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The press is declaring that digital will overtake print within the decade. The visions that this news inspires are numerous and, occasionally, bizarre: a subway full of commuters with heads bowed over e-readers instead of morning newspapers, libraries with dozens of empty bookshelves hovering ghostlike behind radiating computers, multimedia diginovels with holograms jumping off every page. And that may only be the beginning.
So let’s engage in a thought experiment. Here is a world I have envisioned, wherein society has wholly purged itself of paperbound books, and digital readers have become the norm. Some of the events I will describe sound a little outrageous, but then again, some events have already come to pass. It’s a brave new (digital) world:
Libraries will shed themselves of books and replace the shelves with computer stations, with which library patrons can rent their favorite digital books for a limited amount of time. Although each library-provided digital book will come equipped with the latest in anti-piracy technology, intelligent college students will nonetheless find a way to defeat it.
Book piracy will soar. Key authors will give interviews on how book piracy is ruining the publishing industry. Symposiums will be held. A select group of authors will register all their works with Creative Commons and release their material for free as a preemptive move against piracy.
Many brick-and-mortar bookstores will become obsolete, as hoards of booksellers choose instead to operate purely over the Internet. The physical bookstores that remain will be condensed into one-stop electronic shops, wherein customers can simply browse a digital collection on a computer screen and download their purchases directly to their digital readers.
Booksellers will gape at all the empty space once occupied by bookshelves. They will fill the floor with plentiful seating space for customers to use while they enjoy their new purchases. Every bookstore will have a coffee shop. Coffee sales will go through the roof. Bookstores will find that coffee sales dramatically exceed those of books, and so to sustain their business booksellers will demand publishers provide them higher profit margins.
Publishers will seek additional sources of revenue to compensate for this. They will insert advertisements in between book chapters, a move that will prove wildly controversial at first, especially with book bloggers, but eventually these pundits will concede that it is a necessary move for the good of the publishing industry. After a few years hardly anyone will mind the advertisements, with the exception of a few grumbling old-timers who still vividly recall “the good old days of ad-free digital books.”
A bevy of new independent publishers, as well as self-publishers, will flood the market, seizing upon reduced start-up costs. They will sell their digital books everywhere from Etsy to iTunes. Big publishers will find that increasing numbers of consumers are purchasing their fiction from these new independent publishers. In response, they will pump their money into marketing. Book trailers will begin airing on TV and in movie theaters. The publishing companies will tout their authors like rock stars. The entertainment media will notice the increased attention paid to writers, and so authors will begin appearing in tabloids, beauty magazines, and on E!. The most photogenic authors will find their sales skyrocketing.
Readers will revel in the blossoming selection of literature available to them. Trendsetters will snub the material published by the big publishing houses, opting instead for fiction provided by trendy independent publishers. However, these trendsetters will realize too late that, given that the digital reader does not display a book cover, their lit-snobbery is ill-conceived. No one but them will actually know what they are reading. Inspired by popular demand, a new generation of digital readers will eventually be produced. These new models display a book cover on the back of the reader.
Short stories will increase in popularity, especially among those who use public transit, due to lengths that can be conveniently read during the average work commute. The typical reader will hold entire libraries on their digital readers, swapping story collections with their friends like people swap mixtapes.
The story format will continue to evolve. Novels without pictures, video, or music will remain in demand, but many new authors will turn to multimedia formats. Choose-your-own-adventure interactive novels will see a resurgence. Holographic novels become less of an abstract concept and more of a legitimate possibility as new technologies are developed. Book sales threaten to overtake movie ticket sales. The publishing industry, having completely forgotten their supposed near-failure only years before, will declare that this is “the golden age of literature.”
Originally published on The View From Here.
[Image: CrunchGear]
I still worry about the electricity needed to charge the batteries. And, don’t high-tech batteries need rare earths to operate? (The Chinese control over 90% of the production of rare earths.)
Personally, I’ll buy paper until I can buy my “e-books” from multiple sources. Also want the technology to improve … even from the Apple submission.
Within a decade? Laughable, and I’ll tell you why:
First of all, there’s a definite economic component to this print v. digital debate – much as we want to believe otherwise, not everyone in this country can afford to drop $200+ on an e-reader. As long as there is economic disparity in this country, we will continue to have print books.
For seconds, reading a print book is a tactile, emotional, psychological experience that we ignore at our peril. Parents and children bond over print books. People cozy up with novels in treehouses and bookstores and coffee shops and bathtubs. I’m not sure why we, as a culture, are hell-bent on purging every single tactile, slow, sedate pleasure from our lifestyles, but I’m personally not having it. And I am not alone. In fact, I believe the slow food, voluntary simplicity, and “take back your time” folk would agree with me.
Finally, in terms of services to the blind and otherwise visually impaired, which, admittedly, includes this commenter, e-readers have a long, LONG way to go. The iPad is a step in the right direction, but we’re not there yet. Large print books and books on CD/cassette, as well as print materials in Braille, are still the best solutions for persons with visual disabilities.
Thus speaketh one librarian. Please, everybody, go read Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget” for further explanations of why all this digital kerfulffle will NOT save humanity.
Stepping down from my soapbox,
L.
hmmm… I think there are a lot of us who, like Leigh Anne said, enjoy the tactile experience of reading a printed book.
I particularly love old books, found in second hand book stores, that have bolognese sauce and pen ink stains on random pages. Or books from the library where if you’re lucky, you sometimes find the previous borrower’s shopping list in the middle.
There’s something so romantic about printed books – and those of us horders (or as I prefer, “collectors”) will always want to fill our homes with (read show off) the beautiful and special books that have coloured our lives.
ahhh I have to admit the choose your own adventure novels in the future would be pretty epic!
Great article Julia. I love the feel and musty smell of old books, part of the reading experience for me! But when I open our closet doors and see boxes of Lori’s paperback books occupy a huge chunk of our precious closet space. I have to also cheerlead the ebooks concept, plus if you ever lived near a paper mill… eeesh. And, also, you can toss the eye wear with ebooks, just enlarge the type! You should keep an ongoing rant about this. Perform a total cost of ownership comparing environmental impact of trees vs plastic, energy, and recycling.