Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Via MJ Rose’s blog, today I found what seems to be the third part of a four-part conversation with Corrections author Jonathan Franzen. After making what seems to me some terribly shaky reasoning when it comes to publishing work about the lives of his friends and family (Franzen says that it hurts them less to read about themselves in print than it would hurt him not to write the material; WTF?), he then goes on give his “assessment of online reading,” which Franzen acknowledges is “harsh”:

Kafka is about as substantive as a writer can be, and it may be an interesting exercise to spell out the text of “Before the Law” in skywriting over Miami Beach, but I don’t think it will satisfy readers who care about Kafka’s substance. Part of the magic of literature resides in the making of the indelible mark — in our belief in its indelibility. Serious readers are able to invest even the crappiest, most beat-up paperback with a kind of magical permanence. To read Virginia Woolf on a little plastic screen that five seconds ago was filled with Ann Coulter is to undermine one of the basic conditions of literary reading. It’s to make all texts more or less equal and equally provisional. I admit that I may be particularly resistant to reading on a screen because I use a computer to write. When I see words are floating on a screen, I assume they’re still subject to revision. And it’s not that I assume they’re bad — I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting stuff getting published online. It’s more like the difference between fluorescence and a candle. Nothing you can do to a fluorescent fixture can make me want to have a romantic dinner by its light. Writing on the Web is at its best when it’s quick and spontaneous and in process. If there’s great fiction getting published online, I look forward to seeing it in print someday soon.

For me, Franzen basically undermines his own theory, because if “serious readers are able to invest even the crappiest, most beat-up paperback with a kind of magical permanence,” then why can’t serious readers do the same thing with a computer screen? And if they indeed can’t, all it shows is their prejudice for paper over plastic. Which is a shame since — as more and more important work begins to appear online — more and more “serious readers” are going to seriously limit themselves.

Also, for Franzen to use the example of Kafka (in terms of being a writer who must be read in print) is a poor choice. I actually think the writer of The Metamorphosis would find a certain kind of symmetry (if not downright poetry) in the fact that words he wrote on paper have been transformed to fit on a computer screen. Not to mention that the only place Kafka wanted his work to appear was a fireplace (he asked that upon his death his friend Max Brod destroy all of his work, a plea that Brod obviously ignored). So any talk of Kafka having to appear in book format goes against the wishes of the author himself.

Anyway, arguing about Virginia Woolf and Kafka is one thing, but we also need to focus on the new kinds of writing that will be created with computers, websites, blogs and RSS forming an integral part. And of course the bottom-line is that no one’s going to be forced to go digital, no more than stormtroopers are going to storm, or troop, into Franzen’s apartment and make him have romantic dinners by LED rather than candles. However, if he chooses to continue to ignore online writing, or just wait for everything to appear in print, he’s going to miss out on a lot.

Last week, a reader turned me on to an article entitled “The 21st Century Writer,” which happens to be the current cover story for The Futurist magazine. Written by the magazine’s senior editor, Patrick Tucker, the article is one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time to discuss the evolving role of the writer in these digital times.

And while the fact that the essay is appearing in a magazine entitled The Futurist tips its hand slightly as to where the author falls in the future of the book debate (I would imagine an article on the same topic in Luddite Monthly would take the exact opposite point of view), but despite this Tucker places his argument deftly within historical and technological context:

For people who make their living selling words to readers—and indeed for readers themselves—these are times of upheaval. The information technology revolution has led to an explosion in textual content. More people are engaging in more conversations, sharing more opinions, learning more, and learning faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago.

It’s a really great essay, and has many great quotes and bits of insight.

A colleague and fellow writer recently sent me a number of passages from The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson’s recent novel. The book has a section set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic (and post-print) world. In fact, the quotes below remind me very much of Bradbury’s dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451.

From The Stone Gods, page 49:

“We were flying in a strange part of the sky,” said Handsome, “and we thought we’d hit a meteorite shower, ship spinning like a windsock in a gale. I took a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree shot of the ship, and I saw that what we were flying through was a bookstorm–encyclopedias, dictionaries, a Uniform Edition of the Romantic poets, the complete works of Shakespeare.”

From The Stone Gods, page 162:

Books had been lost like everything else in the War, and Post-3 War we hadn’t returned to print media. Natural wastage was the economic argument: why go back to something that was on the way out anyway? You can order books from Print on Demand, but most people use Digital Readers now, or don’t read at all. The younger kids have never known book culture so they don’t miss it.

