Remains of the Day

Tag Archive for e-books

Remains of the Day

June 4, 2009 Electronic Reading, The Future of Publishing 4 comments

If you’ve read The Late Age of Print, then you’ll know that I’m not a technological reactionary. In my arsenal of gadgets you’ll find a much-loved iPod Touch, a less-loved Kindle 1.0, a mobile phone that I regularly use, and more. A friend of mine claims that I’m a gadget-head. Usually I beg to differ, but having just inventoried my electronic wares, I’m beginning to think that he may be on to something.

Here’s the thing, though: I also love books — and my that I mean, printed books. While I’d hardly consider myself to be a book fetishist (i.e., I’m not a devotee of Nicholas A. Basbanes), I’m a bibliophile in about the same way that I’m a gadget-head, that is, by default. Over the years I’ve accumulated a sizable library, mostly in my capacity as an academic; I love to read; and I annotate my books prodigiously, creating personalized indexes so that I can return easily to the passages I’ve underlined. Maybe one day I’ll scan and post one of these indexes here, so that you can see just how intensely I read.

Because I seem to be pulled in two different directions technologically speaking, I was immediately drawn to this week’s (June 8 & 15) cover of the New Yorker, pictured above. Its setting is a post-apocalyptic New York City. An alien has touched down and sits amid the ruins, surrounded by what appears to be e-waste. Discarded CDs, mobile phones, and computer keyboards abound. Also strewn amid the litter are devices that look suspiciously like Amazon Kindles. Our genial-looking alien relaxes with a tattered but still mostly intact printed book.

The New Yorker cover is a brilliant commentary on the particular bibliographic moment in which we are currently living. It seems as though electronic reading was the conversation at last week’s BookExpo America. The prevalence of that conversation tells us just how short-sighted — and indeed profit-obsessed — the book industry is becoming. The central problem with e-reading, beyond the temptation to overly-secure digital content, is that of endurance. Too many e-reading devices and too many digital formats result in too much of one thing: technological obsolescence.

If you don’t believe me, check out Chapter 1 of The Late Age of Print, where I discuss an early e-book experiment called Agrippa (A Book of the Dead). You can find the text of the Agrippa story online, but unless you’re a collector of legacy technologies you pretty much cannot read it in its original form. It was encoded on a 3 1/2-inch floppy diskette (remember those?) that is incompatible with today’s hardware and operating systems.

The partisans of e-reading may well retort that printed books, like their electronic kin, also deteriorate. Paper can become brittle and, well, there’s a reason why the word “bookworm” exists in the English language. All true. But here I’m persuaded both by my own experience and by Nicholson Baker’s wonderful book, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Random House, 2001). Baker shows us how even just a modicum of care can help print-on-paper books to endure for centuries. The “slow fires” that the proponents of micro-media first advanced and that the denizens of e-books now expound are pretty much smoke and mirrors.

For e-reading to succeed, there will need to be something even more fundamental than built-in dictionaries, wireless content delivery, and other such bells and whistles. What will be needed above all — and what the printed book so well embodies — is a stable platform. Indeed, when was the last time one of your printed books was “upgraded” out of existence?

Good Morning, Amazon…

June 1, 2009 Bookselling, Electronic Reading No comments

First it was the cola wars. Now, it’s the e-book wars.

At this past weekend’s book industry trade show, BookExpo America, Google announced that it will begin selling digital book content in the near future. According to this article in today’s New York Times, the search engine giant has the backing of major players in the publishing field.

The move should come as a wake-up call for Amazon.com, which, since the introduction of Kindle in late 2007, has dominated the retail e-book market. Many questions remain, however, about whether Google’s latest foray into the book world ultimately will pan out.

Why it Will Work
First, there’s Google, whose power, prevalence, and brand recognition shouldn’t be underestimated. But the success of its latest e-book initiative will stem from more than just the company’s shear Google-ness. It will result from its growing recognition of itself as not merely a search engine company but indeed as a platform for online businesses. This is, incidentally, exactly what Amazon.com has been doing of late — refashioning itself, a la Google, from a retailer to a business incubator; and in this respect it’s playing catch-up to Google.

