E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (summer reading list txt) 📖

>Distributor Baker & Taylor have unveiled at the recent ALA a

prototype e-book distribution system jointly developed by

ibooks and Digital Owl. It will be sold to libraries by B&T’s

Informata division and Reciprocal.

 

The annual subscription for use of the digital library

comprises “a catalog of digital content, brandable pages and

web based tools for each participating library to customize

for their patrons. Patrons of participating libraries will

then be able to browse digital content online, or download and

check out the content they are most interested in. Content may

be checked out for an extended period of time set by each

library, including checking out eBooks from home.” Still, it

seems that B&T’s approach is heavily influenced by software

licencing (“one copy one use”).

 

But, there is an underlying, fundamental incompatibility

between the Internet and the library. They are competitors.

One vitiates the other. Free Internet access and e-book

reading devices in libraries notwithstanding - the Internet,

unless harnessed and integrated by libraries, threatens their

very existence by depriving them of patrons. Libraries, in

turn, threaten the budding software industry we, misleadingly,

call “e-publishing”.

There are major operational and philosophical differences

between physical and virtual libraries. The former are based

on the tried and proven technology of print. The latter on the

chaos we know as cyberspace and on user-averse technologies

developed by geeks and nerds, rather than by marketers, users,

and librarians.

Physical libraries enjoy great advantages, not the least being

their habit-forming head start (2,500 years of first mover

advantage). Libraries are hubs of social interaction and

entertainment (the way cinemas used to be). Libraries have

catered to users’ reference needs in reference centres for

centuries (and, lately, through Selective Dissemination of

Information, or SDI). The war is by no means decided.

“Progress” may yet consist of the assimilation of hi-tech

gadgets by lo-tech libraries. It may turn out to be

convergence at its best, as librarians become computer savvy -

and computer types create knowledge and disseminate it.

 

A Brief History of the Book

 

By: Sam Vaknin

“The free communication of thought and opinion is one of the

most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore

speak, write and print freely.”

(French National Assembly, 1789)

I. What is a Book?

UNESCO’s arbitrary and ungrounded definition of “book” is:

““Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages

excluding covers”.

But a book, above all else, is a medium. It encapsulates

information (of one kind or another) and conveys it across

time and space. Moreover, as opposed to common opinion, it is

- and has always been - a rigidly formal affair. Even the

latest “innovations” are nothing but ancient wine in sparkling

new bottles.

Consider the scrolling protocol. Our eyes and brains are

limited readers-decoders. There is only that much that the eye

can encompass and the brain interpret. Hence the need to

segment data into cognitively digestible chunks. There are two

forms of scrolling - lateral and vertical. The papyrus, the

broadsheet newspaper, and the computer screen are three

examples of the vertical scroll - from top to bottom or vice

versa. The e-book, the microfilm, the vellum, and the print

book are instances of the lateral scroll - from left to right

(or from right to left, in the Semitic languages).

In many respects, audio books are much more revolutionary than

e-books. They do not employ visual symbols (all other types of

books do), or a straightforward scrolling method. E-books, on

the other hand, are a throwback to the days of the papyrus.

The text cannot be opened at any point in a series of

connected pages and the content is carried only on one side of

the (electronic) “leaf”. Parchment, by comparison, was multi-paged, easily browseable, and printed on both sides of the

leaf. It led to a revolution in publishing and to the print

book. All these advances are now being reversed by the e-book.

Luckily, the e-book retains one innovation of the parchment -

the hypertext. Early Jewish and Christian texts (as well as

Roman legal scholarship) was written on parchment (and later

printed) and included numerous inter-textual links. The

Talmud, for example, is made of a main text (the Mishna) which

hyperlinks on the same page to numerous interpretations

(exegesis) offered by scholars throughout generations of

Jewish learning.

Another distinguishing feature of books is portability (or

mobility). Books on papyrus, vellum, paper, or PDA - are all

transportable. In other words, the replication of the book’s

message is achieved by passing it along and no loss is

incurred thereby (i.e., there is no physical metamorphosis of

the message).

 

The book is like a perpetuum mobile. It spreads its content

virally by being circulated and is not diminished or altered

by it. Physically, it is eroded, of course - but it can be

copied faithfully. It is permanent.

Not so the e-book or the CD-ROM. Both are dependent on devices

(readers or drives, respectively). Both are technology-specific and format-specific. Changes in technology - both in

hardware and in software - are liable to render many e-books

unreadable. And portability is hampered by battery life,

lighting conditions, or the availability of appropriate

infrastructure (e.g., of electricity).

II. The Constant Content Revolution

Every generation applies the same age-old principles to new

“content-containers”. Every such transmutation yields a great

surge in the creation of content and its dissemination. The

incunabula (the first printed books) made knowledge accessible

(sometimes in the vernacular) to scholars and laymen alike and

liberated books from the scriptoria and “libraries” of

monasteries. The printing press technology shattered the

content monopoly. In 50 years (1450-1500), the number of books

in Europe surged from a few thousand to more than 9 million!

And, as McLuhan has noted, it shifted the emphasis from the

oral mode of content distribution (i.e., “communication”) to

the visual mode.

E-books are threatening to do the same. “Book ATMs” will

provide Print on Demand (POD) services to faraway places.

