Monday, March 19, 2012

The Novel 2.0


Jonathan Franzen is afraid: should you be, too?
“When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that's reassuring." This is author Jonathan Franzen, speaking on the evils of the ebook earlier this year. Like many über-literary types, Franzen is not a technophile. He would like the publishing industry to stay the way it is, which is to say, aggressively static. "Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough ... Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change ... Will there still be readers fifty years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable?” Franzen's fear of change extends to a dislike of people who disagree with him: if you, dear reader, are a consumer of ebooks, you are not a "serious reader." Not according to Franzen, who might just possibly still be reading books in cuneiform chiseled onto clay tablets.

I hate to break it to Franzen and his fellow Luddites, but the ebook is not going away. As papyrus was superseded by parchment, and the quill was superseded by the printing press, the Kindle will almost certainly be superseded, eventually, by some new bit of technology. The point is that in spite of Franzen’s obvious desire to freeze the world in place, things do change. Gutenberg's technology didn’t bring the end of civilization (in fact, it might have helped it along), and I think it’s fairly safe to assume that neither will the inexorable march of the ebook herald the apocalypse.

Old harbinger of doom
New harbinger of doom

First, it’s worth pointing out that the static-book concept is something of an illusion. Books can change from their original; we call those changes “editions.” Orson Scott Card, for example, had the chance to change some things about his bestselling novel Ender’s Game, originally published in 1985, but with an “author’s definitive edition” released in 1991. Other books have been changed against their author’s wills: Huckleberry Finn suffered a more ignominious rewriting when the n-word was recently expurgated by well-meaning but clueless censors. D.H. Lawrence and other authors ahead of their times have had their words changed: the fact that their books were printed in ink, on paper, did not make them immutable. Actually, D.H. Lawrence benefited from the passage of time: unlike Twain, his original words were released in later editions, as reader sensibilities liberalized.

Not "permanent and unalterable"
So, Mr. Franzen, even before the ebook, novels were not always "permanent and unalterable." But they are about to become quite a bit more dynamic, and as writers we have to prepare ourselves for this change.

In 2007, ebooks accounted for one-half of 1 percent of the trade book market, according to an annual survey conducted by the Association of American Publishers. Just a few months later, the Kindle was introduced, followed by the Nook in 2009. Ebooks went from a trickle to a tsunami at that point: their sales and markets have doubled every year since then. In 2011, ebook sales were up 117 percent, representing nearly 20 percent of all book-publishing revenues. 

It’s not simply that books are moving from paper to digital format, though. The book itself is changing, as indicated by Franzen’s fretting over “permanence.” Authors can now get immediate feedback on their work from readers, before the book has even been officially published. Authors may begin releasing their books bit by bit, with readers giving feedback nearly in real-time on plot development and character. This means the book becomes something like a collaboration between writer and reader.


Dominque Raccah, CEO and publisher of Sourcebooks, calls this the “agile publishing” model. “You really are publishing into a community already," Raccah says in this NPR interview. "So what you are going to be doing is developing that book in front of that community, having the community interact with the author to develop the book [and] provide feedback."
The writer and her readers, collaborating

I find this concept rather mind-boggling: exciting, a little bit scary, and full of possibility. We may even need to rename the book itself, replacing it with a "word that will describe the digital, transmutable, readable, platform-agnostic, weightless, immersive, elastic creation, hitherto known as a book."


I’m not an especially adept technophile — I always feel I’m limping along after trends, trying to keep up, and missing a variety of revolutionary boats. But I am not afraid of the future, for the most part, and I think some of the changes in the publishing world could go our way, as writers. If e-publishing is a tsunami, we writers have a choice to run screaming from it, or to grab our surfboards and ride this sucker.



What do you see as the pitfalls and possibilities of this frontier in publishing?

19 comments:

  1. I use both. I have a Kindle and an iPad and I have plenty of printed books. Franzen was able to say in part why I love printed books: their permanency. By this I don't mean what you wrote, Stephanie, that future editions may change, but the fact that I have a collection, shelves of books that I can see and smell, printed books on wooden shelves. I also have a Kindle and I have a smartphone and an iPad and I use these to read novels as well, but there is no sense of permanency there. In the blink of an eye, the book disappears until called up again. Future editions may in some cases automatically supplant those that are on my devices too whereas I can enjoy the first editions on my shelves until the day I die.

