Tolkien on the Kindle

[Mithalwen]

I heard a feature on the radio yesterday though that was saying how now the print on demand technology has improved and all books exist digitally books you should always be able to get a hard copy. Apparently Blackwell's in Oxford has a machine which will deliver the book of your choice in under five minutes. On the whole I think more things are going to be more available. But since I shall be spending most of tomorrow morning sitting on the beach, quite possibly in the rain (there is a reason for this I am not merely mascochistically English) I shank risk the new toy and take a "realbook"

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I heard a feature on the radio yesterday though that was saying how now the print on demand technology has improved and all books exist digitally books you should always be able to get a hard copy.

Yes, print-on-demand was what I had in mind when I added the "by far the most convenient" caveat. It'll be interesting to see how the technology develops there. All too often POD books are characterized by low production values, and are more expensive and less easy to acquire than an ebook.

Originally Posted by JRR Tolkien

Long ago Chesterton truly remarked that, as soon as he heard that anything “had come to stay,” he knew that it would be very soon replaced—indeed regarded as pitiably obsolete and shabby .

Heh -- you mean like paper books? Brick-and-mortar bookstores? Vinyl, cassettes, CDs? Anyway, I didn't say that ebooks were here to stay, only that they appear to be the next thing. No doubt the written word itself will someday become obsolete after we all upload and transcend biology (). In the meantime, mass market paperbacks are already on their way out.

I take no delight at all in watching the paper book become an endangered animal. On the contrary, my house is partially furnished with them, and I've lugged many hundreds of pounds worth around with me wherever I go ever since I moved out of my parents' house to attend college lo these many years ago. I still buy paper books. I still hunger for some of the beautiful rare editions that I can't quite justify financially.

But the writing is on the wall, and I prefer to embrace the upsides of ebooks (democratization of content, more money per sale into the pocket of the author in many cases, convenience, searchable, etc.).

Bêthberry, my dear -- you already can highlight and annotate electronic editions. Although, as with others here, I never scribble in my books and I've never felt compelled to try out the feature on the Kindle.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Bêthberry, my dear -- you already can highlight and annotate electronic editions. Although, as with others here, I never scribble in my books and I've never felt compelled to try out the feature on the Kindle.

I have very good company for my pecadillos, Mister U, as Coleridge not only marked up Lamb's early folio of Shakespeare with his comments about the Bard but had the unspeakably bad manners to spill jam on it. So apparently the folio has now doubled in value. (not *cough* that any of my scribblings will be that memorable.)

I can certainly see the value of travelling with a Kindle, as one would have a variety of books at one's disposal all for one weight. And they will of course save trees. I'm just not at the stage yet of curling up with a good Kindle.

[Mister Underhill]

I don't judge. I've spilled many a condiment, not to mention various beverages, crumbs, and smears of dessert, amongst the timeless words of literature's greatest lights, so far be it from me.

Still, if you're the scribbling, highlighting type, I think there is the option to connect your marginalia socially. This may end up being the thing that puts the stake through the heart of the paperback. Not every author spawns fora dedicated to his or her work like our dear professor; the ability to connect socially with other aficionados is something that a paper book can't provide.

[Bêthberry]

That's an interesting possibility, the connection with social media. However, my marginalia is meant just for me, something I use if I want to develope my ideas further, for others.

I saw an advert in a magazine today, on the future of magazines in a digital world. the punch line was:

"Instant coffee hasn't eliminated true brew coffee."

[Mister Underhill]

I will continue to buy paper books for as long as they continue to print them. I couldn't resist picking up a nice 40th anniversary copy of Dune yesterday. There's one I haven't read since junior high.

And as you know I'm not personally big on the social media, but supposedly facebook.com accounts for one out of every four page views in the U.S. these days. We're collectively quite fascinated with what we're all up to, apparently. Besides connecting with other readers, I also just saw this -- you can ask questions of some authors directly from your Kindle. Now, this rogues gallery of beta authors isn't exactly the Algonquin Round Table, but you can see where this is trending. Readers connecting with other readers and with authors while they're in the act of reading.

I don't know. I have a bit of split personality on these things -- the Tolkien in me longs for simpler times. The Star Trek fan in me is jazzed to have tricorder tech available (still waiting impatiently for a breakthrough on the transporter, though). Part of me is glad just to see that enough people are still interested in reading at all to make e-readers a viable product.

[Alfirin]

One other advantage of the e-book is that it should allow for far more rapid updating and correction of material. Any errors of text that slip by before release can be quickly corrected, and those correction can automatically be sent to anyone who bought the book, rather than having to buy another copy. Or if the author decides the book for some reason needs another chapter or a addional essay in the appendix, it can go to everyone, rather than those who have the money to buy the book a second time (it will also end having to continually buy addional editions of the same book (unless you want to) just becuse it has one more three page foreward added. This, I feel, will be particularly important in the case of reference material and scientific literature. As it stands now, a lot of, scientific material (in particualr I'm thinking of things like identification and field guides) tend to suffer from a triple whammy. They tend (if comprehensive) to be far too large and unwieldy to actually be taken into the field, the very limited market tends to result in them being absurdly expensive, and the continual accumulation of new knowledge means that they tend to go obsolete very. very quickly (often, from a funtional point of view, almost before they can be published).
That being said, these very advantages could in my opinion, create their own sort of problems. The ease with which errors can be corrected may result in less care being taken not to make errors in the first place. The ability to update all of the copies of a book simutaneously may result in the loss of a trail of a books evolution (imagine, for example, if the changes JRRT made to the hobbit automatically erased all previos versions of those sections, so the "corrected" text was the only one we ever saw.) As someone who also has a fondness for the Illustrated book, I also worry that the proliferation of the e-book, which can be transmitted easily, may result in a "lock" between a books text and illustrations that is far tighter than we are used to. Part of the reason we have so many different wonderfult artistic concepts of many books (especially when considered in a world wide aspect) is the variable skills of printing all over the world and the fact that, as it stands now the text of a book and the illustrations of a book are often under seperate copyright. If sending a book to another country becomes simply a matter of running it through a good translator program, I can easily see a situation where it becomes the norm for a book and it's pictures to "become one", and legal deviation to become far, far rarer.