Will books Survive eBooks?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Algiedi

I'm surprised that this "paper vs ebooks" debate is still going on, since I don't think that they necessarily compete with eachother, or at least that they will keep doing so for very long.

Right now ebooks are just books that are not on paper. Black and white text, and that's pretty much it. But already we got authors and publishers getting ideas about the really cool stuff they could do with the next generation of ebook readers (or well, even the current one if you count the iPad). Add animations, add a soundtrack, add interactivity - some even start thinking about new ways to think about the very concept of narration.

I truly believe that ebooks will quickly stray from their current mimicking of paper books into a new form, a new media that will be impossible to compare to good ol' books, just like you can't compare a book and a video game, or a book and a movie.

But could that just as easily mean that paper books will be abandonned because of their lack of multimedia functions? That could be, if one would only buy a book for its content - but we also buy an object, which can have its own proper qualities. I suspect that focusing on those object-qualities (high quality paper, beautiful illustrations and binding, etc.) will be the next step in paper book evolution, and will allow them to exist and persist.

The multi-media ebook will become more common, but it will not replace the regular ebook. A lot of readers just want to read, not a lot of fancy interactive functionality. The multi-media ebook's target market is a completely different one.

Sure, paper books will disappear sooner or later. For straight text reading very quickly, I guess. Ebooks are just too convenient.

[Algiedi]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

A lot of readers just want to read, not a lot of fancy interactive functionality. The multi-media ebook's target market is a completely different one.

But then even book-like ebooks (without any extra functionalities) don't necessarily play on the same turf as paper-books - they're not bought for the same reason or used the same way.

People don't buy or value paper books because they're convenient, but mostly because of all the imagery associated to it: the weight of Culture, an emotional & physical (smell, touch) bond to the object, the tangible owning of it, putting it on shelves as decoration or a status statement, gifting, etc.
The oh-so-convenient-but-not-tangible-ebook doesn't compete in all of those areas.

If authors/publishers/retailers focus on and develop those paper-specific qualities, I think paper still has a long life ahead of it.

[Anke Wehner]

The scenario of ebooks eventually replacing mass market paperbacks, but hardbacks or other high quality editiuons still being printed, sounds plausible to me.
Paper books disappearing completely in the forseeable future, not so much.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Algiedi

I'm surprised that this "paper vs ebooks" debate is still going on, since I don't think that they necessarily compete with eachother, or at least that they will keep doing so for very long.

I think the competition is inevitable. We've seen that e-books are already outselling paper books. I think publishers will go where the money is, and less paper will be produced.

Originally Posted by Algiedi

Right now ebooks are just books that are not on paper. Black and white text, and that's pretty much it. But already we got authors and publishers getting ideas about the really cool stuff they could do with the next generation of ebook readers (or well, even the current one if you count the iPad). Add animations, add a soundtrack, add interactivity - some even start thinking about new ways to think about the very concept of narration.

I truly believe that ebooks will quickly stray from their current mimicking of paper books into a new form, a new media that will be impossible to compare to good ol' books, just like you can't compare a book and a video game, or a book and a movie.

I can see this happening, possibly, but I don't think it would be a good turn of events. Books are books, and movies are movies. (Sorry for stating the obvious. ) I find the idea of putting sound and animation (let alone video) in books a little disturbing, as it turns the act of reading into something closer to the act of watching TV or a movie. I've got nothing against TV or movies, but they're completely different experiences, and I think the act of reading engages different parts of your intellect that don't get touched by more passive media.

Originally Posted by Algiedi

But could that just as easily mean that paper books will be abandonned because of their lack of multimedia functions? That could be, if one would only buy a book for its content - but we also buy an object, which can have its own proper qualities. I suspect that focusing on those object-qualities (high quality paper, beautiful illustrations and binding, etc.) will be the next step in paper book evolution, and will allow them to exist and persist.

I think you may be right here, although not because of any multimedia angle. I think e-books have other advantages (e.g., space, instant availability) that paper doesn't have, and I think that paper books, when they're produced, will be higher quality and price, but fewer and farther between.

