Over the past 10-11 months, I’ve become a definite digital convert. There was a time not too long ago where I couldn’t even begin to grasp the concept of buying or READING books digitally. I’m too much a fan of having the actual books, I thought. But after lugging around Stephen King‘s 11/22/63 for a couple weeks last year, after having done so with last year’s new Grisham book, and the trouble I had in acquiring the first Walking Dead novel, and so on, I’ve come to see benefits to ebooks…both on an actual ereader (I have a first generation Nook I bought used) as well as my phone (primarily the Nook app for iPhone).
For one thing, the ereader and/or phone are a fixed size, shape, weight. 200 pages or 1,000–size/shape/weight remain the same. The phone fits in my pocket, and I carry it with me pretty much everywhere anyway, so being able to have entire books on it is just bonus–and it’s so much easier to not have to haul a book around and remember to bring it with me and all that.
Equally important is availability, which has been the other selling point for me. Rather than having to run around to a bunch of stores looking for the book, all I have to do is go online and buy the book, and I’ve got access to it, full-text, virtually immediately. No paying extra for shipping, no waiting for shipping; no using gas to go to a physical store hoping they have it. It makes buying the reading experience–the text of the book–simple and convenient.
Or at least, if the book I’m interested in is available as an ebook.
The factor that really, until a few days ago, hadn’t exactly come into play for me.
There’s a new book out just in the last week or two–a prose novelization of The Astonishing X-Men: Gifted; the novelization is written by Peter David, no stranger to X-books. Not too long ago, I impulse-bought the novelization of Marvel’s Civil War, and quite enjoyed it; I was even excited at getting to read it while saving significantly from the $25 price point of the awkward squarish-dimensions of the print edition.
So I was quite surprised this past weekend when I resolved to buy this book to discover there’s no ebook counterpart. Not for the Nook, not for the Kindle…it’s hardcover in-print or nothing. Which is extremely disappointing.
This is not a book I’m prepared to buy in print, at least not first-run at full price; and there are so many graphic novels I’m after that I can’t see buying this instead at full price, nor having yet more shelfspace taken up by it. And this has stopped me dead in my tracks, as far as praising the digital format. I’m not interested in most of the ebook content out there, and it seems like week after week more new digital content (books and otherwise) get shoved at me, but now when I have a specific book in mind that I want to buy and read digitally…no one has it available.
Trying to move past the disappointment and frustration, I decided today to look for The Brothers’ War by Jeff Grubb. I have the old mass-market paperback edition from 1998/1999 that I’ve read a couple times, but I want to re-read it. Though I would very much prefer NOT to have to re-read it as a MMPB, further cracking the spine, and having to wrestle the book to keep it open, constantly one hand firmly grasping it (if not both) to just read it.
But…there are maybe a dozen Magic: The Gathering books in ebook format, and it doesn’t look like ANY of the ones I’d be interested in (basically, the Artifacts, Ice Age, Masquerade, and Invasion Cycle-era books) are available digitally. I don’t know that I’d re-buy every book, re-read the ENTIRE series…but as I’m re-reading old MTG comics for a weekly piece I’m writing for a friend’s blog (Fantasy Rantz), I’m finding myself once again interested in the earlier MTG stories, including The Brothers’ War and possibly the rest of the Artifacts Cycle and maybe Invasion Cycle.
With none of these available and my aversion to their print editions for the moment…I’ve got some digital comics already on this phone, plenty of physical comics, and generally don’t NEED to buy any of these right now. Especially with another Walking Dead novel and the new Grisham book both coming next month, and I still have most of book 4 and all of book 5 of the Song of Ice and Fire series to get through…
Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: amazon, astonishing x-men, barnes and noble, books, digital, ebooks, jeff grubb, kindle, magic: the gathering, nook, Peter David, the brothers' war | 1 Comment »
Comic Reviews by Walt 