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Google, Penguin, and the future of e-books
July 5, 2010 | 5:47 pm
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By Chris Meadows
In his “Loose Wire” column, Jeremy Wagstaff paints a very picturesque image of why (he feels) the printed book is nearing the end of its life. He cites Google’s announcement of its partnership with the American Booksellers Association to sell e-books via independent bookstore websites on the one hand, and Penguin’s 75th anniversary (which also represents the 75th anniversary of the true mass-market paperback) on the other, in building his case.
Penguin, Wagstaff points out, was founded in 1935 by Allen Lane, who was frustrated that he couldn’t find any good cheap books to read on the train, and so he began producing paperback books that were a notch above the “trashy” stuff that was all that was available in that form at the time.
He even sold them in a vending machine at Charing Cross Road called the “Penguincubator”—rather forward thinking for the time, almost like a predecessor of the e-book store where consumers can buy a book without the need for any human intervention. Wagstaff comes to the same conclusion, suspecting that if Allen Lane was starting out today, he would go into e-books instead.
Wagstaff thinks that printed books are dead based on the example of a second-hand bookstore owner he once visited in rural England, running a shop in an old electricity sub-station.
The substation had two rooms. One had shelves to the roof, laden with books. The other was just a mountain of discarded paperbacks—a tip for all the books he knew he’d never sell. “My job,” he said mournfully, “is to move the books from the shelf room to the tip room.”
We might like books, Wagstaff admits—but on the other hand, they’re so inconvenient compared to being able to find and download e-books instantaneously, no matter where we are. Printed books take up space, use up trees, and just aren’t as rapidly accessible.
And in making e-books available across all platforms, Wagstaff thinks that Google will give them the same accessibility and availability as Allen Lane brought to paperbacks.
I found this article quite thought-provoking, and a lot better reasoned than most “print books are dead, bring on the e-books” cheerleading I see from day to day. Of course, it does rely on expectations of Google Editions, since we don’t yet have any real experience of how well it works. It will take a while to learn whether Google Editions really will be as revolutionary as people hope.
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Oh, it’s guaranteed Google Editions will *not* be the revolutionary release it’s hyped out to be. Nothing could live up to that billing.
As Bill Gates said (more or less): People tend to overestimate the short-term impact of most new technologies/products and way underestimate it’s long-ter, impact.
Another article on how paper is “dead”?
Paper books are not going to die. They may see a slight or even major decrease in production, but they will probably not go away any time soon. At the very least, they’ll always be around as novelty items.
The whole point of writing, as a technology, is to preserve information over time. Distribution, ease of replication, and even mass accessability is a secondary, unnecessary function. Back when monks had to laboriously copy pages by hand, people understood this. E-books do not accomplish this primary function.
Show me a computer file someone has managed to keep for more than 20 years, and a device (hardware and software) that can still read it without appearing laughably obsolete, and I’ll grant you that physical books MAY be on their way out.
Until then, e-books, much like the internet, television, movies and radio before them, will not replace books.
They might take a good market share, though.
Uh, preserving information can be done with *one* copy in a safe place. (C.F. Library of Congress).
The *core* function of writing has always been *distributing* information. Otherwise Gutenberg wouldn’t have created such a fuss when he provided the means of *economically* spreading ideas all over. (And those monks? They usually made multiple copies of their oh-so-valuable illuminated manuscripts.)
If publishing is about distributing ideas as broadly and as easily as possible (which it is), then clearly ebooks are the next *mainstream* medium for publishing. Doesn’t mean it’ll be the *only* medium but it clearly *will* be the primary. Even the most backwards of the BPHs are starting to realize they need to change their internal processes to prepare the ebook first and then translate that into the secondary print medium. Even they can read the graffitti on their mausoleums.
As for enduring backups? Probably spinning titanium disks…
“Another article on how paper is “dead”?
Paper books are not going to die. They may see a slight or even major decrease in production, but they will probably not go away any time soon. At the very least, they’ll always be around as novelty items.”
I love ebooks and books, but let us not forget that ebook readers and other electronics also require rare metals to make. So the benefits are not all black and white or dead trees or the environmentally friendly ebook.
This debate is over what the Market will choose to convey, store, and transfer ideas. eBooks are a dying industry’s (publishing) attempt to control this process. It’s publishing that’s comatose, not books. Until and unless someone gives away an eReader, physical books will thrive.
The case of Penguin is instructive: just as the mass market paperback eliminated the market for hardcover books, so too e-books will eliminate print books. (In other words, not.)
The problem with the Library of Congress is that many books are now being copyrighted with a digital version, not a paper version, so forget the paper back up.
As to reading copies of much older documents, I’ve used Macs since 1984, and I have early versions of some of my novels which are in their original version, ProDOS Appleworks, and I can still open them, but I’ve had to migrate them through many storage formats to keep them accessible.
I’ve used the huge floppy disks, the smaller floppy disks, the HD floppy disks, Zip disks, and CDs. The trick is to stay up to date on the media rather than the OS.
Physical books are in serious trouble for another reason. Younger, more tech savvy young people know that digitized media floating on the internet is FREE. Many books are on the file sharing sights. Whether you agree with “intellectual property” or not, books will follow CD’s and DVD’s for the newer generations.