Mark Charan Newton

Now, it’s not like the Independent newspaper to scaremonger and take a holier-than-thou approach to news, oh no… But here’s a scaremongering article on the death of the printed page and the rise of the e-book.

In just a few short years, MP3 downloads and the iPod changed the face of the music industry. CDs are going the way of the dodo, and high-street music stores fear for their future. Now there’s a new revolution on the horizon; this time in the realm of books… For nearly 600 years – since the invention of the printing press – the printed book has reigned supreme as the “technology” of choice for reading. But this looks set to change as more publishers, and even authors, put out their titles in digital format as “ebooks”

There’s been so much hype about the ebook revolution over the past few years and we’ve seen nothing significant to show the book is dead. Look carefully at the article: the people who are proclaiming the death of the printed page are those with interests or investments in the digital media. Interesting. Doomsaying for their own gains. Take the guy who wrote the piece. He’s someone certainly benefits from this publicity. Oh, he has a book out, did you know? How convenient.

Comparing this to the music industry is the best if not only comparison we can make, apparently, but I’m not so sure. Music has always been played on a device, be it a gramophone or an iPod. A passive thing, to enter your ears. Reading is an active thing. No devices involved, unless there are audio books. You hold the book, you read from it. There’s the production quality involved—something that has become increasingly high-standard in the UK. People buy on cover art, on the tactile process of picking the damn thing up. There are so many physical reactions to buying books. Also, it’s important to realise that digital music succeeded on individual tracks, and the ability to contain so many on one device. It was the success of the iPod that meant mp3s were a massive hit. I can’t for a moment imagine readers liking chapters from various books in random order, or indeed the need to carry thousands of books with them at any one time. (Aside from textbooks, where I can see some appeal.)

People who love fiction books love them for this reason. So these are the type of people who will prefer the real thing. They’re not going to be so fussed about buying an ebook reader. Now people who don’t care about books so much don’t tend to buy so many of them, one or two a year, so why would they want to fork out so much money for a device they’ll hardly ever use? And there’s a third type of book buyer, those who buy to be seen to be reading something smart, or the latest thing. Fashion-conscious readers. They’re not going to be able to show off their intelligence, or lack of, on an ebook reader. All of these reasons are likely to to keep us in paper for a long time yet.

But I’m not scared of technology. We’re not folk who fear change. As Cory Doctorow has pointed out many times, digital media can certainly compliment physical books as a publicity tool. And that’s great. It’s an extension of browsing.

There’s a future for the book. I wouldn’t get worried. This is what the literary agent in the article states:

The publishing industry has for some time been preparing itself for the ebook revolution, and agents have been giving thought to the contractual issues surrounding them, but the revolution hasn’t taken place… Only this morning, I was looking at the royalty statements for an author, one of the few on my list whose work is published as an ebook. His paperback sales to the end of September for a book published in February were 36,345 copies. The audio CD sales for the same period were 721 and those for digital download were 32.

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