Or Why I switched back to printed books, part one.
I am a reader. Always have been.
If I love the printed book, I also like the convenience of its digital cousin, the ebook. So much that for the last fifteen (twenty?) years, more than half of what I have read were ebooks. Probably much more than that but you get the idea: I have no issue with reading ebooks.
Despite that, for the last three months I have almost completely given up on ebooks — I read a single one — reading printed books instead.
This blog post is the first of what I think will be a series of three where I explain my motivations for getting back to the good old printed book.
That first reason is that I am tired of what I consider a nuisance that comes with all ebooks or, more correctly, that comes with all the devices on which we can read those ebooks. That nuisance is tracking. And they all do it.
Who is they? They is all the corporations that sell us e-reading devices, and the ebooks to read on. Corporations like Amazon and Apple, to name the two I use the most and probably the two most important too. But there are others. They is not the small or indie publisher, or the self-published author that does sell ebooks (even if they do sell them on Amazon and Apple). I want this to be clear, what follows is only considering actors like Amazon and Apple, and all the others that sell us the device they want us to use for reading. I am not talking about independent publishers and authors, nor criticizing the ebook itself.
And what do they do, exactly?
Call it however you like, telemetry, tracking, profiling, spying, violation of privacy, or just ‘optimization of the user experience’. It is all the same and it all boils down to tracking us. The act of tracking, here, is the act of collecting data regarding our habits as readers while we are using the reading device we purchased from them1. And it is a large collection of data over which we have no more control than we can control how they use it.
Obviously, like with anything digital, there are workarounds to either limit if not stop that. But they are just that, workarounds or hacks in geek terminology. They are not a long-term solution, they are not obvious to use, they are not officially provided (in the USA, some may even be illegal). More importantly to me, even if they work, those workarounds should not be needed at all. There should be no spying to begin with.
My issue is not that they collect data. I can understand their reasoning behind that — they will get accurate data, and be able to make better products and sell more of them and we will get a better device… at least in theory.
My issue is that they collect data upon their millions users by default without asking permission first. And without even providing us with an easy (legal) way to opt out of it. We have no choice but to accept if we want to be able to read the ebook we purchased. We cannot say ’no’ unless we decide to fight our own device, using workarounds and hacks to regain control over it.
That is non-sense. We should not have to fight against our device in order to regain a semblance of privacy and intimacy while we are reading a book.
At least, that is not a fight I am willing to fight anymore. I have better things to do with my time.
I have not resigned myself, though. I still consider reading an intimate act and, unless invited to do so, I don’t want anyone to look over my shoulder to check what I am reading, and how I am reading it. Am I crazy too demanding?
Compare the experience of purchasing and reading an ebook with the experience of purchasing and reading a printed book. When a reader buys a printed book, what data do they give away and to who? And what do they give away when they read it?
- The owner of the bookshop may know which book I purchased. If it happens he also knows who I am — that is not required at all, one can freely enter any bookshop in any city without having to identify oneself, one can also pay with cash — then the owner of the shop will also know that I have purchased this book.
- Unless I use cash, my bank will know how much I spend in that bookshop. Probably not the detail of the books I purchased.
- The publisher and the author of the book? They will know that they sold that book, in that shop. They won’t know who bought it.
None of them, none at all, will know when and how I read it, if I read it at all, or if I purchased it as a gift for someone. They won’t know how quick or slow I have been reading it. They won’t have any idea the passages I marked. Or how often I switched books while reading it. They won’t know what words I looked up in the dictionary. They won’t be able to read whatever notes I may have taken while reading the book. They will know close to nothing.
That is unless I decide to give them some feedback. Unless I, the reader, decide to give them feedback. It’s my choice and my decision to do so. It is not theirs. It should not be.
Dear Author, I loved your book. I think it’s amazing the way the heroin manages to fly her unicorn faster than light! Thank you for writing it!,
Dear bookshop owner, please get more books by Author. I want to read more books with faster than light Unicorns!
Dear publisher, there is a mistake page 10 line 5 where it says ‘slower than light unicorns’ where obviously it should read ‘faster than light unicorns’, I thought you might want to know about that issue.
Dear bank manager, lover of the art and guardian of my treasure, I want to buy the next book by Author about even faster than light unicorns, can I haz money pweaze?
That’s how I want to give feedback, by choice. Not by being spied upon without choice.
Or, if you prefer, not by being mined like if I was some natural resource freely availble to whomever decide to extract it from the ground, or from the mountain.
I am not a natural resource available to grab. I am a person. I am someone. I am a reader.
And if I can’t be that reader when I open an ebook, maybe it is time for me to be that reader elsewhere? At least, for the time being we still have that choice.
- They all collect this kind of info while we’re reading on their device: what one reads, how long one reads, what word one looks up in the dictionary, how often one pauses reading, how often one is switching books (and between which books), what passage one highlights, what kind of books, what genre, what authors, and so on. I would not even be surprised to learn that they are able to know if one is reading sitting or lying in the bed.
Published: 2024/01/12