ebooks wherefore art thou ebooks?

Old age is something that crawls up on you. It can appear as hair loss, muscle mass decline, lung capacity limited, chronic back ache or underserved demographic in the ebook market.

With all the talk of dedicated ereaders being targeted at older people I find it odd that I am unable to find the books I want to read. Maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with my age but just my reading habits and the reading habits of my children.

It was not long ago that I over-enthusiastically commented in a tweet that I thought it was interesting how the conversations around the digitization of publishing were no longer about content but about price etc. Well I admit here that I was naive. It is still about not having content. I have avoided using the kindle because I don't like the drm. I don't like being tied to their device, even though I can synch up with the Kindle app on the iphone and my laptop and apparently on the ipad as well. But still come on Amazon what is it with this silly propriatary format? You really should know better. And that aside where are the books I want to read!

In the digital world I find I am mostly being sold romance books or business books or classics. But when you step outside of the digital mainstream you are in a wasteland. I just recently was influenced by a display in a bookstore that showed a lovely theme of reading that I was willing to delve into, but for practical reasons -including the aforementioned old age and a recent back problem, I wanted ebooks. I have been able to be a more focused reader on my digital devices than ever before. Don't know why I just am. So I could see myself ripping through these titles -but alas not to be. I just can't find the books anywhere. And who do I ask to special order them for me?

Another disappointment came when my daughter was home sick from school and we wanted to continue reading a new series we had discovered. We have avoided the ebook world for kid's books thus far because the books we were reading were richly illustrated but this series would have worked perfectly on the kindle. Yes I was even willing to buy the books from Amazon in the infamous "60" second download to get going - but once again not to be had. And again who the heck to ask to get a special order around here? No one!

So ebooks - publishers, I beseech you and wonder at your dismal failure to reach the masses with your so called vaunted content. Get your content out there so we can read it when want where we want how we want!