e-books

Say No to E-Books: Matt’s Rebuttal

A debate has been raging at Writer’s Bone HQ for most of the day. Before you read about Matt tearing Dave a new one, check out his original post, as well as Dave’s original response and his rebuttal, and today’s installment of The Boneyard. 

Throughout the history of mankind, there has been an evolution in the world of writing and reading. In ancient Egypt, people used hieroglyphs. When people decided that it took absolutely forever to draw those intricate shapes and caricatures on the walls, they started writing things down on papyrus. Then, the printing press was born, and so on and so forth.

As time and technology moves forward, so does the way of the written word. But why? For simplicity’s sake. If not, we would all still be chiseling shit on walls and driving television producers for HGTV nuts (Can you imagine “Love It or List It?” viewers fighting among themselves as to which interior design was better based on the stories written on the walls?).

Does simple mean the best method to do something? Absolutely not. Look at Twitter. Twitter is a news editor’s dream come true. But when used mainly for personal use (Basically anyone under the age of 18 or a celebrity), it’s the most obnoxious form of media available. It’s mainly 140 characters that no one will ever, ever need in their lifetimes.

E-books make reading more readily available for those who want it, simply. Gone are the days of waiting three to five business days because the book that you were trying to buy at Borders (RIP) is sold out or no longer in stock. A click of the button allows you to have that book almost immediately, without any hassle.

Amazon saw an opportunity to adapt to a changing medium with a proper business model that would ultimately lead to success. Nowhere does Amazon dictate how much a writer should be paid based on their writing. If anything, getting rid of production costs and focusing your book to be online only can only help your profit margin, don’t you think? Besides, the difference between paid content and free content is a completely different animal. It’s like comparing lions and caterpillars. Or, some other weird set of animals that have nothing else in common.

And the idea that reading a paperback book at a library or book store makes you a better person is wrong in more ways than not. Reading a paperback book isn’t going to make you talk to the cute girl that sits next to you on the bus. If anything, you’re going to be ignored no matter what you’re holding because she’s a bit busy looking on her iPhone anyways.

Some books need to be in print. The classics clearly cannot be fully enjoyed on a tablet, and that’s not even negotiable. But to think that there is no place for e-readers at all because they make us seem like a self-absorbed douche is asinine.

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Say Yes to E-Books: Dave’s Rebuttal

A debate has been raging at Writer’s Bone HQ for most of the day. Before you read Dave’s evisceration of Matt, check out his original post, as well as Matt’s original response, and today’s installment of The Boneyard. Be sure to also read Matt’s rebuttal. 

The advent of the Internet has changed a great many things. Many people no longer go to busy and infuriating malls and retails stores. You can watch almost any movie or television shows right on your tiny little handheld screen. You don't have to get the messy ink of a newspaper on your fingers, and the newspaper refreshes every hour bring you new, pertinent, and factual updates.

Right? Maybe. Or maybe the Internet has just made things easier, not better. Maybe digital content is just simpler, not more progressive. Change doesn't mean progress, it never has. The Internet is here to stay, clearly. But it doesn't mean we need to switch everything over to digital; in fact, that's probably the most damaging thing we can do. In my upcoming post, I'll break down one of the very many reasons why converting our whole lives to the digital world is killing some aspects of our culture: vinyl. Don't roll your eyes, because vinyl is coming back and coming back huge. Why? More on that to come.

Most people spend a large amount of time on the Internet, reading and watching. What are they reading and watching? If you commute to work, the next time you board your bus or train or subway, look at how many people are "plugged" in. Examine them for a second. Examine the guy on his 20th (!) session of “Temple Run.” Eavesdrop on how many people one person is texting and emailing and "communicating" with at one time. Reading teaches you how to be alone, but at least you know you're alone, you're not tricking yourself into thinking your not just looking at a phone.

E-books didn’t kill print, greed killed print. Do you honestly think Amazon gives two shits about the spread of human written word? Or did they just dump all their money into something new and cheap? And the Kindle was born. How does all this bode for writers?!

Not well. Like everything else on the Internet, it's all quantity over quality. Let's pump out eight stories in five hours with partial information rather than waiting five hours to get the facts right and publish something coherent. What's talent when you have 100 amateurs who are willing to be paid nothing to do the job one professional writer could do? Don't be sold something you don't need. Don't acquiesce because it's easier. Convenience has never been the right answer, for anything. Ever. Seriously, look it up on Wikipedia...

Maybe dragging yourself to the mall is a good thing. Maybe it teaches you how to tolerate people who don't share your beliefs or manners. Maybe that's how you spend time with a friend or parent. Maybe the girl sitting next to you sees the book cover of your book and, dare I say, a conversations starts. What if that downtime you spend on your phone or tablet lets you think more about the outside world, about the women with a cane who could use a seat more than you, and about the girl crying on the phone in the seat behind you would might have a much better day if you just offered her the tissue in your backpack instead of continuing to "deny" pictures of girls on Tinder. Literature has always been about holding a mirror to the world. But it's hard to be critical when you convince yourself the reflection looks so damn good.

