Editorial: The “End” of the Book
Don't write off sustained reading yet
Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 6/15/2006
The “text” was books, but the subtext of BookExpo America (BEA) was the future of print on paper. Despite the flood of printed books on display and the strong attendance, including 7,324 book buyers, more than a quarter of whom were librarians, the threats and opportunities of the e-revolution infiltrated both casual conversation and formal panels. Much of this dialog focused on the fate of fiction, particularly the novel, in this brave new digital age.
At the “Hot Picks” panel at LJ's Day of Dialog, Morrow's Marjorie Braman, Knopf's Gary Fisketjon, and other editors lamented the decline in book review pages in newspapers nationwide and, notably, the fall off in fiction reviews in the New York Times Book Review. Braman said she plays a little game with herself each weekend, counting the number of fiction reviews in the Times. While newspapers have never devoted many pages to books, the decline in newspaper sales and the shift in advertising dollars from print to the web have resulted in continued cuts to book pages in newspapers.
On that panel and elsewhere, attendees buzzed about Kevin Kelly's New York Times Magazine article “Scan This Book”, which ran the Sunday before BEA. The article celebrates a future in which digitized books “can be unraveled into single pages or...snippets of a page [that can] be remixed into reordered books.... Indeed, some authors will begin to write books to be read as snippets or to be remixed as pages....” (For an equally radical take, see Andrew Albanese's interview with Ben Vershbow, “The Social Life of Books,” LJ 5/15/06.)
The image so horrified John Updike, speaking at a BEA book and author breakfast, that he ditched a speech about his just-released novel, Terrorist. Instead, he read and responded to parts of Kelly's article, calling it “a pretty grisly scenario” and the “end” of “the book revolution, which...taught men and women to cherish and cultivate their individuality....”
The end of the book as we know it is a pretty grisly concept for more people than Updike. Librarians at BEA like Chandra Sutter, Vicksburg District Library, South Haven, MI, worry about young people not reading books. Incoming American Library Association president Leslie Burger devoted much of her BEA program (“Your Library on Steroids”) to the centrality of books and reading to librarians' work. “Librarians are all about books, all the time, like authors and publishers,” she said. “If people come to the library to play games and check email, we have an opportunity” to “reestablish books and reading.” The National Endowment for the Arts' Dana Gioia was on hand to explain the mechanics of “The Big Read,” in which libraries and booksellers play an integral role.
Others, like Terry Beck, Sno-Isle Regional Library System, Marysville, WA, were optimistic, too. Beck said she sees “more young people, teenagers (and old people)” taking out new fiction and classics since the library began putting trade paperbacks on carts near the front door. “I've been hearing and hearing that fiction is dying,” said Beck. “That is not our experience. We're seeing an incredible upswing—and we serve a lot of communities with people without college degrees.”
For all those who envisioned an “end,” others saw potential. HarperPerennial editor Carrie Kania remarked that she receives a lot of book submissions from bloggers—the very people who often slam traditional media. Jack Canfield (“Chicken Soup for the Soul”) discussed with LJ the power of viral marketing to promote books via online tools. “So many people are cocooning, like kids on 'My Space,'” he said, that “libraries should create a 'My Space' for books and for book clubs.” He believes his forthcoming project, You've Got To Read This Book: 55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life (with Gay Hendricks, Collins, Aug.), provides such an opportunity. “People can send in their own stories” to the library and “meet other people for book clubs.” In its promotion, Collins is putting together a kit to launch reading groups, with You've Got To Read This Book as the starting point for selection.
The “end” of the book for fiction and other sustained reading? Not for a long time, especially if librarians like Beck and Burger continue to reinvigorate the library. There are vast changes in how we communicate and connect, but, one hopes, they'll enrich the future of books, not contribute to their demise.
