There has been a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching in the book world about the challenges posed by e-books. There is also the separate, but related, matter of the massive, loss-leader discounting that book-store chains practise routinely.
Cheap books and e-books are apparently threatening civilisation as we know it. They are certainly causing the demise of many thousands of independent book stores worldwide. The most pessimistic estimates put the closure of book stores in the US at 25% already.
If this trend seems familiar, that’s because it hit other industries first. In the second half of the 20th century, mom-and-pop grocery stores the world over were forced to close as giant supermarket chains spread their leviathan-like tentacles further and further abroad. They simply couldn’t compete with all the choices offered by the supermarkets, or with the gratifyingly low prices. There may have been some consumers who held out loyally against temptation, but they weren’t numerous enough or dogged enough.
When the first motor cars were introduced in the 1880s, it didn’t seem possible that they would one day replace the horse and carriage. Nay, that in an astonishingly short period of time, they would sweep the horse and carriage into the dustbin of history. Thousands of people lost their livelihoods — from liveried coachmen to the guy who cleaned up the streets after the horses. Hundreds of years’ worth of carefully honed skills became abruptly obsolete. In their place we acquired dangerously fast-moving vehicles that polluted the air and guzzled up the world’s fossil fuel supply. Yet few of us seriously look back on that time with any acute sense of loss. We’re too fond of being able to move from Point A to Point B quickly and efficiently.
So why can we not let independent bookstores go in the same quiet fashion? It probably has to do with the fact that books are not a commodity in the same sense as olive ciabatta and low-fat yoghurt are. They are not so much consumer items as a repository for the whole of human intellectual endeavour across all time and space. There are those who say that to this day we have not regained all the knowledge that was lost when the great library at Alexandria burned down. (Nice one, Julius Caesar. You twit.)
This is the fear that haunts us when people talk about the demise of the book. All that knowledge, all those stories — entire cultures and religions — could be swept away if books ceased to exist. But e-books are not about destroying knowledge, are they? They merely store it in electronic form. So what is really being lost here? People talk about the feel of books, the appearance of books, and (strangely but persistently) the smell of books.
There are many others who cannot relate to this at all. For them, books are all about the content. They don’t care about fonts, jackets or the grade of the paper. And they most certainly don’t care about the smell. All they care about is transferring the words to their brain in as short a time as possible. They’d be perfectly happy never to read another paper book in their lives. I know this because I am one of them. I love my Kindle with a passion that is probably illegal in several US states.
But even I can see that something valuable will be lost if paper books cease to exist altogether. As yet there is no really satisfactory way of browsing through books electronically. Yes, the sellers of e-books bombard you with “suggestions”, but it’s just not the same as browsing from shelf to shelf to see what title or jacket catches your eye. And downloading a free sample is similarly not the same as flipping through a book to see whether it appeals.
Bookstores, especially the independents, are fantastic centres of community learning and uplift. My personal favourite is Love Books in Melville, which hosts an endless round of book launches during the week, and Saturday-morning readings for kids on the weekend. It would be a tremendous pity if these stores simply ceased to exist.
Most distressing of all is the prospect of children in the future growing up in homes without books. Much of our literary education happens through serendipity. It’s boredom that drives you (okay, me) to your parents’ bookshelf one rainy weekend where you happen to pick up a yellowed old paperback of Auntie Mame, thereby precipitating a lifelong infatuation with Patrick Dennis. If all books are to be stored on electronic devices, these serendipitous moments will cease to exist and all of our children’s reading will henceforth be guided by adults – a truly horrible prospect.
In the end, all we can be sure of is that market forces will prevail, as they did in the case of the supermarkets and the automobile. If bookstores and paper books continue to add genuine value to the consumer’s experience, they will be permitted to exist. If they don’t, they too will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
It’s surely not a matter of bookstores being permitted to exist? They have to be profitable. Should they provide social support for readers, access to electronic databases, discounts to book clubs, or a means of browsing before ordering? Or all four?
The demise of print began quite a few generations ago with DTP and I still remember the comfort my Sunday newspaper brought…reading for the whole week. Why did I lose interest? I guess because discerning reading was not part of the package; with so much marketing in the articles, they sometimes became a poor excuse for advertising…which already seemed over-represented in paper volume. To make the public pay for advertising of no interest, seems a tad unfair these days, doesn’t it?
