Books and Digital Books: A Proposal

Here's one of those offending and assaulting displays.
No, Barnes and Noble, your Apple-like set-up will not
convince me to purchase a Nook. (Nor will your lack
of capitalization.)

If you had asked me four months ago my opinions of Kindles, Nooks, and other e-readers, I might have hissed at you.  For the last few years, my parents have been asking if I wanted one for Christmas, my friends have been encouraging me to jump on the e-reader bandwagon, and Amazon and Barnes and Noble have been assaulting me with large advertisements and displays.

In mid-January, I came into an iPad mini and, knowing that I could use the Kindle app to read online content and pdf's more comfortably on a tablet than I could on my computer, I decided to download it.  Then I saw someone I knew had written a book and was having a free-download day and figured, why not?  And a group of people I knew, including the one mentioned before, wrote a book together and did the same thing.  Once again, I figured, why not?  My boyfriend read a book on information that he wanted me to read, so he sent it to my Kindle address.  Why not?

A whole bunch of why nots allowed me to read while biking or elliptical-ing at the gym while listening to music.  This was surprisingly helpful for me and I wished I had thought of it before.  One of the main reasons I disliked working out was that I wasn't being mentally stimulated enough to keep me interested, even if I was listening to music on my iPod.  I had considered audio books to remedy that, but I liked having a "beat" to workout to and pace me, and I had never been a big fan of audio books, either.

Okay, so I caved a little.  I downloaded some old books that were public domain from Project Gutenberg, including Peter Pan, Anna Karenina (which I haven't yet finished) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  But I only ever read my Kindle books while working out (except Peter Pan, that one I did read in bed a few times).

I still prefer "real" books to electronic books.  I like that I can hold it, that I can turn the pages, that I can sense how much is left in the book (which you can kind of do with the Kindle app by touching the screen and seeing the progress bar at the bottom appear), that I can easily mark things (yeah, you can highlight and search, but I still think it's easier to find passages in "real" books), and I just like "real" books better in general.

But today, while biking away my various anxieties (and hopefully some pounds), I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could purchase a "real" book and then scan a code or something into my Kindle and automatically have access to a digital copy?"

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice?

Not that kind of book thief.

I spoke with my boyfriend on the phone about this after getting back from the gym.  He argued that people would be likely to share codes with each other in order to get free copies -- those book thieves.  "Ah!" I said, "But people already do that!  If there's a way to pirate something, people will do it.  Plus, it's possible to have single-download codes."  Software, such as Microsoft Office, limits the number of downloads (typically to one or two computers).  While I'm sure there are ways around this limit, I'm certainly not savvy enough to know it, nor do I feel its worth the effort to try to get around it for a copy of the software -- I'm a lazy person, sue me.

Okay, so we buy a book at a bookstore; bookstores get some revenue, they're able to stay in business.  Great.  Then, on the receipt (and I say the receipt because if the code was just on the inside of the book or something, people could easily write it down while at the bookstore, download it at home, and essentially steal that one download from whoever ends up purchasing the book), print the download code.  For further protection, maybe you need to enter the pin of the debit/credit card with which you bought the book (unless you paid with cash, in which case, I don't have a solution yet).

So you buy the book and the bookstores are happy and the publishers are happy and you're happy because you have a hard copy should you ever bump into the author of said book and want to have it signed (because having a signed Kindle just isn't as awesome or practical).  You're also happy because you now have a more portable copy available to you, should want to, say, take it to the gym or on a trip.

I think this is a pretty good compromise.  While I don't know a whole lot about the cost of producing electronic copies of books, I imagine this concept is not too unreasonable to work.  Obviously I do not currently have the connections to pursue this, but I figure I'll throw it out into the big ocean that is the internet and if someone wants to put this interaction, have your people call my people and we'll talk.

No, but really.  This should be a thing.  Someone make this a thing, please?