[Algiedi]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I can see this happening, possibly, but I don't think it would be a good turn of events. Books are books, and movies are movies. (Sorry for stating the obvious. ) I find the idea of putting sound and animation (let alone video) in books a little disturbing, as it turns the act of reading into something closer to the act of watching TV or a movie. I've got nothing against TV or movies, but they're completely different experiences, and I think the act of reading engages different parts of your intellect that don't get touched by more passive media.

First, if one adds multimedia or interactivity to books, then they're not books anymore. They're something else, that we don't yet have a word for (although some "brands" are starting to show up here and there). It therefore won't threaten books, just like video games don't threaten books, or movies don't threaten books. Pears and apples.

Then we have several different things happening there:
* Something that I thought was exclusively French: the idea that books are the pinnacle of Culture (with a capital c);
* The idea that books are the most (if not only) intelligent leisure, all other forms of entertainment or culture are dumber (and therefore less desirable, because intelligence and austere-ness are benchmarks of value);
* That there exists an objectively definable "pure" way of creating or interacting with a book, that would garantee the above qualities, and that any deviation from it would be by definition negative.

Those ideas also seem strange to me.

[crich70]

At one time books were a status symbol as well. One of the french kings (I forget which) had a large library comprised of some 24 volumes. This was before the printing press made mass production possible of course. Back then people would chain their books to the table to prevent visitors leaving their homes with more baggage than they arrived with.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by niggle

With cloud technology, and all our written records increasingly in digital format how long before Orwell's future dystopia becomes the present for us? I'm keeping my print books!

I read a short story along these lines earlier last year, but I remain unconvinced. I store my ebooks on my desktop, my laptop, my eReader, a detachable harddrive kept in a fireproof safe, and in privately-rented cloud storage.

If you can crack that system and change one word in all my copies of "1984", then you probably could have done the same with my print copy as well - since either scenario basically involves a conspiracy so vast that I'm screwed either way.

[Algiedi]

Originally Posted by crich70

At one time books were a status symbol as well. One of the french kings (I forget which) had a large library comprised of some 24 volumes. This was before the printing press made mass production possible of course. Back then people would chain their books to the table to prevent visitors leaving their homes with more baggage than they arrived with.

That's still true. "Unfortunately" (for the point I'm trying to make) I only know people who actually read the books they own, but I've been to some people's houses (usually well-off, although I don't wanna extrapolate from that) where books were clearly shown off and used as a status symbol.

Hell, I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who bought a book they were probably never gonna read only because it would make them look smart if displayed in the living room :P

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Algiedi

Hell, I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who bought a book they were probably never gonna read only because it would make them look smart if displayed in the living room :P

Now you just need a tablet device to show off all the Project Gutenberg books you "bought" but haven't read.

Oh, yeah, Don Quixote in the original Spanish? Yeah, I have that in my library. *sniff*

[Prestidigitweeze]

Algiedi:

The innovations you're describing are actually old tech. They were tried during the past six decades with varying degrees of popularity.

This isn't to say it would be impossible to do something new with them, but only to show that they've previously come and gone.

Multiple-choice interactivity: First done in the 60s in the first hypertext novel, which was by Julio Cortazar. The title of the book, appropriately, is Hopscotch.

The original software for hypertext writers preceded the web's popularity and was called Storyspace. "Afternoon, a story," by Michael Joyce is the most famous example and was written in Storyspace in 1987.

Animations, music and interactive graphics: You're describing the CD-ROM books of the mid-80s as popularized by the Voyager Corporation (or as they called them, "expanded books"). Obviously, this is an interesting approach for encyclopedias and has been used that way many times. It was all originally based on Hypercard for the Mac and eventually written in a program called Director.

It's possible that someone will find a way to standardize and popularize some of these ideas all over again, as people return to books and the page (or "page").

But I would argue that part of the book's new charm is its particularity as a book. Our e-readers' popularity is due to convenience and economy of space, not flashy new narrative techniques. Everyone assumed the demographic was senior citizens, but look how that has changed.

Reading is the equivalent of a straight shot of whiskey: An undiluted experience. It's pure content, and once you acquire a taste for it, you won't be able to slake your thirst elsewhere.

The true interactive quality of fiction is its collaboration with the imagination of the reader: Reading is a workout for the imagination and builds associative muscle. Adding extra graphics and music would only dilute that effect.

