eBooks: A Partial and Personal History
With a nod to Terry Brooks
I just about burned my house down once because I love books so much.
I am one of those people who will sacrifice sleep if the asshole who wrote the novel I’m immersed in ended yet another chapter on a cliffhanger. Fuck! Gotta keep going. I’ve been that way since I was a teen and discovered Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. Yeah, I know he kinda ripped off The Lord of the Rings, but lots of people did that. Terry was my introduction to the realm of fantasy beyond that of Roald Dahl and the tale of a kid with the same name as me and some huge ass peach.
I didn’t have to hide under the covers with a flashlight. I’m Gen X and my parents did not give a shit what I did. I had a light on my nightstand and would read until all hours. Then I moved in with my girlfriend (now wife) when I was 23, and it wasn’t exactly polite to have this bright light on while she was trying to sleep. It was 1991, and I bought this book reading light that, speaking of lights, was light on the safety inspections. It attached to the book but had a power cord that ran to a battery pack. I used it for a while and it was fine, but I did notice the battery pack—I think it took a couple of AAs—could get kind of warm. I fell asleep reading one night neglecting to turn the light off. A couple of hours later I awoke to the smell of burning carpet. I guess it wasn’t a house, but an apartment building. Being that I live in Calgary, where it is dry as [insert your favorite Ben Shapiro joke here], I always have a glass of water on my nightstand. So, I doused it and was all what a piece of shit you almost killed us.
Reading lights got better and less hazardous to one’s health, and then so did e-readers. My wife, a technophile, was an early adopter.
If you want a full history of eBooks, there is a Wikipedia page. I will say that the Amazon Kindle didn’t come on the scene with books on a screen until 2007, and now they have about a 75% market share. But this is a more personal history. Sony beat them to market by a year, and I remember that was my wife’s first one, but it wasn’t the first eBook. The Rocket eBook was the first handheld eBook; it came out in 1998, could hold ten books, and sold for a whopping $499. How times have changed.
I had to wait for times to change some more before I’d adopt an eBook. My wife’s old Sony seemed pretty clunky. I was not impressed. I don’t remember when I got my first one, but it was a Kobo. Kobo is a Canadian company and they’re popular up here. My wife bought it for me. We’ve been together over 35 years, and I have learned helplessness with technology as a result. I couldn’t tell you how to load a book onto my Kobo. She does it all for me, and I make her food.
Anyway, my first one didn’t have a backlit screen, but fortunately the attachable reading lights got way better. They just took a single AAA battery as part of the clip, and worked quite well and most importantly didn’t burn my goddamn house down. Then they came out with the Kobo Glo in 2012, where the screen lit up and you could get rid of your stupid nightlight altogether. Kindle came out with their own version, the Paperwhite, that same year.
Anyway, I got the Kobo Glo, and it was a game changer. I don’t even know the model of the Kobo I have now, but I do love that sleep timer. If it takes me longer than five minutes to read a page, then, yeah, I should probably go to sleep.
I should note that I only read novels on my Kobo. Roughly 99% of the non-fiction I read is for work, and that means I always have a highlighter in my hand, and even make notes in the margins. When working on writing a new history book, as I am doing now, I am continuously flipping from book to book to book and I just don’t think that would work electronically. I mean, look at this fucking chaos:
That’s my office, taken moments ago, as I write my new book Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots: A History of Humanity.
But I find novels are great on an eBook, especially for reading in bed. If I or my wife wake up in the middle of the night, we can easily read for a while to fall back asleep without disturbing the other person. Also, I don’t take my phone into the bedroom, and if I wake up and want to know what time it is I must use my eBook, and that’s a pain in the ass, so it’s good for sleep hygiene because I reallyhave to want to know what time it is to do that.
When I first published On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down, I knew that print sales were going to be a high percentage, and I was right. I think they’re around 85%. But plenty of people still buy it in eBook format. And that brings me to the entire please-don’t-hate-me-bait-and-muthafuckin’-switch part of this post.
The Amazon Kindle version of Volume I of On This Day Sh!t Went Down is on LIMITED TIME SALE for only $3.99! Here is the U.S. link: https://amzn.to/4hXZEWK.
It's at a greatly reduced price in a bunch of countries for a short time, so here are some more links:
If you prefer print, you can find links to get both volumes via JamesFell.com/books. Makes an awesome gift!
And if you like personal stories, you can get a free trial as a paid subscriber and have instant access to a shit-ton of them. I don’t even do any sales pitching in those ones.
Bought the kindle book; joined your Substack. I f***ing love your office! A sure sign of genius!
Thank you! I'm so happy when I see an email from you and know I've got a way too brief escape from the insanity of the world. You are a much better read than a Mehmet Wizard of Oz story. I may need to give an e-reader another chance given your love of your Kobo. Years ago, I fell asleep and when the reader dropped on my nose it felt like when the ramp of the Millennium Falcon dropped on the sleeping Exogorth. My awakening was not pretty.