Social Reading

I have to agree with The New Yorker's dim take on Steven Berlin Johnson's optimistic vision of e-books. Though I might not call it optimistic so much as odd. His idea--or part of it--is that the movement of reading from paper books to a linked-up, electronic version of said will create a perpetual dialogue on each book--every line anyone ever struggled with or liked blogged about or commented on and then discussed in the vast community that is the internet. This strikes me as completely unnatural and strange. As the New Yorker points out, books have already started moving online--a lot--and yet we have yet to see a glimmering of this futuristic network of thought surrounding them and giving them a new social context. Okay, people write and read reviews on Amazon and start literary blogs and create fan sites for their favorite authors, but in this books are just like every other subject and project embraced by the internet. It's not surprising that such things should happen. This is not what Johnson is talking about.

The question of books in a social context is an interesting one. Of course your stereotypical book person is not a model social being; she lives in her head and is cut off from the "real world." This image didn't come from nowhere, and I'm sure I'm reacting not just to its persistence but to it's underlying validity when I say that there is something wrong about Johnson's hyper-gregarious vision of the future. I differ here, too, with the New Yorker's assesment of why Johnson is wrong. I don't think the value of physical books as social signifiers--their "attractiveness"--is going to have much impact on the proliferation of e-books either. Bottom line, books are not primarily social things. Certainly they shouldn't be confined within an anti-social bubble. Book clubs, casual discussion with friends, the kind of reviewing and discussion that already goes on online--these can add a lot to the experience, and being a reader can add a lot to one's social self as well, despite the stereotypes. Also, the social context of books is vital to how they are marketed and to how they can potentially infiltrate the culture more than they currently do--the more you hear your friend twittering or blogging about a book, the more likely you might be to read it or to read at all; the more marketers are able to convince you that everyone reads or that cool people read, the more likely you are to do so; the more you're not fully culturally literate unless you've read this or that...etc. That's all as it may be. Still, I don't think the social side of them has over or will ever be the primary reason people read books, and therefore the primary way they react to the experience of doing so is not really based in social terms. When you're deciding what to read, when you want to talk about what you have read, nothing could be better than a community of people to share with. But the space between, the actual act of reading, this seems to exist--rightly--in an essentially private sphere. Johnson's idea isn't much more revolutionary than others who see books becoming integrated into our modern framework, but because his vision intrudes on this private space (the sub-head of the relevant section of his essay reads "You're Never Alone"), it strikes a distinctly unpleasant note. Our culture is a culture of hyper-sociality--in a perverse sort of way that doesn't require you to look anyone in the face, but constant interaction and engagement with the thoughts of others nonetheless. How in god's name would Twitter have made sense to anyone at an earlier point in time? But, and I've said it before, I don't think books can conform too much to this ethos while remaining themselves. When and if they do become blurby and commentable and disjointed and super hyperlinked enough to really fit in to the very social way we process other kinds of information via the internet nowadays, I don't think they will really be books anymore at all.

Dunkin Donuts : organic five grain muffin :: romance novels : literary fiction

This is very true. I've felt a very insistent need for plotty, neatly ending, easily digestable books as these tough times have become more real to me. I imagine it is the mental equivalent of needing sweet, fatty goodness in times of stress, and releases similar waves of dopamine or seratonin or whatever it is. Most recently read, for example--and these books are all exactly what they sound like:

Mistress of the Art of Death
An Unexpected Pleasure
Clandestine
Princess Academy
The Curse of the Pharohs

E-books Depress Me Some More

From Black Plastic Glasses, a very informative article that offers actual analysis of how much e-books cost publishers. Here's a depressing summation: "Clearly ebooks aren’t free - they are perhaps as expensive or in some cases more expensive than print - yet they do not create large, short term cash flow to cover their costs. Ebooks, if successful, will sink the trade publishing industry." As things stand how, he says, e-books must always depend on print sales to finance them and to keep publishers afloat--hardly the model anyone envisioned when looking to the future of this new medium. Not only are they not our saviors, but they're positive leeches on the system, it seems. The author promises follow up pieces on how to escape this unfortunate situation.

