“There’s an underlying issue at play in all of this, the fundamental that books, in whatever their form, are simply text delivery systems. That sort of reductionist approach is true enough – whether ancient papyrus scroll, manuscript copy, printed book, or digital text the essential point is to distribute the written-word product of someone’s thinking – but the down to earth reality is quite different.

“Before books were printed, they were laboriously copied by hand and the text was often illustrated – illuminated – by artists of great skill. The book, very soon, became more than the text. The hundreds of years of perfecting the book were more than technical progression. A large measure of the book’s development has been due to it’s excellence as a medium of artistic expression, whether through its binding, the quality and appearance of its printing, etc. Long ago, books became a gestalt experience, the actual content surely its primary raison d’etre but not the only reason to appreciate and enjoy them.”
E-Publishing Consultant Mike Shatzkin Doesn’t Understand Books, by Booktryst, Seattle PI, August 19, 2010.

Yeah, e-books, ebooks, eBooks, alas, this book, Electricland, won’t be on Kindle or ePub due to some text formatting neither of those formats likes one bit. It will, however, be a available, um, somehow as a pdf, but I haven’t worked that out yet. But I will and I’ll let y’know.