E-books in Chicago

In last year’s Summer Reading Issue (TOC 274), we declared it was the summer of the e-reader, a time when those flat little devices would begin to outnumber dog-eared paperbacks in airports, on trains and at beaches around the city. I’m not going to say that we were prescient—the writing has been on the wall for a while now—but if you’re short on cash you should really ask us for our predictions for the NBA Finals.

Since then, e-reading devices have exploded. Amazon claims that its Kindle books are now outselling any other format through its online store, Barnes & Noble reported that its holiday sales were up far above expectations thanks to sales of its Nook, and by the time you read this, the company will have announced a new device. And the Kobo, which was tied to the sinking ship of Borders Books—which declared bankruptcy earlier this year—recently raised $50 million for international expansion.

Nailing down just how many of these devices have been sold can be tricky. Amazon has been notoriously evasive about releasing hard numbers for its Kindle sales, preferring instead to speak in general terms about increases. But it’s clear something has changed. If you commute by bus or train, you see more and more of the sleek devices, denying you the chance to peek at the book cover.

For an industry that has moved extremely slowly for, say, the last 500 years, the constant change brought on by the ever-evolving e-book has made it difficult to keep track of the latest news. One of the more noticeable losses in transitioning from print to digital—or, more accurately, combining them—is a decentering of the literary scene. Over the past 15 years, a vibrant reading and publishing scene has sprouted in town, but it has largely been one that put print and performance at the forefront. How, if digital culture is everywhere and nowhere at once, does that affect a specific place?

The Chicago Public Library has offered downloadable e-books for several years now through its website, contracting OverDrive, the same company that offers downloadable audiobooks. Currently, the only formats offered are epub, mobi or pdf files, and all three come with digital rights management restrictions, which means that only some devices are able to read them. If you have a Nook, Sony eReader, Kobo or an iPad, you can read any of the epub or pdf books from the library, provided you download Adobe Digital Editions. The Kindle is not one of those devices, but thanks to a deal inked in April between Amazon and OverDrive, CPL’s cache of e-books should all be available on the Kindle later this year.

And while the Kindle veritably forces you to buy all of its books through Amazon.com’s Kindle bookstore, there are ways to support local independent bookstores while still buying e-books. Lincoln Square’s Book Cellar and Andersonville’s Women and Children First, for instance, offer portals to the Google eBookstore (which sells epub books, readable on most devices) and portions of any sales go back to the shops.

As far as local publishers are concerned, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography has been way ahead of the curve. Jason Pettus’s publishing house has exclusively published e-books in a variety of formats through its website for several years. Its latest release is Chicago novelist Mark Brand’s sci-fi novella, Life After Sleep (offered on a sliding scale, from free to $20), in which a drug that allows people to sleep just a couple of hours a week has disastrous side effects.

And as an example of how digital and print are coexisting more than battling these days, Brand’s book will also be the first one released by CCLAP in print.