2009, “the Year of the E-book”
According to Gutenberg.com 2009 is going to be the year of the e-book(where have we heard that before). I really don’t want to come off as a jerk, but if you believe that I’ve got some swamp land in Freedonia to sell you.
We have been told since e-books dawned that print is dead and that e-books would rule the world. Well, I just looked out at the Public Area in my library and I still pretty much see scads of books (my library has access to e-books, nobody uses them).
It seems that Carnac’s annual declaration of the “year of the ebook” is just out of habit these days. I know of very few people who actually believe that print will ever be supplanted.
Now, I could go down Gutenberg.com’s list of 20 reasons and refute them individually, but I have neither the time or the energy. Instead, I will give you 5 reasons (I need fewer) why print’s death either will never come or will be so far in the future that it makes not sense to try to predict when it will come.
1. There are ergonomic reasons people prefer print.
There is both scientific and anecdotal evidence that people find e-books uncomfortable to use. Resolutions for the current generation of e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle is in the neghiborhood of 170 dpi. Computer moniters are 120+ dpi. You average printer renders at 1200 dpi. Anyone else see the problem here?
Yet the resolution issue is likely to go away some day. The real issue is ergonomic in nature. E-books are physically uncomfortable to read for most of us. In, The Elusive E-book, Stephen Sottong describes research that explains why this is. Basically, its because as he puts it “as a species, we are designed to scan the horizon and do fine tasks seated with our work on the ground or in our laps.” So the average computer screen is not a comfortable way to read long works. The dedicated machines fare somewhat better, but until resolution improves, they’re still not going to be as comfortable as a good ol’ book.
2. Multiple Formats are confusing and irritating.
E-books come in multiple formats. By multiple formats, I mean more than 20. If you think about it, this makes the HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray battle seem trivial. What publisher is going to want to have to work in 20+ formats. None of them! So some folks may get shut out of getting a particular item. Until a feature-rich standard (or two) is developed, ebooks are never going to find widespread popularity, let alone “take over”.
Even if this is less an issue than I think. Its still annoying! I shouldn’t need to think in terms of format when picking reading material. I JUST WANT TO READ THE BOOK!
3. Digital Rights Management kills some of the social interactivity of books.
Somewhere, someone got the idea that reading was a insular, isolated activity. I don’t know how this rumor got started, but its bogus. Sure, most adults read by temselves, but there’s a whole social world tied to reading. You read a good book. You tell your friends about it. You lend it to a friend…
Not so with ebooks. at least on the third count. If you buy an ebook on Kindle for instance, that book is yours forever, with emphasis on yours. If you want to loan it to a friend, you have to loan them your Kindle, because no power of God or man will let you loan it to them any other way. Since most of us read the average bestseller only once, one is left with a bunch of data with no future.
I fully support the idea of DRM and I understand why its necessary. After all, before digital copies, you could only share a work with one friend at a time, not so now. Nevertheless, I think this impulse to share is stronger than most Ebook boosters think and will keep print alive.
4. EBooks make no economic sense (to me).
On the surface, e-books look cheaper than regular books. After all, you can get a bestseller on your Kindle for only $10 (yes Amazon, we can round). However, one needs to factor in the cost of the Ebook reader (a Kindle will cost you $360). So if your average bestseller costs around $20, then one could by 18 books for the price of the Kindle, not counting the cost of the Ebooks. This doesn’t even account for planned obsolescence. (You did know that new Kindle of yours is going to break or otherwise become useless someday?)
Given that most Americans typically read a book a year if they’re lucky, this leads me to scratch my head just a bit.
5. Dedicated eBook readers have to be one of the stupidest products conceived by the mind of man.
I mean this from purely a technical standpoint. Consider:
- All currently can only display in 2 colors: black and white. Therefore, if its a novel your fine, otherwise…
- They allow you to store 200+ titles on your reader, yet the average person only reads 1 or two books at the same time. Accounting for the possibility that one might store a few references (dictionaries, etc.) this brings the number of titles needed on the device at any given time to maybe 5.
- The market for electronics has for some time been moving towards multi-purpose devices. Sure Amazon will tell that you can (expiramentally) listen to music and search text-heavy web pages, but basically Kindle is “good” at one thing. Conversely, Apple and others have products tool that ares good at a few more things in addition to being book readers.
- They are targeted at the adult market, when its children that really drive publishing.
I know I must come off as a hater or generally resistant to progress. This could not be further from the truth. In certain contexts e-books have been revolutionary. In the field of reference, I honestly don’t know why anyone bothers with print references anymore. Why would you when you can get the same content in a database or an e-book and have it be keyword searchable?
I suppose I just get tired of the “print is dead” and “the age of the e-book is upon us” garbage that gets spewed annually. The idea that one is going to somehow supplant the other is ridiculous to me, especially since there are still outfits making and selling new vinyl albums. I see a future with both coexisting peacefully, filling the niches they best suit. As Gutenberg.com points out, books and e-books are just formats, “no different than a CD, VHS, or DVD.”
