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| Hearsay: |
Robert McCrum, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords.
How many books can you read in a week, or a month? If you’re judging the Booker prize you probably have to slog through a novel a day, but most people would do well to finish a novel a week. That’s about four a month, or perhaps 40 a year (allowing for holidays). So, even if you throw in a few extras, the average reader will have done well to consume 50 new titles a year, probably many fewer. Yes, there’s an astounding amount of choice and novelty out there, but we are unlikely to explore it, however much we might want to. We simply do not have the time, or perhaps the energy, to fully exploit the contemporary cornucopia of print.
As I see it, there’s no harm in admitting this. The book demands a serious engagement. Even if it’s a frivolous read, it’s still utterly absorbing, and even if you “devour” it (as people sometimes say), the experience is much slower than, say, seeing a favourite movie five or 10 times. Or listening to a favourite piece of music, or song. I am typing this looking at my personal library, perhaps 5,000 books. It occurs to me that if I never bought another book, I could enjoy several years just re-reading my way through this collection. The e-reading revolution will not change the dynamic of our interaction with books.
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August 19th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Submitting this link via comment, in case you haven’t seen it yet: [see link above]
(also, check out the alt text)
August 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I tend to agree with McCrum in this article. Reading takes time. Just because books are sold in electronic format does not necessarily mean people will start reading more. However Ereaders might lead to an increase in sales. By that I mean if books are a simple point-and-click download away, then I can people downloading massive quantities of literature. But that won’t mean they are actually reading what they download.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
If the e-readers take off they will probably decrease sales. Why download ahead of time when you can download at any time? That’s what might reasonably frighten writers and publishers: the e-reader might rationalize the book-buying process. There may well be a substantially reduced consumer urge to accumulate before reading, because there’s nothing to look good on a shelf, no desire to acquire a first editions or a particular cover, no desire to pick up the thing you might not find later.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:41 am
I think things will change a great deal – for the writer. Think of the independence we’re going to have. And it’s about time.
August 20th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Lee, I am not sure I understand how the e-reader will give the writer independence, exactly? Can you explain that?
August 20th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Why, the independence to be poor and ignored. Er, more so than before.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:10 am
Chris, heh heh, too right.
Kathryn, because writers can do their own publishing a lot more easily and cheaply than ever before. Conventional publishing is now simply one way of solving a distribution problem: how to get a text from the the writer’s desk to the reader’s hands.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Lee, publishing is far more than a means of distribution. I know next to nothing about book design and typography; distribution and publicity are incredibly time-consuming, and (above all) the editing process is crucial to the process of refining anything beyond a blog entry. That’s what you get from a deal with a conventional publisher. Electronic distribution has the potential to augment the operations of a conventional publisher, but it doesn’t render that publisher obsolete.