In my view, the richest medium for interactive multimedia narrative is not literature at all but rather gaming. In the 90s, we began to see full-blown narratives and stories in games that were far quirkier than those in standard movies: Fatal Frame, even the first two Silent Hill installments. Later, we have odd games like Rule of Rose, which uses dissonant chamber music scored for strings as its soundtrack, features graphics that look like a surrealist painting by Dorothea Tanning, and takes place in a 1930s orphanage that is modeled on Lord of the Flies and occasionally becomes a steampunk submarine floating improbably in the sky.

Additionally, you have the hypertext story as film/novel in games like Indigo Prophecy (a/k/a Fahrenheit) and Hotel Dusk, all of which proceed by way of multiple-choice questions, puzzle-solving and other such activities on the part of the player, who can also change the ending.

Sandbox games offer a level of freedom of choice that can't really exist in books; it isn't about multiple choice cutscenes but rather the player moving through free environments.

In the future, when graphics and game engines reach something like their peak, I expect sandbox vacations to be marketed to those who are too broke or too lonely to vacation for real (senior citizens, people who are bedridden, the person who needs a bit of time to escape after a grueling work week but can't physically go anywhere, etc., etc.).

Of course, the content will get far more interesting when the sorts of people who make independent and academic films will have access to realistic gaming engines as new filmmakers are now able to do advanced editing and cgi on a budget.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Algiedi

First, if one adds multimedia or interactivity to books, then they're not books anymore. They're something else, that we don't yet have a word for (although some "brands" are starting to show up here and there). It therefore won't threaten books, just like video games don't threaten books, or movies don't threaten books. Pears and apples.

As Prestidigitweeze pointed out, we've been down that road before. The idea isn't really that new. I think the only thing that modern technology would bring to the equation is to make the experience more realistic (both in sound and video). I think that these improvements, along with the new delivery system (as opposed to disks or CDs/DVDs) is what would potentially be more appealing than those older attempts.

These new media will be somewhat of a threat to books, if things go in the multimedia direction, if for no other reason than companies have limited resources. Secondly, ask yourself this question: How many kids do you know that play video games, rather than read? Reading will only go down further on the proverbial totem pole, if the multimedia e-book idea caught on.

Originally Posted by Algiedi

Then we have several different things happening there:
* Something that I thought was exclusively French: the idea that books are the pinnacle of Culture (with a capital c);
* The idea that books are the most (if not only) intelligent leisure, all other forms of entertainment or culture are dumber (and therefore less desirable, because intelligence and austere-ness are benchmarks of value);
* That there exists an objectively definable "pure" way of creating or interacting with a book, that would garantee the above qualities, and that any deviation from it would be by definition negative.

Those ideas also seem strange to me.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that books are the only intelligent leisure activity. But I do think that reading is a more intellectually challenging leisure activity than passively absorbing sounds and images. Reading is also more educational than other forms of entertainment. and is a valuable life skill, to boot.

Don't get me wrong: I probably watch TV and listen to music far more than I end up reading, but books engage your mind more than those other things do. This may vary somewhat from culture to culture, but in the U.S., at least, being "well-read" is a sign of intelligence that has no equivalent in movie or video game media.

[bobavey]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

First off, an ebook is a book. Ebook is just another format to read it. Right now we have the capability of accessing more and more books either in a print version or a digital version.

I still like both. I often use print ebooks for reference where I might need the book open while typing on my computer. This may change as I now use multiple monitors on my computer. All my new fiction books are ebooks, so my greatest expenditures are there.

My main reasons for the switch:

1. Portability: I can carry 100s of ebooks in a device the weight and size of one paperback.

2. Free offerings: A huge number of free ebooks to explore from classic and new offers.

3. Multiple devices: I read my ebooks on my tablet, phone and computer.

Because of the inherent advantages of ebooks, I can see a day in the future where most new books are primarily released as ebooks with a "print on demand" option for those who prefer a dead tree version. But they are still "books."

I tend to agree with you.

[mcrow24]

I think there will be print books for quite some time. This is one of those things that will eventually fade out to all or near all ebooks.

I think text books and things with more techinal aspects as well as picture books could stay in print. However, there is little reason (other than presonal preference) to need a print copy of a novel or low graphics books.

