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Does the nature of E inherently favor one genre over another? And perhaps harm literary fiction, in particular?
February 9, 2008 | 11:42 am
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By David Rothman
SF is a natural for e-geeks, and as Bob Russell observed in MobileRead, romances are another. So here’s the question of the day. Never mind that if you’re technically inclined, you’re more likely to try e-books, or that if you enjoy steamy romance titles, you’ll relish the privacy of a PDA or cellphone. Could something else be at work here? In the long term, if most all modern books and popular classics become e-books, will certain kinds inherently suffer, or suffer even more than now—for example, long literary novels?
For me, this is a “Depends” question. If e-books become as easy to use as P and people can learn to scroll as easily as they flip pages, should the medium count that much? But then I read posts such as Q‘s—complete with the observation that the actual percentage of SF fans among e-bookers might be “90-95 percent” sci-fi fan. What’s going on? That’s high, even considering overlapping tastes and the technical barriers that you must overcome to enjoy E.
Some other issues arise. Once you make books interactive, what will this mean for literary fiction—where traditionally the author speaks directly to readers one by one? That’s one reason why I like it, especially first-person novels. Literary fiction could also suffer from many e-readers’ insistence on a catchy, fast-moving beginnings. Then again, I remain excited about the larger world of books that E makes possible—about the fact that I can not only discover and befriend one work of a writer but instantly call up others online, especially free public domain books without costs or DRM to worry about.
When I finally caught up with George Gissing‘s New Grub Street, for example, having heard of it for years, Born in Exile was just a few mouse clicks away. I can more easily enjoy Gissing in his different incarnations, which change from book to book. One friend actually becomes many.
In the end, then, given a choice between magically doing away with E or seeing it flourish, I would prefer the latter. But I wonder. Is it possible that with certain kinds of books in mind, such as literary fiction, we should be devoting less time and fewer resources to advancing the cause of in-book interactivity and more to the old goal of increasing the number of E titles available, as well as forms of interactivity that encourage readers to share new discoveries among friends. Blogs probably promote discoveries more than real-time chat, keyed to specific titles, does.
The E Ink angle: The more paperlike the screen, perhaps the more conducive the machine to the enjoyment of nongenre books? Just a question. Remember, longer paragraphs, such as those used in older literary works, probably are easier to deal with on a Kindle or Sony Reader than on a PDA. The OLPC XO, whose screen is larger than typical E Ink machines, is good for long paragraphs—especially with FBReader in use, since you can set it up to change font sizes on the XO with minimal effort.
Image: CC-licensed photo by Rob McGlynn.
Related: ‘In praise of shyness’: The e-book angle in the TeleBlog and an earlier post by Peter Kerry Powers. Also see Dan Visel’s thoughts on media and messages.
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Comments:
I enjoy literary fiction (Atonement, Monsters of Templeton, Tours of the Black Clock to name some recent titles I bought as e) as much as sff on my 770.
It’s true that there are some books that I like to read as print more than as e, but the reverse is true also as the huge Against the Day stands in my library unread while if I could get an e-version I would start reading it immediately.
I am thinking why and cannot yet figure the reason, I guess it’s something to do with the writer’s style and with the print book formatting as well as with how much I need to go back and forth in the book.
Liviu and others: I’d welcome some more thoughts on the following from L:
“I am thinking why and cannot yet figure the reason, I guess it’s something to do with the writer’s style and with the print book formatting as well as with how much I need to go back and forth in the book.”
My thinking? Some writers may require more “going back and forth” than others. That’s a function of the clarity and memorability of the writing. Also, for some readers, long sentences won’t work out on a PDA and print might be better. How about a Sony, Kindle or the OLPC XO, though? Or are even they not up to Faulkner? Also, I suspect that for the easiest and most enjoyable reading on a PDA, heavy use of short, snappy dialogue–with some description but not overdone–would be good for many people. But let’s not confuse easy reading with literary merit. In the end, are some books simply destined for P if most people want to appreciate them to the max? Or will improved technology take care of it? The ultimate triumph, of course, as some see it, will be e-books with flippable pages and the resolution and feel of p-books.
