Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Last week J.K. Rowling and her publishers announced that the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series will be published this July. A few days later, the Associated Press announced that, same as with the previous six books, the new one would not be made available as an eBook. The snide undertone in the AP story (here’s the first line: “Sorry, e-book fans, whoever you are”) is matched only by Rowling’s own snide insistence that paper is the best and only way readers should experience her books. Of course, for someone who writes long books in longhand, not to mention spends all of her time in a fantasy world, her viewpoint is understandable if not predictable. However, if the Harry Potter books were made available as eBooks the sales for them would be huge and it would put a stop to the widespread — and meticulously coordinated — piracy efforts which are always put into effect seconds after any Harry Potter book becomes available. What Rowling doesn’t seem to realize is that people who want to read this book electronically are going to do so anyway, so why not let them do it legally? People would never bother to pirate something that already exists (which the success of iTunes has proven). But Rowling seems to be desperately (and obstinately) clinging to some Victorian notion of a writer as a scribbler of hand-written tomes, with noble ink-stained fingers making delicate row upon row of script on foolscap. Meanwhile, study after study has shown that — despite the crazed interest in the Potter books — the reading habits of kids are in serious decline; they’re spending much more time with computers than they do with books. If we could get them to read the Harry Potter books electronically, it could begin to get them into the habit of merging the reading of text with the use of computers, and it would at least be a chance at reversing some very serious trends in terms of youth illiteracy. But instead, Rowling would rather complain about not being able to find a pad of paper in an iPod world.

From the AP: “‘Why is it so difficult to buy paper in the middle of town?’ the author, a resident of Edinburgh, Scotland, lamented in a diary entry posted at the time on her website. ‘What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realizes, to her horror, that she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag? Forty-five minutes it took me, this morning, to find somewhere that would sell me some normal, lined paper. And there’s a university here!’ she wrote.”

AP: Rowling: No e-book for Harry Potter VII