John Allison, webcartoonist for a number of strips (the only one I recognized by name was Scary Go Round), has posted an entry to his blog lamenting the rise of the e-book and the passing of the print book. While he likes digital music, he explains, he does not feel the same way about e-books:

I hate them. I genuinely hate them. With music, your relationship is predominantly with what is going in your ear. Yes, you may stare at the cover for Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes for half an hour while going on a prog journey, but that really is making your own fun at its most innocent, deny that if you like.

The relationship with a book is very different. It’s a tactile object relatively unchanged since the Gutenberg press. You’ve got to hold that thing in front of your face. It’s your buddy until you’re done with it. A well-thumbed, much read book is like a vile, beloved, drooled on childhood bunny, but you wouldn’t buy one of those second-hand unless you had a lot of problems in your life.

He feels that e-books can lead to throwing stuff in whose quality would never have made the cut in a more space-limited paper form, and that “Any graphic work is dead on screen compared to how it looks on paper.” A bit of a weird attitude for a webcartoonist to have, isn’t that?

I found a link to the post on Adam Tinworth’s blog, and as Tinworth points out, books versus e-books “shouldn’t be entirely an either/or choice.” There are still plenty of books being produced today—high-quality hardcovers that are still worth having. Even if the e-book kills the mass-market paperback, that kind of higher-end hardcover book should still be available for those who want it.

And honestly, for all the advantages e-books offer, it doesn’t seem likely they’ll completely drive out paper the way CDs drove out LPs, cassettes, and reel to reel and MP3s are driving out CDs. At least not in the short term.

I suppose there’s really not so much different about Allison’s post than there is about any old-school paper bibliophile’s opinions, which we carry from time to time. Perhaps there isn’t really any point to reporting on this negativity, but it’s worth presenting the odd opposing view from time to time to remind us that not everyone shares the same feelings about e-books.

2 COMMENTS

  1. “A well-thumbed, much read book is like a vile, beloved, drooled on childhood bunny, but you wouldn’t buy one of those second-hand unless you had a lot of problems in your life”
    I think we can see Mr Allison’s problems all too clearly.

    “Any graphic work is dead on screen compared to how it looks on paper.”
    There’s a little company in the US called Disney who might have something to say on that subject.

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