The "if you can't beat them, join them," mentality has always been a defeatist one, and always will be.

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Say Yes to E-Books: Don’t Hate the Screen, Hate the Publishers!

Earlier, Dave Pezza expressed his impassioned beliefs on why e-books are lame. Here’s Matt DiVenere’s response. Also check out today's installment of The Boneyard for more debate.  

Let me preface this entire rant by saying I was a print journalist. I actually went to school for print journalism despite the entire world telling me that I was an idiot to get into a field that was going to be extinct before I turned 30. Therefore, what I’m going to say may upset and confuse you.

The whole idea of “hating technology” is the reason that the print industry is in such a shit world at this point. Instead of embracing it, print lovers tried to give technology a big middle finger and hoped that it didn’t come back to bite them. Well, it has.

Let’s take e-books, for example. It’s no shock that people are starting to trend away from reading hard copies of books and instead going right to the electronic form of this media.

In fact, last year was the first year ever that the average adult spent more time online than watching television during a normal day. According to a poll taken by eMarketer.com, adults over the age of 18 years old spent over five hours a day. That’s compared to the four and a half hours spent watching television, as well as the hour and a half spent listening to the radio.

Want to know how much time is spent reading print? Thirty-two minutes.

The amount of time the average adult spends reading print media (newspapers, magazines) has been dropping by six minutes each year since 2010, while time spent in the digital world has increased over two hours in that same time frame.

Still not convinced? Well, eMarketer broke down what it means to be a digital viewer. Smartphone use currently sits at one hour and seven minutes while the use of a tablet averages one hour and three minutes. That’s still nearly double the print viewership.

One can argue that the only reason that people are online more is to play Fruit Ninja, or check out their Instagram accounts. Whatever the case may be, it is very clear that we are in a digital age and anyone who believes otherwise probably waits to hear breaking news stories from little kids holding up newspapers, screaming “Extra, Extra!” on street corners (And if you do, I have so many questions).

There are those who shoot down the idea of e-books just because of what they represent: progress. No more paper cuts, no more old-book smell, and no more weekend visits to the library.

I get it. Reading a paperback book is an experience in itself. However, a good book should be able to transport you into a different world no matter what you read it on. If your book isn’t doing that for you, maybe you need to rethink what you’re reading.

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Say No to E-Books: For God’s Sake, Think of the Bookmarks!

Dave Pezza ignited a Writer’s Bone debate with this rant against the e-book. Be sure to read Matt DiVenere’s argument in favor of e-books after this! 

Okay, I've been putting this off for too long.

E-books. It's time to fuck e-books right up.

Let's first address the elephant in the room: Amazon. Amazon has cornered the e-book business, buying up rights to classics. What worries me about this is a Nazi-era hording of texts by one company. Who knows what can happen to those rights now. Obviously, Amazon isn't burning books—in fact its publishing books in what it would have us believe is a medium more conducive to widespread readership. However, it still makes me shutter like the scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” where Indy dies inside as Germans torch books at a Hitler rally.

I suppose my more logical problem with e-readers and e-books is based in an American cultural plague of convenience. E-books don't add to the reading experience. Digital text on a screen adds no more to the experience that having a physical book in your hand. In fact, it diminishes it. You are unable to annotated or underline text without becoming aggravated with the tiny or nonexistent keyboard.

Bookmarks would be non-existent! If you are a true reader, bookmarks mean the world to you. They do for me. My current bookmark is thin piece of wood that has been smoothed and polished from the Monticello gift shop. "I cannot live without books" has been engraved into the wood! It's not like film, where visual effects have become better and the physical limits of film tape can be corrected by digital means. An e-reader simply simulates a book for the asinine convenience of being able to have a hundred books at your fingertips, which defeats the purpose of reading, in my opinion.

Read Jonathan Franzen's essay "Reader in Exile" from his essay collection How to Be Alone (an interesting book he wrote around the turn of the century that ended up forecasting everything that would occur culturally in the U.S. in the following 10 years). Franzen's thesis is that reading teaches how you how to be alone. It forces you to be comfortable with yourself alone in a room with just a book. I can't see how that is possibly with an e-book, especially with Wi-Fi, hundreds of applications, and all that poppy-cock (so glad I got to use that word).

And the carbon footprint argument is bullshit. Granted, print books should be more readily recycled, and cotton paper needs to drum up a better following, but what is the carbon footprint for making a Kindle? All that plastic, metal, and whatnot? The Kindle is manufactured in China in a factory I'm sure that pumps more pollution into the Chinese air.

I can hear it now: "Yeah, but you only buy one, and that's it." What about the Kindle Fire or whatever those marketing sell-outs call the second, third, and fourth generation Kindle models? What about Apple constantly upgrading its software, causing old models to be unable to operate with all the updated bells and whistles? Is all this worth the extreme convenience of being able to carry 100 books instead of one? All I know is that I can only read one word, in one sentence, in one paragraph, in one chapter, in one book at a time.

But maybe I'm just old fashion.

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