Book Extinction
Copyright © 2000 by Dave Badtke
Mark the day well, March 14, 2000, exactly one week ago today. In the future your grandchildren will ask you where you were and what you were doing on that fateful day.
What, you say, you’ve already completely forgotten last Tuesday?
Don’t despair, it has only been a week. There’s still time to remember how you felt when you learned that the beginning of the end of the book as we know it began; when you heard the news that Stephen King’s asteroid, the exclusive publication on the Internet of his "Riding the Bullet", struck the dinosauric world of books printed on paper.
There was so much interest in the 66-page novella that more than 400,000 copies were requested in the first 24 hours after its release from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, where the copies were free, and from sites such as NetLibrary.com that charged $2.50. Servers could not meet the demand and many customers were unable to download the book to their computers and Palm Pilots.
Publishers were amazed, and one can imagine intrigued, by the demand. Popular authors like John Grisham, e.g., could previously only expect to sell 75,000 hardback copies of a new book on the first day of publication.
No doubt, if readers are willing to read an electronic book, publishers will jump at the chance to bypass the arduous and costly tasks of printing, binding, distributing and remaindering books made from paper.
Until last Tuesday, the argument was frequently made that few wanted to read an electronic book, because it had lower resolution than paper, was harder to read in sunlight and was not as tactile and convenient as a book. King said: "While I think that the Internet … [has] great promise, I don’t think anything will replace the printed word and the bound book."
Dream on, destroyer of a genus.
If customers are willing and technology is available, past practices disappear, no matter how treasured, as fast as new products can be produced. In this case, however, there might be potential benefit for both writers and readers.
While publishers focus most of their attention on the small number of writers who attract large readerships, the cost of introducing a new e-book writer would be substantially reduced. Unfortunately, publishers might find that the most well-known writers wouldn’t need them. King and Grisham, e.g., could set up their own web sites and bypass their publishers by establishing a direct writer to reader connection: Profits accruing to celebrity writers would soar.
Readers, on the other hand, would pay less for books and would be able to more easily sample new books before buying them. They would also be able to search through e-books and place bookmarks as easily as they perform these operations today on the Internet.
I’m afraid that e-books are an inevitable extension of the web. If there’s a downside, it lies, as always when we’re discussing "progress", in the unknown impact the change will have on our family and community lives.
What was I doing last Tuesday when the King asteroid hit?
I had just received and was perusing my latest Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook, bound in fragrant, supple black leather with 2000 embossed in large, gold-leaf numbers along the spine. While much harder to search than Britannica.com, it’s physically more enjoyable to explore.
I glanced through the obituaries of notables who died last year – the thin white pages crackled as I opened them for the first time – and found Al Hirt, Raisa Gorbachev, Madeline Kahn, Stanley Kubrick, Ashley Montagu( author of "The Natural Superiority of Women"), Yehudi Menuhin, Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger), Arthur Schawlow (1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, laser spectroscopy), and, of course, Lili St. Cyr (bubble-bath striptease artist).
Then I flipped to the section on comparative national statistics and scanned the mortality tables. (Why my fixation on death? I’m not sure.)
I searched for the country with the longest expected lifetime at birth, San Moreno at 85.3 years for women, and the shortest, Malawi at 35.9 years for men. After grounding myself with a check of the U.S., 72.0 years for men and 78.9 years for women, I tried to imagine the human suffering hidden in the Malawi numbers.
Later that same day, I purchased, over the Internet, this year’s Britannica DVD-ROM. It contains all the Britannica volumes, for which I originally paid almost $2,000, plus yearbooks and additional information, including video clips. Like previous CD-ROM versions I’ve purchased, I will use the DVD-ROM for research and reference checking. With shipping, handling and tax, the DVD-ROM cost $25.37; the yearbook cost $62.13.
Most of all, when they’re gone, I think I’ll miss the smell of books.
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com