When I look in the mirror I find that my lips are bright pink from all the Kool- Aid I’ve been drinking…now I’m spreading the insanity halfway across the country.

I got my aunt a kindle this past week. She is a huge reader and also a very smart woman--one of the original Ms. women in the 1980’s. I’ve just recently learned what a big deal she was and every conversation I have with her leaves me in awe that I had someone so fascinating in my family and totally took her for granted.  She has agreed to be one of my readers for my novel Bad Romance. Her comments on the first 50 pages of an older draft were among the most honest and insightful I’ve gotten anywhere.

I was preparing to send her the latest version, all 400 pages, and it occurred to me that after I spent $40 printing it, another $20 sending it to her, and another $20 for return postage, I am over halfway to the price of a kindle! I can upload the manuscript directly to her kindle and save all that, not to mention the paper. She can make comments and I can also access these (she doesn’t have a computer) when she’s done, again saving time and money.

My aunt will read anything I give her. Over Christmas she read Freedom and I finally got to talk to someone who had the right generational perspective on that book, the chapter length issue and is also familiar with the political view of the way the world is evolving. Recently I mailed her a copy of White Oleander and Crying of Lot 49 so she would have more points of reference when reviewing my work.  It cost $16 to mail two books. For almost the same price she could have purchased them on her kindle and saved again: the postage, paper and time.

She is thrilled with it but in her thank-you note expressed concern about the pricing on Amazon and she worries that authors are not getting paid enough for their intellectual property. She also voiced concern that Amazon would lower book prices to the point that they could put bookstores out of business. After that her view of how things went something like this: now only Target and Costco will be the outlets for books that general consumers have access to and there will be no more room for new authors. Also, she believes that casual readers won’t buy a kindle so in one more way the reading public will shrink.

My view is more optimistic. It may be flawed but as with all things only time will tell. More bookstores may go out of business--that seems to be the trend. This, like the fact that drinking two or more Mocha Coconut Frappuccinos on a daily basis will cause me to gain weight is a fact of life that I would rather not think about.

I love books: paper and ink books. The places where they are kept have the same effect on me that churches or car shows have on other people. So I have no idea what to say to this point, but I feel the same concern, even as I happily purchase more and more books electronically. Is this what people felt like when they were happily driving around in their shiny new Model Ts while the buggy whip factories began closing their doors? Does anyone even care about the buggy whip factory anymore?

I believe at some point kindles will either be free or will be available at minimal cost, maybe even lent out at libraries and almost everyone will have access to them. More readers equals more sales. I also wonder if  in another five years phones, ipads, iphones, kindles, and netbooks  will all have merged into more or less one device that can do everything and we won’t have to carry so many gadgets around. Wouldn’t that be nice?

In this world, where Facebook and twitter rule, an author can post her work-- and if it is good work-- people will post links to it all over the internet and happy consumers will be able to download that work to their kindle and/or order a paper copy and read away. My view of things is that we will all be reading more, not less. And by more I do not just mean 140 character bits either. If I can read a book that cites Darkness Visible three or more times, I am more inclined to impulse purchase the book and read it than I would be if I had to haul my butt off the couch and hit the library or bookstore.

Too optimistic? Maybe, but still…I am reading more than I have in years, now that children are more independent and hubby has figured out that reading time for me equals uninterrupted soccer time for him, and having a kindle has made it easier still.

Do you have a kindle? Are you resistant to purchasing one and if so why? Am I a bad book lover because I own one?

Next week I’ll go over the other ways I use my kindle in my work.