Y’all want to know the fastest way to get an epubbed author’s blood pressure spiking? Refer to printed books as “real” books.
This got shoved into the front of my brain yesterday when one of my favorite local bookstores linked off to an opinion article written by a twenty-something who was stridently against electronic readers–to the point that they’d confessed to having irrational hatred for seeing other people reading them. One of their primary objections to them appeared to be that they could no longer sneak peeks at what those other people are reading, if they’re reading electronically! They proceeded to wax eloquent for several following paragraphs about why they would never stoop so low as to acquire an e-reader, because they loved “real” books too much. Snarky commentary was made about how e-reader enthusiasts got on this person’s case about “what are you, a Mennonite?” And even the bookstore in question, in their linking to this article, dropped a cute little remark about how they “don’t have anything against e-readers, no wait, maybe a little”.
This makes me sad.
Part of it is of course that as an epubbed author, I’m really tired of hearing the print books getting referred to as the “real” books. This carries the automatic implication that digital books are “not real”. Imaginary. Lesser in value than books that were fortunate enough to get put into print. Which is an awfully cruel thing to say to somebody who labored just as hard to get her epubbed book written as the authors who are in print. I guarantee you, people, that to us epubbed authors, our stories are every bit as real to us as the ones that are put down on paper.
Part of it though is the bigger question of the print vs. digital argument. It’s yet another variation of the “this thing vs. that thing” debate that crops up in every single aspect of our daily lives: Coke vs. Pepsi. PC vs. Mac vs. Linux. Emacs vs. vi. Etc., etc., on and on, with each side espousing the virtues of whatever they’ve committed to and often sneering at the other side, who are clearly not clever enough or intelligent enough to realize the virtues of the Right Choice.
Don’t get me wrong. I get that the digital book is a threat to traditional bookstores, and that indie bookstores in particular, who have been struggling for ages against the bigger chains, are going to hunker down and cling to their print books for as long as possible. But I’m really tired of the print side sneering at the digital side, and vice versa. For me as both a writer and a reader, this loses sight of the most important thing: the story.
You tell me a good enough story, I’ll read it in whatever format is available–print, digital, on the back of a cereal box, in fortune cookies, in tweets, in skywriting, whatever. Seriously, I do not care about the format. I care about the story. Print has its virtues for me, such as the art of a beautifully designed book–Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin comes immediately to mind. It’s also lovely for reading if the power is out, or if you’ve left your Nook or iPhone at home and/or uncharged. And although this makes me sad too with my writer hat on, truth be told, writers still are compensated better for print than they are for digital. I’d love to see that change, but I’m not expecting it to do so quickly.
In the meantime, though, digital also has its virtues. Many folks like how a well-used book will have crinkled corners and bent pages and such, and this to them is a sign of how much the book is loved. For me, though, that’s an irritant. Because I love my books, I don’t want to damage them. And if I carry them around in my backpack on a daily basis, they will get damaged. Therefore, for me as a reading choice, a reader makes more sense because in its protective case, it’ll take a lot more abuse than a paperback or trade will. Never mind a hardback, which is often going to be too bulky to carry around easily anyway.
You tell me a good enough story, though? I will buy you in print and digital. Print to keep the archive copy around, and digital for day to day reading. I am living proof that you don’t have to choose one or the other. I long for the day that publishers will start offering sales of both print and digital for one nice premium price, because I will totally put down money for that.
In the meantime, though, print enthusiasts, I beg you, please don’t look down your noses at the digital fans. Digital fans, same goes for you in reverse. Let’s just all just agree that yeah, each of us will have our personal preferences as to how we like to read, and get back to the important thing that we all have in common: i.e., reading. Thank you!
Comments
9 responses to “The print vs. digital divide”
Well, some of it is envy. Those of us (really, there are a lot) who can’t afford a Kindle or whatever see people who can getting out-of-print stuff for free, and it’s hard not to get all third-grade “Must be nice.”
Also, I’ve only ever owned 10 or less books not bought second-hand. Ebooks make secondhand books go away, or at least make that scenario look plausible. And scary.
Yes, I’ve heard the “well, you clearly have screwed up priorities” response to this, to which I tend to silently “respond” (just as unhelpfully) “I don’t speak privilege, no sense trying to communicate here.”
Let me be abundantly clear: I am not asking print lovers to justify their choice. Or digital lovers to do so. If you prefer print for the reasons you’ve specified, I absolutely respect and support that.
Basically, I’m just asking people to not snark at each other for the choices they’ve made about their reading, and in return I promise not to do so myself. (Of course, this is the Internet, so asking for a lack of snark is probably fruitless. But hey! *^_^*;;)
Also, I don’t necessarily buy either that ebooks make secondhand books go away. Just because I’m buying a lot of ebooks, and in many recent cases also downloading free ones, doesn’t mean I’m not also interested in secondhand print books. In fact, my print purchases, aside from the desire to maintain copies of my most beloved books that will not require either batteries or DRM, are also beginning to specifically include older secondhand works that aren’t available digitally. And it goes the other way as well; since I’ve been giving up a bunch of my print copies so I can swap ’em out for digital ones, those are going to the aforementioned bookstore, so other people can buy and enjoy them. The ones the bookstore can’t use are then donated to the library.
