Yesterday, amidst great fanfare, Steve Jobs released the iPad. You might think that as an author, avid reader, and book publisher, I’d be wildly excited about this new gadget. Do I view the iPad as the “future” of publishing?
No.
Like many techie devices, it has been saddled with an utterly stupid name. Yo Steve, what were you thinking? The feminine protection jokes made at least 79 circuits around the Internet mere hours after the announcement.
Beyond the name, I find I have a problem with hoopla-laden technology launches. It feels like déjà vu all over again.
Unlike a lot of people in book publishing, I actually come from a computer-related background. I was a technical writer, wrote computer books, beta tested buggy software, and witnessed a lot of the less savory aspects of high-tech.
The music industry already has gone down the high-tech path, and apparently learned nothing from the problems that have plagued the computer industry. Now book publishing seems to be doomed to the same fate.
Has no one learned anything? Here’s what book publishers can look forward to when books go high tech.
1. Compatibility issues. Will books you buy for the Kindle work for the iPad? Will they work on the Sony device? Will they work on any device 20 years from now?
2. Piracy. Yesterday a big shot at Macmillan said they would “fight” piracy. Books are already being stolen. The trouble is the fight he’s waging is using weapons already proven not to have worked in the computing and music industry for years. (Have a little chat with the folks at Microsoft, dude.)
3. Usability issues. Most people know how to open a book and read it. Anyone who has written computer documentation knows that no matter how “easy” something is, someone will have trouble with downloading, storage, transfer or other issues.
4. Archival formats. Libraries are filled with 20, 30, or 50 year old books. Just as old photographs preserve history, old books are a treasure-trove of information. Where are betamax movies now? A few have been transferred to DVD. Maybe. Bits and bytes are disposable in a way that tangible objects are not.
After this discourse, you may think I am a Luddite who is against ebooks. Actually that isn’t true. I believe that many people will use and enjoy ebooks on readers.
However, I also believe that physical print books will not go away entirely. I think all the teeth gnashing about the “death of the book” is absurd.
Digital photography did not signal the demise of the printed photograph. In fact, it led to new ways of printing out photos. Whole businesses, such as Shutterfly.com, are built around the fact that people still want to have something they can hold in their hand. You may have 10,000 photographs on your hard disk, but you still want to have printouts of the best 300 to put in your photo album, so you can share them with your family and friends.
In much the same way, I think that people will use and enjoy e-readers for books they “consume” like mass-market novels. But some books you want to keep on your bookshelf to refer back to later. New markets will arise both from these “archive quality” books, ebooks, and e-readers.
I only hope that the next e-reader gets a better name.