[Hitech_luddite]

Don't get me wrong. I love my little ebook reader. As someone long term unemployed and with limited funds it has opened me up to a mass of free content which I am loving exploring. However several weeks of lurking in these forums have convinced me there is something about the attitudes which I am seeing here that are in my view not healthy for the craft of writing. Rather than exposing people to a greater wealth of material, ebook reading seems for some to be narrowing their scope more than ever, meaning there are difficult choices to be made for the writer.

In sitting down to write my first ebook, the Gods of the Terminal, I did not set out to offend anyone. I had a creative idea which I pursued and allowed characters to speak using the terms and the imagery which seemed appropriate for them. I sometimes used colloquial adult terminology because it fitted the modern informal tone of the narration much more than precise biological terms would. Like generations of writers before me, I made thoughtful choices in the words used and I would hope the reader would respect that. However reading ebook reviews of other people's work, both here and at other sites, I cannot help but feel the fundamental compact between writer and reader is breaking down. Writers are being judged not on the book they have written but on the book the reader wanted them to write.

I love the poetry of TS Eliot and fully accept that in his latter years he was a man of faith who wrote from a religious perspective. Not sharing his religious views does not mean I cannot appreciate the quality of his work. There are people here that have said they will not download any Christian fiction. I am a pagan and I can say that I honestly enjoyed Violet Dawn immensely. It was a thrilling and moving story which had it not been so labelled I probably wouldn't have recognized as Christian fiction since the religious references were subtle and well integrated. Links of Utopia was more explicitly preachy towards the end but I still got a lot from the book and was glad I read it. The writer must bring out what is within them, and if that is a Christian conviction I can respect that.

In another thread here a writer was criticized for his use of religious swearing. I haven't yet read his book but I have little doubt he chose the vocabulary that he thought his characters would use. Is the craft of a writer to hold a mirror up to reality or offer an idealized version of it which has been shaped for the individual prejudices of the reader? Because ebook sites encourage categorization, which is always a dangerous thing, there is a real temptation to go with what we know we like. Moreover we are dependent on how other people view and class a book in order to find it. This isn't something unique to online stores, I am sure we have all heard the tale of the book shop that placed the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy in the Travel section, but it exacerbates the growing difficulty.

As a young man I remember visiting Foyles of London, back then both the biggest and most disorganized book store you could ever have imagined. You could almost guarantee both that they would have the book you wanted and that you would never find it, but in browsing would probably come out with several others you hadn't previously considered.

Perhaps because ebook reading software is installed on devices as personal as phones, the reader now seems to expect and demand a more personalized experience, reflecting the language and themes only of his choosing in his selected literature. If there is now a right not to be offended it is a misguided one, because literature and great writers should be able to challenge us. In dictating exactly what we want to read it seems that that we are losing faith in the skill of the writer and that the inevitable consequence is that publishing will become such a mechanical process that ultimately the reader will be able to pick from a menu the things they want included in their download, so the paragraphs covering love scenes for instance, can be ripped out of the book before it is transferred to the ereader.