Raises the question: what is a book? I own a kindle. So does my wife. I buy books for it. I also steal books for it. I also own a lot of atlases. Weird, that. In this era of Google Earth, I own three atlases. I also own a very expensive coffee table book on Kowloon Walled City, I own a ridiculously rare book on nuclear weapons, and I own a first edition of Paolo Soleri's Arcology. Further, I own three copies of Tobe Hemenway's "Gaia's Garden" - two print and one digital. I own the digital version of Bill Mollison's Permaculture manual, and I own the legit, horse-choking 800pp textbook as well. None of that shit was available at Barnes & Noble. The rare books were bought off eBay or bought from Powell's, which has figured out how to survive the internet era quite nicely, thank you. There are still marvelous bookstores I support that focus largely on local authors and local content. Finally, I bought a PDF off the author two days ago because in his opinion, 100% of $15 kicks the tar out of 30% of $10. I guarantee he isn't selling as many copies as he would on Amazon but I'll bet if he printed out a few copies, leather bound them and sold them to gift shops in the right places he'd do better than dealing with Amazon. That's how I ended up with this monster, one of 75 copies, mine for the cover price of $65 a full 5 years before I'd ever heard of "Amazon" (and in Seattle, Amazon ran radio ads long before they ran banner ads). The purpose of a "book store" used to be to connect you with the written word. It is now to connect you to physical objects that you wish to hold on to. The volume of dead trees being sold is going to go down immensely, and I think that's good. The number of book stores? Well, look at record stores. I wouldn't open one. But I think books are here to stay. Whenever I see a publisher decrying the death of books I remember the labels decrying the death of music. Yeah, MP3 was the death of the music industry but bands still tour.
These are people who haven't gotten the hang of eBooks. - eBooks are searchable. - eBooks are quotable. - eBooks are portable. I sync mine across three devices. - eBooks are loanable (if you are willing to kick Amazon's DRM in the head) - eBooks are adjustable in size, adjustable in aspect ratio, adjustable in font and adjustable in readability in other ways. - eBooks (again, cracked of DRM) can read to you (albeit through a robot that isn't particularly convincing - I've been an Audible Platinum subscriber for six years now so I'm not exactly new to audiobooks). - eBooks allow you to see passages that others have highlighted (which to me usually outlines how stupid the rest of the world is but there you go). Importantly, eBooks can be updated. Typo in the initial run? Re-upload the file and every subsequent purchaser gets a better experience. eBooks allow authors to experiment with sales - I know a guy who puts a few of his books up under different covers every week to see what happens to sales. Finally eBooks don't need publishers. There need be no gatekeeper saying "we will make at least $50k on your writing, therefore it is worth spending $25k killing trees so that we can pay you a $5k advance for that novel you've been working on for three years." eBooks allow authors to directly interact with their audience and make as much (or as little) money as the title is worth. Gentle reminder: 50 Shades of Gray was Twilight fan-fic. It was exposed to peers, who encouraged its continuation and marketing, causing it to pop up on Amazon as a self-published eBook. It has since sold 65 million copies and is the fastest-selling paperback in history. Universal bid over $3m for the film rights and Brett Easton Ellis is in negotiations to write the screenplay. For fanfic. Again - I own some bitchin' books. I spent two hours last night trying to locate the 12-volume set of *A Study of History* and have had The Golden Bough on my watch list for ages. But that's 'cuz books are cool. If I'm actually using them, I'll take digital every time.
As much as I love the physical book (for a lot of reasons, not least being that my father is a book artist), my favorite feature of the eBook is the searchability. It is incredibly frustrating trying to find that old quote from a hard copy when you're writing. eBooks therefore reduce the need to take notes, which is very desirable. I hate note taking while I'm reading. I don't find that it helps me remember more. I find it disruptive to my concentration.
Or selecting a word to define. Moby Dick had so much trade-specific terminology that it was actually frustrating to have to reference a dictionary or my laptop every time I came across a word I was not familiar with. Often times I'd just skip it and move on (Hey, I know it's a part of a ship. Good enough, right?). One evening I was on my couch and wanted to pick it up again but couldn't remember where I had left it. Instead of getting up to look for it, I just downloaded it to my iPad for free. Picked up where I left off and found that reading on the tablet was immeasurably more enjoyable than in paperback. It removed so much frustration. There are many books that are are served best by a corporeal form, but for me, I'd like most of them to be digital.