The person who gains the most satisfaction from the weight, feel and smell of a book is surely the author? Give it another 20 years, until the old folk are underground…
I’m a recent convert to the Kindle, and I still buy hardcover books from authors who I know I am likely to want to read again over the years. This is partly about stupid moves by ebook publishers and retailers, however. DRM is a plague which must be stopped – it is the equivalent of saying “you may only store these books on a bookshelf made by us; if you buy a bookshelf from someone else, you may not transfer your books.”
I suspect even without DRM I would buy certain books in print, because there is no guarantee there will be e-readers in 30 years time – they may ultimately fail due to cost and lifespan – with Amazon recently admitting they sell the Kindle at cost price and make money from the books, this is not as ridiculous as it seems, because the supposedly low price is still out of reach of many who can afford paper books. And unlike paper books, their batteries will die, and will not always be replaceable. At the moment, e-readers are for the minority of well off readers only.
It will be a long time before we know whether they will replace paper books.
As for discovering authors – I have been buying a lot more digital downloads of music lately, and I find that it leads me to new discoveries easier than music stores or my parents collections ever did – a shock to me, who had assumed the same as you, that browsing physical items was more likely to have this effect. There are more ways than ever to share with others what you read and listen to.
I think it would be in order to discern between newspapers, periodicals and glossies and categories of books, as far as their compatibility with electronic readers, as opposed to good old paper are concerned. If, for instance, scientific textbooks with numerous formulae are simply copied onto paperless media, I find it easier to consult paper. However, a more imaginative presentation could conceivably change one’s preference to the electronic version. Time will tell, no doubt. I’m waiting for direct transfer to the brain – you just suddenly know. Reading will then fall away as a hobby; we’ll just have to find something else!
As one of those most despised of literary outcasts, the self-publishing author, i have been liberated by the death of the auld regime…almost more than i have been liberated by the potentials of the digital revolution. I no longer experience the horror of the axiomatic “gone today back tomorrow” syndrome, whereby booksellers take my work “on consignment” and either never pay me, or do so in a hundred and plenty days… and only after i have had to harass them so unmercifully they would no longer communicate with me, or at worst hand me back my work in second hand form as a “remainder”after some six months. Thank you: they can all go into the same place as the horse and buggy crew.
Thanks to the digital revolution, I am now able to [and do] communicate daily with readers [and listeners] from every corner of the planet: whereas before i was struggling to be noticed outside my garden.
When i heard the editor of Newsweek last night on Bloomberg, using much the same rhetoric [albeit more discreetly] to explain that magazine’s decision to go exclusively digital in 2013, i felt doubly [almost smugly] vindicated.
So while i understand your sense of nostalgia… being myself the owner of more than 8,500 volumes of paper works i have to say that when i hear people ‘gaaning aan’ about the absence of reading in their indigenous languages [e.g: this a.m. on SAFM] i ask why they haven’t gone digital? Is it because they are still horse and buggy people?
Until they make a water resistant Kindle, I’m a paperback version. Hot winter baths with bubbles and wine don’t work with electronics – I speak from experience
I’m a Luddite. No doubt about that. My books are like best friends sitting on the self, inviting me back into their lives. I just cannot find the same connection with an electronic device. The price factor does attempt to sway me but the need to touch what I buy manages to over-ride it.
I remember there used to be a second hand book store in Sunnyside when I was still in university. They had this big comfy chair and the aroma of loved books all around. Many of the gems that I discovered there on a rainy afternoon are still on my bookshelf – these are the same treasures which my children have discovered on a rainy afternoon in my spare room infused with the aroma of loved books and on the comfy chair that lives there. Where will your Kindle book be in 30 years time, on the umpteenth generation of electronics?
Some interesting comments. To add to these here’s a wonderful letter entitled “The trouble with e-books”, written by one David Robson, of Otley, West Yorkshire to The Guardian newspaper:
“Your report highlights our march into a more limited and sterile book-reading future. It is not enough to simply compare the experience of e-books with that of paper books – we need to consider the whole reading ecosystem that each format supports. An e-book (like a music download) is licensed to the consumer – it is not owned. It cannot be shared, or even passed on to your children. It is bought, read, and probably forgotten; it leaves no physical presence in your room to remind you of the hours or days you spent with it.