Now, some ereaders and tablets now have great capabilty to display graphics heavy books in high quality. Eventually printed text books and pitcure books will likely see bigger dips in sales as well.

The thing is that there are so many people who are still stuck on paper books that it may take a generation or two before ebooks completely take over.

[Algiedi]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

The innovations you're describing are actually old tech. They were tried during the past six decades with varying degrees of popularity.

This isn't to say it would be impossible to do something new with them, but only to show that they've previously come and gone.

You said it yourself, it doesn't prove anything. Motion control, 3D and all the cool things that are somehow super popular nowadays are also things that have come and gone. Technology is nothing but a gimmick until creators give them meaning (well that and lots of money for marketing, but that's not helping my point).

The one thing that made me think this could happen is very simple: lately I've either talked to or read about a significant number of authors that want to create in this kind of way - going beyond the text.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

The true interactive quality of fiction is its collaboration with the imagination of the reader: Reading is a workout for the imagination and builds associative muscle. Adding extra graphics and music would only dilute that effect.

Probably out-of-topic, but that's exactly what one my tabletop-RPG friend says when I try to convert her to video-games RPG. Make of that what you will.
I'd also say as a "multimedia" creator that saying that only non-visual media develops imagination is nonsense (although I wouldn't say that to my friend because I like her very much).

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

In my view, the richest medium for interactive multimedia narrative is not literature at all but rather gaming.

Now we're talking. Actually I'm still debating with myself whether we're just gonna end up reinventing video games. Or something kinda in-between? Or that both media are gonna meet half-way? Now that'd be cool.

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Secondly, ask yourself this question: How many kids do you know that play video games, rather than read? Reading will only go down further on the proverbial totem pole, if the multimedia e-book idea caught on.

I dunno, video games and books have both always been the two big things in my life, so I don't understand how or why one could or should "replace" the other. Maybe it's just me being weird.
As for other people, once again correlation doesn't mean causation. Kids read less books but play more video games does not necessarily mean one is the cause of the other.
People that I know that read don't read because they don't play games (actually in my experience they often go together), but because they got parents who were big readers, used to hang out in libraries a lot, etc.
But then again one can read while playing video games. Bioware games anyone? Or would anyone here dare say that if it's not on paper it's not truly reading?

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Don't get me wrong: I probably watch TV and listen to music far more than I end up reading, but books engage your mind more than those other things do. This may vary somewhat from culture to culture, but in the U.S., at least, being "well-read" is a sign of intelligence that has no equivalent in movie or video game media.

Oh don't worry, living in a country that still doesn't think police novels or science-fiction deserve the term "literature", I know where you're coming from with this. It's not the topic of the thread, so let's just say that I find this idea very debatable :P
I'll just conclude by a quote from the great philosopher Yahtzee:
"[...] art is only as good as the culture that surrounds it. A game could give the most extraordinary emotional experience in the entirety of human culture and bring tears to the eyes of a jaded war veteran with no eyes, but it's all for naught if it's not surrounded by self-important bearded tossers who read too much into things for a living."

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I think the competition is inevitable. We've seen that e-books are already outselling paper books. I think publishers will go where the money is, and less paper will be produced.

But they're not outselling paper books. Not even close. They are 10% of the market in the US, and far less in the rest of the world - close to 1% in the non-UK part of Europe.

They are outselling paper books on *Amazon* - which, while the largest bookseller in the US, still only has 15% or so of the market. And which has its own, heavily promoted e-reader. E-books are likewise close to outselling paper books at Bn.com (but are not even close to outselling paper books if you include B&N's brick and mortar stores).

Most people read 1-2 books per year. It makes no sense for these people to spend $100+ on an e-reader to read their books - the device would be obsolete before they read five books.

Most people still buy music on CD, despite a massive push into (and adoption of) mp3s.

Change doesn't happen overnight, and it only happens completely when the new format offers many improvements and almost no drawbacks over the format it has replaced. Vinyl records are *almost* dead, killed (almost) by CDs. Film is *almost* dead, due to digital.

CDs are not almost dead because they still offer some advantages over mp3s. For the majority of people who don't read 10 books per year or more, pbooks are still better.