Book People Archive

Re: What's an ebook?...What's a reader?

> when used in everyday situations will be ambiguous.  "Reader" used in
> place of "book" clears up this ambiguity.
> 
> Personally, I hate the word "reader", though I suppose there is some need
> to clear up the ambiguity now that the physical medium and the text are no
> longer so irreversibly associated with each other.
> 

Please, God, NO!!! A reader is the person who looks at the book and garners 
the meaning. What hardware makers may call a reader is nothing more than a 
playback device--a book shower, if you will. (Not in the sense of a baby 
shower or a rain shower...) We have dodged this bullet before. Neither a 
motion picture projector nor a video display unit is usually called a viewer, 
and a radio transponder isn't a listener. I hope for a time when all 
electrical devices used to output media are called, simply, players or units 
or some such l.c.d. CD Player. Record player. Tape player. Video player. MP3 
player. Book player.

But what about "game player?" Is it the device or the person operating it?
             
Maybe we should just write, read and publish books as we see fit and let 
language develop based on popular usage, as it undoubtedly will, 
inconsistencies and all. So what if the forces driving the change are 
(shudder) the marketing departments of multi-gazillion-dollar corporations. 
After all, for a culture as euphemistically inclined as ours, "reader" does 
hit pretty close to the mark.

Maybe things will get simple and the first successful brand will become the 
generic term. Kleenex. Xerox. Walkman... Rocket?

Or maybe... One good acronym is all that's really needed. Nobody wonders what 
a VCR or an ATM is. Any portable device designed to output stuff for human 
appreciation is a Portable Output Device. POD

Jim Weiler, reader, viewer, listener, POD person
Naked Word Books, books
The Naked Word, PD ebooks
The Short Order Press, POD Books (Okay, here it means "print on demand." So 
sue me.)