Book by e-mail

Many people read their e-mail always and everywhere. I even do it with my Treo smartphone. When it comes to reading a book it gets more difficult for all kinds of reasons: when you feel like reading you don't have the book with you or you are always too 'busy' to find time for a book, books are too expensive, heavy, whatever. Or at work it's accepted to read e- mails (it's work) but not to take up a book (it's escapism).

Some people also suffer from a disorder that makes them read the last pages of a book first.

The solution is to 'subscribe' to a book. You receive a few pages by e- mail. Once you read those, you send an empty reply message and you receive more. Again and again until the last page. When you finished reading it, you get the bill. You can also choose to receive a free dead tree copy of the book as a receipt, a proof of purchase.

Like this you only pay for the books you really appreciated, you have read to the end. You can expect that people will want to pay out of gratitude. Certainly when they get something tangible for it in return. If you don't pay the author asks by e-mail why you didn't...

At the same time you can read a lot of books, but each time, once it gets too uninteresting, you just leave it. Too bad for the author, he should have written a shorter or more interesting book instead!

While reading, you can forward parts of the book to friends and they can reply to it and automatically subscribe to the book also. But since their address is not known they will receive the first pages first.

It is also a good copy-protection. Why bother copying it if you can receive it for free yourself? It takes time also to 'copy' a book, first collect all the e-mails and then copy-paste them together. If you automate it the server will protest if you demand it all very fast. Just wait a day or so (the author decides) between each part. If you want to read the whole thing non-stop, just buy the book.

I am familiar with the concept of e- books, but in practise they just take up diskspace and I turn to my mailreader first when I open my Treo or iBook and I compulsively deal with all unread mail before I start reading documents without 'interactivity'.

I also know there are e-mail feuilletons, but I want to apply this to just any book. A kind of extra Amazon feature or something.

I would like to reply to the book also in my mailreader. As comments to the author, myself in the future or to another reader or a group of readers (make a book-> usenet/listserv gateway). When I know that I can reply to a book and there are many people out there with whom I share that same bookreading experience at the same time (same pages even) there is a stronger incentive to continue reading. Yes, I would like to be able to read the replies to a book back in Google Groups in the future.

Or even just a mailinglist will do. When you reply with an empty message you get an e-mail with new pages to read. When you comment on what is written it is redirected to a mailinglist with other readers (or the author if you choose to). Because you can read in the subject-line which pages the posting concerns you skip the postings about pages you haven't read yet for later. It also speeds up your reading if you notice that people you started off with progress faster. If you save all the messages you can always react on previous pages.

In fact, I like this idea so much, I am going to realise it for my next book myself! Mail me if you want to subscribe. Especially if you can read Dutch, the English translation will take a little longer.