Second, there’s the Kindle factor. Google’s plan is to release digital editions of books which, though secure (read: DRM), will not be native to any particular e-reading device. This is good news for those of us who’ve been less impressed with Kindle than we we ought to be; this is especially so where images are concerned. Plus, it’s great news for readers who, in a time of economic downturn, are discomfited by the prospect of shelling out hundreds of dollars for the privilege of accessing and reading digital content via Kindle.

Third, did I mention Google? Besides the technology, one of the major problems that has beset e-books thus far has been distribution. Amazon has successfully addressed the issue by providing readers with a reliable, centralized hub from which to download e-titles. There aren’t many companies out there who could compete with Amazon along these lines, but Google is surely one of them. It’s already become a nodal point for people to access e-book content via Book Search and Google Library. Becoming a nodal point for distribution of e-content shouldn’t take a great deal more than a hop, skip, and a jump.

Why it Won’t Work
Book publishers are greedy and do not understand how to sell their products in and to a digital world. As the New York Times today reported, Google intends to allow its partner publishers to set their own e-book prices. If recent history tells us anything, it tells us that the publishers likely will charge something close to print-on-paper prices for content whose material support has already in essence been outsourced to consumers (e.g., in the form of computers, netbooks, and other mobile e-readers). This is unacceptable and will only hinder e-book adoption.

Relatedly, there’s the Amazon factor. The company has insisted that, where possible, Kindle e-book titles should be kept low. Most bestsellers cost around $9.99, and although there are many Kindle books that cost more, Amazon should be commended for pressuring publishers to keep their e-book prices down. If Amazon can continue to do so, purchasing a Kindle with the prospect of having access to cheaper e-book content won’t seem as off-putting as having to buy e-titles from Google at or near ridiculous print-on-paper prices.

Finally, there’s the question of form. Will Google’s e-book content largely reproduce what would otherwise be available on paper? If so, then Google e-books won’t have as much uptake as they otherwise could — that is, if they broke with what Gary Hall calls a “papercentric” model of electronic content. Indeed, if the publishers want to charge near-paper prices for the e-books they sell/distribute via Google, then readers will expect additional types of features to make up for what is, essentially, lost value.

Bottom Line
Only time will tell what will become of Google’s latest venuture into e-books. I see a great many downsides that would really spell disaster for an anxious contingent of publishers who have convinced themselves, as they do about every eight years or so, that e-books will “save” their industry. More optimistically, it is my hope that Google will spur Amazon.com to move more quickly on developing cheaper, better Kindles and related e-reading systems that are even more user-friendly.

Books, NOW!

May 25, 2009 The Future of Publishing No comments

Via Filed By and my good friend José Afonso Furtado’s Twitter Feed comes this fascinating Publishers Weekly story about Perseus Book Group and its BIG EXPERIMENT at BookExpo America 2009. The crux of the matter is this: Perseus plans on publishing a 144-page book consisting of “sequels” to some of literature’s great opening lines — all within the span of 48 hours.

The title of the work — Book: The Sequel — clearly isn’t just about the content. It’s as much if not more about the publishing industry and how it operates (or could operate), which is to say nothing of the existential crisis its main product — the book — finds itself in today. What we have in Book: The Sequel is more than just print-on-demand, it’s essentially books, now!

I’m usually fairly circumspect of experiments like these. Rarely are they particularly well thought through, and often they put far too much faith in simple, technological solutions or outcomes. Not here. Perseus proposes a remarkably holistic picture of what book publishing could be in the not-so-distant future — or later this week, if you want to get all “the future is now” about it.

First, the substance: crowdsourced content. There already have been experiments in collaborative book writing, so in a sense what Perseus is doing is not altogether new. Those who wish to contribute to the volume can log on to www.bookthesequel.com, where they can can pitch their own opening line sequels. On the other hand, the Press’ experiment in crowdsourcing demonstrates one possible future function publishers may choose to take on. That is, they may opt to become aggregators of decentralized information, as opposed to their simply remaining the gatekeepers of already centalized or unified information. Perseus also plans on focus-grouping the cover designs using similar means, which is in keeping with my previous post on the marketing power of a site like Scribd.