    Books give comfort to me, like old friends that are ready to be read again and again. They sit patiently on shelves where I can see them, organized by me, different sizes, shapes, colors and smells. I realize I sound like an old guy when I speak of the romance of the printed book, but I'm no Luddite: as I said, I read off my devices as well. One thing is for sure, though. Until they change the rules, no flight attendant will tell me to turn off my printed book when I'm on a plane.

    Giving away or throwing a way a printed book is difficult for me. It is like severing a friendship. I know it isn't rational, but it may be in part generational.

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    1. Thanks for dropping by, Joe! I couldn't agree more with the idea that we can love *both!* I wish it wasn't framed as an either-or thing. I have wooden shelves full of paper books, too, and I know what you mean about getting rid of them. Some books I simply have to have in paper format. But as for permanence, I feel like an argument could be made that ebooks are more permanent: if a fire were to ravage my house (heaven forbid) and burn my books and melt my Kindle, I would still have my ebooks. They exist in the cloud, which makes them, in a very real sense, more permanent. Of course, the Buddha would say any sense of permanence is an illusion! :) It would take some doing, but I suppose all virtual copies of a book could also disappear.

      Hey! It just occurred to me that this is what Shadow of the Wind is about: the permanence of the book.

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  2. Sister Stephanie, this is a no-win issue. Thanks for bringing it up. I have a collection of magazines from the first half of the 20th century and they are literally crumbling away. It breaks my heart being unable to protect them. But then I have my beloved George R.R. Martin’s books in my hard drive and if my PC fails… There is no such a thing as a truly permanent format, but I wish that old books and magazines would not be discarded or destroyed just because there is a new technology around.

    And talking about classics being “rewritten”, in Italy there has been a petition by the politically correct intelligentsia to rewrite or ban Dante´s Divine Comedy due to its anti-Semitic/ anti-Islam content. Oh L-rd, protect us from politically correct zealots!

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  3. I use both, but as of right now I don't necessarily love both. I feel a little limited when it comes to reading on a Kindle. Yep, I said it! I did a recent review on a book I read from my Kindle and since I didn't bookmark anything in particular, I had to scroll through page after page to find exactly what I was looking for. It got a little on my nerves. And I'm a cover flipper. I constantly flip to the cover to look at that picture that drew me into the story in the first place. Not so easy on a Kindle.

    That aside, I will say that Franzen doesn't make much sense. Yes, there is a sense of permanency when you have a paper book before you, but at the same time so many works have been hacked to death. I can't tell you how many condensed Writer's Digest novels I read growing up (my mother was always finding them at garage sales) or how many "excerpts" were in high school and college lit books. Unless the author's dead (and not even then it seems anymore with Dante's and Twain's works) a book is a fluid work of art.

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    1. I'm getting better at using my Kindle, but I know what you mean about scrolling around. Even when I do bookmark, I have to look through my list of all bookmarks, which can be time-consuming when you've got a ton of bookmarks in a long book. But I've been using the "search this book" function now with my Kindle, and feel impatient with paper books that they *don't* have this ability. :) I like the note-taking and highlighting function, too, since I can never bring myself to write in paper books. I imagine for our kids' generation, ebooks will be second nature.

      I resonate with what you said about the cover: It's not logical, I suppose, but covers matter!

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  4. I admire Franzen for many reasons but he says some of the stupidest things from time to time. That guy is always with the drama. Jeez.

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    1. You'd think after the Oprah fiasco he'd choose his words a bit more carefully, right? Sheesh. Imagine being his PR manager!

