Books Dec 31, 2009 at 4:00 am

On the Infinitely Avoidable Regrets of the Publishing Industry (2000-2009 Edition)

Comments

1
Two sentences above can't quite belie how their writers really feel:

"I'm not the kind of person who believes in censoring books but..." (Sarah Palin)

- Dot, dot, dot... But really? Sarah looooves it!

"While regretting the closures of bookstores is a good and important thing to do..." (Paul Constant)

- Dot, dot, dot... But really? Paul doesn't care. Not about Portland booksellers or paper companies or binders or delivery drivers and cyclists, etc, etc.

E-books? Really? I dunno. E-books kinda suck.

Unless I'm like Joe Troutdale rocking my rad Bluetooth with a Kindle powered up with the latest James Patterson.

Otherwise? Then yeah. They suck.

Or I guess I'm the uncool one. I'm not "keeping up with the latest tends" per some special "what to buy next" consumer report on MSNBC or Us Weekly.

Ah well...

I'll probably keep going back to the places I like where I know the folks. (Which for me is Reading Frenzy and Counter Media and Powells.) Instead of tickling the nutsack of Amazon (which just happens to be located in Paul's own city...) that only serves to send my Portland money out of our local economy.

Not to mention that when I buy an e-Book? All I get is a buncha 0s and 1s. A copy of a copy of a copy of a PDF. No resale or trade value. Thanks for your quick tenner, boyo.

But when I buy a regular ol' book? It has intrinsic value. I can lend it or sell it again.

Or maybe it's just that I like the feeling of something hard in my hand...
2
Publishers love e-books, because they have no printing costs, sell for nearly the same price, and include heavy DRM. DRM (digital rights management) typically means that you don't _own_ the content like you would own a book; you're merely _licensing_ it. There's no "used e-book" market. There's no loaning books either.

As far as e-books creating a new wave of literary masterpieces, I would counter that if it follows the pattern Youtube set for us, we're more likely to get a whole lot less signal and a lot more noise.
3
To be fair, the biggest problem with E-books for the last decade was that nobody in publishing was willing to settle for one format. Well, that and assuming that people were going to pay as much for a digital copy (downloaded via dialup connection, to boot) as for a hardcover.

The telling point on the current success of the E-book is that now it's being embraced by people other than their audience back in 1999. Back then, the only people who really cared about E-books were Cat Piss Men wanting to show off their latest overpriced tech toy (anybody remember the Microsoft Reader, selling for nearly $150 more than the Kindle?), and even then you couldn't convince any of them to _buy_ E-books. Instead, they were all over at Usenet, downloading pirated copies of the only books they cared about: science fiction and the user manuals to the software they'd stolen from work.
4
The problem with eBooks is that they have the sensual appeal of a colonoscopy. Fortunately, there's been a soul salving countertrend: small publishing houses returning to craftsmanship book production of excellent new and classic titles. As long as the publishing world spreads horizontally and saves a place at the table for readers who want to get the $&$&# away from $#$#*& twitchy srolly computer monitors once in a while, readers like me will abide with eBooks. Failing that, There Will Be Blood....

Please wait...

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