Electronic Thursday - Choosing my religion

Here are some thoughts about strong feelings.

Some people have strong feelings about the advent and sudden ubiquity of ebooks. There are the people who fret for the future of paper and publishing, who are concerned that kids are not developing a true love of books, who (I think prematurely) mourn the sensations of opening and smelling a book.

Then there are people like Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, who announced at the recent Tools of Change conference that he has written his last paper book. His next book and all subsequent works will be published in electronic format only - at least, until he or a crew of postdocs at MIT figure out a way to publish books as breakfast cereal, so that we may absorb the wisdom of Kevin Kelly daily along with our 8 essential vitamins and minerals.

Frankly, what I have to say to Kevin Kelly is - we'll miss you, man. With logic like that, I don't guess I feel the need to download your next book onto my Sony Reader or my iPad.

To me, it seems shortsighted to get exercised over the substrate upon which content is inscribed, when the goal is to deliver the content. You just know that when the printing press was invented, there was a whole squad of people bemoaning the demise of vellum. "The grain! The silky feel! That faintly rancid smell!"

(This is assuming the goal is delivering the content, and not getting paid, which is another goal, and is important to the survival of the publishing industry, but which I'm not going to address here and now. Although - you should hear what Kevin Kelly thinks authors should do to make up for any income they may lose due to the per-unit price decrease that most people expect as ebooks become a larger part of the market. Let's just say: if you don't know how to play guitar, maybe you should take it up.)

 

Author/illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka literally singing for his supper at the Baltimore Book Festival.

It tends to boils down to taste: some people only want to read books on their ereaders, and other people just don't like them. I received an email from a man who heard me discussing ebooks on WYPR with host Tom Hall, and he found the Peter Rabbit iPad app that we demonstrated incredibly distasteful, calling the background music (Debussy) "elevator music" and the narrator's voice "catty".

 

 

He was appalled at the idea of a child interacting with this app at bedtime. I don't know - I'm not going to tell you how to raise your kids, but my recommendation would be to share the iPad app just as you'd share the printed edition. I think the important part of the book at bedtime is the lap-sitting, but if the lap is not available, I think our catty British lady is better than nothing.

So, maybe it's an obvious thing to say, but... my correspondent should not buy an ereader. Just as I should never again watch the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle. I loved the book but I just can't stand gasping, big-eyed Japanese anime. I'm not going to suggest that Miyazaki not be allowed to make movies, though. Other people like it, and kids who have watched that movie are more likely to read the book. So - don't you force me to watch Howl's Moving Castle, and I promise, I will not force you to read Robinson Crusoe on an eReader (although it's only $0.99 on Kindle, FYI).

I know that for many people, opening a book is their version of going to church. I love that, and I hope (really, I expect) that the Church of the Printed Word will persist for many more years. That's not me, though. I experience certain books as sacred experiences, but I am agnostic as to the medium by which I receive them, and the genesis of Tom's and my on-air discussion was the fact that many kids and teens seem to share my attitude.

One of the restaurants in our neighborhood, the Hamilton Tavern, has papered its ladies' room in literature, including a passage from Wuthering Heights. Sacrilege? It gives me pleasure to read that passage every time I'm in there.

Wuthering Heights, of course, is a terrific book for a teen. And whether that teen receives an heirloom copy of Miss Bronte's classic as a birthday gift from a beloved aunt, or downloads the audio edition from the library and listens to it on her iPod, or, in fact, reads it on the bathroom wall at the Hamilton Tavern, she will, if she's the kind of girl who goes for that kind of stuff, experience the thrill and frustration and drama of Heathcliff and Cathy's doomed romance among the windswept moors.

Oh, man. Now I want to read that again. I wonder if it's available as a free classic on iBooks or an always-available download from the library. Because my paper copy is buried in a box in the coat closet right now, or possibly I loaned it to our babysitter. Maybe I should just go for lunch at the Hamilton Tavern! Good burgers.

There are aspects of the electronic revolution in book publishing that trouble me. I am concerned about the economic barrier to entry. I am concerned that we are creating yet another digital divide among our youth. I'll get to these on one of these Thursdays - and if you've got concerns we should discuss, please leave a comment! But in this case, the medium, I feel, is not the message. The message is that we should, as always, be observant of what kids are looking at, doing, and interested in, so that we can serve them good stuff in appealing ways.