E-Readers are the Future of Book Publishing But Will Never Replace Actual Books for Black Beard

As long as books continue to be released in their current form, I will never buy an iPad, Kindle, or Sony Reader. I readily acknowledge that digital copies are superior to paperbacks when it comes to storage, transportation, and research (searchable online copies of Ulysses alone have saved me hours of time spent looking up precise locations of quotes), but I could write an entire post about the folly in society’s willingness to constantly exchange inexpensive and efficient technologies for expensive though slightly more convenient inventions (i.e. books for digital books, or land lines for cell phones [Egads! I could write an entire post on cell phones, which I’m told people simply refer to as ‘phones’ these days]), and I would gladly eschew the advantages of a rewarding technology for the pleasure I derive from the feel of a book in my hand.

Despite my personal preferences, however, I admit to being excited about the growing prevalence of e-readers. Undoubtedly, the invention of mp3 players led to an increase in the amount of music consumed by the public (this article reports that digital devices have made it possible for teenagers to multitask their entertainment to the extent that they consume eleven hours worth of music, movies, Facebook, texting etc. in seven and a half hours of actual time), and my belief is that the same will hold true in some part for print media. See, not only do digital readers make it more convenient to carry books around, it also makes them more accessible.  Some libraries (like the New York Public Library) are beginning to offer digitized texts, which can be “checked out” instantly from one’s home, and if you prefer to buy, digital books are sold at lower prices. Hardbacks retail at around $24 and paperbacks at $14, and conversly, Kindle books go for less than $10.  (Tangent: the MSRP for Don Delillo’s new 117 page novel, Point Omega, is $24. You can get William Faulkner’s Collected stories, all 900 pages, for $19.95. I’m just saying: get your money’s worth.)

From the author’s perspective, e-readers are a harbinger of the death of the publishing industry as it currently exists, which is a good thing. See, with books, as with music and record labels, publishing houses operated as little more than dastardly distributors. In the past a writer needed a publisher in order to have his work printed on a large scale and sent to bookstores for sale and critics for review. Now (and it will only become more widespread with Apple in the market) we are headed towards a place where anyone with a minimal amount of effort could sell digital copies of their novel on a website or on a book by book copy via on demand printing technology.  As much of a literary snob as I am, I believe the ability for anyone to publish a professional looking book is a positive thing. Yes, there will be many unreadable novels made available for mass consumption, but there are unreadable novels published under the current system (Yes, Jonathan Franzen, I’m talking about you). I also believe that if something is good it will be recognized as such, regardless of the circumstances surrounding its release.

The conditions are not in place yet, but in the near future the distribution technology will be sufficiently embedded in our culture that an established author will be able to self-publish a book that goes on to become a best seller. Furthermore, book publishing will shift in the coming decades from the current monolith of consolidated houses to a large network of small publishers specializing in specific niches within genres. Sure, this may sound like an outlandish prediction, but if in 2000 I had told you that a thing called iTunes, which won’t even be invented for another three years, would end the decade having sold 9 billion songs on the internet, it would have seemed ridiculous, too.