Kindlerama

What is wrong with you people? You readers and authors out there who say you love books, but then wring your hands about “the future of publishing” and behave as if ebook technology is somehow anti-literacy–what is it you really love? I suspect it’s the book as an object, not as a device to transmit the written word. Are you avid readers, or simply book fetishists?

The latest nonsensical fear about the future of publishing and the threat of the Kindle comes from an opinion piece in the New York Times this week. Eleanor Randolph writes (emphasis mine),

There are darker questions about e-books, like whether these innocent-looking things will kill off the book publishing industry. Carolyn Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster (and the publisher of some of my husband’s works), said recently that e-books were only $1 million of her company’s $1 billion business last year. But, she added, this segment is growing so fast that it is at a tipping point. For somebody who still loves book books, this does not sound terrific.

It is easy to see that the e-book has its place — like on an airplane. There are also times when it doesn’t belong. For reading at the beach or in the bathtub. Or for Salman Rushdie, there is still nothing like a good old-fashioned hardback.

Fine, fine–it’s just an opinion. But buried in those two paragraphs are a few prejudices that pop up time and again in anti-ebook screeds:

• that the emotional and aesthetic value of a book is indivisible from a printed, bound object;
• that the potential growth of ebook sales will harm the book industry;
• and that ebooks are a “false convenience” (a common prejudice among anti-technologists) that are more trouble than they’re worth, or fix something that isn’t broken, or over-complicate things, or hard to use.

I can’t convince a “hardcover romantic” that the intrinsic worth of a book–its impact on my life, the memories I create as I read it, the connection it has to my personal history–exists beyond any mere physical object, but it does. At least for me it does. The most important books in my life exist in my head, to put it another way. I’ve gone through several copies of Mrs. Dalloway, and yet it’s the novel, not a particular printing, that matters to me. (I’ve never understood the mind of a book collector, who lives and dies off of first printings, signed copies, and limited editions. He may as well be collecting salt and pepper shakers or unopened toys from the 80s, as far as I’m concerned.)

What bothers me more is the second argument, which says that ebooks are bad for an industry that by all accounts is slowly fading into obsolescence. Ebooks are the face of group of technologies that could reap huge profits for savvy publishers–they combine zero-inventory publishing, instant sales, and a way to monetize your entire back catalogue of titles. They even offer a way to economically publish experimental, shorter, or unusual works that otherwise would never see the marketplace. They offer a way to turn user guides and manuals into ongoing revenue streams through subscription-based edition updates–without the need to pulp, republish, and distribute new editions.

As far as the “false convenience” argument goes, it’s one that people have made about every technology that’s introduced into the consumer electronics market, and it will be made about other gadgets in the future. What they’re really saying is that they can’t imagine using the new technology, or that they’re happy with the world enabled by the current technology and are therefore resistant to change. In other words, it’s a self-criticism that is incorrectly projected outward upon the new gadget.

Randolph tips her hand on this last point when she writes about the Kindle–which she owns, surprisingly–as if it were a magical and not entirely trustworthy faerie object:

There are problems with the thing, of course. It flashes a bit when you turn the page, giving one the feeling that this item, like banks and teenagers with cellphones, keeps taking your picture. Maybe that is part of the experience: wondering whether the e-book is judging the reader as the reader judges the e-book. So, does it know when I yawn? Will it change the ending if I guess? Does the machine simply need fixing?

She also worries that she’ll ruin her finances by accidentally buying a bunch of books on the Kindle, something which any experienced user knows is more or less impossible. That lack of knowledge about the UI, combined with her superstitions expressed above, disappoint me; the Kindle, I think, is designed to be easy to use and idiot-proof–in other words, designed for an average reader. It’s disappointing that an above-average reader like Randolph looks at it like it’s an example of Clarke’s sufficiently advanced piece of technology–and worthy of distrust.

“Reading Into the Future” [New York Times]