Now I grant you, I have enough disposable income that I have that option: I can buy both digital and print, and have every intention of continuing to do so. Which is my overall point: this doesn’t have to be a question of print vs. digital.
For me, it’s a comfortable co-existence of both.
No kidding!
I have a bajillion books, and it’s pretty 50/50 as to the split between digital and analog (er.. print I mean) books.. I like ebooks because I can shove them in my pocket, and because I can jack up the print size since I have bad eyesight.. On the other hand, I like the smell of print books, I like being able to see my collection on my bookshelves, and by gosh sometimes I just wanna curl up in my chair with my tattered copy of my favorite novel and not worry about whether or not the iPod charged that day.. That and my local used bookstore lets me get older OOP novels for a dollar 😉
I’m with you though, if it’s a good enough story, I’ll read it off the side of my coffee cup from Starbucks if I have to 🙂
High five! 🙂
I don’t have much sentiment attached to the individual physical objects that make up most of my library–except, I think, for the best beloved books. I wouldn’t dream of selling my old beat up copy of The Hobbit; I read that specific copy in sixth grade and it shows its wear and tear! I won’t be ditching any of my print copies of Elizabeth Peters’ books, either. For those, I totally get the whole romantic sentiment for books as objects thing.
I’m with Columbine on the privilege aspect. Until I broke down and sprang for a netbook a few months ago, I was like a kid looking in a candy store window at all those e-only books that the smaller romance publishers put out.
And as a former reference librarian, I worked with hundreds of people who will miss out on a lot of excellent e-only reading pretty much full stop.
I do buy ebooks now that I have something to read them on, and I consider them to be every bit as real (huh? it’s the words that are real, not what they’re printed on), but I do worry about that digital divide.
And if more and more books get published as e-only, which I do see as happening in the next twenty years or so, once they go out of print, so to speak, until they go out of copyright, a gap that can last decades — no, you won’t be able to get used copies unless the author puts them out there again once the copyright reverts back. So, yes, that’s going to impact used book purchases in a major way, because a lot of authors probably won’t, at least not for the forseeable future.
I would be much more sanguine about ebooks if these issues could be resolved in a fair an equitable manner.
But that does not mean that ebooks are any less real than the paper version.
As I told Columbine, I am absolutely, unequivocably, NOT saying that print readers–or, for that matter–have no justification to prefer print over digital.
That’s not really the point of my post. The point of my post overall is to ask readers who favor either form of reading to not be critical of those who prefer the other sort. What set me off on this in the first place is the article I mentioned, in which the writer talked about feeling hatred to strangers just because they were reading on an ereader. That’s just not cool.
On the other hand, I also freely grant that it’s not cool either for digital readers to be snarking on print readers either. I don’t want to see digital readers calling print readers Mennonites or whatever.
The other points you raise here, though, I grant are a very real concern. Publishing is in a huge upheaval over all of this. But on the other hand (there are a lot of hands to consider in this, aren’t there?), as I’ve seen pointed out on repeated blog posts, people have been afraid that this, that or the other thing will kill the book as we know it. Yet the book survives.
I am pretty sure that no matter what happens, the essential core of publishing will remain. Which is to say, “writers write stories, publishers publish them, stores sell them”. What form that will take will be the big question. I share your concern about whether this will all shake out in an equitable manner, to be sure. For the writers, the readers, the publishers, and the people who sell the books.
What a poseur! Everyone knows that only HARDCOVER BOOKS WITH STITCHED BINDINGS are “real” books. I am often overcome with rage at seeing people with these disdainful “paperback” so-called books. The cheap distribution of content by means of these “paperbacks” is an insult to real readers. I cannot imagine enjoying a book without the heft of a hardcover and the risk of a dropped book breaking a toe.
Here, catch! *throws her hardback of Tad Williams’ To Green Angel Tower* 😉
I get motion sick if I read on a bus, so the wee handheld e-readers don’t really appeal. I had a Palm once, and I read a few things on it in bed, and it was ok, particularly since it was backlit and thus I didn’t have to worry about arranging light to read… but it *was* wee small and you got to “turn the page” a lot….
I remember putting Faerie Blood on my Netbook, thinking “hey, I could read it in bed like I do a print book”… I never did. I don’t have a coolpad, and shifting around on the bed with a netbook just doesn’t cut it.
When I got the CD copy of FB, though? I loaded into Acroread, and ripped through it in a single sitting. And really really? If you take away the distinction between books and blogs and LJ and DW and ePapers and just count *words read*? I read *far* more words sitting at a keyboard these days than I do as ink on dead trees.
And that was the argument I threw at Cat Valente’s publisher when they screwed up the cover on her latest (print) book… was that your wee publisher had *no trouble* putting a black girl on the (virtual) cover of FB, and they had no excuse for not putting people of color on theirs, given that that’s precisely what Cat had written about…
(Frankly, I thought you had a most excellent solution to print vs. non-print, making those CD’s with the *gorgeous* Lightscribe of Kendis… I gotta get you to sign mine! 🙂
But, no. Just because you are published in bits and bytes doesn’t make your stories any less “real” or gripping… and just ’cause I gotta bimble down to the Bookstore to pick up Seanan’s latest doesn’t mean I won’t.
Honestly? I hadn’t thought about what I’d do if somebody offered me a DRM-free, Linux-friendly eBook vs. a print copy… I suppose it would depend on subject matter and pricing strategy?