Hanif on Media

When it comes to what to read these days I find myself simultaneously a traditionalist and a technophile, fighting a losing battle against the biggest blockbuster of this holiday season: the electronic book.

— From my latest commentary in Florida Weekly

See it here. See this week’s entire Digital Edition here. See the page here. Or just keep reading:

Can I give up the printed page? Power me up

C.B. Hanif

December 16, 2010

When it comes to what to read these days I find myself simultaneously a traditionalist and a technophile, fighting a losing battle against the biggest blockbuster of this holiday season: the electronic book.

Count me among the holdouts, a defender of the printed volume. I like the touch, the feel, the tradition, the universality of The Real Thing.

It’s a longstanding love affair. What was that one thing I desperately missed for weeks that long-ago summer, when for whatever reason I was grounded while my friends were outside playing baseball? A book.

Any book. Not the convenience and great features of the new reading contraptions that keep singing a siren’s song to this technology enthusiast.

Yes, I confess. Part of my problem is I love things electronic.

Shipwrecked on a deserted island? I easily can think of the single volume I’d want to have along. I’d rather have my laptop with wireless access to all the world’s libraries.

And I don’t know anyone else who, even back in the early ’80s, rushed over to Radio Shack to pick up that combination car stereo and CB radio.

But I’m trying hard, very hard, to remain Old School on this matter.

You might envision me as the Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz,” only this time chanting:

“I do believe in books, I do believe in books, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do!”

And by book, again, I mean the print volume.

My dissonance was only accentuated when I stopped by the bustling Barnes & Noble bookstore at Legacy Place on PGA Boulevard.

It was nice to walk in and see all the people perusing books. Real books.

Tables in and around the store’s café were filled with conversations and/or readers. In an aisle, two stacks of books had proved just the right height to provide a makeshift chair for one engaged gentleman.

It simply was a comfortable place for a reader; as cozy as any library, rivaling many a beach.

And at a display of B&N’s proprietary electronic book reader, the Nook, there was a knowledgeable, articulate and witty saleswoman, Sandra, demonstrating its numerous features by way of explaining why it is one of the hottest gifts.

In fact, even as I began crafting this column a couple of days later, a New York Times email pushed to my Blackberry smart phone was proclaiming:

“Forget those bland ‘black text on gray, no touch screen’ e-book readers. Here’s Nook Color, a reader from Barnes & Noble with a color touch screen.”

The Times’ David Pogue was saying in his “State of the Art” column (almost as much a must-read as my Florida

Weekly colleague Bradford Schmidt’s “The Mashup”), that:

“E-book readers like the Amazon Kindle may be all the rage this holiday season. But five years from now, they’ll seem as laughably primitive as the Commodore 64.”

In touting the new Nook as major progress for humanity, Pogue concluded, “Yes, five years from now, we’ll laugh at this reader, too — but not derisively. As we unwrap our all-color, alltouch screen e-book readers under the 2015 tree, we’ll remember this machine as the one that showed the way.”

It was beginning to sink in. The question no longer is what to read, but how.

A few steps away, however, at the Eissey Campus of Palm Beach State College, came yet another take.

“The misperception that people buy more e-books than printed books is widespread and the e-book publishers do nothing to dispell it,” said David Pena, director of the school’s Library Learning Resources Center.

“They want to make people think print is unhip and on the way out — much bigger profits in selling an electronic file for $9.99 than a printed book for the same price,” said the soft-spoken but always erudite Dr. Pena.

“In 2009, total U.S. book sales were about $24 billion, e-book sales accounted for only $313 million of that. Of course e-book sales are growing fast, but they’re not even 10 percent of the total.

“PBSC libraries offer over 30,000 e-books to our students, but e-book hits account for less than 10 percent of our total circulation. Academic librarians can tell you that everyone talks about e-books, but students will choose a print book over an e-book almost every time.

“E-books and e-readers are most convenient and useful for light reading — best-selling fiction and the like,” Dr. Pena said. “But a printed book is much better for intense reading and serious study requiring note taking, underlining, rereading, flipping back and forth, etc.

“PBSC libraries offer Nooks, Kindles, and iPads with preloaded e-books for checkout by students. There’s plenty of interest in the devices, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who borrows from us becomes a regular user of e-readers or goes out and buys one for themselves.”

All that warmed the heard of your correspondent. One reason I tend to hold out against being an early adopter of the new electronics is that the gadgets are coming too fast and furious.

No, my Blackberry isn’t perfect. But I don’t want an iPhone — I think?

I love my Mac laptop. But during our last Social Media Roundup session over at Store Self Storage and Wine Storage, “Branding Professor” Patrick Barbanes of Really Simple Social Media suggested I give an iPad a try.

I easily could envision his expected result. I’d be like Mikey of the old TV cereal commercial: “He likes it!”

Problem is, I don’t wanna like it. Not unless I really need it.

Still, I suspect I already know the outcome of this e-story.

It’s probably just a matter of time before Sandra has another sale.

— C.B. Hanif