Yep

People just aren't going to stand for e-book prices that approximate actual book prices. I'm surprised they stand for those that are only slightly lower. The first commentator on this article makes a good point: it is probably true that our intuitive sense of the relative cost of making an e-book, and therefore the justified price of one, is mistaken. I don't think it's very likely, though, that anyone is ever going to win consumers over with logic. People aren't going to start paying for online newspapers that they've never had to pay for before, and they're not going to stomach paying as much for an ephemeral digital file as they would for a physical book. Whether it is an instinctive sense of value, or simply that we have gotten used to paying nothing or very little for internet-gleaned entertainment, I don't see this attitude shifting any time soon or ever. Where does this leave publishers? Maybe it will drive technological advancements that will lower the cost of publishing and distributing an electronic book. Maybe they will just be stuck with low low profit margins. As someone who cares about the industry, I feel for them: the promise of this shiny new technology is marred by the fact that it won't lead to the more substantial profits that publishers and their authors need and deserve. As a reader though, I am unwilling to factor this sympathy in when calculating what price I will pay. Perhaps e-books will eventually become so easy to get and read that more people will read, period, and that increased volume will make up in some way for the low profit margins. I don't see why not. Any maybe eventually publishers will be able to save money by not printing and distributing/storing as many physical books. They're hardly going to abandon e-book technology, in any case, and I'm sure eventually readers and publishers will reach a sort of leveling off point on prices where neither feels utterly screwed by the system.

Self-Publishing, -Destruction

The rise of the self-publishers is upon us already, apparently. It seems more sinister than it did when it was just a theoretical caveat to the future of publishing. I'm sure there is a positive way to construe this. In and of itself I guess there's nothing terrible in it--so far self-publishers aren't really in competition with traditional publishers. Even if they were, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. It would be a change--the good books would be harder to find with no pre-screening, and that would have to be dealt with somehow, maybe through a class of super-readers, as someone suggested, or maybe a resurgence of book review sections. As everyone keeps saying, music itself hasn't been ruined by the demise of the big labels, it may even be better, and that's what really matters here--the books, not the business. But I fear self-publishing is more pernicious than it seems, or at least its rise indicates some very disturbing book and reading trends. My worry is not for publishers, but for the books themselves.

A line in a Slate article about all this clarified some of my fear. "Books are the new blog," they say: everyone can have one, but most shouldn't. Maybe this is what worries me most about the rise self-publishers: what does it say about the people who use them? It seems to me that an appreciation for truely well crafted books is slipping lower than ever. The ease of printing one's own, the sense that this is a common and appropriate thing, both reflects and reinforces a very casual attitude, even a disrespect, for the medium. I really doubt that most of the people commissioning these books are real readers. They're like that lady on Real Housewives of Atlanta, perfectly convinced that she was a great singer and deserved a record deal, without having ever done the slightest study or even really listened to her own voice. You can't be so confident in your horrible prose if you're in the habit of reading actual books. Of course this doesn't apply to all who self-publish. I'm sure there are some genuinely unfairly neglected geniuses out there. But, as the Times article quotes one bookseller as saying, “'For every thousand titles that get self-published, maybe there’s two that should have been published,'”

Like I mentioned in my last post, I worry about internet reading affecting book reading. And this trend towards seeing books as just a sort of physical blog, a medium of the people and open to all, confirms that worry in a slightly tangential way. Mabye it doesn't say anything directly about how or whether internet media-drenched people read books, but it does show a drift away from respect for book-reading and writing as a sort of institution. The very fact that self-publishing is on the rise just as publishers are selling fewer books and people are reading fewer of them confirms this. It reminds me of newspaper publishing and how it has declined. People cite, rightly I'm sure, the rise of the internet as a reason. With so many blogs and other sources online, why get an old-fashioned paper? Why rely on someone else to assemble the information and trivial entertainment stories you want, when you can assemble them for yourself online? But I don't think there has been anything like a direct transfer from newspaper reading to online reading. Something has been lost in the way that people look at the news. This is why papers can't be just as successful by transfering themselves to the internet. People want something different now. It seems that books are headed the same way. Perhaps everything will stabalize at some point far in the future when a generic media form will at last be reached, a sort of blog with a narrative, but not requiring too much sustained attention or loyalty, with options for shorter or longer reads. I don't look forward to it. I'm all for self-expression, and I think internet media are great within their own sphere (I'm not oblivious to the fact that I am, at present, BLOGGING), but these two individually commendable things seem to be seeping a little to far into something I want kept sacred. And I don't like it.