From The Stone Gods, page 164:

I had been in the British Library, researching the history of artificial intelligence. It was the books that saved my life. As the building collapsed I fell on to a raft of books, and stacks of books fell on to me, knocking me unconscious but casing me from further damage. I came round, pushed myself out of the mountain of books, and started to walk home through the blasted streets, in shock, aware, somewhere, that people were running and screaming, and that everywhere, like one of those archive films of detonated demolitions, buildings were falling.

I think these are great quotes, and the predictions feel very real given all that we’re going through right now.

The Economist’s June 5th edition has an article entitled “Unbound,” which sounds fairly benign until you read the sub-headline: “Publishers worry as new technologies transform their industry.” Oh, and there’s also a grinning picture of Jeff Bezos with the caption “You’re all doomed!,” as if Bezos is attacking the publishing industry Jack Torrance-style, with his goofy grin about to break out into a fiendish sounding “Here’s Johnny!”

The article was spurred by Bezos’s recent appearance at Book Expo America. Having been in the audience for the Bezos speech, I can confirm firsthand that his appearance was indeed lukewarmly received. In fact, when he told the booksellers in the room that Scott McClellan’s new book, the Bush-bashing memoir What Happened, was sold out everywhere except as a Kindle eBook, it seemed like he was gloating rather than trying to relate to publishers that they need not have warehouses and physical stock in order to make money. The point that Bezos should have made was that people just wanted McClellan’s story, not the paper.

Anyway, after setting the stage (“Books have changed very little in half a millennium, but they may now be on the verge of going digital”), the Economist article touches upon the usual topics surrounding electronic books and print on demand technology, listing the effects they could have on the industry. And while most of it is standard stuff, I find the final couple of lines to be a bit disingenuous:

Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them.

The fact that I’m reading this article, on the Economist’s website, rather than the millions or so other stories that appear on the Web everyday is because the Economist is a brand that I trust. I simply don’t have time to chase down and read every scrap of content that’s out there, so I pick and choose from reputable sources. So if the Economist’s thesis were true (and it’s nothing we haven’t already heard over and over; remember when Stephen King tried to sell The Plant for a buck a branch?), and the only major parts of the publishing process were indeed “authors and readers,” then publishing would have been put out of business a long time ago. eBooks have existed for over ten years, and vanity presses have been willing to print a book by anyone who will pay them for much longer than that.

What I find most interesting about the Economist article is that, in the same issue, there’s an article entitled “Who needs paper?” But this one’s not about publishing or books. Instead, it’s about the travel industry. The full headline reads, “Airlines do away with paper tickets,” which is something I actually wrote about last September. Here’s the first few lines of the Economist article:

IT WILL not be long before paper tickets for a plane, train or bus seem as quaint as propellers, steam and conductors do today. Electronic travel passes are already widespread in many cities.

And, of course, with the headline “Who needs paper?” you could imagine that the article would be about books, probably reading something like:

IT WILL not be long before paper novels for fiction, non-fiction or reference material seem as quaint as propellers, steam and conductors do today. Electronic content devices are already widespread in many cities.

And yet, in either one of those stories — whether you’re writing about traveling or reading — the fact that paper is going away isn’t having an adverse effect on the thing itself: people are still traveling, despite not having paper tickets. And people will continue to read, even when paper formats begin to go away.

There’s a Seinfeld episode where Kramer goes to his local firehouse and offers the station chief a bunch of neighborhood shortcuts that will enable the firefighters to get to fires faster. However, the fire chief brushes Kramer off by telling him that “just about every week some brash young hothead like yourself saunters in here talking about faster routes and snazzier colors for the trucks. Well, fact is we feel things are fine the way they are.“

We’re of course we’re supposed to be rooting for Kramer. After all, what institution couldn’t use a little help and/or advice? And the shocked look that Kramer gives the fire chief is something we’ve all probably felt at least once when we had a great idea that we felt wasn’t appreciated. But later in the episode, when Kramer “helps” drive the fire engine on the way to a fire after he mistakenly knocks out a fire fighter, he ends up causing the fire engine to crash. Meanwhile, the building they were all on the way to save ends up burning down (all of which just goes to show that good directions don’t count as much as not crashing).

I thought of all of this when I saw a short article by Henry Blodget from last week that appeared on the website Silicon Alley Insider. Entitled, “How to Save the Book Publishing Industry,” Blodget’s glib advice is short and sweet. “How can publishers fix their business?” he asks. “Not by killing more trees. By radically retooling the business model.”

