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A lot of her writing in done with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek. I emailed her with this response:
Hello Mireille,
I read your National Post column *Printerrupted: What happens to lovers of ink when the e-book takes over for good* this afternoon.
If you are more likely to be in places frequented by people who generally do their reading in French, there is a good reason you do not see ebook readers all that often. Publishers buy the rights to specific languages and specific locations, so for example, an agent may help an author put together a deal for English language Canadian editions and fail to negotiate for French language editions in Canada. At the same time, there may be French language editions negotiated for ebooks intended to be sold in France or Belgium, but sellers cannot then sell books to Francophones living in Canada.
It's a horrible mess, even for English speaking Canadians. As you may know, Louise Penny is a popular Canadian mystery writer. Only one of her books are available in Canada--and scads of them are available to people living in the US.
I read most of what you wrote as being tongue in cheek. You do that well. My guess is that if you have to move house very often, downsize to smaller digs, or develop the dreaded older eyes syndrome, your perspective may change. In any case, I was sitting in my doctor's reception room a few days ago, and saw that three people besides myself were reading ebooks. Surely, if that can happen in Red Deer, Alberta it can happen in the big city of Montreal.
Regards,
Taming (I actually used my real name)
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