posted
Whilst visiting the writer Dan Simmons's website I came across a link to a series of three articles by renowned genre literary agent Richard Curtis. He gives an overview of the publishing industry over the past 65 or so years and speculates as to what might lie ahead.
The articles can be found at Backspace - the writer's place
posted
Maybe it's backward thinking, stubbornness, short-sightedness, but will there really come a day when physical books are wholly supplanted by virtual books? The comfort of shelves of bound books -- the smell, the feel, the sight of varied spine titles -- just can't be compared to a digital screen, no matter how many or how great the graphics.
posted
I don't think that books will be totally replaced in our generation. But I can definitely see it happening during my grandkids' time. If they are raised with everything being on the Internet or personal media devices, books won't hold the same nostalgia for them.
And I know a lot of highschoolers who would appreciate not lugging around backpacks the size of Mount Everest because of all the textbooks. If they can just download the day's homework and stick it in their pocket, they probably won't miss the physical books.
The generation that is in school right now hardly reads anything as it is. I only see that trend worsening.
Mind you, I would absolutely LOVE to be proven wrong. And I will love physical books and libraries and paper and bindings and covers, to the day I die.
posted
I think we're all lovers of books here I can't read for long periods of time on a screen because the contrast is too important, so I've never gone digital. Add to that a tendency to holiday in places where electricity is erratic at beast, and you'll see why e-books don't work for me. Plus a book never runs out of batteries.
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posted
For me what I found most interesting was when he spoke of mid-range writers who had, for many years, been making a comfortable living then suddenly finding themselves dropped because the sales department decided that they had to sell x-number of copies.
What Curtis was pointing out was that publishing had evolved to the stage where it didn't matter whether your new book was good or not, they just looked at your previous sales figures and decided on that basis alone whether to keep you or drop you. Bookstores adopting the same strategy of order an author's new book based on previous sales. Thus the desperate situation of established writers having to change their name just to stay in print.
Also the current pressure where writers have to prove themselves right from the beginning; the process whereby the writer was allowed to grow into their skills and, hopefully, work their way up to that breakthrough novel is no longer an option. They have to come up with that 'big' novel NOW or forget it.
This, more than the issue of e-books versus physical books, it what fascinated me most about these articles.
[This message has been edited by Paul-girtbooks (edited October 08, 2005).]
posted
Hmm. This is interesting. I've been wondering, what will happen to us in future generations? Will we even NEED to know how to read? Surely not all of us. Even now we can get most of the information we need without needing to read.
Our young people are reading less and less. How will our society have to adjust to accomodate them? Will it? Or will we simply degrade into a society of readers and non-readers?
I like the idea of not having to lug textbooks around. You loan every kid a Palm Pilot for the school year instead of 6 textbooks. With the costs of technology dropping all the time, it'd probably be cheaper anyway--and probably within twenty years. In college, you'd just take your Palm to the bookstore and pay a fee for each textbook download--or better, do it over the internet.
Other benefits: No worry about lack of supply--they'd never run out of books.
posted
The thing is, have you ever heard anyone reading out loud in a group setting from a Palm Pilot? Most of those I've heard have skipped words and blundered through the abyssmal reading of the screen. Now, of course, there are some readers who do that with any medium--so maybe that was the case here. I don't know--the comfort of a book, being able to bend the cover on a paperback all the way around, using highlighters, writing in the margins. To say nothing of signing autographs. How do you sign a computer screen? And as others have said--reading off the computer screen gets tedious after awhile. It's no wonder that the majority of article marketed to the web are less than 1000 words long. Even I avoid reading lengthy articles on the web--I just read the first couple of paragraphs or so and then print it off to read later.
Shane
[This message has been edited by Smaug (edited October 09, 2005).]
posted
As I've said before, I like reading on a computer screen. I don't like PDA's, but other than the crappy resolution I still find them easier to read than regular books.
So what? It isn't like electronic publishing is going to make it harder to get books printed on paper. Like Smaug says, you can print it out yourself. It isn't even that expensive to get a binding system so that you can print out a book for yourself. If you don't want to bind a whole book, most word processors now allow you to layout a print job as a booklet, you just print one side, print the other, then staple the thing through the middle and fold it in half. Presto.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