And what’s Blodget’s radical (if not just plain rad) advice? Charging less for eBooks. A lot less:

$4.99 for a first run bestseller, downloadable to your Kindle, PC, or iPod — or simply readable on the Internet. The retailer keeps $1 or so, the author gets $1 or so, and the publisher takes home about $3. Some of that goes to marketing and some to overhead. And then you’re left with the typical publisher profit of less than $1 (no returns, manufacturing, or distribution costs).

As many others have already stated in their reaction to the piece, this is nothing we generally haven’t heard repeatedly since, oh, the late ‘90s. In addition, the always-smart Tim O’Reilly posted two comments on the Silicon Alley Insider website that make great sense, and hopefully will school Blodget a bit, including: “Overall, your figures seem completely imaginary. Seems to me that you picked numbers out of a hat to fit your argument, rather than figuring out real numbers and real implications.”

But this all just goes to show what publishers are up against. I mean, do people really think — in the face of enormously changing consumer habits and online trends — that it’s that simple? The fact is, many people do indeed think it’s as easy as just slashing prices. To go back to the Seinfeld episode mentioned earlier, Blodget’s idea is just about as helpful as Kramer’s usually were. That’s not at all to say that “we feel things are fine the way they are.” Not by a long shot. But we need to have ideas that do something other than just leave us and our authors with drastically reduced revenue.

On Monday, Information Age columnist L. Gordon Crovitz had an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Digital Future of Books.” The essay is ostensibly about the Kindle, but he also touches upon the general idea and nature of digital books. For instance, Crovitz writes that “perhaps a new digital device like the Kindle can help us regain the attention spans earlier devices helped us lose. If so, this could become a great era for books, or more accurately for the future of words that for centuries could be delivered only in book form.”

He also quotes a bit from my book, Print is Dead:

Much is at stake. As Mr. Gomez concluded, “what’s really important is the culture of ideas and innovation” books represent. But “to expect future generations to be satisfied with printed books is like expecting the BlackBerry users of today to start communicating by writing letters, stuffing envelopes and licking stamps.”

It’s a nice article, and I especially like its last line: “With innovations like the Kindle, digital media can help return to us our attention spans and extend what makes books great: words and their meaning.”

Over the weekend The New York Times had two stories about books, one that talked abut them in analog form and another that discussed their more recent digital transformation. Analog showed up in the form of a small piece on playwright Tom Stoppard, who lugs with him wherever he goes a box filled with books (pictured above). The article is drenched in nostalgia, describing a world of porters and ocean-liners. And maybe this is indeed Stoppard’s world (I can see him being like Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, traveling with a myriad of monogrammed trunks). But for most us having a forty or fifty pound “portable bookshelf” isn’t an option (or even something we’d consider). Which is where electronic books come in very handy.

Which leads to the piece on digital books. Entitled “Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless,” the article is mostly a review of Amazon’s eBook device, the Kindle. But the writer also gets at the heart of the future of the book debate, and how our definition of exactly what a book is is beginning to change:

The object we are accustomed to calling a book is undergoing a profound modification as it is stripped of its physical shell. Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.

It’s not hard to connect the dots between Stoppard’s “portable bookshelf” and the Kindle’s ability to hold dozens of books at a time. And while Stoppard will probably never embrace an eBook device, there are thousands of other readers out there — drawn by the ability to carry one small device instead of all those books — who will.

Engadget, reporting from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, has some info on a new eBook tablet prototype that iRiver is developing. Details are hard to come by at this point but, according to Engadget, the prototype has handwriting recognition and a color display. In terms of its overall look and feel, it seems more Kindle than iPhone, but the advanced functionality it has (i.e. it does a lot more than just read books) points to what the Kindle should have been (and may still be). And, of course, something like this points to the integrated device of the future that will probably be what ends up being the final game-changer in terms of digital reading.

eBooks made an appearance this past Sunday in cartoonist Berkeley Breathed’s latest strip, entitled Opus. Named after the penguin from his ‘80s series Bloom County (why he couldn’t have brought back the Macintosh with feet is beyond me), the recent strip featured Opus getting an eBook for Christmas. The friend who gives it to him tells Opus that “it can download every book ever written,” and then refers to a print book (just as he’s tossing it away) as an “obsolete pile of pressed tree pulp.” The strip then shows Opus, without much luck, trying to read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Now, not to be too technical, but the reading experience that Breathed portrays is pretty much off the mark and wrong. First of all, the text that Opus is supposedly reading is computery and pixilated in a way that even the Rocket eBook wasn’t a decade ago. Today’s screens offer a much cleaner and clearer reading experience than that. Also, the eBook that Opus is trying to use is backlit. Indeed, the strip shows Opus reading in the dark, his eBook lighting up the entire room (so much so that, by the end of the strip, he’s using it as a night light). This is silly since none of the major eBooks on the market today use backlit screens; everything from the Kindle to the Iliad, not to mention Sony’s device, use eInk displays which quite faithfully mimic the paper reading experience.