People in remote corners of the earth will be able to select

from publishing backlists and front lists comprising millions

of titles. Millions of authors are now able to realize their

dream to have their work published cheaply and without

editorial barriers to entry. The e-book is the Internet’s

prodigal son. The latter is the ideal distribution channel of

the former. The monopoly of the big publishing houses on

everything written - from romance to scholarly journals - is a

thing of the past. In a way, it is ironic. Publishing, in its

earliest forms, was a revolt against the writing (letters)

monopoly of the priestly classes. It flourished in non-theocratic societies such as Rome, or China - and languished

where religion reigned (such as in Sumeria, Egypt, the Islamic

world, and Medieval Europe).

With e-books, content will once more become a collaborative

effort, as it has been well into the Middle Ages. Authors and

audience used to interact (remember Socrates) to generate

knowledge, information, and narratives. Interactive e-books,

multimedia, discussion lists, and collective authorship

efforts restore this great tradition. Moreover, as in the not

so distant past, authors are yet again the publishers and

sellers of their work. The distinctions between these

functions is very recent. E-books and POD partially help to

restore the pre-modern state of affairs. Up until the 20th

century, some books first appeared as a series of pamphlets

(often published in daily papers or magazines) or were sold by

subscription. Serialized e-books resort to these erstwhile

marketing ploys. E-books may also help restore the balance

between best-sellers and midlist authors and between fiction

and textbooks. E-books are best suited to cater to niche

markets, hitherto neglected by all major publishers.

 

III. Literature for the Millions

E-books are the quintessential “literature for the millions”.

They are cheaper than even paperbacks. John Bell (competing

with Dr. Johnson) published “The Poets of Great Britain” in

1777-83. Each of the 109 volumes cost six shillings (compared

to the usual guinea or more). The Railway Library of novels

(1,300 volumes) costs 1 shilling apiece only eight decades

later. The price continued to dive throughout the next century

and a half. E-books and POD are likely to do unto paperbacks

what these reprints did to originals. Some reprint libraries

specialized in public domain works, very much like the bulk of

e-book offering nowadays.

The plunge in book prices, the lowering of barriers to entry

due to new technologies and plentiful credit, the

proliferation of publishers, and the cutthroat competition

among booksellers was such that price regulation (cartel) had

to be introduced. Net publisher prices, trade discounts, list

prices were all anticompetitive inventions of the 19th

century, mainly in Europe. They were accompanied by the rise

of trade associations, publishers organizations, literary

agents, author contracts, royalties agreements, mass

marketing, and standardized copyrights.

The sale of print books over the Internet can be

conceptualized as the continuation of mail order catalogues by

virtual means. But e-books are different. They are detrimental

to all these cosy arrangements. Legally, an e-book may not be

considered to constitute a “book” at all. Existing contracts

between authors and publishers may not cover e-books. The

serious price competition they offer to more traditional forms

of publishing may end up pushing the whole industry to re-define itself. Rights may have to be re-assigned, revenues re-distributed, contractual relationships re-thought. Moreover,

e-books have hitherto been to print books what paperbacks are

to hardcovers - re-formatted renditions. But more and more

authors are publishing their books primarily or exclusively as

e-books. E-books thus threaten hardcovers and paperbacks

alike. They are not merely a new format. They are a new mode

of publishing.

Every technological innovation was bitterly resisted by

Luddite printers and publishers: stereotyping, the iron press,

the application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and

typesetting, new methods of reproducing illustrations, cloth

bindings, machine-made paper, ready-bound books, paperbacks,

book clubs, and book tokens. Without exception, they relented

and adopted the new technologies to their considerable

commercial advantage. It is no surprise, therefore, that

publishers were hesitant to adopt the Internet, POD, and e-publishing technologies. The surprise lies in the relative

haste with which they came to adopt it, egged on by authors

and booksellers.

IV. Intellectual Pirates and Intellectual Property

Despite the technological breakthroughs that coalesced to form

the modern printing press - printed books in the 17th and 18th

centuries were derided by their contemporaries as inferior to

their laboriously hand-made antecedents and to the incunabula.

One is reminded of the current complaints about the new media

(Internet, e-books), its shoddy workmanship, shabby

appearance, and the rampant piracy.

 

The first decades following the invention of the printing

press, were, as the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it “a

restless, highly competitive free for all … (with) enormous

vitality and variety (often leading to) careless work”.

There were egregious acts of piracy - for instance, the

illicit copying of the Aldine Latin “pocket books”, or the

all-pervasive piracy in England in the 17th century (a direct

result of over-regulation and coercive copyright monopolies).

Shakespeare’s work was published by notorious pirates and

infringers of emerging intellectual property rights. Later,

the American colonies became the world’s centre of

industrialized and systematic book piracy. Confronted with

abundant and cheap pirated foreign books, local authors

resorted to freelancing in magazines and lecture tours in a

vain effort to make ends meet.

Pirates and unlicenced - and, therefore, subversive -

publishers were prosecuted under a variety of monopoly and

libel laws (and, later, under national security and obscenity

laws). There was little or no difference between royal and

“democratic” governments. They all acted ruthlessly to

preserve their control of publishing. John Milton wrote his

passionate plea against censorship, Areopagitica, in response

to the 1643 licencing ordinance passed by Parliament. The

revolutionary Copyright Act of 1709 in England established the

rights of authors and publishers to reap the commercial fruits

of their endeavours exclusively, though only for a prescribed

period of time.

V. As Readership Expanded

The battle between industrial-commercial publishers