Thanks,
David
E-books with flippable pages? I read on a Kindle so I don’t have to have 2 hands to flip pages, so that if I set it down the pages don’t flip by themselves, because I don’t need that library bookmark to find my place after the wind flipped pages for me and so I don’t get tired of holding pages open to where I want to read them. Did I misunderstand why you want flippable pages?
Hi, please note the words “as some see it.” Flippable pages aren’t at the top of my list of priorities, either. But that help win over some Luds. Glad you’re enjoying your Kindle. Thanks. David
Available selection may be an issue too. I looked up several titles on my to read list at Ebookwise when I finally got one, and most of them were not available there. You can’t complain about people not reading something in e-form if you’ve never made the option available to them in the first place, can you? The reality is, we will not have any good data about what people will or will not read in e form until an affordable device hits the popular market—an ipod for ebooks, if you will, where the masses can easily find the books they want. Then we’ll see what they buy. But until then, it’s too niche market to make any real judgments, and like I said, if you don’t sell them, people won’t buy them anyway, so it’s all an irrelevant argument.
Agree with Ficbot. It is a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” thing. I mostly read scifi/fantasy and romance on the ebook, because that is what I can find in non DRM ebooks. If I could find mystery in non DRM, I’d read that too. If I could find a good hardback novel size reader with search capabilities and bookmarking, I’d buy non DRM technical manuals.
I do not find page turning in ereaders to be a hindrance, nor hunting for a page previously read to be any more difficult than in print books. Now, if I could e-search a book, that would be a off the charts fantastic. If I could make notes while reading, I’d be so giddy I’d probably faint.
The best thing about ebooks is having access to and being exposed to books you never had access to before. If your local store does not carry the book how do you know it exists? If you can not browse the book on store web pages, how do you know if you want to buy it?
For literary fiction — genre fiction too, for that matter — the notion of in-book interactivity is enough to freeze the blood. The writer spends time and effort creating a set of characters and a sequence of events, and shapes his story with an eye toward the greatest impact he can get from his material. In-book interactivity? As in, “Well, I don’t think the Pequod should have sunk, so here’s how I think Moby Dick should end”? Nope. It’d be like having a sculptor let the audience vote on how the sculpture should be done.
And I’m not sure most writers of non-fiction, who try to structure the presentation of their material and the flow of their argument for greatest effect, would be that crazy about in-book interactivity. They spent their time, they crafted their arguments, and presented their book — their sculpture of words — just as a novelist would.
Interaction and discussion can take place OUTSIDE the book. That’s why God made the blog and the internet forum. If a writer wants to change his text because of something that came out of such a discussion, he can do a new edition later. For myself as a reader, when I sit down to read a book in print or in e, I want it to be just me and the writer, and that’s true for fiction or non-fiction. And I doubt I’m alone in that. In-book interactivity would be just one more interruption, one more distraction from the book’s content, in a world full of distractions.
But increasing the number of titles available? Yes, absolutely, and the sooner the better. Fiction and non-fiction. Mainstream and genre fiction alike. All of it. Every title should be available in both print and e, and sooner or later, that’s going to be SOP in book publishing. If I have one complaint about Fictionwise, eReader, BooksonBoard and the others, it’s that there aren’t enough titles there — and that’s not their doing, since they can’t sell ebooks that the publishers don’t offer in any format other than print.
There’s a ton of backlist I’d purchase in e, to say nothing of new releases. I don’t believe I’m unique, and I wish that the publishers would simply get on with it. More titles, and faster, please.
Bests,
–tr
I don’t think that’s what people have in mind when they think of interactivity. I think they mean things like being able to click on a word to see something like a dictionary or wikipedia entry, or video clip or something. And possibly some sort of Web 2.0ish interactive message board.