Internet Reading

When the mildly encouraging NEA results came out a while ago there was of course some chatter about why the numbers had gone up. Annoyingly, the NEA failed to look into this much, but the chairman seemed to think online reading wasn't responsible for the rise. There was some righteous harumphing at Booksquare about how backwards this assertion is, and how online reading is probably an important factor in increased reading stats. I've heard this kind of philosophy elsewhere to, and it's always seemed off to me. Kind of an overzealous attempt to be modern and tolerant, like those libraries who have video game tournaments to get kids in the door, as if their mere presence is worth something. It's the sort of tolerance that's effectively the same as apathy, although I suppose one seems slightly cooler when actively espousing postmodern ideals. It's undeniable that people are taking in a whole lot of the written word on the internet, and this at least seems encouraging, since only a few years ago everyone was worried that movies and TV would kill literacy completely. It's nice that people read news articles and maybe the occasional short story, that they read period instead of just watching. But I think the rise of the internet has much less intellectual value than is supposed, and I think it does almost nothing to aid the cause of books. I've felt sort of uncomfortable articulating this, not wanting to seem backwards myself, but then I came across a quote in a random nineteenth century manual for "Brain Workers" which expresses my feelings exactly. "The reading of newspapers [substitute blogs, online mags, etc.]," it says, "has made most of us very careless and slovenly readers. We have grown into the habit of glancing and skimming over the pages of books..." Reading a book and reading the occasional short story [read: fanfiction] online are not the same thing. So as not to seem like a broken record, I will just refer back to this post and reiterate simply: books are special. Book reading is a special kind of reading. And the internet could just as well destroy this elevated kind of literacy as it could help it.

E-Book Love/Hate

I have been avoiding posting on e-books for a while. Strangely, reading article after article about them and how they are taking off and what the newest sales figures are and what new reader is coming out and how publishers are making more books available but how they've been around for ten years and haven't gone anywhere, and what possible obstacles there might be, and who likes then and who doesn't, has inspired more exhaustion than interest in the issue. This has been a strange kind of exhaustion, fueled, I suspect, by deep-seated conflicts within my reader's soul. Recently, though, I had a mini-epiphany about the subject, so I thought I'd try a post.

I was at the airport with my sister, looking for a last minute gift for her Irish boyfriend's parents. We went into a Brookstone-like store, maybe it was a Brookstone's, and I saw it. A Sony reader. Wuthering Heights was up on the screen, as if the express goal of this display was to draw someone like me in. And I liked it. A lot. I can say now that an e-reader, even for someone who loves books as objects as much as I do, is not out of the question for me. It didn't seem foreign or inconvenient in the least--it seemed like a perfectly natural way to read something, in fact it seemed like a great way to read something especially somewhere like the airport. In the spirit of this new openness to the technology, here is a list of reasons I think e-books are about to take off. In an honest nod to the drawbacks that still make me hesitant about the technolgy, and that probably inspire the sense of intertia and reluctance I have to talking about the topic, it is followed by a list of reasons why e-books and -readers still kind of suck.

