The Bookseller reports on author Jeanette Winterson expressing dismay over the march of digitization (or “digitisation” as they spell it on that side of the Atlantic). At an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of her novel Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, she said:
"What worries me is that a load of s**** has been talked about digitisation as being the new Gutenberg, but the fact is that the Gutenberg led to books being put in shelves, and digitisation is taking books off shelves."
She brings up the browser’s dilemma: if you can only find what you’re looking for, you’ll miss out on the happenstance discoveries of what you hadn’t known you wanted to read.
Meanwhile, ever-thoughtful publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin has posted another of his lengthy editorials, this one about the “death” of the printed book. While Shatzkin does not believe that printed books will be “eliminated” by e-books, he does suggest that arguments that the print book was “perfected” several centuries ago may not be as favorable to the primacy of printed books as those who put forward the arguments believe.
E-books, he points out, are improving day by day and only getting better as the technology matures—while printed books are staying the same as ever.
I started reading on a Palm Pilot in 1999 or so. Until 2008, when the Kindle’s launch began to have a real impact on publishers’ digitization practices, I was compelled to read some print books because much of what I wanted to read just wasn’t available as an ebook. When Kindle took hold, that problem went away. I can’t remember the last time I looked for an ebook I wanted and didn’t find it available. That’s why I haven’t read a print book since late 2007; if publishers had moved faster, that date could have been as early as 2000 or 2001 for me.
Of course, what Shatzkin does not address in this post is exactly Winterson’s plaint about being unable to browse. But Winterson presumes that browsing is the only way to find something you hadn’t expected to want. Recommendations by friends are another way, though those can sometimes go awry.
But another solution was around even back when Shatzkin was reading on his Palm Pilot. Alexandria Digital Literature, whose short career as an e-lit vendor ended up fizzling, provides an excellent collaborative filtering recommendation service, in which you provide a list of the books you like and it tells you what books you probably will like that you haven’t read yet. (When and if it’s up, at least. I just checked and the domain is currently not resolving.)
So what does the “browsing” argument have to do with e-books? I’ve been buying regular books online for years, never going near a bookstore. About the only time I bought a paper book “off the shelf” was when I was on vacation somewhere and wanted an “airport read”.
All of the online bookstores and e-book stores that I use provide browsing facilities. They don’t provide a narrow tunnel with just the title you’re looking for. When you first get to their site they stick a bunch of titles in your face, just like when you walk into a regular bookstore. They also send me lots of emails (hokey smoke, do they send lots of emails) pushing various titles.
Myself, I’m reading far more fiction, and a far wider variety of fiction, since I switched to e-books.
Of course it’s possible to browse an electronic book store. I’ve been browsing books on electronic book stores ever since Amazon started. It is a somewhat different experience, but I’ve found just as many unexpected treasures online as I’ve found in any physical bookstore, including some arcane books that would never be sold in any physical bookstore.
It seems to me too the “browsing” objection shows an ignorance of the technology. Zoomii.com is an example of something like being in a bookstore and visually browsing shelves of books and stumbling by chance on something you might want to read. Not too far from a virtual bookstore where you “walk” in and see books on display and you can look around and find something that catches your eye.
this argument has ceased to be interesting.
and: what doug and sherri and philo say.
Ms. Winterson seems to be oversimplifying.
I do think there’s something about browsing books in a really good bookstore that hasn’t been reproduced by Amazon, even with its automated recommendations (and Borders is even worse – stop telling me about Sarah Palin’s books if you want me to buy anything from you! I loathe her!) but Powells.com does a bang-up job – between their website and newsletter, they really entice you.
I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t differences in browsing a physical bookstore and browsing an electronic bookstore, just to deny that browsing a bookstore is necessarily superior to browsing online. I browse them differently; I use automated recommendations and keyword searches online rather than physically perusing shelves as I would in a bookstore. Online might seem less serendipitous, and it might even be, but it’s not completely lacking serendipity, and what it has is easy accessibility. It’s always there, so I can always stop in and browse.
To note, I could perhaps have been more clear about the “shelves” Ms. Winterson meant. I think she was really referring more to libraries than bookstores—in part of the article I didn’t quote, she also complained of going to a library where she’d spent a lot of time devouring books as a child and finding most of the books had now been replaced by DVDs.
I have always loved much of Jeanette Winterson’s writings. But this kind of drivel from her just proves to me how people who have an apparent talent in one aspect of their lives can be so completely moronic and vacuous in others . . .
The rising price of ebooks has made me a browser. Yes, I can find what I came for immediately but often now, because of agency model pricing, I cannot afford it. That sends me off in search of something cheaper and I have discovered many authors new to me this way. Maybe I should be thanking the Big Publishers for high prices?
Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether books are on shelves or not, it matters whether books are in minds. Digitisation (potentially) allows more books to get into more minds than ever before.
The objection that e-books mean you will only find what you are looking for doesn’t really hold up either. Winterson’s example of starting at A and reading everything of merit is now easier than ever.