Will books Survive eBooks?

[DMB]

One of the reasons I had amassed a pretty hefty collection of dtbooks was for reference. But with the internet I just don't need reference books all that much. And even where I don't use the internet so much, there are still alternatives to print books. For example, I used to have several copies of a large French/English dictionary. Now, if I need to look up a word or phrase, I could try online, but I also have an excellent dictionary on CD.

[mcrow24]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

Good points. A lot of people take Amazon as the indicator for the entire market segment but they are not as huge as people think. Sure, 15% market share for a single company is huge but given they are pushing eBooks hard it's no surprise they are selling a little more of them than print books. From the consumer it make a lot of sense as well because instead of paying shipping, it just downloads to the device.


Personally, I think the future market for print books will be in high quality premium editions for collectors. We've already seen some of this in the small press publishing market.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I appreciate the reply, but it sounds as if I haven't make myself clear.

Originally Posted by Algiedi

You said it yourself, it doesn't prove anything. . . . 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).

I said it myself for a reason: I didn't want to invalidate the possibility that new things could be done, nor, especially, to discourage you if you're thinking about exploring that possibility.

My previous comment had to do with the lifespan of the public's interest (so far) in the ideas you mentioned.

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.

That sense of something in the air is a valid one, especially when we're young and have a (sometimes temporary) ability to intuit trends and innovations -- possibly because we're undistracted by the trajectory of our lengthy pasts.

However, the writers I know are always saying things like that. The only ones who don't (in my personal experience) tend to be established science fiction writers.

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).

It sounds as if I haven't made myself understood.

All sorts of media develop the imagination, but the written word specifically develops the muscle connected to transposing the events and images on the page to the universe inside your head. None of the work is done for you; in effect you become the book's microcosm, but only in the sense that that environment meshes with the collages made up of the feeds from your image repository/factory and the ever-mutating archives of your past.

It isn't that other arts and disciplines fail on the level of imagination, but that reading specifically develops that particular aspect of the imagination.

Any art that leaves out sensory input depends on you to fill it in. Fiction's drawback is also its virtue: it leaves out all of that input in the most direct fashion. We spent the past three decades moving away from leaving things out, only to discover that a segment of our culture longs for the exercise.

This is not meant to belittle any other art form or medium. Every art is reductive in a sense, and threads the dissonances of its silence with our minds' coherence.

Another example: Absolute music in the classical sense, which has the structure of an argument but is completely non-representational, so that the meaning is assigned internally -- perhaps even arbitrarily -- by the listener.

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.

As you probably know, I just praised one of the most hated games of all time for its aesthetic beauty and originality. It's hated by many gamers because the battles are often completely frustrating, but beloved by me because the experience of the game touches on so many things I find lacking in film but not in paintings and novels.

Believe it or not, I have high hopes for Canadian academics in terms of the development of games as complex art.

The tension I feel is between the narrative fullness of cut-scene-dependent hypertext and the freedom of the sandbox. If I were working in that field, I'd either try to minimize the faults of both by leaving out as much clunky machinery and directionless wandering as possible, or I'd try to find a third way of advancing, which didn't depend on trailer-like pieces of film to connect sandbox explorations and battles. It would be cool if the narrative were splintered and imbedded in the sandbox, so that the story proceeded by subtler impulses and decisions. You wouldn't be presented with multiple choices so much as collective events and stimuli as clusters that propelled you forward. The odd speech would be given within the gameplay, and would be spoken by a character in real time instead of "oof," "have you seen Mother?" or "die, pussy."

Ideally the speech could also be interrupted. Not skipped, not bypassed, but actually interrupted as you would that of an actual person, so that your impatience or abruptness could affect the dynamics of future interactions and the game's understanding of what you know and will learn voluntarily.

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.

