The Electronic Reader
Can Amazon’s Device Re-Kindle the Passion for Books?
2009-02-16
By Eric Easter

Despite my day to day role as someone whose job it is to find new business models and create content for the digital world, and my love of anything electronic (my gadgets have gadgets), I must admit that I am still, proudly and steadfastly, a book person.

I love everything about books, the feel, the smell, the weight, the art, the sense of wonder they hold, the promise of new worlds. I spent a great deal of my childhood under the dining room table reading my family’s outdated sets of World Book and Britannica encyclopedias from cover to cover. I’m one of those people who recoil in horror watching MTV Cribs when I see houses that have gymnasiums, grottos and Bentleys - but no library.

I also think my kids are smarter because our house has hundreds of books. There is empirical evidence to support this. According to studies, children’s reading performance has a direct relationship not just to reading at home but also to book ownership specifically. So call me a bit less than enthusiastic about the buzz surrounding Amazon’s Kindle 2 electronic reader.

Electronic readers have been talked about and experimented with for years. Three years ago I was sent a Sony E-reader to test. It was only slightly buggy, but my main question was “Why?”

What exactly was wrong with books that required this invention? Was it really that difficult to find the last page you read? Was a bookmark technically inefficient? A dog-eared corner?

The new version of Kindle has more sound and reliable technologically and certainly improves on the questionable “experience” of reading books on screen. But to be honest, it just creates more questions.

If someone steals your Kindle, what happens to your books? Is their replacement insurance, like with a cellphone. One assumes you can back up your books just as with iTunes. But do you really want to spend another $300 for another device to have the privilege of reading your book collection?

I also have questions about the market for the device. If one is willing to spend that kind of money to download books, we can only assume that person is already a lover of books. The decline in book sales is not due to fewer people loving books, but to people having less time (and less money) to read books. Will electronic books actually give people more time to read? Probably not.

So the market for the Kindle, it would seem, is the existing book lover who is somehow inconvenienced by actual books – which is a psychology beyond my understanding.

My misgivings aside, there are some obvious, and not so obvious benefits to this new development.

For those living in tighter spaces without the room to indulge in the passion of books, the Kindle is a perfect solution. People (like Oprah) with the money and time to travel extensively will also benefit from slight lighter packing, especially if they are prone to reading multiple books on a trip.

The more interesting developments, however, lie on the business side of books in an electronic future. But this too has pros and cons.

What will electronic publishing do to how manuscripts are bought and sold? And who will make those decisions?  Just because companies with e-readers like Amazon, Google, Sony and others have found a unique way to market and sell books does not necessarily mean the people running those companies love books.

I have always questioned some of the decisions some publishers make about what to publish, but I have never questioned that industry’s love for the book.  Like it or not, traditional publishers have provided a fairly decent screening process for the book business. As a former agent, I can tell you that quite a bit of good stuff has been left off the table by publishers. But also as a former agent, I can also say that the vast majority of what gets written should probably stay unpublished.

But in theory, the Kindle, if it reaches a mass audience, opens the door substantially to budding authors who might be seen as not worth the risk of financing a dead tree and glue version. The Stephen Kings and John Grishams of the world will own the electronic business just as they do the print business, but more talent may rise to the surface and ultimately that’s a good thing.

Without the cost of printing as a factor, deals for books released only electronically could potentially offer writers a much greater percentage of royalties as well as give authors and publishers a much more reliable accounting of sales.  There would also be, presumably, a lot less time between acceptance of a manuscript and publishing of new e-books, since electronic publishing will no longer account for print scheduling, jacket design and competition for bookstore shelf space.

On the other hand, without bookshelves and display windows, electronic publishers like Amazon, Sony and others will have to dramatically increase the money and time they spend marketing releases. Those marketing costs will likely begin to offset the money saved for printing and still result in lesser royalties for writers. And aside from the most famous and best-selling authors, new writers who publish only electronically can probably kiss the much-ballyhooed “advance” goodbye as well.

Also, electronic publishers risk doing what CDs did to great album art, which is to reduce its impact (and sales) by shrinking one of the best things about the medium. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but undeniably covers sell books and books need enticing images. How do you re-create that electronically?

Ultimately, the advantages of e-books probably outweigh the negatives. Out-of-print books  may suddenly become available and could be printed digitally on-demand.

And a side benefit. Black authors would no longer have to see their re releases relegated to Black History Month. The Kindle might be worth its weight in gold if only for that possibility.

Still, I’ll sit with my glass of wine near the fireplace with the kids at my feet and my real honest-to-goodness book in my hand and pine for the one technology that needed no improvement.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing, Inc. He writes about politics, culture and technology for ebonyjet.com