Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

People said that recorded music would destroy live music. It didn't. People still sing, people still play instruments . . .

There may be better examples that could be given to make your point. Home singing was extremely common family entertainment in most western countries. And among families with enough money to afford instruments, the singing was accompanied. Walking in the evening down an American residential street a century ago, you would have heard live singing and music coming from house after house. Now, entertainment is typically given to the individuals as consumers, rather than created by family and friends for themselves. This is a tremendous difference.

This effect of eBooks on our lives is minuscule compared to that of recorded music. That's true even for people who don't listen to much recorded music, because the decline in music-making so changed the tone of family life.

So, I don't think paper books are going to go away.

Go away completely? No. Become a niche market, like vinyl records? We just don't know. I do think the decline of paper books will be slow, if only because used paper books will be cheaper than eBooks for a long time to come.

The form factor of the 6 inch eReader, and the reading experience, is just not all that different from that of a paper book. By contrast, singing while your teenager played the piano was completely different from listening to Rudy Vallee.

[QuantumIguana]

If I want to hear live music, I have no shortage of options. Live music is quite alive. Creating your own music at home is less popular than it used to be, but it didn't go away.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

The things he loves will not disappear. People said that recorded music would destroy live music. It didn't. People still sing, people still play instruments, people still pay to hear singers. The live experience gives them something they don't get with recordings, even if the singer being recorded is more talented than the person they listen to live.

Well, the thing about pbooks is that they can be found by people who didn't know they looking for them. When I was a kid, lo these many years ago in the 50s, I discovered a treasure trove of books in the attic of an old barn my youngest uncle had built when HE was a teenager during WWII. These books had been owned by him & his older brothers - Horatio Alger, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Do & Dare, Brave & Bold, X Bar X Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Tarzan. And among those books were The White Company, Ivanhoe & many others.

Now, how would a kid find these if they were ebooks? I have books in my library that I have forgotten about, until I run across them & remember that I kept them to be discovered by my kids - which has happened.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Well, the thing about pbooks is that they can be found by people who didn't know they looking for them. When I was a kid, lo these many years ago in the 50s, I discovered a treasure trove of books in the attic of an old barn my youngest uncle had built when HE was a teenager during WWII. These books had been owned by him & his older brothers - Horatio Alger, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Do & Dare, Brave & Bold, X Bar X Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Tarzan. And among those books were The White Company, Ivanhoe & many others.

Now, how would a kid find these if they were ebooks? I have books in my library that I have forgotten about, until I run across them & remember that I kept them to be discovered by my kids - which has happened.

It seems to me that the likelihood of stumbling upon hidden treasures on the Internet is much greater than the likelihood of finding hidden treasures in random barns.

[JDK1962]

Originally Posted by khalleron

It seems to me that the likelihood of stumbling upon hidden treasures on the Internet is much greater than the likelihood of finding hidden treasures in random barns.

Definitely, but then people accuse you of piracy.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

Definitely, but then people accuse you of piracy.

People do discover old books in attics all the time. These same books may very well not going to be yet in the public domain, so you can't legally stumble over them on the internet.

Often, the only reason you can stumble over old books on the internet is because someone else stumbled over that book in an attic, and took the time to scan the book and post it on the internet.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

Definitely, but then people accuse you of piracy.

Actually, I was thinking of the 3 million PD books on Google.

[silasgreenback]

Nicely bound paper books are great and leafing through acid-free pages is wonderful but ebooks have never given me cause to enter "reading gloves" into a search engine.

[JDK1962]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Actually, I was thinking of the 3 million PD books on Google.

Fair enough. No argument there. I was being more than a little facetious (hence the smiley).

I was thinking more about being a kid, where the first thing I'd do when dragged to the houses of friends of my parents would be go find the bookshelves and get lost in a book while the adults talked. Plus, the kind of books they had told me a bit of what kind of people they were.

I was also thinking about the fact that, with physical books, they remain after the original owner died, and are sometimes then discovered by others. I have a copy of The Terhune Omnibus, a second printing from August 1945, with a book plate in the front and my father's name in his 10-year-old scrawl. It means something to me because it was something that he treasured, and finding it amongst his things gave me something emotional that I wouldn't get rummaging through the vast closet that is the Internet.

I love e-books, but legally, when we die, our e-book libraries die with us. You cannot leave an ebook (or a collection of ebooks) to a favorite child or grandchild; your license to an ebook ends when you do. They are not considered property (at least in the US).

With e-books, we gain things, but we lose things as well.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I think people like Franzen also overlook the reality that keeping a large and permanent paper library is still an economic privilege for many people. I live in a city where real estate is very expensive and I will never be able to afford a single-family home unless I get an inheritance or win the lottery. They just posted a story in the paper about a two-bedroom home that was badly in need of renovations and was right beside a train track, and even that fixed upper was half a million dollars! So where does Franzen expect I am going to store all this permanent paper in my cramped inner-city apartment? Ebooks have opened up the concept of 'owning a library' to people like me who would otherwise be borrowing the books they read from the public one.

It is fine to say he does not prefer them, but to imply that those who read ebooks are less 'serious' readers is downright offensive.

I agree. I have simply run out of space in my apartment to store any more paper books. I'm talking boxes of books stacked in front of filled bookcases, boxes of books in closets, stacks of books on the coffee table, etc. I keep my books and I re-read them. It's not that I don't want to buy paper books; I just don't have any place to put them anymore.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

I love e-books, but legally, when we die, our e-book libraries die with us. You cannot leave an ebook (or a collection of ebooks) to a favorite child or grandchild; your license to an ebook ends when you do. They are not considered property (at least in the US).

But really, legal or not, is that likely to happen?

Whoever in my family who wants them is going to get my ebooks, my videos, my movies, my music, my audiobooks and my games - same as with any of my physical possessions. I bought them and they are mine to do with as I please, as far as I'm concerned.

[The Terminator]

But his books are available in Ebook..........

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I completely agree. When I look at an e-book file, I don't know what some overzealous person might have changed. E.g., when I download a book from the MR library, I can't tell what grammar, punctuation, or spelling might have changed. I can't tell if the uploader might have used a euphemism for an objectionable word. I have no reference point unless there is a printed copy of the book to refer to. If we reach a point when there is no printed copy, where are we? The digital file can be constantly in flux.

This bother me also. I read The Three Musketeers as an MR ebook and it was annoying not knowing which edition you read or if you read a combination of editions. Or if it was changed in any other way.

And one reason that is important for me is that I talk about the books I read with friends and other people and then it is often important to know which edition people have read. And paper books actually have editions that changes when the text changes. That does not happen with ebooks automatically.

[JDK1962]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

But really, legal or not, is that likely to happen?

Whoever in my family who wants them is going to get my ebooks, my videos, my movies, my music, my audiobooks and my games - same as with any of my physical possessions. I bought them and they are mine to do with as I please, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Like many here, the first thing I do is strip the DRM and save a backup in my collection. But those of us who do that are probably less than 1% of the ebook-buying public.

What I object to is that, with ebooks, publishers have quietly tried to re-define a book sale into a book licensing, without any commensurate lowering of price, and without any real discussion (outside of their fine print) of what rights vanish with the sale of the physical artifact. But now I'm .

[speakingtohe]

I agree with Xanthe and inheriting an ebook or DVD etc. Should be legal. After all you are still the only owner if the original owner is dead and you should be able to inherit the ereader with it's contents, user accounts etc. If the bill for a book was outstanding, you would as the inheritor be expected to pay it.

A very interesting point.

Helen