Why I Love E-Books and Why They Will Take Over the Book World
1.Convenience: Having oodles of books at your command in one little book-shaped package can never be a bad thing. You can easily draw up a recent read to look at a particular passage, you can load enough books to have one ready no matter what mood you're in, you can amass a small library without cluttering up your house, you can buy "books" and have them in your possession instantaneously, and so on.
2.Tech Cred: Books are inherently old-fashioned, and they can never really be exactly in line with modern textual forms without completely losing their identity. A book is not an internet article is not a piece of fanfiction is not a series of text messages is not a blog. However, e-books are on a more level plane with these forms, and could make it easier for the tech-obsessed to cross over into the Wonderful World of Books. It seems a bit trivial, but this is probably the most important factor pushing e-books ahead. As people get used to consuming all of their other information in a certain way, it will only seem natural to bring books into the fold. As for what will help devoted techies develop the sort of attention span that books demand, I don't know.
3.Enriched Possibilities: Just because books are happy anacronisms doesn't mean they have to be completely walled off from technological development. They can retain their character while being enriched as e-books by such features as searchable text, hyperlinks, easy e-dictionary access, etc. The electronic medium, especially when combined with internet access, offers hosts of opportunites to make reading easier, deeper, more in touch. There is some danger here too--I can see excessive distractions interfering with the essentially private, concerted nature of book-reading, but there is good possibility.
4.Environmentally Friendly: I guess. As in no paper. And no planes and trains schlepping everything to bookstores. Though I'm not sure those batteries and microchips and such will be very landfill friendly.

As you might have noticed, I couldn't help myself from qualifying many of the positives above. In addition to those drawbacks, here are some sore points...

Why I Hate E-Books and Why They Will Never Succeed
1.Cost of Readers: During my little airport encounter I was probably equally struck by the insane price tag on the reader as I was by its loveliness. More, I guess, since the price tag overcame my appreciation for the object and caused me not to buy it. Readers are too expensive, period. I guess in theory it should be okay for them to cost about the same as an iPod, but somehow it's not. With the advent of e-reader apps for cell phones, this is becoming less of a problem, though. I have yet to see or be bowled over by an iPhone e-reader, but with the likes of Joe Wikert of Kindleville turning coat, and even though the iPhone is backlit, and isn't book-shaped or specifically designed to make e-book reading convenient, I think its a fair bet that such apps will solve the e-reader problem before we have to worry about Sony and Amazon slashing prices. Still, this might remain an obstacle to serious readers who'd prefer e-ink, features specially adapted to book reading, dedicated and safe hardrive space, etc. Combined with other book-lover qualms, this could sentence e-books to permanent casual-reading status. Which I guess is not a terrible thing.
2.Cost of Books: However, the cost of books will remain an issue. There's been a lot of talk about this at GalleyCat and TeleRead. I remember being offended when I learned that the average cost of an e-book was ten dollars, and just plain scornful when I saw that some publishers were trying to charge more than fifty. I don't care if it's a textbook! People are used to paying a dollar for an mp3. They are used to having a pretty physical book when they pay slightly more than ten dollars for it in a store. Ten dollars is not going to cut it. I don't know the reasoning behind this figure, and I don't really care. All I can think of is how you didn't have to pay to print and distribute the physical thing. Intuitively, this leads to a big price cut--whether or not you can come up with reasons why an ephemeral file is almost as expensive to get to me. My intuition tells me I don't like it. And I'm not going to buy your book.
3.It's Just a File: Like I said, it's ephemeral. I don't like the idea of paying solid money for something I can't touch. I don't have to pay for things I read on the internet. And while I won't have a physical book taking up space, I will have this digital one clogging my hardrive and likely bulking up my iPhone, so I will erase it soon, and then I'll have nothing. And I don't like that. Have you seen how big houses have become in this country? For a lot of people, eliminating book clutter is not a huge issue. And for many more, to lose it would be a sad thing. What could be better than a rich tapestry of book spines shelved on your wall? Pulling them down, loaning them to people, appreciating their feel while you read. I don't think this fetishism is an impenetrable barrier to e-books. I could see myself, as I toyed with the e-reader in the store, taking in my books this way while maintaining an appreciation for traditional books. On the other hand, I don't think the wish to elimiate book clutter is a big enough incentive to mass e-book acceptance as long as important drawbacks remain. Such as their dubious value over time and their troubling impermanence.
4.But My Books!: I'll just say it: they're not books! Strange as it seems to say, books are pretty amazing pieces of technology themselves. They're ideally sized, they couldn't be more intuitive to use, and they present their content in a highly efficient maner. And they're also pretty to look at and nice to hold. As I said before, books are old-fashioned. Maybe it's appropriate that they retain their old form, instead of trying pathetically to mimic the trappings of their flashy new cousins. You can read a book in short installments on the subway or while standing in line, but at bottom books aren't really meant to be consumed like the easily digestible blog posts and online articles that are more appropriate for such times. Books are special. They require commitment, perserverance, private reflection, and prolonged attention. These are valuable things to practice, and they could get lost if we try to make books fit in too well with modern media.

