Just testing the e-mail posting option.
25 February 2010
15 February 2010
The End of Print Technology? I think not.
I came across yet another article tolling the death knell for print books and the transcendence of e-books. This one was written by Dan Agin and published by The Huffington Post. While I do not dispute Dr. Agin’s intelligence – he is not only a PhD and a professor emeritus at a distinguished university but also a neuroscientist – I do dispute the logic he used to signal the demise of print publications.
He starts by equating the digital book with the Gutenberg printing press, which allowed books to be reproduced without the laborious work of hand copying them. The thing is, e-book technology does not change the way books are produced. It changes the way they are delivered. The majority of work that goes into producing a book does not involve the printing of it; it involves the writing, editing, and marketing of it. None of that is changed by digital technology. The only thing that is changed is the way the books are consumed by the audience. Before the Gutenberg printing press, the audience did not exist, and therefore the industry that surrounded it did not exist.
Dr. Agin goes on to say
This shows a woeful ignorance of history or deliberate hyperbole. I’ll leave my readers to make their own judgment on which it is. Because anyone who knows even a fraction of history knows the automobile did not emerge onto the scene overnight and its early incarnations employed the self-same blacksmiths and carriage makers who serviced the equine industry. The very first self-powered vehicle was built in 1769 for the French military. The next innovation did not happen until 1801 was one of the first pieces of machinery to be termed a horseless carriage because that was exactly what it was. A carriage without horses. The first practical automobile did not appear until 1886, overly 100 years after the first self-powered vehicle was used in France. Hardly an instant success that toppled entire industries overnight.
Also, working blacksmiths are still in demand and not just as a sideshow exhibits at Renaissance fairs. They make the decorative wrought iron railings you find on public buildings and in nicer arms. They create safety rails and repair centuries old work and they still shoe horses, which remain a large part of many people’s lives today.
Dr. Agin also claims that
Really? No more editors or salesman or publishers? Who then will make produce the books that are delivered digitally? Who will alert distributors and stores, online or otherwise, to their availability? Who will make certain that the world inside the author’s head has made it onto the page or select the books for a particular line? The role of editors, salesman, publishers, etc., do not go away just because the delivery mode has changed. E-book publishers are still publishers. They still – thankfully since I have a paycheck lying nearby from one of them – need editors to help authors polish manuscripts. They still need editors-in-chiefs to finalize manuscripts and staff to alert the reading public to the existence of the finished product.
I believe Dr. Agin has compared digital book readers to the wrong technology. I would remind him, and anyone else who claims the digital book means the death of print books, that movies did not bring about the end of plays, televisions did not mean the end of movie theatres, VHS and DVDs did not mean the end of television shows. All complement one another and provide for yet another way of reaching the audience, just like digital book readers do.
He starts by equating the digital book with the Gutenberg printing press, which allowed books to be reproduced without the laborious work of hand copying them. The thing is, e-book technology does not change the way books are produced. It changes the way they are delivered. The majority of work that goes into producing a book does not involve the printing of it; it involves the writing, editing, and marketing of it. None of that is changed by digital technology. The only thing that is changed is the way the books are consumed by the audience. Before the Gutenberg printing press, the audience did not exist, and therefore the industry that surrounded it did not exist.
Dr. Agin goes on to say
It's tragic because when an industry dies because of corporate blindness, people do get hurt. When the automobile put the horse and carriage trade out of business, blacksmiths and carriage makers became irrelevant overnight. But before that happened people were up to their eyeballs in media baloney that the automobile was only a fad.
This shows a woeful ignorance of history or deliberate hyperbole. I’ll leave my readers to make their own judgment on which it is. Because anyone who knows even a fraction of history knows the automobile did not emerge onto the scene overnight and its early incarnations employed the self-same blacksmiths and carriage makers who serviced the equine industry. The very first self-powered vehicle was built in 1769 for the French military. The next innovation did not happen until 1801 was one of the first pieces of machinery to be termed a horseless carriage because that was exactly what it was. A carriage without horses. The first practical automobile did not appear until 1886, overly 100 years after the first self-powered vehicle was used in France. Hardly an instant success that toppled entire industries overnight.
Also, working blacksmiths are still in demand and not just as a sideshow exhibits at Renaissance fairs. They make the decorative wrought iron railings you find on public buildings and in nicer arms. They create safety rails and repair centuries old work and they still shoe horses, which remain a large part of many people’s lives today.
Dr. Agin also claims that
The same will happen to the entire printed-book industry, editors, publishers, printers, salesmen, publicists, marketeers, whatever. They will be gone or transformed -- to be remembered in anecdotes about the old days.
Really? No more editors or salesman or publishers? Who then will make produce the books that are delivered digitally? Who will alert distributors and stores, online or otherwise, to their availability? Who will make certain that the world inside the author’s head has made it onto the page or select the books for a particular line? The role of editors, salesman, publishers, etc., do not go away just because the delivery mode has changed. E-book publishers are still publishers. They still – thankfully since I have a paycheck lying nearby from one of them – need editors to help authors polish manuscripts. They still need editors-in-chiefs to finalize manuscripts and staff to alert the reading public to the existence of the finished product.
I believe Dr. Agin has compared digital book readers to the wrong technology. I would remind him, and anyone else who claims the digital book means the death of print books, that movies did not bring about the end of plays, televisions did not mean the end of movie theatres, VHS and DVDs did not mean the end of television shows. All complement one another and provide for yet another way of reaching the audience, just like digital book readers do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
