I had an English professor early on in college that gave an impassioned, albeit well rehearsed and repeated as his opening day starter for every course he taught, speech about books that always stuck with me. He urge us all not to sell our books back at the end of the semester. The college gives you a terrible price on the buy backs and who knows when you might find use for them later. Just one more way colleges screw you over, he said.
Bitter old English professors aside (or realist ahead of his time?), I have always loved used books. The more tattered the pages the better. Books that look like they had gone every where with someone. Passages underlined, notes in then margins, dog eared pages, evidence of another reader. I always felt books picked up extra meaning beyond the words on the page when you could see the wear on the spine and someone's words in the margins.
That is the mindset I that has always kept me from getting a Kindle. While I'm sure I'd love an ereader, I feel like it disconnects me from the book too much. There is a lack of permanence in the way the feel. A delicate nature that makes it hard to live in the words the same way as a physical book. Letting it pick up who you are as a reader as it travels with you. Those lived in books always felt handmade to me.
I've been thinking a lot about the DIY and crowd sourcing communities. The idea of building it yourself by hand instead of having someone glaze over your efforts with the gloss of expensive print jobs. At the same time letting the community that invests in choose help the projects develop into their full potential. In still piecing together my mission statement for a project I'm going to begin working on soon. If I can get a central idea to umbrella all my efforts under first, then I'll be able to really push myself into it and get it done. If I start trying without that idea solidified in my head fist I'll just waste my efforts trying to figure out step one for an unfinished idea. That wouldn't end up helping anyone.
Andy, it sounds like you've given this quite a bit of thought. Some of the things I thought about as I read your piece:
ReplyDelete- I also love the look, feel and general tangibility of printed books, just as you do.
- For people who are living in smaller spaces (examples: intentional tiny-house people, travelers, income-limited, or simply downsizing), a library of physical books can mean having to choose very carefully which books to keep. E-readers may give these folks the option of more books in less space. One trade-off with this option: having to re-purchase any printed book that you have and want to keep, but you find that you can't fit it into your space.
And one more thing: you can give a printed book to someone else. I suspect that's not true with e-books, or at least it's more difficult.
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DeleteI completely agree. Though lately I've been seeing more of a purpose to e-readers and tablets for certain kinds of book. Periodicals, airport novels, or comic-books for example are perfect for e-reader/tablets: low cost and a low probability of re-reading. I also have been getting into tabletop RPG gaming; where some of the books are only available in the $39.99 hardcover edition, $30 used edition, or the $10 PDF. In that case a handful of the books cost more than an e-reader and the PDF versions combined would.
Though I think the way things are going we will see fewer and fewer publishing companies producing large runs of anything other than airport novels and switching largely to e-book formats.
However, I think that where the larger publishing houses are leaving a gap the crowd-funding websites will be creating an increase in low-run editions of more specialized books. Things fewer that wouldn't necessarily be accepted at a major publishing house, but will be lovely crafted by the writer themselves. For example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nachonomics/the-field-guide-to-nachos
A field guide for nachos. Something that not everyone has use for and Pearsons or Random house anywhere near it, but for the 442 people that were interested enough in the idea to back it they will no doubt keep it in a treasured place in their bookshelves.