iPod/Stanza: A Christmas Tale

SCENE: A pre-Christmas meal. Around a table sits a family, including the writer (Hugh), his mother, and his his mother’s friend, a woman of a certain age, an aspiring short story writer, and passionate reader.

HUGH: You see, there are two technologies that will transform the publishing business. Print-on-demand allows printing one-off copies of books at roughly the same unit cost as a big mass-produced run of books, and ebooks, or electronic-books.

FRIEND: E-books?

HUGH: Yes, electronic books. Books you can read on something like an iPod, or Amazon’s Kindle.

MOTHER: But my eyes just get tired, I can’t read on a computer screen.

HUGH: Yes, but, the devices are –

FRIEND: No, I want pages and paper, I don’t want to read from a screen.

HUGH: Well, three months ago I would have –

FRIEND: I just don’t think people are going to want to read that way. I certainly wouldn’t consider it.

HUGH: But I would have agreed with you three –

FRIEND: No, I could never see myself reading from a screen.

HUGH: Well, just a minute let me go get my iPod.

[HUGH leaves the dining room, and returns a minute later with an iPod Touch]

HUGH: You see, this little device here is an iPod Touch.

MOTHER: And you read on that? But it’s so tiny.

FRIEND: How could you read on that thing? I could never read on something like that.

[HUGH turns the device on]

HUGH: Well take a look, see this is … War and Peace. I’m reading War and Peace on the Stanza reader.

FRIEND: And how does it work? Let me see…Oh. And how do you change … Oh….

SILENCE

FRIEND: Oh, that’s really quite neat.

HUGH: Yes!

FRIEND: I see, it’s …

HUGH: And I have 75 books on there.

FRIEND: What is this little thing called?

HUGH: iPod Touch.

FRIEND: And you could take it out in line at the bank, or anywhere …

HUGH: Yes!

FRIEND: Could you write down whatever this thing is, please. I want to get one.