Mike Shatzkin wrote a
interesting tweet, encapsulating part of a blog post about the future of the ebook:
"People who say they will "never" switch from printed books to ebooks ignore basic dynamic. Ebooks get better. Print not."
Read the full blog post here:
http://bit.ly/9UqkpG . Here's my reply.
There's a lot of truth to this. Many anti-ebook arguments are about technological limitations. These will change. And ebooks will allow new things not allowed today, like more "social reading." The nostalgia factor will not save paper books. Convenience beats that bookish smell. (And besides, as some wit said, if your books smell, something is
wrong.)
But you neglect licensing, which I see as the "real" change involved in ebooks. The change there is considerable, and I'm not convinced ebooks will continue to get better licenses. They may even get worse worse.
There is a real lack of real conversation about
this aspect of the transition. So I'l like to hear you address it. Here's what I think:
I think the transition will be slowed by the fact that some people will continue to want to own their books "for real"--to lend them, give them, take them out from a library and pass them on. ( To the library argument, see
http://www.librarything.com/blogs/thingology/category/ebooks/ ). This issue has not yet come to the fore. I suspect it will.
For what it's worth, I also suspect that objection will only slow adoption. People will accept limited rights*, especially if they can get the thing cheaper. Secondary effects, like the death of the bookstore and serious problems for the library, won't stop things.
But I question how publishers and authors will respond when piracy assumes music-industry levels, and then worse. One solution would be a return to the physical. Another would be the imposition of ever harsher DRM. But the most likely result is that the book industry can't solve the problem, and we will gradually lose the "middle" of the author community--the majority of authors who who aren't Steven King (who could live on non-book revenue), but aren't doing it just for the fun either.
So, ebooks get better, and, I worry, eliterary culture gets worse.
* In some countries, rights will be very limited indeed. Ebooks could be designed to be sensitive to reader privacy and freedom, but that isn't happening. When the first Chinese dissidents go to jail for the ebooks they read, or the notes they took on them, I hope ebook proponents notice how their dreams went wrong.
