I should have asked you guys your opinions a long time ago. You have been really amazing about the whole book cover issue. I’m sorry—I’m a slow learner. I promise to do better in the future.
So today I’m going to ask your opinions on a subject discussed intelligently and at length by a guy named Craig Mod in Tokyo: the disposability of print books.
Craig was brought to my attention—and a lot of other people’s, as well—by the NY Times.
Is it true? Are there more cons to print books than there are pros? Is the digitizing of books a boon to humankind that writers and designers alike should be embracing, an opportunity for our skills and talents to blossom in ways that print books simply can’t handle? Is our attachment to print books an emotional attachment to familiarity rather than artistic common sense? And what about all those dead trees, anyway?
I love print books. I just bought 11 volumes of Thackerey with leather spines and corners, which—so far as I can tell—were probably printed in the 1890s, and they are absolutely the apple of my eye. I don’t own an ereader. I don’t have any plans to acquire one.
There is a concreteness to physical books that’s deeply tied to my identity, my sense of myself. I grew up in a house where bookcases were important and books embodied respect for the intellectual mind. When my parents bought an old Victorian in Bellingham to renovate in the early 1970s, almost the first thing my father did was build a wall of bookshelves across the study, finishing it with care in old-fashioned trim and staining and oiling it to look like it had always been there. He filled it with his books from his college days. That was the world in which he learned the marvelous flexibility of thought, curiosity, creativity.
My mother reads novels. Not cheap crap, but really amazing works by the great wordsmyths of the English language. Those books were around the house throughout my childhood, so I grew up on the nineteenth-century masters, as well as the wonderful language in books written in the early twentieth-century, the Moderns and Post-Moderns. Virginia Woolf’s experimental short-short stories were a part of my childhood experience. She taught me to look meticulously before writing and to choose words to match that meticulous eye.
The smell of those books has been with me since I first learned to read. The beauty of language and craft is tied intimately in my brain to the beloved smell of words.
Now, I’ve seen gadgets come and go for decades. I know how to write computer programs and recently spent a weekend commiserating with a friend who’s a programmer at Apple over the eternal superiority of Unix and C. I live in a house with more computers than media outlets. I could try to be a Luddite, but what would be the point? I work on computers cobbled together by my husband.
I have not been bowled over by the advent of ereaders. “We already have readers,” I say. “I’ve got stacks of them by my chair even as we speak.”
But Craig has really got me thinking about this. Is he right? Is it time for us writers and readers to quit clinging to dying illusions and move into a vibrant new literary reality?
Is that what you’re doing?
It’s always hard to be in the group that is firmly rooted in the past when change comes.
I cannot imagine not hearing the sound of a crisp page turning when I read a book. I can’t imagine giving up the glow of a page illuminated by a GE 70 watt bulb. I hate to think of not feeling the page beneath my fingers or smelling that musty, sweet smell of a time worn book.
But Craig is right. Not all books deserve the physical treatment. Cutting down trees, shipping, the additional square footage required for an in-home library – these are costs beyond the price of the book.
The day is coming when a book is going to have to earn it’s place in the physical world and it’s coming fast..
I want future generations to experience the wonder of turning a page – Wasn’t it incredible to pick up an encyclopedia and just start flipping pages? The inside of a human body, Denmark, all the breeds of horses – who knew what surprise would be on the next page? I’m not ready to lose that, but I don’t mind a bit if trash is deleted instead of sent to the curb.
Kathryn
I have an e-reader. If you want it, you will have to pry it from my cold dead hands. There are books you can’t give the e-treatment to, but for all intents and purposes, if I’m never going to read a book again (think serial novels, eg. the Sookie Stackhouse books, Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series, Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and the three following them, the rest of the genre I prefer to write in–sff), I am perfectly happy to have them, conveniently, in e-format on my e-reader, instead of having to plan how many books will fit into my handbag and not break my shoulders.
