What We Mean When We Say “Book”

More on how interactive media are booming… and it’s the end of the world as we know it. Even books aren’t “safe”:

When Mark Z. Danielewski’s second novel, “Only Revolutions,” is published in September, it will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. Nearly 60 of his contributors have already received galleys of the experimental book, which they’re commenting about in a private forum at Mr. Danielewski’s Web site, www.onlyrevolutions.com.

Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor and author of the new book “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” (Yale University Press), has gone even farther: his entire book is available — free — as a download from his Web site. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people have accessed the book electronically, with some of them adding comments and links to the online version. …

And, as is now part of the ritual, the old guard has to snarl and spit:

… Not surprisingly, writers have greeted these measures with a mixture of enthusiasm and dread. The dread was perhaps most eloquently crystallized last month in Washington at BookExpo, the publishing industry’s annual convention, when the novelist John Updike forcefully decried a digital future composed of free downloads of books and the mixing and matching of “snippets” of text, calling it a “grisly scenario.”

…

“It sounds absolutely deadly.” Reading books as isolated works is precisely what she wants to do, she said. “When I read someone like Willa Cather, I feel like I’m in the presence of the divine,” Ms. Hamilton said. “I don’t want her mixed up with anybody else. And I certainly don’t want to go to her Web site.” …

This reflexive back-and-forth—New Thing! Travesty! New Thing! Travesty!—really needs to be retired in favor of more engaged and creative thinking. The article offers a fair representation of an emerging media mashup, but can’t we move beyond the binary, black/white, he/she said/said storyline and talk about what it means for readers of text? Yes, we will carry our books on electronic tablets into space and we will still love the feel of paper and ink. If we’re going to actually arrive in the future, let’s focus on what it means that creators and consumers are working together, on the undiscovered diamonds of the indie movement, on the evolutionary leap that narrative is poised to take. Instead, we get the same old push-me/pull-you story. There is definitely a story there, but often it’s not the one we think it is.

I can’t help but suspect that the traditionalist-versus-innovator narrative is not merely the journalist’s cookie-cutter, though it is that (not that cookie cutters aren’t useful). To hear these billion-dollar industries wail you’d think they were Ma and Pa Shopkeeper in a Frank Capra film. They act as though a ruthless thought had never wafted through their boardrooms. Until they figure out how to make the next big thing part of the portfolio, the subtext is always a pouty lower lip.

To critique this article as an example, let’s start with a bold proposition: Books are not going away. (Sure, maybe you could say, “Tell it to the telegraph,” but let’s be real. Do most of us bemoan the loss of the telegraph? The short-wave radio? The carrier pigeon?) New media hybrids like the one described above demonstrate that people are going to use technology as a tool to suit their intellectual curiosity and their desire for social interaction. Industry spin like this….

… Hovering above the discussion of all these technologies is the fear that the publishing industry could be subject to the same upheaval that has plagued the music industry, where digitalization has started to displace the traditional artistic and economic model of the record album with 99-cent song downloads and personalized playlists. Total album sales are down 19 percent since 2001, while CD sales have dropped 16 percent during the same period, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sales of single digital music tracks have jumped more than 1,700 percent in just two years. …

…. shows that the press buys into the false sanctity of the corporation. Fear? Upheaval? Percentages? Jeez, did someone not get to go to St. Barts this Christmas?

Surprise: businesses need to adapt to the way their customers’ minds work. Is this some kind of exotic new idea or something? Isn’t the market supposed to be the all-powerful master-decider of what is worthy and what isn’t? It’s true that things are changing faster than they used to, but since when was that not the case?

It sure doesn’t take much to get these global conglomerates to squeal. Meanwhile, the kids keep on hacking the culture.

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