Do you do digital?

November 10, 9:47 AMSeattle Books ExaminerDanielle Dreger-Babbitt

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Amazon's Kindle, photo from Amazon.com

I'm a little hesitant of electronic books.  Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a book in my hand.  I always have a book on me, whether i's in the bathtub or on the bus.  Until this summer, on a cross country road trip, I'd never even listened to a book on tape (well, CD before).  And Amazon's Kindle kind of scares me.

Despite my reluctance to read a book on a screen, I am in favor of open-content projects like Project Gutenberg, where volunteers archived over 25,000 that users could download for free.  Project Gutenberg focuses on books who have expired copyrights.  Google reached a deal last week with the Association of American Publishers and the Author's Guild to sell electronic versions of copyrighted versions that have gone out of print.  Google's Book Search program scans millions of books and makes their content available on the Internet.  Google would share online sales revenue with authors and publishers.  This could turn out to to be the largest bookstore in the world once it is open to business.

Across the world, digital books are gaining in popularity.  In Japan, the most popular way to read an e-book is on cell phones.  Half a million iphone users worldwide have downloaded Stanza to read e-books on their phones.  Some publishers are looking into subscription plans where readers could pay monthly fees for online access to best sellers.

Where do you stand on e-books?  Do you have a Kindle?  Have you used Project Gutenberg?