Tag Archives: books

Will Self-Publishing Save Print?

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Last month in this blog, I made a statement that at the time seemed obvious, but now seems rash. “Most writers,” I wrote in declaring that print is effectively dead, “don’t care in a meaningful way about the physical presence of a book. They just want to tell a story, or convey information, or to create works of art out of their words.”

Since then, I’ve had cause to rethink my position. Print, it seems, isn’t dead, but just retired. Though diminished, it still has vital roles to play—especially for writers.

This realization came to me last week as I attempted to lean back and survey my achievement, such as it was, in publishing my first e-book, the New-Media Survival Guide. The leaning back was satisfactory; the surveying less so.

As a vehicle for conveying information, the e-book is superb. But as a device for signifying to yourself or others that you’ve written a book, it is dismally disappointing. The physical heft of a book that is an outmoded and inefficient drawback for traditional publishers and booksellers is, for authors, one of its most precious traits. Just try weighing an e-book appreciatively in your outstretched hand. It can’t be done.

That’s one reason why I spent many hours this weekend formatting my e-book for print-on-demand via CreateSpace (more on that experience later). Until I have a volume, however slim, that I can put on a bookshelf, I won’t feel that I’ve truly published it.

That’s why I suspect self-publishing may end up sparking a modest renaissance in printed books. In terms of units the quantity of printed books will grow ever smaller. But the number of printed titles may well explode as self-publishing grows. No matter what their motives for publishing, most book authors will want at least one printed, bound copy.

Though I plan to put the print version of the Survival Guide up for sale, I don’t expect to sell many copies. For most readers, the electronic version is ideal (ahem: why not buy a copy and find out for yourself?).

But for most authors, I now see, e-books lack one thing that only a paper book can provide: tangibility. A small thing, to be sure. But like print, it still matters.

Doubling Down on Print, for Better or Worse

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Photo of book sculpture. Image: Robert Burdock, Flickr

A nice specimen. Photo by Robert Burdock/Flickr

Over the weekend, New York Times reporter Julie Bosman described how book publishers have begun putting extra effort into making their print products more physically and esthetically engaging. Their rationale, says Bosman, is that if “e-books are about ease and expedience,” then print books should “be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning.” The strategy, they hope, will “increase the value of print books and build a healthy, diverse marketplace that includes brick-and-mortar bookstores and is not dominated by Amazon and e-books.”

As a book collector, I’m pleased that books will be more beautiful. As a lover of bookstores, I’m happy for anything that might help preserve them. But as a reader and writer, I’m quite indifferent.

The problem with the strategy is that it won’t, as hoped, “cut into e-book sales” in a significant way. Most readers aren’t antiquarians and don’t value the physical esthetics of the container. They just want the content.

In the same way, unlike book designers, most writers don’t care in a meaningful way about the physical presence of a book. They just want to tell a story, or convey information, or to create works of art out of their words. The physical format is not essential.

There are a few books for which the physical medium of print matters in an essential way. House of Leaves, for instance, just wouldn’t be so mind-blowing in a leafless e-book. And is there any effective e-equivalent of a pop-up book? Moreover, could anyone do this with an e-book?

But these instances and their like are minor eddies of activity that briefly pull print defenders upstream before they are hurtled back down, inevitably, towards the fatal digital waterfall.

The effect is simply amplified when it comes to magazines (and turned up to 11 for newspapers). The physical aspects of magazines can be nice indeed, but they are rarely treasured objects. Inveterate collector though I am, I have gradually whittled down even my set of classic Wired issues from several shelves to one shelf—and only the Neal Stephenson issue is safe.

I’m all for more beautiful books, but let’s be realistic. Like taxidermy, printing beautiful books may preserve glorious specimens, but it does nothing to save the species.

My Love for Magazines Lies Bleeding

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MUD day 17:

There are days, perhaps when my inner curmudgeon breaks through my usual resistance, when I’m convinced that magazines, as a useful format, are truly dead. Yes, it may just be me or my desperation for a topic in this month of mandatory daily blogging. Ask me tomorrow and I may feel more hopeful. But what has me worried is my oddly sour reaction to this Folio article on magazine design. A few years ago I would have been vitally interested. Now it just seems irrelevant.

