It seems that faking older publishing tech (the animated page turns in iBooks and other apps, for one) isn't all that new. Instead, it is following a centuries-old tradition.
Spurred by a disclaimer in the Amazon online bookstore,
Quote:
This Book Is Bound with "Deckle Edge" Paper
You may have noticed that some of our books are identified as "deckle edge" in the title. Deckle edge books are bound with pages that are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges. Deckle edge is an ornamental feature designed to set certain titles apart from books with machine-cut pages.
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...the Economist has an amusing explanation of the history of one faked-quality industry practice: the so called Deckle edge.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babba.../printed-books
Quote:
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An artefact of bygone days, the "deckle edge" is part of the modern fetishisation of the past, much as Instagram glorifies the 1970s snapshot camera. An artefact that might have annoyed the makers of the day turns into a trait intended to evoke the whole experience and emotion associated with the original, but without any of the baggage.
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He could easily be talking about the paper smell fetishists.
Quote:
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Over time, the deckle edge transformed from a cost-cutting measure, in which leaving it in place was cheaper than removing it, into a sign that a book was made from more expensive paper or using a more refined method. Your correspondent spent his teens and twenties in the printing and book worlds, and even as late as the 1990s a sniffiness prevailed about sheet-printed books versus those printed on continuous presses, a similar vestige. Babbage also recalls buying hard-cover books in cheap book-club editions in which the deckle edge was a must, to try to offset the impression made by poor paper quality, binding and printing.
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And, of course, now we get the "sniffiness" over the sensuality of pbooks vs ebooks.
Quote:
The modern deckle edge is cut by a machine that scarifies the edges of a book in an ostensibly random—and rather pretty—fashion. In 1948 Dard Hunter, a paper historian, noted that the Eynsford Mill in England, for example, produced "genuine handmade, imitation handmade, and Fourdrinier machine-made", each appealing to the differing needs of publishers and printing firms.
But the significance of the edge may be lost on many modern readers.
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Amazon's note is meant to reassure buyers disturbed by a deckle edge that the artefact is not a flaw. Ironically, making a book dearer by design seems to have made it appear damaged in the eyes of readers who lack the supposed sophistication to appreciate the fakery of a handmade past.
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Ah, marketting geniuses at work!
Ragged edges to imply "handcrafted" have apparently lost their appeal in the high tech age of "seamless coolness".
This has me wondering if publishers have been secretly spraying some chemicals on pbooks to make their smell appeal to the smell fetishists, maybe some bookworm pheromone.
I have dozens of books with that kind of edge. And I thought it was a sign that the publisher was too cheap to pay for clean-edged paper. Live and learn; I'll have to remember to be impressed next time by the attention to (fake) detail.
Clearly different value systems at play.
Now I'm wondering what other product "enhancements" I'm too unsophisticated to appreciate.