I say they're two different art forms and neither can replace the other. However, it's still too early to try to define what video games are or predict what they'll become. As I said, I'm pretty certain that in the near future, ordinary people will go on vacations in non-stochastic game worlds, and that vacation spots will be mapped out as LA and New York are in GTA, but on a far more minute level. I think there will be games without competition or objectives -- games in which one can wander as through a museum -- which are understood to be that by the general public. There will also be passive and active versions, depending on how much stress, responsibility and involvement the person who's playing wants.

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.

I'll leave you to it, since that comment couldn't possibly be directed at me. You're addressing an argument I've never made in my life.

However, I have problems with YC myself. He's an amusing writer/ranter who's most brutally accurate when he sniffs out holes in a game's construction and the devs' involvement, but he's also a bit too free with his characterizations of others as self-important. After all, he's British, and has the national tendency to be most self-involved when he's trying to be humble. That's because class affectation means something different there than elsewhere, which is why Fowler thought saying French words with a French accent was the height of irritating pretension. He was so unconsciously enamored of royalty that the only reason he could find for such pronunciation was in people's desire to be upwardly mobile. Ironically, it was he, not they, who carefully imitated the unspecialized learning, understated conversation and enervated modesty of familiar nobility, while the person who cultivates a French accent might not care what anyone thinks. To ponder meaning is everyone's right as a conscious living being. If they derive enjoyment from it, then with all due respect, who is Yahtzee Croshaw?

BTW: I always seem to spell his last name as if it were Richard Crashaw's, then uneasily replace the a with an o.

It was fun exchanging ideas with you, Algiedi. Until the day when everyone's literate in the disciplines we've mentioned, I'll have to rely on sporadic conversations like this one with infrequent debaters like yourself. Pity that, since I could talk about this all day.

[Algiedi]

Somehow my carefully-crafted reply disappeared from my tabs just before I send it. Screw you, Gods of the Forums.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

That sense of something in the air is a valid one, especially when we're young and have a (sometimes temporary) ability to intuit trends and innovations -- possibly because we're undistracted by the trajectory of our lengthy pasts.

I gotta say that I only recently got into that whole book meta-thought business, and I'm still easily distracted (and excited) by any and all innovations and possibilities ("oooh shinyyy").

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

However, the writers I know are always saying things like that. The only ones who don't (in my personal experience) tend to be established science fiction writers.

I don't know what to make of that. Is it because they're already blasé about that whole "the X of tomorrow" concept?
(Frankly I've only talked to the one french science fiction writer that one could call "established" - we don't have many of those strange beasts around here )

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Any art that leaves out sensory input depends on you to fill it in. Fiction's drawback is also its virtue: it leaves out all of that input in the most direct fashion. We spent the past three decades moving away from leaving things out, only to discover that a segment of our culture longs for the exercise.

This is not meant to belittle any other art form or medium. Every art is reductive in a sense, and threads the dissonances of its silence with our minds' coherence.

Well that was quite well-put. (that makes me wanna work hard on my english writing skillz, I feel so inadequate)
I love it when walls-of-text are exchanged for ages only to realize in the end that we agreed in the first place.
I guess I just bristle very easily when arguments stray in that area, because the (true and objective) point you just made is usually coupled with a judgement of value that amounts to "images are for dumbasses therefore books are BETTAR", which is a logical fallacy on so many levels it boggles the mind.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I'll leave you to it, since that comment couldn't possibly be directed at me. You're addressing an argument I've never made in my life.

Yeah there's a couple of quotes and points in there that were from someone else. I should have put a divider between the two or something.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

[lots of awesome stuff about video games]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Pity that, since I could talk about this all day.

You know what, screw books, let's just talk about video games

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by Algiedi

Somehow my carefully-crafted reply disappeared from my tabs just before I send it. Screw you, Gods of the Forums.
I guess I just bristle very easily when arguments stray in that area, because the (true and objective) point you just made is usually coupled with a judgement of value that amounts to "images are for dumbasses therefore books are BETTAR", which is a logical fallacy on so many levels it boggles the mind.

