Editorial: Beyond the Kindle
Ebooks and downloadable delivery are just more library services
Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 7/15/2008
I’m an inveterate sneak reader, craning my neck to decipher the fine print in a book the person sitting next to me is reading, or glancing at the title of a book upside down on the subway. So, when I found myself reading over the shoulder of a woman while waiting in line at the airport recently, it wasn’t unusual—until I realized her “book” was a Kindle.
This occurred as I was heading from New York to Los Angeles for BookExpo America (BEA), May 29–June 1, the publishing industry’s annual bookfest. Indeed, it underscored the very real shift in reading/listening habits that BookExpo itself reinforced, a shift that goes far beyond the tiny beachhead of ebook sales. It’s that publishers are actively putting their titles into myriad formats and piloting all kinds of media and delivery options. At LJ’s Day of Dialog at BEA (see p. 14ff.), for instance, OverDrive’s Steve Potash and HarperMedia’s Ana Maria Allessi, talking about downloadable books and audiobooks, agreed that cell phones, or smartphones, would become “ubiquitous” for e-reading and e-audio.
Eight years ago, upon returning from BEA, LJ reported that the “big book” at the show was the ebook. The dot-com implosion ended that. Still, the steady experimentation that ensued is finally showing signs of taking hold. On the scholarly side, the launch of mass digitization projects (the demise of Microsoft’s venture notwithstanding, see News, p. 16) and ebook platforms and databases to deliver monographs and reference books means that books have moved online, following academic journals.
The consumer side has shifted more slowly, but many publishers at BEA this year believe that trade publishing has reached the tipping point, too. It wasn’t just because Amazon’s Jeff Bezos crowed about ebook and Kindle sales and downloaded the e-version of Scott McClellan’s What Happened: Inside the Bush White House... during his keynote. In fact, when it came to McClellan’s book, print-on-demand (POD) was just as visible: Ingram’s POD house Lightning Source took up the slack over BEA weekend, printing books overnight when McClellan’s publisher, PublicAffairs, ran out. The confluence of these digital formats, whether print, audio, or video, creates the potential for transition, while the high cost of paper and fuel and the slow growth of publishing ensure that it will come sooner rather than later.
We still have a long way to go, of course, to learn the directions print (and other media) will take and the impact on reading and writing such formats will have. Surprisingly, I found myself more enthusiastic about reading an ebook on the Kindle or similar device than one young novelist at BEA who cut her teeth writing about ebooks and hypertext at Wired and Salon. Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (Spiegel & Grau: Doubleday), a Silicon Valley story, says that reading online is “less about pleasure, more about getting information. I don’t linger when I read online.” Other than its “incredible portability,” says Brown, “what does the new format do that’s better than the old format—books?” She acknowledges that today’s children may adapt more quickly to reading on a “teeny, tiny screen,” saying, “If we can get the Kindle interface into the iPhone, kids will like it.” Nevertheless, she thinks they’ll continue to read hardbound books.
Meanwhile, Brown’s book, which came out May 27, is selling well in both hardcover and e-formats. She compares the changing publishing models to those in the film industry, noting that movie ticket sales may be down, “but many more people view [movies] on computer, TV, iPhones.” She expects the same with books: “There are a million ways to tell a story...lots of new media. They’re adding things, not subtracting,”
Her final comment could apply to libraries as well. They’re always “adding”: services, formats, and ways to acquire, provide access to, and deliver “stories.” Librarians have jumped on the ebook and downloadable bandwagon as vigorously as they have DVDs and CDs. They’ve adapted social networking tools to their library catalogs, e.g., enabling patron reviews and LibraryThing tags (à la King County Library System, WA). Some may view these changes with trepidation. I don’t. Librarians always have been early adopters. Ebooks and downloadable delivery are just more library services.