Next, the product, which is multiple. Perseus plans on releasing digital, audio, and online versions of Book: The Sequel, as well as a tangible, print-on-paper volume. This is impressive. Too often experiments in flash publishing result in only one of these — usually the e-edition and nothing more. The looming test of the book industry’s mettle will be in how well it works — quickly and elegantly — across both analog and digital platforms.

Finally, the opportunities for post-publication interactivity. Thus far publishing has done a fairly good job in recognizing the growing importance of author-audience interaction. It has built ample infrastructure to support this. But what the industry hasn’t caught on to well enough yet is the importance of decentralizing its social networks. Online book marketing has been preoccupied with bringing audiences back again and again to the publishers’ or the authors’ websites. This is understandable. But we live in a time when conversations about culture happen all over the place, and increasingly on Facebook and Twitter. It’s a testament to Perseus’ vision that it’s recognized how it need not try to control or consolidate the conversation about its book for that conversation to occur.

My only misgiving — and it is a significant one — about Book: The Sequel is that there appears to be no structure in place to compensate those who’ve donated their labor to create the book’s content. This will have to change, even if it ultimately results in micro-payments to the authors (which, as Chris Anderson has shown, can add up in the long run). Any book publishing business model that relies on crowdsourced content but that does not compensate the crowd for its initiative, wisdom, and goodwill surely will be unsustainable.

That said, Perseus plans on donating the profits of its grand experiment to the National Book Foundation. Who could have any truck with that?

Download The Late Age of Print

April 15, 2009 Electronic Reading 2 comments

One of the defining attributes of the late age of print is the erosion of old publishing certainties. Among them is the notion that the free circulation of book content leads inevitably to lost sales. Another is the belief that strong, proprietary systems are the best way for publishers and authors to secure value in their intellectual properties. Maybe it’s too soon to let go of these notions completely. It’s fast becoming clear, however, that they cannot be taken for granted any longer.

There are two ways of responding to the erosion of old certainties like these. One way is to dig in your heels, hoping to keep familiar ground from shifting under your feet. The other is to allow the erosion to expose opportunities that may have been buried underfoot all along. With the latter you risk coming up empty, but with the former you risk something worse — inertia.

I’m pleased to report that my publisher, Columbia University Press, isn’t one of those digging in its heels. It’s taken the bold step of releasing The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control not only as a copyrighted, bound physical volume, but also as a Creative Commons-licensed electronic book. You can download the e-edition by following the “download” link of the navigation bar, above, or by clicking here. The file is a “zipped” .pdf of the complete contents of Late Age, minus one image, for which I was (ironically) unable to secure electronic publishing rights.

I thank Columbia University Press for releasing my book electronically under a Creative Commons license. In doing so, it’s embraced the extraordinary spirit of openness that is beginning to flourish in the late age of print. Mine is the first book the Press has decided to release in this way. Here’s hoping that many more will follow.

Library 2.0

April 3, 2009 Quick Takes 2 comments

Just a quick note to say how excited I am to be heading out today to the Library 2.0 Symposium, hosted by Yale Law School. The organizers have graciously invited me to present a version of my work-in-progress on the Amazon Kindle e-reader, which is an outgrowth of The Late Age of Print. The piece is called “Kindle: The Labor of Reading in an Age of Ubiquitous Bookselling,” and the latest draft is hosted here on my wiki site: http://striphas.wikidot.com/kindle-the-labor-of-reading-worksite-v2-0. Comments are of course welcome and encouraged.

I plan on posting some sort of report about the Symposium early next week, so be sure to check back then.