I agree. I love books and I read novels more than I watch movies/TV/play video games/do any other kind of mediaing combined (other than well, The Internet), but I respect other media. The basic written text is more my thing but a specific medium doesn't create inherently bad/inferior/stupid content. There's just bad content everywhere, period. I enjoy video game narratives and the merging of story and game play. There's a lot of good stories, but some are better suited to a specific type of media than others. You can't have something like Planescape: Torment as a novel. It's said to be like an "interactive novel", but the interaction and choices made is part of the story.

I still believe that plain old fiction text will be here to stay, it won't mutate that much in the next 50 years. I agree with the whisky analogy. I just like my whisky, when I want mixed drinks, I'll go get them, but I like my whisky 90% of the time. It might change in a centuries' time, but there's just a massive culture around the art of writing (without media) that it'll continue to go strong into the next century. Until people's multimedia experience skills get refined over time and get a bigger audience, plain written fiction will continue to be important and popular vehicles for delivering stories.

[hidari]

Printed books will be around or some type of Hard Copy ...i.e. pbooks or Hardback....

Simple..No electricity no.... ebooks... Many parts of the world still do not have
electricity 24/7. Some parts are off the grid. No grid No Ebooks. Thus, I reckon pbbooks for non-fiction and important docs will stay around for a while..

[WillAdams]

Paper books also make nice gifts --- for years now, I've been giving a hand-bound book to relatives as a wedding gift, most recently Gannett's _The House Beautiful_ w/ ornaments and photography by Frank Lloyd Wright from the Auvergne Press Edition which Wright printed letterpress.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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).

Okay, fair enough. But doesn't the fact that the largest bookstore in the U.S. is selling more e-books than paper books, and that B&N is seeing something similar, count as a trend?

Obviously, B&N is never going to see e-books outsell paper books at the brick-and-mortar stores, but that's mainly because they don't sell e-books there. And from what I've been reading (e.g., this article), the brick and mortar stores aren't doing so well. It won't happen immediately, but dead tree books do look like they're starting a serious decline (at least, in the U.S.)

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

This is true, but you're forgetting about tablets, which are a significant part of Amazon's and B&N's strategy. Most people probably wouldn't spend > $100 on a reader, but they'll spend > $200 on a device that has multiple functions. And the avid readers among us will pay for the privilege of e-ink and a seamless experience.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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

CD sales vs. MP3 sales is a little bit tricky to pull off. Making that kind of comparison doesn't account for all the people who buy MP3s piecemeal, without buying full albums. (At least, that's how the stats look to me.)

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

I don't think either one of those is actually going to be "dead" in a real sense of the word (like, say the telegraph), in our lifetime. People will still use film for artistic reasons (even though from what I understand, you can do most of the effects digitally now), and there will still be audiophiles and DJ's and such who swear by vinyl.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

CDs aren't dead, but they're fading fast. Something like 36% of album sales are MP3s now. And from what I understand, that's only counting full albums. That doesn't even count one-off purchases of songs.

[screwballl]

Ebook versus Pbook will eventually balance out as a dual format system, but with the digital format slowly taking a majority of sales. This is just like what was mentioned above relating to music and video media.

Music is still primarily a 3 format system:
1) Vinyl records still sell in small numbers which is actually starting to increase in sales now,
2) 8-track (and Beta tapes) was replaced by cassette tapes (and VCR tapes) which in turn was replaced by CDs (and DVDs), which still sells quite a bit,
3) mp3s are slowly taking the largest chunk of music sales.

Video is also a 3 format (or 2 depending on how you look at it):
VCR tapes are almost dead so we can ignore this one.
1) Streaming/online video is expanding fairly quickly
2) DVDs have the majority of video sales, and
3) the third is Bluray which is still a disc/digital media but is still its own format is many ways.

There is room for a system to include both digital and physical media. We are only now starting to see the digital book side of things expand but at some point it will balance out as the older generation ages and passes away, and the younger digital generation sticks primarily to digital media with paper being used for special uses.

[omgfire]

Did anyone else read the comments below the article? Some of them are just absurd.