It’s not just the paper version of magazines I’m pessimistic about, but the very concept. There are some who feel that tablets will be the salvation of magazines. I’m not so sure. One of the negatives in Linda Holmes’s review of the new Kindle Fire today is that its 7-inch screen is too small for magazines. Full magazine pages, she says, don’t work well: “You can zoom, but when you [turn] to to the next page, you pop back out to seeing the full page, and to read anything, you have to zoom again.”

But having just last night downloaded with some interest the December issue of The Atlantic to my iPad, more than a third larger than the Fire, I’m not so sure size is the real problem. Paper pages just don’t translate well to the screen—the turns are slow, images build too slowly, the fonts are too big or too small. You need to enlarge and shrink too often, or tap too many times to get to the better “reading view.” The articles might have been pretty good—but I don’t know. I was too distracted to actually do any concentrated reading.

To me, books seem like an eternal format. They work as well for me on a tablet as on a page. But the format to which I dedicated most of my professional career has a poor prognosis in any medium. I fear I will soon be attending a funeral for my old friend, the magazine.

One Way the Web Will Change the Book

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MUD day 6:

New-media enthusiasts, myself included, sometimes talk as though print is dying. That’s a strategic exaggeration, of course. No form of media is ever killed off by another. Rather, each new form of media transforms those that came before it, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Consider for instance how painting was changed—even liberated—by photography, turning, in response, to new modes of expression like impressionism and cubism.

A Lesser Photographer by C. J. ChilversIn a similar way, I think, books will be liberated by digital media. That will happen in part because technology frees print from its reliance on paper and traditional, expensive production methods. But it will also happen because print will react and respond to the new forms of digital media, and function in new ways. Our very idea of what constitutes a book will be redefined.

One modest but telling example comes from the latest Tips from the Top Floor podcast, hosted by photographer Chris Marquardt. In it, he interviews C.J. Chilvers about his PDF book, A Lesser Photographer: 10 Principles for Rediscovering What Matters.

Chilvers observed that its length, just 25 pages, has prompted other authors he knows to ask “where’s the rest of it?” They argued that each of his 10 principles could be backed up with enough evidence and examples to make a much longer work. But, Chilvers said, “I feel that’s what the blog is for.”

There’s nothing new about pamphlet-length books, nor is the manifesto a new genre. But what does seem new to me is the way the Web has made it possible, even desirable, to distill what would otherwise be longer books into their essence, while offering other media to back it up, and provide the substance many readers will want.

I can’t say there will be fewer books in the future—in fact, their number may grow. But I feel certain that they will, on the whole, be shorter—and more useful.

What Killed Borders? A Loss of Passion

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The announcement this week that Borders Group will liquidate its remaining bookstores by the end of the summer puts an end to my hopes for its unlikely revival. But though I’m sad to see it go, I don’t worry about the future of books or reading. What killed Borders wasn’t some irresistible economic or cultural force, but the loss of an essential resource businesses need to survive in times of change: passion.

Borders logo Though I’m no expert on Borders, I draw this conclusion from a memorable personal experience. One of my first assignments as a journalist was interviewing the manager responsible for opening the first Borders bookstores in Atlanta. Though I don’t remember the exact date, it was in the mid-1980s, when Borders was just beginning the expansion that would make it the de facto local bookstore for many communities.

Although it would come to be seen as the enemy of independent bookstores, that wasn’t the impression I took away from my interview. The manager was not the sort of conflicted corporate bookseller portrayed by Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail,” a sensitive, soulful sort with a bloody-minded determination to smash his small competitors.

While the Borders manager was convinced of the superiority of his company’s approach to bookselling, he wasn’t brash. Rather, he believed deeply in what Borders was doing and in its potential to extend the independent bookstore experience to millions of people. He talked at great length about the benefits he wanted for Borders readers and the knowledge and dedication he expected from his clerks. His passion was such that he had me, a confirmed book lover and admirer of independent bookstores, ready to apply for a job there. Only the fact that I lived three hours from Atlanta stopped me.

Though I have not closely followed Borders since then, I have to believe that the core reason for its failure is not some economic or technological factor, but the simple loss of passion for bookselling. As noted in the Forbes RetailWire blog today, “Borders forgot how to be a bookstore” and started “hiring people . . . who had little or no interest in books, authors, or literature.”

So though I’m sorry to see the end of Borders, I don’t worry about the state of book publishing, selling, or reading. As long as people have the passion for books and the reading experience that I encountered in that Borders manager, the book business may evolve, but it will not fail.