• Canadian author and bookseller Deborah Willis discusses the differences between bound books and e-books.
• Willis argues “when books become computers, they will no longer be books.” Ultimately, she feels computers and the web are not well-suited to storytelling and diminish the experience of reading itself.
Editorial by Deborah Willis
VICTORIA, B.C.: The bound book is an ancient, heavy, environmentally dubious technology. But it’s also one of the most convenient, tactile, beautiful, and versatile things ever invented. It can contain odes, information, instruction, pornography, and photographs –– sometimes all at once. It can be highly cerebral or totally escapist. It can be kept on a coffee table or tossed in a purse. Its pages can be marked, folded down, and one can flip between them. It can be read on the subway, in a park, or on the beach. In fact, since many people only have time to read while on vacation, and since I’m lucky enough to live near an ocean, I often think the beach should be the ultimate test between the book and the ereader.
In this competition, the traditional book wins easily. It can be read in the glare of the sun, dropped in the sand, and you don’t have to worry about it being stolen if you go for a swim.
But it’s not just that ereaders strike me sterile and less convenient than advertised (or that I suspect producing gadgets –– which will break down or quickly become obsolete –– may be worse, environmentally, than printing paper books). There’s also this: when books become computers, they will no longer be books.
In a world where people read on electronic devices, books may become mash-ups of media, including music, video, and possibly advertising. (Advertising in ebooks is of particular concern if we distribute them for “free” or nearly free.) An electronic, interactive Alice in Wonderland is an incredible thing, and I’m intrigued by the possibilities of the technology. But the electronic Alice may be closer to a video game than to Lewis Carroll’s original. So perhaps I simply have a problem with the vocabulary: can something that is not bound, not made of paper, and not necessarily meant to be read –– can that thing still be called a book?
And if books are no longer envisioned and executed in the same way, will something of their essence be lost? Full disclosure: I work in a bookstore, so ebooks threaten my job and the jobs of many of my friends. I’m also an author whose book is available as an ebook. And I’m a reader who loves the simplicity of words on a page, which I’ve found contains the most possibility –– to inspire me, bore me, infuriate me, educate me, and enchant me.
Mostly, I’m a story writer. This means I like beginnings and endings, though not necessarily in that order. Most of the stories that appeal to me have to do with time, with the way it marches on, bringing loss or wonder or any number of surprises.
I find that computers in general, and the web with its various platforms and apps in particular, are so far not very good at capturing a sense of time, of movement, of story. Currently, the Internet is not built for stories, but for “information” and “content.” One link leads to another in no particular order, endlessly. On the web, we no longer have beginnings and endings. Especially endings. We can click and scroll forever. It’s something like a denial of death, and it’s addictive. It leaves me occasionally exhilarated, but mostly overwhelmed and exhausted.
How will traditional books –– with their sense of history, their King James Bible and their Shakespeare and their Flannery O’Connor –– how can they exist on the same phones and iPads that give us the ever-updating Internet? How can traditional stories about time’s movement, about the frailty of being alive –– how will they survive the transition to this new form of “content delivery?” How can the quiet, introspective solitude and focus required to read a book –– how can that exist on the same device that gives us email and Twitter and countless distractions?
My hope is that the traditional industry will be able to co-exist, on a smaller scale, with the new technology. There are many signs that this is possible: the existence of hundreds of wonderful book blogs, libraries that house both physical and electronic collections, books –– like House of Leaves –– that are published in gorgeous paper editions as well as extraordinary digital versions. And there’s me: a so-called literary writer who sometimes (hardly ever!) browses celebrity gossip sites for the latest on Lady Gaga and watches adorable YouTube videos of kittens eating peanut butter.
Both the old and the new exist firmly within me, and this must be true for most people. So I hope that my worries are unfounded (I can take it –– being an absolute hypochondriac, I’m used to unfounded worries). I hope it’s not books versus ebooks at all. I hope the new technology might broaden the definition of what a book is in ways that are inspiring for writers and readers, as opposed to impoverishing. In the brave new world we inhabit, a world without newspapers but with Tumblr and Chatroulette, a world where publishers will struggle and attention spans diminish, I hope there will remain a place for the writers and readers of books.
Deborah Willis was born in Calgary, Alberta, and currently lives and works as a bookseller at Munro’s Books in Victoria, BC. Her first book,Vanishing and Other Stories, was published in Canada last year. It was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for fiction and named one of the Globe and Mail’s top 100 books of the year. It was recently released in the U.S. by Harper Perennial.
DISCUSS: When is an Ebook No Longer a Book?
Deborah Emin
1 year ago
As an e-book publisher as well as a novelist, I respond on many levels to this
thought provoking editorial. For one thing writers compose on their computers. I
know this and when I am stuck, I surf, I check my favorite sites, I watch a video.
So writers are doing all these things we object to readers doing?
As a publisher I am enthralled by the new creative possibilities. I love
this new DIY world. It encourages radical re-organizations of production
and consumption.
Who could be opposed to this and not want to see where it will lead?
Malcolm James Thomson
1 year ago
I have always regarded myself as a storyteller, over a good few decades. Back in the sex’n'drugs’n'rock’n'roll sixties our narratives in London were often woven in the form of song. In the seventies I was involved in the motion picture industry in France. More recently in Germany I was show runner for a good eight hundred episodes of soap opera, storytelling for an audience who followed us faithfully each weeknight. Now I have completed two novels which are, in the conventional sense, unpublished but in digital form on a couple of websites.
Like Deborah Enim I see the future in a very positive way. Yes, gaming attributes will play a part. So will community features and even virtual worlds. But whether the term eBook survives, the hybridized, mashed-up enhanced works will be, at the end of the day, exciting examples of the storytelling form of our day.
