Gaby Wood, the Telegraph’s Head of Books, has an fairly lengthy article on The Telegraph pondering what e-books mean for the future of literature. Wood considers Jonathan Franzen’s much-remarked-upon comments about how e-books are damaging society, and ponders the question of whether they really are.
Though Wood found she did not care for the Kindle reading experience herself, she notes that there is nothing at all wrong with it for those who do enjoy it (a refreshing admission when it seems like everyone who doesn’t like e-ink reading is ready to claim it shot their wife and kicked their dog). And she found other forms of e-reading offer something print just doesn’t.
On the other hand, the app of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land produced by the seers at TouchPress is a watershed moment in the history of scholarship and digital capacity. It offers not just the final text, but critical notes that were previously published in a separate volume, a facsimile of Eliot’s manuscript as annotated by Ezra Pound, also previously to be found in a separate book, and a number of audio recordings of the poem, including two made by Eliot himself and one by Ted Hughes.
And thanks to print-on-demand and similar services, digital media such as digital camera photos can be rendered in fancier and more sophisticated print formats than ever before. She also points out that people will still want printed books in cases where they want an artifact, an “autobiographical” reminder they can see on the shelf and remember back to the time they read, or else have autographed by the author.
Regardless, one way or another print will go on, even if much of it is no longer actually physically printed. Change is a constant, and is probably not the end of the world no matter what publishers or dead-tree lovers think.
I also believe that change is constant even in the world of publishing and usually changes are for the better. ebooks are alternative formats that are not there to entirely replace printed books but to provide options and solutions for people who love more advanced devices. There are still people who value physical books and they can still be a great market to maintain.
There is a world beyond e-books, called electronic literature. These works go even further, by incorporating links, images, sounds, secret passages, etc. You can see examples of these new genres and an explanation of how they work in an online textbook (google fundamentals electronic literature).
I agree with Deena, I think the real story we should be looking out for is the new type of “book” that can now be created – it’s a little frustrating that most e-books are only trying to replicate a physical paperback, rather than making the most of what might be possible… I just blogged on this today if you’re interested! http://joelsbookshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-e-books-of-future.html