I think it’s worthwhile to see this as less of a war between books and technology and more of a brotherhood. I love books, and would choose one over a device any day, but the tide is moving in a different direction. It may swing back in the near or distant future, but it also may not.
Here’s a little tough love, Victoria, and I say this with the utmost respect for your talents and integrity: abandon or contain this angst about the literary technology. With so few options to us writers, your potential clients are going to want an editor who embraces all of the possible avenues to getting published. I want to see my book as just that, an actual book. But I realize that things are changing and I have to be ready to adapt, even if the cost is a bit of pride.
Kathryn, that’s a fascinating attitude—digitize the crap! You’re always so hilarious. Because who gets to decide what’s crap? Raymond Chandler wrote dimestore novels. I can see the thunderclouds forming over it already. Will it fracture into “literary” and “pop” works —those that get into both print & digital and those that get into only digital—-the way paperbacks fractured into post-hardback and mass-market?
Ai, that’s a really good point a LOT of people are making: ebooks are only as heavy as the ereader they’re on, and one book weighs as much as full capacity. I’d say paperbacks were invented partly for exactly the same purpose. Yes, they’re cheaper than hardbacks. But they’re also heck of lighter. Magazines are, too. How many readers put up with the omnipresent advertising just to have something to read when they’re out of the house? And Craig Mod’s point is that ebook format is vastly more flexible than print. Penguin recently announced they’ll be moving aggressively into multimedia. What’s your take on that idea?
Chris, you’re great. Actually, I was kind of playing the devil’s advocate there. We’re geeks in this house. In fact, we’re going to reverse the current (hotly challenged) trend in conventional publishing of releasing a book in print with lagtime before releasing the e-version. We’ll be releasing my book in e-version first. So all of you with ereaders will get it before those riddled with literary angst.
What do you guys think about Chris’ comment about the tide? Will it swing back? Will retro engulf the reading world? Or will print books eventually join leather binding as a rather glamorous but ridiculously impractical thing of the past?
My crystal balls says that a rising tide lifts all ships.
My primary goal as a writer is to write a great book. But, my secondary goal is to promote reading, especially in children. If digitizing books makes words seem cooler or allows them to be more accessible, that’s great.
Let’s hook people on reading any way we can. When they find a book they love, they will want to hold a copy of it in their hands, because, let’s face it – Humans are still primitive. We want to tack our trophies on the wall, and display our favorite books on the shelf!!!
K
Rising tide—that’s a heck of a good quote. I hadn’t thought of that.
Of course, I was in graphic design and newspaper composition back when we did it all by hand with process cameras and hot wax and exacto knives, and when desktop publishing hit my entire skill-set became obsolete almost overnight. So that rising tide left me kind of high & dry.
But you’re right about books and gadgets being cool to young people. And the books in your hands—Paulo Coelho did a rather riveting thing when he found out his books were being pirated in Russia. He collected all the pirating sites he could find that had his books and created a Pirated Paulo Coelho webpage. So you could just go there and download his books. His sales SPIKED.
So do you think treating digitized books the same way will spike sales in print?
And what about what makes gadgets cool to young people? Isn’t that just marketing by the makers of the gadgets, designed primarily to extract money from folks? And is that okay with those of us who have other priorities besides those of marketers?
How do you ever fall asleep at night with so many questions running through your mind?
You got the marketing component right. Create a need – like Nintendo DS’s and I-Pods and everything else. Why can’t books have the hip factor, too? Once publishers figure out how they can make the same or more money out of ebooks, they will market them like crazy and everyone will be happy.
It’s the pricing piece I sent you from NPR. If publishers and writers can still make a living, and people can get books at the click of a mouse, everyone should be happy. (Except the people who want books for free.)
K
Thanks for sending that NPR link—I’m putting it in today’s post. Everyone should read it. The problem is whether or not writers will be able to make a living. Not that they make one now. . .
I have insomnia.