Oct 3, 2011

Pages and Downloads



While a lolita blog, I feature books rather heavily here. Books have been my passion long before I found this fashion and, while I don’t wish to think about that dark day, will remain one of my true loves long after the desire to wear my frills has cooled and faded. Books have saved me in the darkest places of my life. Words have reached out with whatever message I had no idea I needed and left me with enough light to make it through. I hold these pages close to my heart will always do so.

But the world of literature is changing around my little bubble of bookish adoration. People are setting down pages in favor of electronic reading material.  With Amazon’s recent announcement of an ereader priced at under $100 and ebook sales having surpassed those of their physical predecessors, the age of real pages seems to be drawing to a close.

No, I’m not living in fear of library closures and a complete halt of all book making. I feel there will always be a place for the real thing, even if only as collectors items and lending items for public libraries. At least, this is the future I see for hardcovers. Paperbacks, I think, will slowly become a thing of the past and fade into a happy nostalgia. Or perhaps there will be a brilliant marketer that realizes how much including digital copies with physical media has helped DVD sales and manage to push the medium along a little bit longer.

Whatever the case, lovers of paper and ink books are facing a hard transition ahead as the world marches past them into progress. While I’ve yet to move forward with them and will be ever so slightly heartbroken on the day that I’m dragged on with the rest of the stragglers - I’m more than a little curious for the possibilities the new world will bring with it. Stories released by episode the same way we view television has already made a timid appearance. One wonders what might be next. New chances for self publishing? Open communication with admired writers, event notifications, and fan bases embedded into the work in question? Electronic reinventions of the book club in reading real time?

While I’m not yet ready to make the switch, I’m secretly a little eager to know where this will go.

2 comments:

  1. You seem a little more optimistic than me. Though I love control+f and search functions that ebooks offer for school, I still prefer holding the real thing in my hands when it's for my own enjoyment. I feel like my eyes get tired much quicker after staring at a screen all day. And books never run out of batteries. xD

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  2. The best thing to me is that once publishers get over their initial fear of new technology, books no longer have to be unavailable. Think about it: a world in which even the most obscure book can be ordered and delivered at any time, day or night. A world in which the popularity of a book and its expected sales no longer come to bear on its availability. The idea of something being 'out of print' will be a thing of the past.

    Over a quarter of a million Kindle Fire tablets have been pre-ordered in under a week. The new $79 Kindle is selling like mad. Ebooks are coming down in price as publishers acclimatize to the new terrain.

    The book is dead; long live the book.

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