Jen
1 year ago
The last line, “I hope there will remain a place for the writers and readers of books” really resounded with me. I can’t imagine a world without bound books and the special way they can become treasures to mark up and maybe pass along to someone who just really needs that story. I also appreciated the comparison of e-books with so many bells and whistles as more akin to videos than books. This is such an interesting time in the development of this media, with e-books being pushed so hard in so many venues, but I too like to think my worries are unfounded- don’t most of us have to do that everyday to keep on keeping on despite all of the global issues our planet and people are facing. I like to think the simple pleasure of a parent reading a child to sleep won’t be replaced…
Charlie Boswell
1 year ago
As long as the choice remains–that is really the great concern. Personally, I cannot stand reading more than a page or two on a screen, but my wife and I have enough books to last the rest of our lives in case that need arises. How will this issue affect libraries?
Chris Petersen
1 year ago
The article and the comments are thought provoking. I prefer to think of it as horses and cars. We still have horses. People love them, ride them, race them, enjoy them. But, cars have essentially replaced them as a primary mode of transportation. Why? because cars do the essential job of getting us from one place to another better than horses can. The E books of today are just Model “T”s and they will continue to improve. Just as there is still a place for horses, there will always be a place for printed books. It was not that long ago that books were hand written and only meant for scholars, not the masses. The very invention of the printing press allowed for the novel as we know it today. Progress, no matter how distasteful to some, will have its way…
Alexander Inglis
1 year ago
With respect, Ms Willis, you appear to be confusing the medium with the message. Chesterton’s prose is not any less amusing on a Kobo, a Kindle or a dog-earred copy on taken down from the cottage shelf that’s been thumbed through many times sitting on the dock by the bay ….
If words matter — and I certainly hope they do to you — then whether they are presented on pulp edition paperbacks or e-ink e-books, they are still the same words. The same words that are gateways to our imaginations and lead us on wonderful adventures of the mind, emotion and soul.
And there’s a side benefit, rarely highlighted, about e-readers: these devices are single-purpose vessels designed for easily acquiring, and consuming, books. Some do allow for magazines and newspapers and blogs; some even half-heartedly let you surf the web … if you’re that desperate. But where they excel is in longer form works — like novels — and that’s what the bulk of enthusiasts (and users) are reading. And surprisingly, many of us are reading more than ever because they are convenient, inexpensive and, yes, fun to use.
C. A. Bridges
1 year ago
Yes, ebooks are books.
I’ve been reading books on small screen for almost ten years now, and I have no trouble getting lost in fictional worlds just as easily as when reading print. I don’t suddenly stop, mid-sentence, to go check e-mail or tweet what I’m reading about. I just read, and the story comes alive in my mind. The difference is I can do so more easily now because I always have a book (or more) with me at all times.
I’m a little confused by the multimedia fear. I doubt that publishers will take the time and money to make all or even most books multimedia-laden. That takes a fair bit of work, not all books will be usefully enhanced by it, and publishers should be smart enough to realize that making it more difficult for the reader to read the story is not a good idea. I love Gardner’s “The Notated Alice” but if I simply wanted to read the stories I’d never choose that volume.
I believe multimedia-enhanced books will remain a small percentage of ebooks, and even if they become commonplace smart publishers will add multimedia the way movie companies add DVD extras; easily accessible for people who want them, but easy to ignore if someone just wants to watch the movie.
I won’t argue the philosophical points made since they are highly subjective, but I have to think that someone who believes electronic words do not address the frailty of existence is someone who has never had a hard drive crash.
Jayden
1 year ago
I can tell you from my own experience, that I have read more books on my Kindle (and Kindle for Android app) in the last month and a half, than I have read all year. I don’t buy books from the bookstores, because they are ridiculously overpriced. On the Kindle I can gets some good reads at many different price ranges. I don’t mind paying $9.99 for a book, as long as I know I’m going to like it. Which is where the sampling comes in.
I also read faster on the Kindle than I can with a real book, because I can set the font size and line spacing. I would find myself reading the same lines over and over in a regular book. With my Kindle, that does not happen.
I also have arthritis in my hands, and the Kindle is much lighter than a small paperback, and find it a whole lot easier to hold than a two and a half pound book like Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn. I couldn’t read that one as fast, because I had to keep putting it down to rest my hands.
The Kindle also helps my back. I don’t have to carry around twenty plus pounds of textbooks anymore. I already have a bad back, and sometimes my classes have two books a piece. Now I carry my less-than-half-a-pound Kindle to school. I don’t even need the backpack anymore except to carry my laptop.
And finally, it IS a convenience thing. I no longer have to spend thirty minutes going to the bookstore. Then spend an exasperating time trying to find the book I want, only to ask for help from the morons that work there, just to receive a point in the general direction of where the book would be. Then spend an enormously long twenty minutes in line to check out. It literally takes seconds to get to the amazon site, whether from the Kindle or my laptop, then the time it takes to type in the name and load the page of the author or book, and download. In sixty seconds or less I have a new book on my Kindle and am reading away.
Reading on the Kindle doesn’t diminish the experience at all for me. In fact, I read faster, have less pain, and enjoy it wherever I take my Kindle, which is pretty much everywhere considering it fits snugly into my purse.
ian darling
1 year ago
I will miss books ultimately because i grew up with them though i cannot remember when my small mind concluded that what my hand held was a perfect technology.For myself the Ebook just adds gizmos and provides technobores the means of boring everyone else with gadget-talk. Depressingly, at least in the short term,electronic books will disempower poorer people from access to reading material-will there be any Ebooks sold in charity shops?
jautrgeet
3 months ago
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