Paper books, on the other hand, can be stored in an easily visible way. They can be shared, given away, lent, sold; they support charities and secondhand booksellers; they can be borrowed from libraries by people who cannot afford to buy them; they can be discovered years later and read again – providing a trip into your own past; they are visible at friends’ houses and can be discovered by new readers. The e-book versus paper books debate should not be limited to the simple act of reading – we will lose much more if the e-book becomes dominant”.
Brilliant !
I’ve just given various books (some ‘classics’ – Treasure Island, etc.) to a couple of young (thirteen yrs. old or so) lads hoping to improve their English through reading…. I gradually rediscover books for them and they call round every week or so to see what I’ve found. They have a drink and snack and we chat about the stories they like best for about half an hour. Now I could never do that with Kindle!
I am a complete Luddite over books as is Momma Cyndi, though (unlike my father) I don’t read in the bath….
@ Dave Reynolds
Lovely letter and i can completely empathise with the sentiments expressed by the writer… thank you.
What that writer and those charming ‘luddites’ represent is a fragmenting and allegedly declining part of the”information access’ and i am certain that it will rremain in the way that it existed in the distant past before it was hurtled into an Information age for which it was not prepared… It’s business model was incompatible with the speed of technological evolution and it has been by passed and marooned… which i would repectfully suggest is a more proper term thjan ‘Luddites’… since i am sure that the various ‘luddees’ all make use of cellphones, and do not become frantic over the loss of cleft sticks…. Luddites wouldn’t have had cellphones.
However notwithstanding the large number of texts that exist in my “bloggery”: rule #4 in my classroom is: “Love Google [and whatever may take its place]. Because the biggest needs in the world we have created for ourselves is a: information b] and Storage of that information and hence C access to information.
I cannot understand why you think that old fashioned “reading” is going to vanish for some reason as though you are soon to be forced to stop reading books… It has been done in the past; there was a time recently when one smuggled books around the country: so maybe you are reflecting a common human memory… Digital now takes that freedom books gave us to a new dimension.
There is a missing word there: sorry.
Line 4: “information access market”
I have books n the shelf but mostly as “look up” and “reference” tools. I do not know who this would work with an e-book device. Much of the “look up” and “reference” I do now using Internet but…….still use my old books.
What the electronic age has almost taken away from me is: writing letters using pen and paper, an envelop and stamp to send it away. I correspond via email which is not the same. I guess a very similar sensation to reading from a panel instead of reading from a book. Sentimental old ………. (for you to complete)
When I walk into somebody’s house I do not look at the decor but I look at their books. Their collections speak volumes as to who they are. Their bookshelves define.
A sterile computer somehow does not do the same…
Anyone remember Microsoft Reader? Anyone bought books on it? And then Microsoft just killed it. Without apology, regret, refund or a migration path… All the current media forms except for html and pdf are almost certain to be lost in ten years time. Especially those that are encrypted or tied to a device serial number. Disposable media like Kindle is for disposable literature, or what needs continualy updating – the book you read on holiday in the shade with a cocktail, the newspaper or magazine that you just throw away, the encyclopaedia, catalogue or dictionary. But the things you love, the things you pour over, the things you look at again and again? No, books are special!
Interesting read – thanks Author…
I guess the book will become retro, like the LP, and eventually the CD.
Some of the points in the comments are a little off:
- e-book reader in the bath is just as waterproof as paper. Drop your paperback in the bath and you end up with unreadable pulp.
- we have more than one Kindle at home, all linked to the same account, meaning we can share the books across devices (so sharing is possible).
my son can check out my purchased books on his Kindle just as easy as looking at the bookshelf on a rainy day. In fact, even better, just buy a new book if none interest you, any time, without having to venture ouside.
For me, space is an issue, I do not have enough to store many books (same as DVD and CD’s), so this is a real practical option.
I travel quite a bit, so I am a little frustrated when you have to turn off your ebook reader for take off and landing, where the paper versions had their advantage, but carrying more than one book is a bit of a pain versus the electronic version.
Not sure about the ebook reader for recipe books in the kitchen either – perhaps flicking through pages with food covered hands is not really practical, especially touch screen….
But love my Kindle, and hope that the service continues…