Saturday, July 16, 2011

Confessions of an Ebook Pirate

Today I found this article, titled "Confessions of a Book Pirate". Its an email interview with a bibliophile who is also a book pirate. The person in question has a name "The Real Caterpillar" in one of the many book sharing communities that he participates. He makes quite a few points which seemed logical and worth noting. The article is a definite recommend from me for anybody who loves books and is aware of ebooks and piracy.

However, some of the arguments seem feeble. Like "I would probably still grab a book if I stumbled across the file and thought it might interest me – or if I wanted to check it out before buying a paper copy". Well both of these can be very well accomplished in Google Books (partial book) or in the local bookstore (full book).

Personally, some of my interests fall into pretty much the tail end of the curve; and often finding books on some of these topics are quite difficult. Sometimes the books themselves are out of print. But I guess the ebook industry is moving towards the correct direction. With ebook readers flooding the market and big players like amazon coming in, bibliophiles like me are having a good time. Still it will take quite sometime till the entire spectrum is covered.