Interactive fiction of the type you suggest HAS been done before, though—the Choose Your Own Adventure series for kids which was popular when I was young comes to mind. It has been done. But I think everyone would agree that those books, while fun for kids, do lack the richness of a full-fledged story put out the usual way.
Ficbot,
I hope you’re right — if I want stories and non-fiction titles done by committee, I can dive back into series television or the average textbook. I’d hate to think that effort that should go into expanding the supply of available titles could be spent on introducing distractions or active detriments to the books themselves. As to dictionary lookup, it’s already there — reading on the PC or Palm in EReader or MobiPocket, I can highlight a word and look it up if I’ve installed a dictionary. Seems to me that wikipedia or video clips would require an always-on connection to the web from within your reader software, and at that point we’d be letting in distractions again.
And it may be open to question just how much readers really want this sort of thing anyway. Techies may like the idea just because it’s so freaking cool to be able to do that (and, yeah, it is). But look at the humble footnote. This is just my impression, but it seems to me that more often these days, the footnotes are found not at the bottoms of the pages, but in their own section at the end of the book. Some of that may simply be due to ease of manuscript preparation and printing, but I’d guess that part of it is the desire to avoid pulling the reader out of the flow. Not knowing what a word means and not being able to get the meaning from context breaks the flow, so the dictionary lookup feature seems desirable. But the rest puts that seductive and distracting ‘and here’s another interesting link or video clip you might want to check out while you’re here’ into play, and that seems more likely to break the flow than give much real benefit to the reader. Just my impression and not the result of any careful study, though.
Bests,
–tr
I think the decline in literary fiction has more to do with the decline in fiction than in the paper vs. e thing. I’ll agree with Anne that reading devices are an improvement when it comes to really big books (don’t you hate lugging all that paper around).
In terms of interactive books, I appreciate the comments from Tony and Ficbot. As an author, I don’t want to write a million endings depending on what people vote for. Sometimes the power of the story is that things don’t work out the way the reader wanted them to. (How about we change 1984 so Big Brother reforms?) Certainly as a reader, it is nice to be able to use dictionary features and, especially in non-fiction, wonderful to be able to hyperlink to references to see if the references really do say what the author is saying they do.
Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ stories. In the eWorld, we call those text-based adventure games, right. Now that’s a genre that vanished. I wonder if its elimination has anything to do with the decline in reading?
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Tony, I do think that there are improvements to be made in the areas of interactivity you mention, and frankly, I think a lot of those ave to do with the publishing industry as a whole needing to realize that the WORLD wide web is populated by more than just Americans. Example: the ebookwise is only available in Canada and US, the Kindle is only available in US…I did get an ebookwise, and it does have dictionary look-up features, but only for the included English dictionary. I never use a dictionary when I read in English, but I do when I read in French. Too bad I can’t install that feature…
First up, thanks for the article David
am honored. And yes, interactive sounds mucho interesting to me; AFAIK, an interactive book is not the same as a Gamebook (like Forgotten Realms or Fabled Lands), which usually has the choose-your-adventure type story. Interactive for me works by interweaving text, video & audio in one package.
@ Tony
“For literary fiction — genre fiction too, for that matter — the notion of in-book interactivity is enough to freeze the blood. The writer spends time and effort creating a set of characters and a sequence of events, and shapes his story with an eye toward the greatest impact he can get from his material. In-book interactivity?”
As a counter to that, sometimes i really feel that the writer could do with some enhanced features on books; a recent example would be the last Harry Potter book. the climax was confusing at its best. I’d rather have Warner Brothers film the ending than the confused cacophony which came out. And, i’d rather read Jo for the story bit rather than see arbit cut-scenes on screen. LOTR is another example. Battle sequences are the most natural fit for an interactive book – most movies are oriented towards it anyway.
And on the topic of why E appeals to the SF fan; i feel its mostly due to the nature of the genre itself – SF attracts early adopters. These are the guys who were dreaming of reading books on screens/tablets/random-SF-screens other than paper before e-ink was a twinkle in PVI’s eye. It appeals to, atleast, my sense of participation in the genre