In my wanderings around the ’net, one thing has become perfectly clear to me: However harried and hassled, looked down upon, sneered at, spit toward, and generally disrespected as a valid art form, genre romance (just after science fiction and Cory Doctorow) seems to be at the leading edge of the ebook revolution.

<donning pimp hat>

I love ebooks. I love the simplicity. I love having a library in my hand. I love the instant gratification. I love that our romance-lovin’ cohorts in other countries don’t have the inconvenience and expense of importing physical books.

I don’t care that I can’t donate them for my tax write-off, that I can’t take them to a used book store, share them with my friends.

The only thing that concerns me at the moment is that my ebook reading device (the eBookWise-1150) will go the way of the do-do bird once a standard is adopted and devices are built that can take all formats. On the other hand, it’s a small price to pay in the event that the universal format, .epub (.oeb for now) is adopted (a la mp3) and manufacturers build devices that can read .epub/.oeb formats (although my eBookWise does read that natively).

Don’t get me wrong; I love books. I love paper. I love the pretty covers. I love the smell of books new and old (even the ones that smell like tobacco smoke because you know someone enjoyed that book before you). I love everything about paper books. But as a late-adopter of every other gadget out there, I find ebooks to be fast, convenient and, uhm… (publishers, take note)

I impulse buy a lot more now that I have an ebook reader. I’m spending three, four times the money I spent on books before I got my reader. Want my cash? Give me ebooks.

Food for thought.