I have tried to make this list more than just a reactionary book person's cry for the past. I didn't succeed, entirely, but I doubt such objectivity is possible for me. I get all frazzled thinking about this, so I don't think I'll be saying much more about the topic, but this has been a good cathartic roundup of my various reactions to all those masses of articles I've read on the subject. I'm sure others will continue dissecting e-books, so I will leave them to it.

Nice

For once the NEA has some good reading-related news. Fiction reading is on the rise! Sort of! In a very limited way that may just be a statistical blip! And almost half the country apparently never reads at all. But hey. I don't know if I could have taken another gloom-and-doom report from them, on top of all the other hits books are taking these days, so I'll take this. (The cloud represents the masses of black news and bleak reports that made up 2008 In Books. The silver lining, though a very qualified lining, is the NEA's recent findings.)

The Bargain Hunters of Doom

Here is a piece presenting similar concerns to my Terrible Confession of earlier. It offers evidence for the destructiveness of book lovers' bargain hunting. I'm not really buying the writer's injunction not to "blame [recent bookstore-killing] carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader’s time or diminished attention spans. What’s undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers." Still, talk about nails in coffins. I don't know what to say about this, or what publishers could do about it since, as Editorial Ass has schooled me, lowering book prices is not an option. Nothing comes without consequences, I guess. It's very discouraging to think that Amazon and such sites, even as they help bring books to the masses, are actually hurting those that produce the books, in more ways than one. If even book advocates end up hurting the ones they love, then what is to be done? The only thing I can think of is a publisher takeover of all book-selling sites. They could control the market with an iron fist. Alas, I fear they lack the capital for such a coup, even if they banded together. And I'm sure someone would just start another site, and people like me would continue patronising brick and mortar used book stores. Sigh.

No No No No

This Holt Uncensored post almost infuriates me. It starts out fine, proposing to be an elegy for things editors have supposedly lost over the years, "their high standards, their belief in readers, their ability to nurture authors, their love of language, their patience, their dedication, their eye." Have they lost these things? Terrible! Shocking! Tell me more. But it very quickly turns into what seems to me a completely wrong-headed screed against marketing departments, or against the sort of power marketing departments have over editors nowadays.

One of the first things I was struck by during my first publishing internship was how far the marketing department's reach extended. It seemed like every question I asked (to a designer: how do you decide what look to go with?, to a production guy, how do you figure out how many copies to print?) was answered by "marketing." I admit this seemed sinister at first. And okay, some of Holt's points about the semi-tyranny of such considerations ring true. Editors have to be able to take chances, to use their judgment as to quality, to put out books that might have long term artistic importance instead of immediate commercial appeal. But the idea that every editor all the time should be concerned only with lofty, artistic goals is not just impractical but undesirable.

