My library in my bag?

Despite my computer and game playing tendencies, the joys of literacy appeal to me more than drink or fame. Several years and many houses ago I wanted desperately to carry my entire library, an ever expanding one, in my backpack -- ostensibly to ease escape to Canada when the United States institutes the draft (again), it's hard to carry a hundred pounds of books and not be conspicuous.

At that time the most affordable eBooks were Passive LCD screened tablets with poor battery life. Heather, ever the loving and pragmatic woman, told me it'd be easier to switch back to windows than convince her I should get that book! So I resigned myself to trudging my heavy books around the world, until one day last year while watching dl.tv's CES special Sony announced their plans to bring their e-ink books to the United States

At the time of writing this, my Sony Reader left Gardena, CA and should be here tomorrow afternoon. After a thorough geeking I'll be sure to give you my thoughts.

I choice 1 day express shipping because it was free. The fact Sony was having a special of $50 off their normally $350 Reader is a telling bit of info you should consider. When the concept of ebooks originally sprang up, technophiles espoused their coming as the end of regular wood pulp books. Considering the heavy burden I have for class, this future has yet to pass. and like all good bloggers, I have a theory!

Digitizing media is hard. It's really really hard for consumers to digitize their media in any meaningful way. "But Chris, I ripped my entire music library in no time flat!" *ahem* Congratulations you succeeded in trans-coding your entire library. Music producers have been digitizing their old masters for years to make sure it sounds good. But books! Oh my, books are a frustrating beast for the consumer to rip! There is no easy way for me to take my books and encode their text into a pdf or txt file for consumption on either my computer or even the Reader.

People don't like paying for things they already have, which is why the Sony book store will not be as successful as the iTunes music store, or for that matter why the iPod is selling millions and ebook readers are still quite niche. Personally I am optimistic for the digital reading revolution, and have a suggestion about the intermediary to entice more people to the new form of reading.

Since digitizing our libraries is so gosh-darn hard, we need some company who can do the job for us and not charge us an arm and a leg for their efforts. How much would you pay to get a digital form of your book you already own? A dollar, two? Assuming the company isn't actually converting giant warehouses into pdfs, but instead licensing the media from the distributors. Surely they wouldn't mind getting some more money for your purchases.

Until that time, I can either rebuy all my books (ha, good luck!) or pirate PDf forms of these books I already own, which is a ethical grey zone. I'll write up a review in about a week.
In the mean time you should be playing some Bioshock!