Anyway, by the end of the strip — after Opus has been shown reading his horrible eBook in a cold, grey, bare room — he’s finally shown snuggled up in a warm library, curled up in a comfy chair munching on popcorn and reading a paper book. All is suddenly right with the world.

While being not only ridiculous, Breathed’s point is about as subtle as a jackhammer: eBooks bad, paper books good. And not only is this silly and simplistic, but it’s also interesting that the book Opus tries to read is To Kill a Mockingbird. Because I think that eBooks could be quite effectively compared to Boo Radley, the misunderstood character in Lee’s novel.

In the book, Boo Radley is seen by Scout and others as a big creepy monster, a neighborhood ghoul to be feared. Indeed, over the course of the book, Boo Radley is talked about in feared, hushed tones. And currently, eBooks (as evidenced by Breathed’s comic strip, where an eBook is portrayed about as warmly as Hal 9000 in 2001) are seen as cold, scary things: soulless devices whose only wish is to murder books. And yet, in the end, Boo Radley saves Scout, after which everyone discovers that he’s not some awful, Frankenstein-like creature after all. And I think readers will experience a similar epiphany when it comes to eBooks. They’re not something to be feared, but something to be embraced. And as more and more people give them a try, and come to the topic with an open mind, they’ll see that eBooks — long portrayed as the boogeyman by bibliophiles — are simply reading’s next evolution. And there’s nothing to fear in that.

The other day on the design website A Brief Message, designer Chip Kidd had a short essay entitled “Notify the Next of Kindle.” In the essay, Kidd disparages Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader by bestowing upon it the usual kind of narrow-minded bibliophile dismissal that culminates with the rather Proulxian declaration that “PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO READ BOOKS ON A SCREEN.” This is, of course, news to all of those people out there who DO ACTUALLY WANT TO READ BOOKS ON A SCREEN. (Not to mention that Kidd doesn’t really seem to comment on the fact that both his words and my words are BEING READ ON A SCREEN RIGHT NOW.)

Anyway, Kidd is obviously a brilliant and talented guy, but he’s coming at this from the point of view of a designer and, dare I say it, he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to discussing the topic. First of all, here’s how he explains away the success of the iPod: “The reason the iPod took off is that music was never meant to be a ‘thing’ in the first place. It was born as pure sound, and pure sound is what it has returned to.” This is pretty ridiculous. Kidd is failing to realize that, yes, music used to also be objects. In fact, when you think of the elaborate packaging of something like The Beatles White Album, with its embossed gatefold sleeve, fold-out poster and full-size color portraits, it was very much a “physical object,” a “thing.” And yet, after being downgraded to flimsy CD packaging a dozen years ago, it will soon be available as a completely digital download, meaning all you’ll get for your $20 is the music and an invisible package. And it will still be a great record.

So why won’t it be different for books? As Kidd sees it, “Books were always physical objects, and the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon.” I completely disagree with this. Books were always physical objects, yes, but that’s because they were, well, books. What Kidd fails to realize is that books have a marrow and a DNA that go far beyond the paper they’re printed on. In fact, as I’ve said many times, the “book” aspect of a book, meaning its physical structure (pages, ink and binding) is always the least interesting thing about a it. (Unless, I guess, you’re a designer.) I mean, the reason Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers is because he’s an amazing storyteller who takes me — through his words — to different and wonderful worlds. And while Kidd’s jackets (on Murakami’s books and others) are nice, they’re just part of the package (think of them as icing on the cake; nice, but not essential). I could read Murakami’s novels with different covers, or plain covers or no covers, or as a series of cocktail napkins, and they would still be chilling and amazing stories. So while Kidd can insist that the Kindle changes nothing, I think he’s dead wrong. And I also think the time for the snobbishness of saying no one wants to read books on a screen, when we live in a digital world and plenty of people do, has got to end.