It is really the overall tone of this piece that gets me. The premise seems to be that any concession to popular taste or commercial value is wrong. "I don’t agree with the notion that editors should even be in communication with readers," writes Holt, "- the same taint of commercialism exists." This dismissal alone makes me want to scream. Apparently, being an editor is not about finding what people want to read, but about finding what is "best," and then foisting it on the readers. This has a sort of paternal reek to it which I find insufferable. The be-all-end-all of this horror is encapsulated, for Holt, in the "Hollywood" philosophy of "'give ‘em what they want,' not what was editorially best. Not what was original or creative or adventurous or, god knows, a challenge." God forbid publishing should be about courting readers, about trying to please them and lure them into more reading. Yes, this is the recipe for obtaining more filthy lucre, but it also happens to be a good one for reading evangelism, which I think is one of publishing's primary goals. You dont' get people to read by forcing someone's idea of literary greatness down their throats. Like every industry, including Hollywood, you get more customers by finding out what people want and giving it to them. Yes, this means many of them will be reading Danielle Steel and Dan Brown and other such unsatisfactory types, but it means they will be reading, period. And maybe eventually they will feel like moving on to more literary reads. There is a place for both artistic integrity and commercial consideration in editing, though probably not an equal place. This will be frustrating and awful at times, but that's no reason to malign accessibility and popularity.

Gotterdammerung

In years past the occasional article would reach me, foretelling the die out of the reading population and the demise of publishing. I would get scared for a while but quickly settle back into my confidence that nothing too dire would happen during my lifetime (much like my [oh-so-mistaken] conviction that my time period would be pleasantly uneventful historically) and that I would be able to wiggle in somehow and work unmolested in my chosen industry. Outside the safety of school and fully immersed in the Recession, the articles I see now have more of an impact. And I see lots and lots of them. They are both more extreme and more convincing then ever before. They make me equally depressed, or at least they have. But I am beginning to develop a protective scar tissue. Yes, we can all acknowledge that things are increasingly difficult. I don't think anyone can know what will really happen, but there doesn't seem to be any chance of stasis. In a way there is a sort of freedom in acknowledging that. Reading these terrible articles I think now, not, "oh that's so terrible oh my god what will happen," because I've thought that too many times to think it again, but rather "so what will happen? what will we do?" I think this has something to do with the articles themselves also. I've noticed an earnest, if harsh, search for answers and solutions that makes these commentaries something more than the facile shadenfreude of times past. The sense of seriousness associated with what is now the much more real prospect of disaster is at least somewhat helpful. See, for example, Gallycat's impatience with one doomsayer, or this excellent kick-in-the-pants by Lawrence Osborne, or this forward-looking essay on The Urban Elitist, or Richard Curtis' eerily prescient, unearthed essay on returns.

I'm not completely convinced by anyone's vision of the future. Many note how long people have been predicting publishing's death, and how stubborn it has in fact been. I think this time is different, and big things will happen. The Recession, although it didn't actually cause all or most of what's happening now, will force things forward speedily and painfully. Childhood lessons about ripping the bandaid off quickly make me think this is a good thing. I feel sure that books and publishing won't ever completely die off. I can't pin down too many coherent or without-a-doubt objective thoughts on why, but probably the most important is what one pleasantly optimistic Gallycat commentor suggests, "What will save publishing is what began it - the need, the drive, the will of the human being to communicate through story. When all the layoffs and takeovers and "reorganizations" are over, what remains will be what always remains - people desperate to hear and tell their stories," and what editor Mark Tavani reiterates on Notes from the Handbasket, "books are a mere format....the most magical thing about them is the information they convey: the story they contain. The word “book” and the word “story” are not synonymous, just as eight tracks and music are not the same thing. Stories pre-date books by milleniums; and though books might someday go away, story will last as long as our civilization does." Who knows how recognizable tomorrow's publishers will be. At their most basic, though--entities that help diseminate stories--I think they will remain useful and therefore in existence.

Sigh

Via the NY Observer: Steve Ross, Collins publisher, "said he was glad the publishing industry and the economy in general are collapsing now rather than when he was first starting out in the early 1980s.

'It'd be absolutely terrifying to be starting out now, to be young and to not have the benefit of years, if not decades, of perspective," Mr. Ross said. "I would have seriously considered leaving book publishing.'

What would he have done instead?

'Law school,' he said. 'Or worse, I would have gotten an MBA.'

Oh boy.

