I’ll be honest and say that I would have been happy if Painted Black had only been released as an ebook.  For me as a writer, the importance of publishing was so that people would read what I have to say.  I want my readers to know Jo and Chris and all the others the way I do.  Because these characters, to me, are representations of the real people I met and grew to appreciate while volunteering on the streets of Chicago.

But as a reader, like most readers, there will never be anything that replaces having an actual printed book in hand.  Something you can put on your shelf and look at.  Something that smells like paper and ink when you open it.  That is what transports me to my childhood joy of reading and adds depth to the characters and stories because it touches that chord of discovery I felt then.

That’s why I am so pleased that Painted Black is finally available to order as a print book now.  Both Barnes & Nobel and Amazon have links up now and people can actually have my book on their library shelf much sooner than I originally thought.

Whether you read the e-book or the print book, I hope you enjoy discovering the lives of the people whose story I have tried to tell.

Some things seem to designed to do their jobs perfectly, and the old-fashioned book is one. What else could be quite as efficient at packaging so many thousands of words in a form, which is sufficiently sturdy to protect them, yet so small and light that it can be carried around to be read whenever its owner wishes? The pages, type, binding and jacket of a traditional printed book do all of the above, as well as giving its designer just enough scope to make the result look beautiful, witty or intriguing.

via The Beauty of the Printed Book – NYTimes.com.