Link here.
I'm probably being predictable here, but this bothers me. Not, I believe, because he is destroying objects that I consider next to sacred ... that's sticky ground that I won't tread because of my belief that in America we are free to burn any symbols we choose. It's more his motivation that disturbs me:
His stated protest is against "society's diminishing support for the printed word."
"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today."
Listen, I've been working with book people for a really long time. I know book people to be incredibly passionate and emotionally involved with books, but this man's decision to destroy what he loves is misguided and represent more of an unwillingness to adapt to change than anything else.
I remember around 1998 when the mp3 codec hit ... the music industry seemed a little concerned, a few tried to do something to preserve their livelihood, but all in all the preparedness of that industry was pretty weak. Now, in 2007, downloads have a huge market share and CD sales are way, way down. There's no question that as download speeds increase, movies will be next. It's already happening with audiobooks - audible.com offers cheaps downloads of audiobooks in a proprietary (though admittedly inconvenient) format similar to mp3.
Are book sales down for the same reason? Not really, but it's coming. As far as data size, books are much smaller than songs, so the technology can handle it. It really comes down to portability - The Sony Reader is the first step in that direction. It's there, folks, right over the horizon, and though this guy's sales are down for a huge variety of reasons besides electronic book downloading I think that if he can't keep up now, he won't be able to keep up later.
There's another piece to this, as well, as it relates to the internet and the price wars with the non-brick-and-mortar Amazon. I have discussions with people all the time about their prices. Sure, price is great, but I haven't spoken to anyone who has had a satisfactory time resolving an issue with Amazon. Obviously, their reduced profits due to price chopping go somewhere other than service and training.
I think it's his statement about the death of thought ... it annoys me because he admitted that part of his difficulty is that people are "getting more of their information from the television or internet." It's a shortsighted and misguided statement - people never went to used bookstores for information. They went (and go) for books - the softer feel and nice smell of an older book. Especially in the case of reference titles like language and travel books, more and more of this information is going online, as it should. People will eventually be downloading this stuff into a PDA -like device and just taking it with them.
I love books. But my love is changing, evolving - in the last year or so, due to a very long commute to work, most of my reading is done via audiobooks. The most important thing about a book are the words in them, and what they mean when they're strung together. Everything else is just packaging - beautiful packaging, in my opinion, but not incredibly efficient or environmentally sound. People are still thinking, people are still absorbing ideas, they're just doing it less via a stack of thinly-sliced wood.
Thought isn't dead - the old ways of packaging thought are, or will be. Books may outlast their counterparts in music and film because of our affection for the package. The fact that we mistake ideas for the packages they come in is very indicative of our marketing-driven culture (where the package itself is more important than the idea - thanks to Marhsall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage we are cognizant of this) but is a dangerous and foolish road.
A package is a box, right? If a package is a box, an idea can be an object, right? So this guy sells boxes full of objects. People still want the object, but not the box. Instead of adapting to a new paradigm, this guy is destroying both. It seems selfish and small-minded.
I guess we all would be if we thought the most important part of our birthday presents were the boxes they came in, or the most important aspect of people were the clothes they wore. I guess if I was really adept at choosing boxes and wrapping paper for people, I'd be upset as well if people just starting giving conversation to others on their birthdays.
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Comments: 9
I disagree with him also because if he was just planning to burn all those books anyway he had no business charging people for the ones that they wanted to rescue.
Linda - I love books. I have thousands. I'm definitely lamenting the possible decline, but I'll be ready when it happens. The thing that gets me about this guy is that if could be equally ready, he could make an absolute killing. Down the road, books may be a rare commodity, and someone with a warehouse full of them could become very rich.
If books go, they'll definitely go the way of the LP, not the cassette.
If big profits are being turned, it's because of expense cutting, not increasing sales. Sales across the market are flat. Brick & mortar stores are maintaining or losing market share, and internet share is increasing.
We're at the very gestational phases of a transition into an digital culture for books. My problem with this guy is that book sales are down because people are uneasy, and books are luxury items. He's pointing the finger at digital about 10 years too early.
You bring me a ray of hope. Maybe if I keep it for long enough, it will be a collector's item and I can sell it for lots of money and make a big donation to the ACLU.
If you've been collecting them for a long time, seriously, hang on to them, write them into your will, donate them to keep them in circulation, whatever. It may not be soon, but I guarantee an actual for-real paper book will be a much rarer thing eventually.
In the past books have been the only media people could use to express thought (well, music and art work, too, I guess) so that thought fed into "the system" have been limited to the relatively few people who could get published. Today, with the Internet, anyone can post their ideas to gather.com, and other places. This is even more input.
This is analogous to the time when Gutenberg invented the printing press. Prior to that time, few people had books, so most people had to rely on whatever their priest said as the truth. (It is not a mistake that the first book printed was the Bible.)
The increase in distribution of knowledge was immense. The modern world as we know it was the result.
I suspect that in the long run Internet will be the same thing. If this results in the demise of the printed book, then so be it, just as Gutenberg's invention resulted in the demise of the hand-copied book.