A Terrible Confession

Once again an Editorial Ass post strikes fear in me. This time, however, I am worried that the publishing industry will heed her usually spot-on rallying cry, not ignore it. She lists a few ideas for making publishing profitable and thus not, as a commenter had suggested, worthy of dying a justifiable death. Her second suggestion (raise prices), however, got my hackles up, and leads now to a terrible confession and the first of what I intend to be a string of Ideas for Saving (or Improving in Some Small Way) the Industry We Call Publishing. Here goes: I was planning on keeping this private and certainly never telling anyone who might care about books, but in the interest of making a point, I feel I must. Plus, Dingbat isn't my real name, so I don't feel any real danger. I buy used books. I buy on sale remainders. I shop at discount book stores. Constantly filled with worry though I am about the plight of publishers, I, a book person, seek in my book-buying practices to deprive them of every possible ounce of profit. Same goes with book stores. Just this weekend I bought pounds and pounds of books at a library sale for about a dollar a piece. I believe the last time I bought a full price book in a full price store was in May (Etgar Keret's The Girl on the Fridge), just because I was out of sorts and wanted something right then. So there it is. Why do I do this? Because it is not unusual for a trade paperback to cost $18. More often it is around $15. If I want to buy four books, which doesn't seem like many, I am up to $60, plus tax. That's serious money. And Editorial Ass thinks it should be more. My Idea, on the contrary, is a very simple one: lower prices. I am not sure how practicable this is. $15 for a lot of paper seems a little much, but I know there is a lot involved in making a book. And maybe the problem is less critical than it seems to me, consuming books as I do at a much higher rate than the average book store customer. Maybe I'm like that family with 18 kids who has to make their own soap because $2 a bar becomes a lot when you have that many showers to take. Still, I think the current price is dangerously close to the absolute cap for what people consider reasonable for a paperback book, and if there's any way to lower the price without catastrophic effects on profits, it needs to be done. This seems like an obvious move so I assume there are roadblocks at present. I would hate to see my pretty paperbacks suffer design-wise, but maybe there's a happy medium between those pulpy, yellowing mass market versions and their upright, smooth trade brethren. Or maybe it's a matter of fixing other policies that lower profits and lead to the need for higher prices on what does get sold. I don't know. But I would love to shop in a legit bookstore and support publishers with pride, so I hope something changes.

Oh Dear Con't

Here is Motoko Rich's lengthier and more fact-filled version of my "Oh Dear" spiel. The facts go towards solidifying the reality of book publishing's recent hard knocks. It contains a similar amount of optimism, or reports a similar level in publishing folk--that is, a sense that books have something special to offer and might do all right for the holidays and beyond. And it does document some soul-searching and imminent changes to the industry, although apparently stratospheric celebrity advances will be kept in place through a sort of Catch-22--as things get leaner publishers need that big hit even more, which means they have to continue paying out big time for those hoped-for blockbusters. I'm wondering still if those cautiously optimistic book publishers are, like me, just wishful and sheltered by their own overwhelming appreciation for books, or if they have a real point about the saving graces of the medium.

Kindle Conflict

Heffernan's piece for the Sunday Magazine makes no sense at all to me. She seems to find great charm in the Kindle's lack of sophistication, and essentially posits that its existence makes sense because it is just a little hooked in to technology's web, but is otherwise comfortably remote, drawing one in with its non-backlit pages and, um, words. Most of the significant postives she names for it, though, concern it being as close as possible to an actual book. You can get absorbed in it! It doesn't emit any garish electronic light! I try to remain at least neutral about eBooks and Readers, but this argument for them, ironically, only makes me want to decry their existence--or the Kindle's, anyway. Nothing that she says about the Kindle make me think it is a good replacement for an actual book, and several things she says make me quite wary of it. Clumsy design, ugly casing, awkward internet hookup, and general failure to take advantage of its nature as an ELECTRONIC device to make the reading experiene richer in some way. Really, as far as I can tell, the only reason she likes the Kindle at all is because she likes reading, and most readers aren't going to be motivated by the Kindle's charming backwardness to give up their yummy, easily manipulated books. This article only reinforces my feeling that eReaders still have a ways to go before there can be any good reason for buying one--and certainly any good reason for a passionate reader to leave the world of paper behind.

