The ebook debate: part 2

A few weeks back, we chatted about the appeal (or not) of ebooks, and how they compared to traditional books.

Everyone who commented talked about the tactile nature of books, and how – even though an ebook might be more convenient – it lacked the emotional experience of holding a treasured story in your hands, and then having it remain a part of your life by being visible on a book shelf.

The looming ebook era in Australia was the subject of a well-researched article by the Australian Review’s Rosemary Sorensen this past weekend.

Ebooks have not yet taken off in Australia, but Sorenson notes that if our country’s take up of the mobile phone is anything to go by, ebook take up will be swift.

However, no-one can yet agree on what that will mean, or how it will affect the emotional and nostalgic impact books have in our lives.

Sorenson quotes author Sven Birkerts (The Gutenberg Elegies: the Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age) as saying that if we replace print with screen-based text, “we will not simply have replaced one delivery system with another. We will have modified our imagination of history, our understanding of the causal and associated relationships of ideas and their creators”.

By that, I assume he means the production, look and feel of original books and their covers, which says much about the technology, artistry and social attitudes of the time in which it was published.

If the day comes when there exist nothing but ebooks, there will never again be “first editions” or “special editions” … just old electronic files.

For some, the end of the printed book is inevitable. In Sorenson’s article, New York-based Bob Stein compares the book as a form with architecture that’s no longer possible to build: “I love gothic churches and I’m sorry we don’t build them anymore, but we don’t. They’ve served their function and so has the 800 page novel. It was really cool, the novel, and I’ve spent a lot of time curled up with good ones, but new technologies give rise to new forms. Humans were not born with a gene that made us gravitate to print.”

And yet, for others, ebooks may create more demand for the paper version. Random House marketing director Brett Osmond suggests readers might use more than one format to get through a single story. “In the future, you may simply buy the book and are able to read it in a range of formats. You might begin with a paper version, then take a chapter on your on your e-reader while you’re walking the dog or pick it up on your computer.”

In this scenario, you buy the story, and it’s up to you how you actually consume it – a fascinating and revolutionary idea, and one that would require revolutionising the publishing industry to accommodate it.

What do you think of that idea? Would you be more inclined to use an e-reader if it was only one format available to you as you read a book, rather than the only format? Is it more acceptable to traditional book lovers to have the choice of both experiences – tactile and convenient?

I will always want physical books – no question. But there is some appeal to having the convenience of being able to read a couple of chapters on a compact e-reader in situations when it’s not practical to carry around a large book.

What does everyone think?

Ebooks: do you read them?

Booking Through Thursday (BTT) hosted an excellent discussion last week about electronic versus paper books.

The post directed meme participants to an interesting Time magazine article Books gone wild: the digital age reshapes literature by Lev Grossman, and then asked for thoughts and comments.

In the article, Grossman discusses the changes facing the traditional publishing industry in the wake of online books, e-readers, and self-published books marketed by bloggers.

He sees the move towards electronic books as a natural progression in the world of literature. Just as the emergence of books in the early 18th century was shaped by the forces of money and technology as much as by creative genius, so too, he says, is the move from the paper-based novel to the ebook.

Grossman says publishers need to be looking beyond existing means of selling books, given the increasing uptake of e-readers like Kindle and the Sony Reader (for those unfamiliar with these gadgets, they’re electronic devices the size of a small novel, on which you read downloaded ebooks in a format that looks like the page of a novel).

The ebooks available for these e-readers are not just those provided by publishers, but anyone who wants to make their writing available in cyberspace via services like Kindle.

In discussing this recently with two librarians, it seems the issue is not just about a shift in attitudes towards books without tangible pages, but also about the availability of a single platform in which to read ebooks.

From what I understand, existing e-readers only access some books, not all. Which means that if you want to read novels from various sources, you need more than one type of reader - otherwise, you're limited to the titles available to your particular reader. The librarians I spoke to don’t expect to see a huge uptake in the general population until that situation changes.

Interestingly, many of the comments left in response to the Time article on BTT were along the same lines: people like the idea of having an ebook reader – offering hundreds of titles at their fingertips, often with dictionaries, glossaries and note-taking options. But they still love the feel of an old fashioned book in their hands and can’t see a day when they would turn away from the paper option completely.

There’s also a trend for people to read initial chapters of a book offered online and then go out and buy the “real” version to finish reading it.

Personally, I’ve not bought an e-reader, or read a fiction ebook. I can see the benefits of the technology, and would certainly be willing to give it a try, but I too still love the feel of a book in my hand and the sight of books on my shelves.

The paper versus electronic debate has been raging for years and will continue to rage as the industry and the fiction-loving public grapple with these issues.

The traditional system of agents, publishers and editors exists to provide a level of quality control and discernment, preventing readers from having to wade through thousands of un-edited and potentially badly written books before they find the good stuff.

But Grossman says even this open-slather approach will find its own level. “The wide bottom of the (literary) pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses”.

What do you think about the issue?

Do you read ebooks? If not, would you?

If yes, do you choose work from writers unpublished in the traditional sense or only those already available in book shops? Do you read ebooks to find new work, or because they are a more convenient and cost-effective way to buy popular titles?