I believe that using a cpu to deliver an e-text means more than Wow! now I can download books at midnight! or Guess what — I have 53 books in my pocket right now! (I just counted). And, of course, everything has a cpu these days, particularly these new e-readers coming from Sony, iRex and Jinke.
So why aren’t we acting on this? I recently read Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe Time, and his preface says it all:
Some day, though, paper books will all but go away. We’re already reading more words off of more screens every day and fewer words off of fewer pages every day. You don’t need to be a science fiction writer to see the writing on the wall (or screen, as the case may be).
Now, if you’ve got a poor imagination, you might think that we’ll enter that era with special-purpose “e-book readers” that simulate the experience of carrying around “real” books, only digital. That’s like believing that your mobile phone will be the same thing as the phone attached to your wall, except in your pocket. If you believe this sort of thing, you have no business writing sf, and you probably shouldn’t be reading it either.
No, the business and social practice of ebooks will be way, way weirder than that. In fact, I believe that it’s probably too weird for us to even imagine today, …
Cory is acting on his belief by tossing away the old notions of restricting access to his writings, like a handful of novelists. And millions of bloggers.
How will we as publishers and creators discard our old notions of the book?
Instead of a publisher making its money by manufacturing, distributing and promoting books, maybe its role is to specialize in transforming a static text to one that engages readers with sound, visuals, motion and interactivity. (Every study shows this vastly increases retention of the content, btw.)
To survive, publishers should do what authors and individuals cannot — maybe that means re-emphasizing editing, or approaching their role exclusively as promoters, or (in the case of news publishers) digging out information that only a team can collect and connect.
When I worked at Conde Nast, I learned that a writer might take ten or twenty or a hundred hours on a project, researching and writing but most of all figuring how to best explain the information, how to make it fresh and interesting. And at Conde Nast, I saw that they were prepared to put in an equal amount of time and money thinking about how to visualize that information and present it. And when they doubled the effort this way — split among art directors, high-end photographers, top illustrators — guess what — the impact really was doubled.
Advertising agencies, btw, seem to get this. Words alone only convey so much. What the words look like and the context they’re presented in and the artwork with them all convey information the words along can’t. So maybe publishers will be more like ad agencies — with information/text products rather than toothpaste, iPods and cars — and capable of so much more than nonspecialists, just the way ad agencies run rings around in-house creative staff. Or maybe publishers will be more like today’s packagers or movie producers, putting together a creative team and then handling the overall product.
Or maybe they’ll be more like today’s children’s book publishers, taking a text and hiring not just illustrators but also interactivists and sound specialists to “finish” it as a book that fits their market.
You know, I never thought I would use a camera that came with a phone, but I was wrong. When I got a cellphone, I thought What would I do with a phone other than make phone calls? Play games? Listen to music? Use it as a clock? Store addresses and appointments? I already had a way to handle those things. Got into the cellphone age and found out I was wrong. The phone is a great place to have those things.
Cory is right. Our e-reader today is yesterday’s notion of a mobile phone. Who will make tomorrow’s e-reader, and just how weird will it be to the sensibilities we have today?
Note: Cory’s latest novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, also carries this statement. Btw, good luck, Cory on going to full-time writing!
BTW, the name of Cory’s book is actually Eastern Standard Tribe, not Eastern Standard Time.
I plead preoccupation. Typo fixed. Thanks for catching it, Carl.
I think that where publishers are still sorely needed is in sorting out the gems from the tripe. It’s easy to self-publish an ebook – whether it’s a blog serialized novel, a collection of short stories, a hypertext book, whatever – all you need to publish it is a website, a file in whatever format you like (and it’s trivial to create any of them), and you’ve got a book. But will I, or any other reader, pay money for it? Or even take the time to download it?
I published my book of poetry through a website called lulu.com. It’s a fully automated print-on-demand business – you upload a PDF and it prints your book for you. It also makes the PDF available for download, either free or for pay. I find that I am rather reluctant to pay for these PDFs, though I’ve downloaded some free ones (and even enjoyed some of them). Why? No way to tell if I’m paying for tripe or treasure.
Though this function does not necessarily need to be performed by publishers, of course. In fact, it probably shouldn’t. Bloggers, reviewers, and other miscellaneous readers could probably do just as well.