The Popular Novel: An Idealist Rant

Recently this article ran in the New York Times. It's made me think about the role of more popular, commercial books in publishing in general. In this case the writers of what are now very successful books had to start out self-publishing and selling books out of the backs of cars because they couldn't get publishers to pay attention. I don't know exactly how other mass-markety type genres got their start--did romance novels begin as an underground thing, were sci-fi books passed from devotee to devotee?--but it seems likely that these and other books that are now making huge profits for publishers were initially scorned as crude or unsalable. I find it frustrating that this could still happen, that such a vibrant market could be missed. Other industries use market research to guide the most minute details of their operation--no doubt they overuse it to an extent. And I'm sure there are failings in even the best-designed research plans and the conclusions drawn from them. But I would like to see such research applied more to publishing, with the hope that publishers could reach a larger buying pool by first figuring out what people want. Editors can't be relied on to be aware of every market, of every potential trend. Figuring out how to figure readers out more effectively is so important, not just to the financial health of publishers, but also to readers and potential readers who can be drawn more closely to the Wonderful World of Books.
I won't argue that all books are equal, or that one can get the same benefits from reading a beach book as a classic novel. I admit, the plot summary given of one book in this article: "a Versace-clad seductress... shoots her boyfriend in the head during sex, stuffs money from his safe into her Vuitton bags and, as she fondles the cash, experiences a sexual frisson," makes me shudder a little. But no one starts out reading Tolstoy, and no one can read all Tolstoy all the time, so to speak. And almost any book, any reading time, is better than none. In the interest of getting people reading, whether they stick with one genre or whether they branch out and up and experience the full benefits that challenging, "literary" novels can bring, it's essential to figure out what they want. Bringing more people into the fold is not selling out. It is a way, not just to stop the losses and sell a few more books, but to permanently bolster the health of the industry by creating more people who read regularly (even if they get their books from the library, as they do in this article).

eBook Thoughts

Publishing Trends has its new survey out. Again I am mildly depressed by it (cutbacks made worse by this year's economy, job insecurity, a sense of fewer readers and the imminent End of Publishing as We Know it), but not terribly surprised. One thing that inspires neither of those feelings in me, though, is the revelation that only about 30% of respondents had ever read an e-book. Joe Wikert finds this fact not only stunning but disturbing. My feelings are more mixed. On the one hand the figures seem to indicate a dangerous unconcern for this new medium, a cavalier attitude towards something that is supposed to revolutionize the industry. Wikert mentions having an eReader as something that has sparked ideas he'd never have had without one, and it's certainly important for publishing folk to make eBooks and the different opportunities they allow a considered part of a general effort to help books reach as many people as possible. On the other hand, this change has been on the horizon for years, and there are still many legitimate reasosn for supposing that eBooks won't be overtaking everything any time soon. Really, if you can't get the bookiest of book people interested in a palm-sized library, something is still quite wrong. Obviously part of this can be ascribed to the reverence these people have the the book itself as a sort of fetish object, and possibly to the "hubris" that Wikert mentions--though the rest of the survey indicates more fear and disappointment than deadly pride. I don't think publishers are entirely wrong in suposing the general reading population shares special affection for, or at least comfort with, books as physical objects, either. I haven't read much market research on people who read eBooks, and I don't know that much exists. I think there was a Times article a while ago mentioning the popularity of sci-fi books and, surprisingly, romance novels as eBooks. But while certain populations may be eager to take in their books in this admittedly efficient way, and while people in general may be getting more and more used to the digital medium, I'm not convinced that all or most of publishing will need to convert anytime soon. My thoughts tend to go in all sorts of directions on this topic, and I'm anxious to see where it goes. One thing is clear, though: with the economy as it is, and with publishing salaries as humble as this survey indicates, I doubt that uninitiated 70% will be coming around very soon.