The digital convert

I am currently suffering from an escalating problem. On bowing shelves, under the bed, beside the bed, at the foot of the bed, in my wardrobe, under my shoes, above my clothes, beneath my clothes, in my drawers, between my DVDs, my book collection is growing. It has gotten to the point where when I finish a book I chuck it over my shoulder into to cascading pile of my latest reads that lines the back of my bed like an abandoned game of dominos. As a hoarder by nature I live in genuine fear that I am one day going to be one of those old ladies who builds secondary corridors out of old reading material. I will be forced to spend a large portion of my day navigating the expanding maze of epic fantasy just to reach my settee in time to shout at Noel Edmond’s Deal or No Deal (somebody has to).

In my darkest moments, I think of the multiplying collection of cats I’ll have lost amongst the stacks who have given up all hope of rescue and have taken to building their homes out of my collection of ‘90s James Herberts, which they’re slowly but surely teaching themselves to read. It’ll be like The Rats, but with cats. The Cats. I’m going to be found with my arm gnawed off, buried beneath a pile of Robin Hobbs, my only legacy the army of felines that have evolved enough to survive nuclear apocalypse.

The real issue is that I can’t throw books away. It would be like throwing your first child away, just because you’ve had another. It just isn’t done.

My other problem is that I know the solution, and it isn’t one I am particularly happy with. I should convert to digital. Buy an eReader. Get over the printed word.

If I put so much value in the physical copy, if I really class myself as a lover of beautiful covers, clever designs, the tactile reading experience, the smell of a page, then why is my ever-growing collection living rough in its haphazard piles?

I’m either going to have to give up and buy a cat now so I can practice losing it, or suck it up and become a digital convert. It's me or the books.

how many books can you fit on the head of a pin?

I know this is supposed to be a Bad Thing but I love judging a book by its cover. In this increasingly digital age (as we keep being told), covers might be the last bastion against against the mounting need to cram all the books into a teeny little living space. Or, to put it another way, it's the greatest and most exciting challenge a publisher now has to face: how to market a book without a cover.

If done well, a cover can be a great marketing tool. Blurbs, carefully wrought designs, author quotes, and, if you're lucky, a lovely big picture to gawp at and reference in case you forget what the main protagonist looks like.

It can also be a dead giveaway that you're reading a fantasy about a big dragon who enjoys shouting things like 'puny mortals!' and burning villages to the ground (thanks, Hobb).

But publishers are sly. They know that some of us like our Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in anonymous jackets that could easily pass for semi-intelligent thrillers or modern romances (shudder). Many want covers and jackets that will blur beneath the common commuters' eye and don't invite judgement on the reader. This is also a great marketing tool if you want to spread the net a little wider and target the fabled Mass Market. One point to eBooks then. You can't judge a book by its eReader (although, interestingly, it is possible to judge a person).

But what will this do to the content? And will happen to the content that the SFF 'fan' has been loyally consuming for all these years? Those of us who have been here from the start, since before being a geek became cool? Who still aren't cool? When SFF publishers begin to commission with everyone in mind, will these genres suffer, and be resigned to the subbasement of SFF in place of the new favourite kids, Urban and Dark Fantasy? Suddenly everything might become about vampires and catering to fragile tweenage hearts.

Or will it? There are still license-based imprints out there like Games Workshop's Black Library, or midlist imprints like Solaris, who are doubtful to ever snub Warhammer in favour of another Urban Fantasy about a kick-ass girl fighting sexy demons.

Anyway, really a cover shouldn't matter, or the format either. A book is made up of its content. But I still want to be able to judge a book by its appearance (on screen or off). I want to know that publishers are working hard, keeping on their toes, to make their content look appealing. To publish content they can make look appealing. And I want to know how they're doing it, and I want to be there when they do so that I can make my choice.

Join me. Revel in it. Judge.