don’t reinvent the book
It’s pretty similar to the saying “we don’t need to reinvent the wheel” - books are not something I consider needing reinvention or real change. There is a great Newsweek article on the new Amazon product, Kindle, which raises a huge amount of points about the potential future of the book, most which I disagree with.
Call me a traditionalist - I don’t see it as a perjorative term in this context. Books should remain as they are today - something which can be tangible, separate, portable, held, tucked into a handbag or a coat pocket, and experienced. I am not against audio books, especially for those with accessibility/disability concerns or who are time-limited. What better than to play an Harry Potter audio book on a long car trip? Text being reproduced onscreen works in a lot of instances, especially when even the Long Tail cannot revive or even produce sales. I also believe that when copyright concerns have passed, the Internet and ebooks can be a great way to have these texts as reference for those who need them. One of the most self-restrictive decisions I think they have made - i.e. for commerce and not for any sense of the greater good - is not to use the open standard for ebooks. Why - when every reason to use the device points to the fact that you should be able to read anything on it - not just books published in the acceptable format. One step forward, two steps back!
There are limits to the changes I would accept to a text though. Books ARE a closed container. That’s the point. I believe in the power of the web to enhance a story, to bring audiences to writers, to allow for the final full stop of a page to only act as a pause until the text is updated or enhanced. However, I expect that to happen away from the original text - not as a series of updates to the intrinsic text of the book itself (well, perhaps for non-fiction but definitely not creative narratives). I can’t imagine how intrusive it would feel to read a text which had historical or political rebuttal (for whatever reason) embedded right within the lines. Some stories definitely have more life and potential to follow than others. Only last week I sat for minutes mourning the end of the story I was reading. I think that is one of the reasons we read these tales posed by a single author. We also have books which are conceived and executed by multiple people, but a “wisdom of crowds” scenario, or however you try to dress it, is not something I think will be widely accepted or even searched for in that medium.
Ultimately, I don’t believe that the Kindle will work - not because of a lacking feature set or the cost (though it is hefty for a unitasking item which adds to the weight of one’s daily load) but because we just don’t need another device. i’d rather buy an iPhone and get all the other features which I can have with it if I’m looking for a slick delivery device. As with the other Mac products I own, even an iBookreader would merge automatically with the suite of products I have already invested in.
(An aside: the Newsweek quotes a statistic about the percentage of Americans reading ANYTHING. This has dropped to under 60% of Americans reading 1 book per year. Shouldn’t we focus on that rather than trying to reinvent something that has a “killer user interface”?)