The "Not Enough Pirates" Hypothesis

February 13, 2009 Electronic Reading 2 comments

Yesterday I ran across this intriguing post on The Guardian Technology Blog, about e-books and book piracy. There, author Bobbie Johnson advances a provocative, and perhaps counter-intuitive, claim. E-books have yet to really take off, he argues, because printed books haven’t been subjected to a level of online piracy sufficient to inculcate a digital disposition in book readers. The analogy Johnson draws is to the music industry, where peer-to-peer file sharing helped to promote a system in which music would no longer be tied to a specific — and specifically analog — medium.

I don’t dispute Johnson’s assertion about digital music. But on the matter of e-books and printed book piracy, I must respectfully disagree. As I demonstrate in my book The Late Age of Print, especially in the chapters on e-books and Harry Potter, printed books have been going digital and coursing through file-trading circuits for years now. Probably the biggest racket is in printed student textbooks, which, because of their egregious (captive audience) price, have ended up on any number of fly-by-night bit-torrent sites, such as Textbook Torrents, Rapidshare Textbooks, and others. Here’s a link to good article from The Chronicle of Higher Edcuation about the former — now defunct — site, if you want to know more.

Popular printed books like Harry Potter also have been photographed or scanned and posted online. This is exactly what happened when the final installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in July 2007. Images of pages began appearing on file-trading sites like Photobucket and The Pirate Bay even before the book was officially released!

And then there’s the thorny matter of academic course packs. It used to be that educators would create anthologies consisting of photocopied book chapters and journal articles — all copyrighted materials — for their classes. Usually the course packs would be created and sold by local copy shops. Following the landmark 1991 Kinko’s decision, most of these shops sought permission to do so through the Copyright Clearance Center, which pays royalties to copyright holders. But in an age of cheap, ubiquitous scanners, Adobe Acrobat, and password-protected course sites (usually hosted by academic libraries), the traditional course pack has become all but obsolete. Today, educators assert the exception to the 1976 Copyright Act that stipulates the “fair use” of copyrighted materials for one-time classroom use. Significantly, very few of these items are “born digital,” even if they may ultimately end up that way.

There’s an even broader argument to be made here, namely, that e-books arise precisely (although not simply) in response to publishers’ longstanding fears about the promiscuity of printed books and their content. Way back in the 1930s, the publishing industry contracted with public relations doyen Edward L. Bernays to come up with a pejorative word for people who, by trading books with one another, supposedly deprived authors of their royalties. (The term, “book sneak,” never really caught on.) Then then there was the whole freak-out over photocopiers in the 1970s, which led to the creation of the Copyright Clearance Center and, shortly thereafter, to a host of lawsuits against copy shops.

There are many other examples like this that I could point to, but the question ultimately is this: given the mobility of printed books and their content, is it any surprise that book publishers would be interested in pursuing a technology — digitally rights-managed e-books — that would allow them to micromanage the whereabouts of book content?

So why haven’t e-books become even more popular than they already are? The answer isn’t, “not enough printed book piracy.” In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

Kindle, Reloaded

February 10, 2009 Electronic Reading 2 comments

On Monday Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled version 2.0 of its popular e-reading device, Kindle, which the company will release to the public on February 24th. The price is $359.

As with most things Amazon, the reaction thus far has been mixed. Some see Kindle 2 as a great leap forward for e-reading (mostly Bezos here), while others are nonplussed about its redesign and modest upgrades.

I haven’t had a chance to test drive the new Kindle myself. Only a select few have been granted that privilege. Still, as a Kindle 1.0 owner, I cannot help but be struck by several aspects of its younger sibling.

First, am I the only one who finds it odd that Amazon would release the next generation Kindle a scant 14 months or so after the release of G1? I know the company is offering Kindle 1 owners priority dibs on Kindle 2.0s, but the short time between generations leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth. As a Kindle 1 customer, I feel as though I’ve been treated as a means to an end — that is, of generating excitement over what now essentially amounts to a prototype.

Okay, enough with the kvetching.

Kindle 2’s redesign intrigues me. Where Kindle 1 was modeled in size, dimension, and weight after a paperback book, Kindle 2 is about the thickness of a pencil. It’s also much lighter as a result. This was a smart move, and not only because it makes Kindle 2 more portable. It also makes it less “papercentric,” or less beholden to the idealized form of the bound printed volume. This isn’t to say that Kindle 2 doesn’t still take many of its cues from the world of print, but at least its designers are beginning to show that they understand the specificity of the new medium.

