Earlier today I was reading an old Guardian blog about Amazon's bookreader toy, the Kindle. There seem to be mixed feelings about it - some people say that there's no way it will ever replace paper books, what nonsense, blah blah blah. Some people say that it's inevitable and no matter how long we hold out it will eventually take over, just like the iPod has sort of taken over from CDs and CDs took over from records and tapes and so on, and that basically once they get a reader on the market that's actually really usable and affordable (the Kindle is not that reader) then books will become obsolete.
I can sort of see both sides. On the one hand, I fucking love books and don't know how I'd do without them. I have so many books in my room that without them it'd just be weird. I work in a bookshop. I think that it's a great idea to reserve books on my library's website at 2AM in the morning so that I get a nice surprise when it becomes available in a few day's time. I have stacks of books on my bedside table and I like flicking through them and deciding what to read before bed.
Essentially, that's all bullshit and shouldn't really affect how I view this whole reader thing. It's sentimental and based on history and me looking backwards. I have all of these books so I can't imagine a future without books. But while the more sentimental parts should be ignored (and the fact that I work in a bookshop shouldn't really have been mentioned) it doesn't change the fact that I'm not the only person that has this sort of weird thing about books. There are people that collect records and are still devoted to mixtapes, CDs, mix CDs. There are people that still pine after the long-gone flexidisc format (I have a flexidisc somewhere. They're weird) and there are people that like 78s (gramophone records) even though as far as I'm aware 78s haven't been in use for quite a long time. What I'm trying to say is, if these formats, none of which were around for that long before they became outmoded (the gramophone record seems to have originated in the 1890s, the rest came after) still have their loyalists, then what about the book?
Books are different. They are not as easily replaced or changed as audio formats, and the improvements made to them tend not to really affect the literature contained within. Sure, they have to be readable and it's nice if they don't fall apart after one read, but they're not like records or CDs because the format there is more crucial, as the texture and speed and overall sound of the end product will be different depending on which physical or even digital format you are dealing with. Sure, yeah, there was the mass-market paperback revolution of the 1930s, but it's not really the same. The rise of the paperback may have changed the publishing industry forever, allowing books to become a more affordable commodity, but what difference did it make to the consumer once they'd paid for their books and had taken them home to read? They were more convenient and portable, like the iPod, but the art was not changed or made any more accessible. Digital formats have been promised to give us clearer sound quality, and while it might be nice to be able to listen to that Joy Division song fifty times in a row without surface noise (although, as John Peel famously said, "Listen, mate, life has surface noise"), that difference is simply not there with books and digital readers.
Because, you see, sound is ultimately affected by very tiny things. I don't know about you, but then I read it isn't really. I may be a bit of a loser and prefer certain types of paper or certain types of book to others, but I don't think that it makes any difference in the long run to whether I find myself enjoying the finer points of Lyrical Ballads or not.
I mean, I'm sure this is a pretty obvious point, but it's not one I've often seen being made. Digital audio has the potential to actually change how people enjoy an art form, to make it clearer and more portable at the same time. Books are already portable and not as delicate as CDs and minidiscs, immediate predecessors of the iPod. The kindle does not, as far as I'm aware, suddenly make Ulysses a lot clearer, and nor is the crisp white screen going to suddenly make me understand what the hell that whole Shantih thing was about.
Digital readers may offer accessibility to numerous books at any time, but I'm not sure I necessarily want or need to be able to access every book that I own when I'm on the train or catching a bus into school, which is generally when I take one or two books with me. I don't have the longest attention span anyway, and so leaving me with no choice is a good way to get me to finish something. Digital readers can probably crash and lose data; they are too fragile for my purposes. What about books with illustrations? What about books such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close that use typographical effects and colour illustrations (the Kindle, for example, boasts a monochrome screen)? What about children's books, pop-up books, concertina books, books in non-standard binding and books that have sections for you to write in, such as 1000 Places to See Before You Die and its checklist that you're supposed to tick off?
Books have been around for millenna. I'm not saying that digital readers don't have a future, because that would be stupid and if anyone read this then I'd be embarrassed. Obviously I don't know what the future holds for the book, and in fifty years I could have burnt all of mine and be a delighted advocate of Ebooks and portable readers. It's just, I can't see it happening; you can write notes in books, fold corners, lend them to friends and sit on them. You can browse them in bookshops and ask the friendly booksellers' advice. Sure, it sucks when you can't get hold of something - and I suppose digital readers are attempting to make a wider range of publications available to those that own them - but how amazing does it feel when you finally track down that out-of-print poetry volume that you had to buy from a second hand bookshop all the way over in deepest Connecticut?
I don't think that books are going to be obsolete any time soon. They're too versatile and sturdy for that, too convenient, and we're too used to them. But digital readers are going to have their place, and once they become a) affordable, b)not fugly, c)more convenient (so they'll need very little charging and better network coverage, etc.) then it'll be interesting to see where they go. The fact is, though, there will not be a digital book revolution. It's going to be slower than that. Don't forget that the iPod is essentially a youth thing (I'm sure you can't forget, what with it being the number one item to namecheck if you want to seem like you have your fingers vaguely near the pulse, never mind that all the coolest young things abandoned Apple for some obscure brand ages ago) and popular music has always been so; literature is not, and never will be, predominantly youth-dominated. Poets and novelists can be called young in their thirties and forties, by which age you're practically dead if you want to make popular music.
What I'm trying to say (in the longest and most boring way possible) is that due to demographics, history and the very nature of the art forms concerned, it's not wise to compare the digital music revolution to a theoretical revolution in the publishing industry. Publishers need to look to the internet more, I'm not disputing that, but they need to explore different methods and not use iTunes and Apple as a model for what they need to do to adapt to this strange new digital world.
