Crayons and Electronics

Last week I mentioned that my upcoming book, Paperback Writer: Now Appearing at Bingo Night, is going to include a few Adult Coloring book pages. A reader asked: How do I handle this if I read on a Kindle?

First: If you use a Kindle Paperwhite: Don’t get out your crayons and color on the screen. This would be bad. My lawyer has advised me to put this disclaimer right at the beginning of the book. If you disregard this advice, you’re going to need a lot of Windex. Maybe a paint scraper.

But, still rocking your iPad like it’s a high-tech clipboard? You’re in luck. If you’ve got a tablet—iPad, Kindle Fire, something your grandkid set up that you’re afraid to update—you can download the PDF version of this coloring book and use one of those fancy “apps” to color right on the screen. All it takes is a stylus or a confident index finger. No ink smudges, no broken crayons, no grandchild yelling, “You’re doing it wrong!”

Now, if you’re a “real paper” person—because you like the sound of a good page turn and don’t trust anything that sends push notifications during church—you can print the pages out at home. Just download the PDF to your computer, open it (ask someone under 30 if necessary), and hit “Print.” Voilà. You’ve got yourself a coloring book, right there on paper. Ready for crayons, colored pencils, or highlighters from the junk drawer.

So yes, even if you do all your reading on a Kindle, you can still enjoy the tactile thrill of coloring outside the lines. You just have to do one small, courageous thing:

Dust off your printer and turn it on.
And maybe buy some actual printer ink. If you’re like me, the ink cartridge is as dry as the Sahara Desert.

Make sure to tune into this space next week. Discussed: Kids are using ChatGPT to write homework papers. Teachers are using ChatGPT to grade the papers. No humans are involved with the writing or the reading.
Think about what is accomplished in this process.

Coming soon: 
Paperback Writer: Now Appearing at Bingo Night.