Post #2: What is a book?

A book is a cottage nestled deep in the woods.

When you read a book, you travel to a place found within the crevices of the pages. If you search, you won't see it. It's a cozy place you create in your imagination. You can't help but be absorbed in it- it just happens. When you have your own, printed copy of a book, your cottage is kept safely inside. Even if someone else purchases the same book, they won't have your copy- your cottage. They will have their own, personal copy, kept safely away from yours. Your book is your place, your cottage.

Your cottage is a magical place. You decide what to do with it. You can write notes on the walls if you want, and you can invite your family to join you in it. You can build a shed behind it or plant a bed of daisies on the hill just to the right of it. Your book is your place, your cottage. No one else can change it.

But when you purchase an e-book, your quiet cottage in the woods is taken from you. Everyone downloads a digital copy of the book to their devices. Regardless of whether it's read on a Kindle or a Nook, it's the same exact copy that everyone else has. It's not your own. It doesn't have an ink mark on the cover or a page folded down. It's no different from the next.

Your cottage is no longer alone. Soon, a street of cottages will develop. Then another street. Then a subdivision. Before you know it, your once isolated cottage is surrounded by a city of cottages. The air becomes polluted with everyone else's thoughts and feelings about the book. Your book is no longer your own. It belongs to the rest of the world, too.

I would rather have my own cottage, surrounded by a trickling creek and birds in the trees, than a cottage crammed five feet from my neighbor's.