn’t mean that the Nook Color doesn’t have its issues. It’s a bit heavier than a paperback, making it a little awkward to hold for long periods of time. The battery life isn’t all that impressive, and the OS while nice, pales in comparison to the iPad’s. There are extra features, but for now they’re pretty limited. In two year’s time, I’m sure this will all be sorted out, though. We’re on the verge of the perfect eReader, and once that happens, the last of the holdouts won’t have any choice but to make the jump.

So have you converted yet? And what’s your vision of the ideal eReader?

Tags: e-books, eReader