Bookplanet: digital books

Missing ink
I really don't like the idea of reading a book on a digital device. But that's not going to stop them being forced on us.
By Julia Bell/Guardian UK

Last week I visited my publishers to record a video for Meet the Author and met with man of the moment David Freeman. During the course of the recording we discussed the obvious success of his venture and the fact that 2007 looks set to be the year that everything, including the author, goes digital. While movies and music have already made the transition to mp3s and mov files, Sony is declaring war on the printed page with its new Reader . . . which is about to do to text files, if you believe the hype , what the iPod has done for mp3s.

Personally I don't like them, for all sorts of Luddite reasons, but I can feel them being forced upon us whether we like them or not. (Watch out for a big marketing push later this year.) On a recent trip to an empty Borders I feared for my profession, not to mention the publishing industry. Nearly all the stuff in their shop is already available digitally online. And once books go too, perhaps the empty bookshops will be replaced with download "hubs" where we can buy Costalottashmucks coffee and download the latest tunes, novels and movies from the matrix while money trickles out of our bank accounts, all funnelled through our mobile phones.

The real nub of the issue for me is that screens will now mediate the text. The bound book comes to us with so many connotations of magic and learning, so it will be a cultural revolution of Caxtonian proportions to watch it replaced by a bland black tablet. Will it cheapen the reading experience to be able to skip through virtual pages rather than feel the weight of real ones? Will having 10,000 novels on your reader involve the same kind of macho competitiveness as having 10,000 albums? Will I read more? Or less? Doubtless novels will be cheaper and readers will be able to download manuscripts directly from an individual author's site. This could be a good thing for the author, but a very bad thing for the publishing industry.

Publishing contextualises books, frames them with a cover and type and assorted quotes and blurb, the naked text might be less appealing and much more, well, naked.

For me, there is also the issue of favourite books, thumbed with marks in the margins - the ghosts of my previous readings. This is a tactile relationship with the book as an object - splayed out on the floor, pages bent to mark the pause, cover scuffed from being carried to work. I know it's a romantic attachment to something inevitably ephemeral. But in the same way as I collect vinyl albums, a personal library of books is like a roomful of friends, real, tactile, authentic. To shrink this into a device which only carries the text as a digital file - a series of zeroes and ones - seems almost disrespectful.

Maybe, hopefully, possibly, the Reader won't catch on. It is after all over $300 for a jazzed-up PDF reader. But then again it (or something cheaper like it) might well . . .

And, after a post-Christmas clearout which turned into a frenzy of shredding, I realised what terrible polluters writers are, and in a world where books are cheapened by overproduction, we are worried by global warming and the dominant aesthetic is minimalist, disposable digital files might well be the best place for some of these books, and no one need ever know that you have been reading Dan Brown on the Tube again.

Comments
1. joedoon
Digital reading devices will not be forced upon us. Sure, they will be marketed, and they will become attractive to some, but they will be no more compulsory than the iPhone. Books have so many advantages, and have survived for so long, that I think we can be pretty sure they will survive for a long while yet. Digital reading devices do furnish a room? I think not. I was really gripped by a book on the train, but then the battery ran out? Nope.

2. alvanoto
The appeal of the iPod is mainly down to the convenience of being able to carry a large music collection around with you and being able to pick and mix tracks according to your mood. It's really just a better Walkman.

No one needs to carry a library of books around with them and although it might be possible to pick short stories from various collections and create your own anthologies on the go, I can't see this catching on.

I prefer electronic texts for research, with the ease of annotating and cross-reference, so there could be a limited market there, but for a mass audience this seems a little like TV or internet for mobile devices - just because the technology is available doesn't mean the demand is there.

3. Persephone251
The manufacturers don't seem to have taken into account the fact that it is much worse for your eyes - and more tiring -to read from a screen than from a printed page. I've been reading books all my life but after only 18 months of a full-time office job I needed glasses as my previously twenty-twenty vision had been damaged by spending 8 hours a day in front of a computer. I would never choose to read text on a 'Reader' rather than a paperback. I can't see this catching on.

4. utzy
I'd like to see one. I think the screen will suprise and I can imagine it a great boost for students with many text to get through - will bring a whole new feeling to reading week. It has a battery for 7500 page turns so shouldnt run out quickly, only thing is now its yet another plastic gadget for the bag and definitely one not to leave on the train.