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It's your favorite ... books
- Jul 08 2011
- 2
Here's a story in today's Bee that is sure to appeal to my friends over at the Fig Garden Bookstore. It orginally appeared in the Los Angeles times. In it, Sara Barbour expresses the the feeling a lot of us have had lately. Esentially: How do book lovers deal with the digital revolution?
To be clear: E-readers aren't the future. They are happening right now, and ignoring them makes you a bit of a luddite. And taking away the things-are-moving-too-fast, longing-for-simple-times fear of it all, E-readers are pretty darn awesome. Portable, inexpensive and easy to read, with an almost endless supply of titles at your fingertips? Sounds too good to be true. Yes, they are less personal than books, in the way MP3s are less personal than CDs and CDs are less personal than vinyl records.
The mass consumer doesn't care about personal. They want it cheap and plentiful and now. So, the best us book lovers can do is carry on. Transport our books in heavy boxes every time we move and visit our local bookdealer to bemoan the day when the texture of a page meant something. Also: connect with other book lovers over at the Beehive book club.
To the authors and publishers who are no doubt struggling to keep everyone happy AND make money, I'd add this: Check out the Radiohead model.
2 Comment(s) for "It's your favorite ... books"
It's worth less because of the ease of access, sadly. Which raises the question of intellectual property and its monetary value in today's society. Who owns what and how much should they get paid for it. For musicians, there's another monetary option -- the live show. If the day of the album is over, I think we're see a resurgence in live performances. That's a positive in my mind. Authors don't really have that same outlet ... although they could do readings and the like and charge that way. There will always be people who enjoy the physical book form, just like there are those who will always love and buy vinyl (even if they have an ipod). The key is giving them options.
I liked that one, too. I see the the comparison of the E-Reader to a Book and the MP3file to a Physical Disk. The enlightening thing is the file version of the content is worth less than the book or disk.
I've struggled with trying to understand why my music, any music is worth so much less nowadays than say, 20 years ago. This is where I find redemption: It's OK that the file be cheap or even free, whereas an actual disk, with it's accompanying booklet/sleeve full of lyrics/art/photos is worth more and justifies a higher price.
On my website, I'm going to give away all my songs that are MP3 files with an option to pay what you like through a PayPal button. But, the physical disk, with all the artwork and lyric sheet and photos will still be around ten dollars.