I’m also intrigued by the legal implications of the K2’s text-to-speech feature. The Author’s Guild is already making a stink about this new capability, claiming that it results in illegal, derivative works. I’m not sure what to say about this beyond the obvious. Lawsuits clearly lie ahead on the horizon, and unless they’re settled out of court, there will be a thorny matter for jurists to decide: can a machine, acting essentially on its own, produce a copyright-infringing derivative work? Another way of asking the question would be: is it the unique provenance of human beings to infringe on another’s copyright?

The last feature I want to address is Whispersynch, which keeps all of your Kindle titles backed up on Amazon’s servers and allows you to synch them to as many Kindles as you own. First things first: Kudos to Amazon for allowing content to migrate across devices. (Now, if only they’d get rid of the DRM and allow readers to share content with one another….) Here’s the potential downside of Whispernet, which is essentially the downside of cloud computing more generally. How much can we trust a private company to store our content? Now, I’m reasonably confident in Amazon’s financial solvency right now, as evidenced by its recent profit despite the economic downturn. But remember Gimbles? Or B. Altman? Or all those other department stores that used to rule the retail roost, but that no longer exist? Nothing lasts forever, especially in such a competitive environment. Consequently, I’d like to see Amazon explore additional — client-side — ways of backing up content when Kindle 3 comes around.

Probably in another year or so.

I’ve blogged at length about Kindle 1.0 on my other site, Differences & Repetitions. You can read the posts here, here, and here.

Why Bother Calling it a "Book?"

February 3, 2009 Electronic Reading One comment

I was excited to come across Virginia Heffernan’s recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, “Click and Jane.” In it she explores her young son’s refusal to call an online book a “book.” Here’s a short excerpt:

In a hundred ways, we pretend that screen experiences are books — PowerBooks, notebooks, e-books — but even a child knows the difference. Reading books is an operation with paper. Playing games on the Web is something else entirely. I need to admit this to myself, too. I try to believe that reading online is reading-plus, with the text searchable, hyperlinked and accompanied by video, audio, photography and graphics. But maybe it’s just not reading at all. Just as screens aren’t books.

It’s a lovely reflection, really, and intriguing in that her 3-year-old son, Ben, is highly adept at differentiating paper books from Blackberries, Amazon Kindles, and other on-screen reading devices.

So much for the heady claims of the e-book denizens. Young people, they say, will be the ones finally to embrace electronic reading with open arms — so much so that the distinction between printed and electronic books will eventually become irrelevant. But with Ben the conventional wisdom seems to be incorrect. Books aren’t just books, regardless of the platform.

Even more important, though, is the larger issue Heffernan’s article points to. Why, after all, would someone want to call the type of on-screen reading she and Ben have been engaging in, book reading? Clearly it’s a matter of wanting to capitalize on the cachet or cultural authority that bound printed books command. But isn’t that precisely the problem here, too?

Gary Hall’s wonderful new tome, Digitize This Book! (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), which I cannot recommend highly enough, offers some helpful perspective on the matter. Hall observes that “papercentrism” abounds in conversations about the future of books and reading. By this he means printed books and the reading of paper objects more generally are the yardsticks against which all claims to the categories of “book” and “reading” get measured. Anything digital inevitably comes up short.

What Hall suggests is that those who sing the praises of e-books are, in effect, undermining their cause. In referring to these objects as such, they are constantly reaffirming the priority — even the pre-eminence — of their print-on-paper counterparts. Ironically, “e-books” cannot escape their own papercentrism.

So let me end with a modest proposal. Perhaps it’s time we cease referring to electronic reading devices as “e-books” and instead find some other, less papercentric, name. Maybe then, when the technology no longer feels compelled to prove its worthiness in relation to paper, will digital reading achieve what’s been expected of it for so long.

Tag Archive for e-books