Theos-Talk Archives (July 2011 Message tt00004)

eReaders and eBooks - Trend in free eBooks

While browsing, I noticed that the Barnes and Nobleâs eReader - Nook has
many theosophical eBooks available for free. Of course, these are the books
out of copyright. Still, it is a welcome advantage who have access to
eReaders and like to use them. Also many books are available on these
eReaders. Some of them are priced low while others are not attractively
priced. The market is yet to mature and one can expect the prices to come
down.

Still, theosophical publications stand on a different footing. While, the
authors need to make a decent living, the primary thrust should be to get
the theosophical doctrines out to the world so that they would help those
who are receptive to help transform themselves which in turn will lead to
the welfare of family, friends and everyone they interact with. From this
point of view, I feel theosophical publications should be made available in
electronic form in addition to hard copy.

The traditional publishersâ mindset still pervades those responsible for
pricing theosophical books. The evidence of this is quite obvious; look at
the pricey books like Blavatskyâs Unpublished discussions and the Judge Case
book. Even prices of other recent publications are not low enough to make
them affordable to most theosophists outside the West, thus we are shooting
on our own foot.

Let us hope and pray that the theosophical publishers will wake up to their
primary mission and address the issue of electronic books soon. The threat
from cheap fast scanners is real and no one should be surprised if bulky
books are getting scanned to electronic files which makes them storable on
computers and thus avoid lugging them along as well as quicker access even
from a remote location in the world.

MKR


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