Making the case for books

I can't understand is this e-book craze. The vinyl record lasted several decades; the VHS tape for a shorter time; the CD only reigned for a matter of years. But books have done their job for centuries upon centuries. When you open a volume, you're sharing in a human tradition.

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Making the case for books

POSTED: Thursday, March 17, 2011, 10:00 AM

(bestbuy.com)

I’m not a technophobe: I spent much of my childhood trying to program my dad’s computer and attempting feats like hooking up my Nintendo to my guitar amp. The iPhone has saved my absent-minded self from a number of situations in which I suddenly realized I had no idea what time my train was leaving, or, for that matter, where the station was. Even though I like records, I’m definitely behind the iPod. And I can’t imagine writing this post without a word processor.

What I can’t understand is this e-book craze. The vinyl record lasted several decades; the VHS tape for a shorter time; the CD only reigned for a matter of years. But books have done their job for centuries upon centuries. When you open a volume, you’re sharing in a human tradition. Books, as objects, have a permanence that software doesn’t; they don’t require any mediating machine; they never run out of batteries; and our bookshelves, decorating our walls, are records of our personal histories.

E-books have been around for more than a decade now, and so have e-book readers: Franklin’s eBookMan, for example, appeared in 1998. Back then, however, the electronic format didn’t have much buzz, and it took years for it to catch on. “They’ve been selling e-books for a long time. Nobody’s been buying e-books,” said Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in an interview with Charlie Rose. Perhaps that’s because they lacked clear advantages over traditional books. An iPod makes sense: when you’re on the move, you’re going to listen to a variety of songs, so it’s handy to have your library with you. But when you travel with a book, you’re not reading one novel for three minutes, then changing to another. You’re not going to put your book collection on “shuffle.” You don’t need more than a book or two at any one time. So why spend a vast amount of money on a special machine when you could spend a few bucks on a paperback of the same size?

Then, in 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. Suddenly, it seemed, people were talking about an e-book revolution. Granted, it had some advantages over other devices: it isn’t backlit, for example, so it doesn’t hurt your eyes (of course, neither do books). But unless you travel constantly, or read at such a superhuman speed that you finish multiple books on your commute to work, there’s still little advantage to carrying an entire library rather than a paperback. Instead, it’s always seemed that the hubbub surrounding the Kindle has more to do with marketing than any concrete improvement over actual books. Since the Kindle emerged, Bezos has given plenty of interviews, telling Newsweek that he believes paper books are on their way out and that “this is not just a business for us. There is missionary zeal.” Indeed, the Kindle’s name disturbingly suggests burning books; whether this is intentional I don’t know. But why replace a centuries-old centerpiece of culture? To borrow a phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As Jon Stewart puts it in a good-natured but cutting interview with Bezos: “Books are almost comfortably low-tech,” while this “just doesn’t feel like the kind of thing you want to fall asleep with on your chest.” Still, Amazon managed to create the necessary buzz—the media loves to tell us that older technologies, like books, are “dying”—and the Kindle’s popularity grew.

The best technology solves an existing problem. But in today’s gadget-obsessed culture, it’s easy to manufacture a need where none really exists. Before the Kindle appeared, I never heard anyone saying, “man, I sure wish there was a way to carry several thousand books at once!” To quote Jeff Bezos himself, on why it took so long to digitize books: “It’s because books are so good. The physical book is so highly evolved, and so elegantly suited to its purpose, that it’s hard to improve on.”

A last note: what worries me most about all this—and what too few people are talking about—is the fact that digitizing books opens things up to piracy. I can maybe live with the Kindle if it increases overall sales of written material. But if e-books start getting pirated as often as music is, will readers begin to expect free access to books—thus forcing an industry overhaul? Will we start seeing advertising in our novels—or will writing as a profession become unsustainable? That’s where things get a bit personal.

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