Prompt: Ebooks and Audiobooks

Ebooks are an interesting entity for me. I love technology and am a geek with any tech device but I’m not into ebooks. I love the fact that I can take books with me on trips with just a small device but,  normally, I don’t read ebooks. That being said, I love that ebooks exist and I am all for people loving them – just not enough to make my physical books obsolete!

As I made reference to before, using ebooks doesn’t let you see or feel the weight of the print book. If you are looking for a certain size of book, you won’t be able to gauge the length or the size. If someone is looking for a small, light read that won’t take long and they choose a Wally Lamb ebook, they will be in for a shock! You can see how many pages are in an ebook so that does help if you can visualize what that number of pages translates into size. As far as genre, many sci-fi novels, for example, are quite large and, as a result, are able to go into much detail in storyline and description. This, I believe, is an unofficial characteristic of sci-fi novels and that is something that is lost when reading an ebook. Another detail about sci-fi novels that may be lost when reading an ebook is the font used in the title and headers of chapters. These are not always used and some ebooks may, in fact, incorporate them but fonts for certain genres give a feeling about the book and its contents. This may be lost when reading ebooks.

Changing fonts, line spacing and color in an ebook is nice; people who need large type don’t have to look for the large type edition, they simply enlarge their text. However, this also affects the size of the book. Line spacing will affect this as well. I think being able to change the color of text is a good thing, as well as the dimming and brightening of your device’s screen. For people who have a hard time reading black on white, or white on black, or have color blindness, changing the color is a great way to allow the reader to enjoy reading that much more. Some people also just like to have cool colors when they read!

However, color does affect the tone of the story. Think about reading a horror novel in a bright yellow font. First of all, yellow is associated with the sun and happiness and could make the tone of your horror novel not as scary – not to mention hard to see with the yellow text. But then imagine reading that same novel in red type. All of the bloody parts might be scarier and more tactile. Or black text which has a dark feel to it. It really is amazing what color can do for a book.

Along these same lines, narrator and music on audiobooks can bring forth or take away from the story. If the narrator is pleasant to listen to and hasn’t recorded the book in their noisy home, chances are you’ll enjoy it. If it’s someone who you can’t stand the sound of their voice because of an accent or they have a nasal voice, you won’t enjoy the book or even not want to finish it. Maybe you don’t like the actor who is reading the book and you just can’t get past that get into the book. Music is important if you are going to have it in an audiobook because the music must fit the genre and be included in the correct parts of the book. It also must be produced well. Tinny music does not bode well for an audiobook, and I can attest to that!

I think one appeal that both ebooks and audiobooks share is the lightness or absence of a physical book. Both of these are good to take on trips so you don’t have to pack a ton of weight. Also both can be adjusted for the reader’s enjoyment; ebooks with font, color and line spacing and audiobooks with volume.

As I stated at the beginning, I love technology and am wholeheartedly supportive of ebooks and audiobooks. I use more audiobooks as I have a commute but I am all for ebooks, too. I just love the feel of a physical book, I love going to the store and lifting them and holding the weight of them and turning them over and over to see which one I would like to buy the most – that is the appeal of physical books for me and ebooks just don’t have that. But it is a book and I do read them every so often just to stay abreast of the changing technology.