http://www.slate.com/id/2214243
(...)
"The Kindle is not better than a printed book in all situations. You wouldn't want to read an art book, or a picture book to your children on one, or take one into the tub (please). But for the past few weeks, I've done most of my recreational reading on the Kindle—David Grann's adventure yarn The Lost City of Z, Marilynne Robinson's novel Home, Slate, The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times—and can honestly say I prefer it to inked paper. (((He says it honestly, and I believe him.))) It provides a fundamentally better experience — and will surely produce a radically better one with coming iterations.
The notion that physical books are ending their lifecycle is upsetting to people who hold them to be synonymous with literature and terrifying to those who make their living within the existing structures of publishing. (((Yo!))) As an editor and a lover of books, I sympathize. But why should a civilization that reads electronically be any less literate than one that harvests trees to do so?
(((Because "the medium is the message." Because infrastructure trumps sentiment. Because linear, novel-length narratives are dependent on specific means of literary production, distribution and consumption. Because rival forms of text-consumption consume the time and energy formerly devoted to ink-on-paper forms of readerly behavior. Because of the cogent reasons detailed in Clayton Christensen's THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA. Because book culture is predicated on promotional activities from other ink-based media, such as newspapers and magazines, which are failing. Because bookstores and book distributors have already been destroyed by Amazon and Wal-Mart. Because a "search and publish" paradigm is alien to the "publish and search" paradigm. Because electronic text has useful elements of search, tagging, folksonomy, and peer-to-peer network sociality that are entirely impossible in ink-based forms of text. Because of Henry Jenkins "Convergence Culture" and because of Lev Manovich "creole media." This is like asking why the Ford assembly line should ever damage our tender appreciation of a moonlit Louisiana hayride.)))
And why should a transition away from the printed page lessen our appreciation and love for printed books? (((See above.))) Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. (((Straight out of Clayton Christensen; threatened analog medium attempts to imitate the cheaper methods of computer printout, fails.))) In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. (((Much like posh, hand-made cavalry uniforms thrive in a world of cruise missiles. Or like word-processing software revived the sturdy, well-machined manual typewriter.))) Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects. (((Or, you know, maybe not.)))
As to the fate of book publishers, there's less reason to be optimistic. (((Make that EVEN LESS reason to be optimistic.))) Amazon, which is selling Kindle books at a loss to get everyone hooked, will eventually want to make money on them. (((Although the Kindle may well be rendered obsolete by some cooler, cheaper gizmo before Bezos can get around to cashing in.))) The publishers will be squeezed at best and disintermediated at worst. (((Well, no – the "worst" would be that the publishers keep grinding out product, only it's evil propaganda entirely subsidized by ultrawealthy moguls who have made themselves the only public source of news and culture. In other words, the commercial press collapses and it's replaced by a classically fascist press. (Likely run on bailout money.) THAT's the worst – with the possible exception of a furious proletarian upheaval that forces everyone to read grimy, poorly-printed copies of PRAVDA.)))
Amazon is already publishing Stephen King. (((Steve's not exactly hurting for money, although the poor guy has failing eyesight and was hit and almost killed by a truck. If it were up to me, I'd relieve this gentleman of his unsought role as the business exemplar of American letters.))) In the future, it could become the only publisher a best-selling author needs. (((Unquestionably that's a trust, and a conspiracy in restraint of trade. Given that the USA already abjectly bowed the knee to Microsoft predation, maybe the Europeans can save us from routing the entirety of literary culture through another weird clique of cranks in Seattle.)))
In a world without the high fixed costs of printing and distribution, as the distance between writers and their audiences shrinks, what essential service will Random House and Simon & Schuster provide? If the answer is primarily cultural arbitration and editing, the publishing behemoths might dwindle while a much lighter weight model of publishing — clever kids working from coffee shops in Brooklyn — emerges. (((I wouldn't mind a method of cultural production run out of bohemian cafe' society, but I do wonder what weird form of American culture emerges when nobody has ever cracked a book. "Mark Twain? Yeah! I read some Twitter tweets from him!" Yeah, maybe.)))
(((Hey, Internet publishing. Remember that "advertising model" you thought you could swipe from the paper presses, and then use to thrive forever? Well, you're next:)))
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/
