Pixels or Pages: The Great Kindle Debate

by Aggie Villanueva

Reprinted from “What’s black and white and read about all over? The Kindle” www.insidesocal.com/click/kindle/

As one objector, and he is not alone, Sven Birkerts writes in Resisting the Kindle, for The Atlantic, “Literature-our great archive of human expression-is deeply contextual and historicized…This essential view of literature and the humanities has been-and continues to be-reinforced by our libraries and bookstores, by the obvious physical adjacency of certain texts, the fact of which telegraphs the cumulative time-bound nature of the enterprise…As I see it, the Kindle ethos-offering print by subscription, arriving from a vast, undifferentiated cyber-emporium out there-abets the decimation of context.”

The page-bound context has never been what connects us with history. It is content, not context. Throughout time our information delivery systems have changed. Do we still read our texts on rock-pounded scrolls, or carved in stone? Yet we gain no less understanding and insight into that history whether we read it in pixels, pages or stone. We don’t need to literally hold those scrolls to be in context with what they convey. We learn from their content, context notwithstanding.

I gain no less from reading a book in Kindle than by reading a bound book. I still curl up with a hot mug of chai and sink into the world the author creates for me. This hullabaloo is reminiscent of the great word-processor vs. handwritten/typewritten manuscripts debate. And with all the resistance over that, who still writes their manuscripts by hand or typewriter to retain the “context” of how it was historically done? Yet we’ve lost not one bard in the transference.

So what if certain idioms may disappear, such as “Don’t judge a book by its cover?” I see that as an improvement. If digital readers indeed take over the book industry, wouldn’t this be an affirmation that society has somewhat overcome marketing efforts to the contrary?

So what if the Kindle brings up new issues to settle. Every new technology does. I refer to issues such as Kindle’s new text-to-speech capability, which may violate copyright law. Usually audio book rights are negotiated separately. The Authors Guild is reviewing the implications, and the Information Law and Policy Blog have their say in favor.  See also Author’s Guild vs. Kindle: The Debate.

Courtesy of Amazon.com

There are those who fear that bringing the selling price so low will send starving artists further into poverty. On the contrary, the cost of production is the largest expense in book publishing.

Let’s say a new author gets $0.10 per $16.95 copy (just an example). Publishers can’t afford (and won’t) spend more than a few thousand dollars to market that author’s book, which is basically no marketing at all. From experience I also know that they don’t even put the book into many outlets. If a few thousand customers see my book in the 18 months or so publishers give it to make/break, that’s a great deal.

By cutting the cost of production by more than half, that author will still get $0.10 per copy or more, and in cases of self publishing much more, subtracting nothing from the publishing houses’ take. Not to mention that the book will be instantly and indefinitely available to millions.

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Pixels being greener than pages aside, the facts are that many of our major print-publishers are suffering from the extreme costs, so how can they continue to compensate writers their worth?  i.e. Seattle Paper May Shift to Online-Only. (Reuters) – Hearst Corp, one of the largest U.S. publishers, has offered some of its Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) staff work in an online-only version of the paper, amidst speculation that the newspaper’s print edition may be shutting down, according to media reports…

Then there are the millions of health-challenged people that can’t often leave their homes who, with digital readers, can now enjoy all the books they missed, and with no high shipping fees for heavy print books.

For me, and most other avid readers I’ve talked with, the convenience of slipping a Kindle into the laptop case reigns over an additional bag to hold reading and reference materials. Suggestion to Amazon: if you could add a function so that I can import from my word-processor all my personal notes & references needed for the trip I would be eternally grateful.

Wired.com‘s senior editor, Dylan Tweney seems to agree. “For it to become a runway success would take some kind of dramatic innovation that I haven’t seen yet.

“It would have to be a device that was not just a book reader but kind of a portable information device, and it might be something like a notebook computer except without a keyboard, some kind of elegant interface that lets you browse through news, check your e-mail, read a book, but also see what’s happening, maybe watch videos, and sort of get all the world’s information funneled into this one screen that’s very easy to carry around. I don’t see anybody doing that in a way that I think is really compelling yet.”

Courtesy of Amazon.com

The monopoly and other pending legalities aside, even if Kindle remains nothing but useful tools for reading, why are so many opposed to it? Do they dread instantaneous access to knowledge/inspiration/entertainment? Then destroy all the cell phones. Or are they worried that reading devices will replace our present information delivery system-the bound book? If an alarmist fear of change, or the loss of conglomerate income, is not the cause, then I must wonder what is.

We could all ramble on about the pros and cons of the Kindle and other digital reading devices, and indeed we do (just Google “the Kindle debate” and see), but it boils down to the sway of  individual choice. If you prefer the bound book then don’t buy the Kindle and vice-versa. Pixels or pages. It’s your choice.

What do YOU think?

For futuristic roles of book right here and now see Joanna Penn’s article, The Future of the Book: It’s Already Here.

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