Has How You Read Changed?

This is mostly how I read now. You can’t see my iPhone, cuz I used it to take this photo.

We are de-junking in preparation for the return of the #GrandmaProject, i.e. the visit of the grandchildren (and their parents, of course!). While I was digging through the rubble, I unearthed the eBookman I “dove” into for last Wednesday’s post.

That got me thinking, not just about what I read, but that HOW I read has changed. A lot.

Back at the turn of the millennium, when I began to realize the possibilities the internet presented to me as a writer AND a reader, I began to explore digital reading. Yup, waaaaaaay before it was cool. Like seriously, it was back in that other millennium.

The Sony Reader was very sassy for its time. I used to get a lot of comments on it.

And this isn’t actually all the devices I have used to read. I don’t have that original computer or my Palm Pilot (though that may turn up in another layer of the rubble). Those little laptops were hot eReaders for a while. You just tipped them up and held them like a book. That was back when we still felt we needed to read digital books like they were physical books.

I will admit that when I first started looking into digital reading, it was all about me, or rather, my books. Here’s my books before they were in a cool format:

There she is my first edition of Pig in a Park!

For the first three or four years of my adventures in publishing, I spent more time explaining HOW to read my books than I did telling people ABOUT my books. I think I probably sold a hundred different eReaders over the years by letting people play with mine. LOL

But a funny thing happened on the way to selling my books. I began to LIKE reading digital books. I signed up to test a Rocket eBook and I was hooked. Oddly enough, I’ve found three of them among the detritus of my past. I know my sister sent me one. Can’t account for the third one.

Look at the bigger one. It’s signed! I loved that book.

I think the attraction was two-fold. I really became hooked on the expanded selection of books to read. I am a fast reader and I can burn through books at a tremendous rate when I have time to read. While exploring digital books, I also expanded genres and discovered authors that remain favorites to this day.

The second part of the equation is me. I love technology and I particularly love cute technology. My various readers don’t look that cute now, but for their time? I couldn’t use them out in public without people coming and asking me about them.

I was an early adopter for reading on my cell phone, but didn’t migrate to the iPhone until I was promised that the App Store was coming—and it would include digital bookstores. As you can see, I am no respecter of reading apps. I follow the books.

I have two pages of apps on my iPhone. LOL

If I didn’t have SO much to do, I’d sit down and get reacquainted with my old readers the books still there. Yes, so far they all boot up and have books. And yes, I’ve migrated the books forward and have them in Calibre, but it’s kind of nostalgic remembering when and where about each of them.

What about you? Has the way you read changed over the years? I’ll include both genres and formats, because I also “read” my audio books on my newer devices. And, you know I love comments. I enter them into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana gift basket ($25 value). I announce the winner the first blog post of the new month.

Perilously yours,
Pauline

P.S. In honor of this blast from my past, here’s Pig in a Park in its new cover. Way back when a publisher asked me to change the name. I kind of held out for a while, but then people started calling it the “pig in a poke” book. Yeah.

Mama wanted her to find a guy, but not like this!

You can buy this book in print (used), audio and DIGITAL! Oh yes, it’s still available in digital!