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  5. Fortunately Franzen's opinion carries zero weight. I'm not saying ebooks are good or bad, things are changing and there's no way to tell how things will turn out. But demanding people turn back time isn't a valuable use of anyone's celebrity.

    mood
    Moody Writing
    @mooderino
    The Funnily Enough

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    1. Franzen seems to speak for a number of prominent literary technophobes, such as Ray Bradbury, who wrote in 2009, "They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’ It’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.'" I love Ray Bradbury, but to say the Internet is "not real" is beyond silly.

      I tend to be an optimist, so I see good things coming from the fluidity of information exchange ... but you're right. Our opinions about it either way aren't going to stop that flow.

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  6. A thoughtful post, and very pertinent to my situation. I'll be ninety (I hope) before long and my 525 p. 'debut' novel is being edited and read here and there. I'm sorry I waited so long, but I never would have had the patience to write it without a word Processor. Regardless of the fact that it might be better after the winnowing and chopping of an agent and (hopefully) a publishers editor; by the time it got published, I might be pushing up daisies. Other factors are important. Several Epublishers return the author over 75 % of the online selling price, although to me this in a secondary factor. One has only to look at the number of free Ebooks offered everywhere to guess what their quality must be like; however, some are 'teasers'; first chapters, or one of a series of mysteries offered at $1.99. For me, it was an easy decision.
    Regis

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    1. I hope we have you around for many more years, Regis! I may be ninety before I get my own fiction works published, at the rate I'm going.

      One interesting aspect of e-publishing is author revenue, I'm glad you brought that up: there seems to be some extra ability there for a savvy writer to make money, but probably not the way people expect. What I've noticed from social media is that many trending people, like George Takei and Andy Borowitz, make a name for themselves by providing content that people love, for free. It's not a lot of effort: Takei shares witty little memes, Andy Borowitz writes funny one-liners about politics. And people eat it up: their output gets shared constantly, building a community of rabid fans. As their popularity grows, the opportunity to make money comes with it: Borowitz recently pubished a Kindle single about a medical emergency he experienced ("An Unexpected Twist."). It rocketed to the top of the ebook charts.

      This is not completely different than the old-fashioned way of becoming known: you still have to reach that tipping point to become a household name. But it seems more democratic: you go straight to the people, and you don't rely on the publishing-house machinery, or the critics, or your agent, to get you connected to a potential fan base.

      It's going to be a fascinating ride. As the Chinese curse goes, "may you live in interesting times!"

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  7. Stephanie, I have feedback from young readers about where their interest lies, and making a few adjustments they have suggested, but the 'Hunger Games' crowd, won't find enough mayhem and lusty young males to be attracted. I'm not too pleased to say it, but I think devotees of John Irving might enjoy the curious on-goings. I have a number of ideas for 'marketing', without 'building a platform'. Regis

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  8. What an interesting subject, Sister Stephanie.

    I see the benefit of both. A Nook, for example, is very handy when you're running on the treadmill or in the stairmaster/stationary bike. A book is nearly impossible to hold open and change pages while you're running (I've tried it and failed!). I also like being able to read manuscripts without having to print them; or bookmark pages without having to fold the corners of the book; or being able to highlight words/sentences (I don't like to write on books). But, like someone said earlier, you can lose information in the blink of an eye. I once bookmarked and highlighted my entire novel, but then pressed the wrong button and lost all my bookmarks!! I'm with Sister Mary when it comes to book covers. I also like to go back and look, particularly if there's a picture of the protagonist, to remember what he/she "looks like". When I was reading "Revolutionary Road" in my Nook, I felt like I was missing out. One time when I was at a bookstore, I asked to see the book. I held it in my hands like a treasure and flipped through the pages to have an idea of where I was and how much longer I had. I know some e-readers have page numbers/percentages, but I still had this inexplicable urge to "see" my progress.

    Another problem I'm having with my Nook is that now that I'm reading a non-fiction book about relationships/psychology, I want to skip pages or read in disorder and doing it one page at a time is driving me crazy!

    Conclusion #1: I don't think paper books are going away. At least not in our lifetime.

    Conclusion #2: Self-help/cookbooks should be purchased in book format.

    Conclusion #3: Don't try to flip the pages of a book while you're in the treadmill if you don't want to fall.

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    1. Haha! I have to listen to my books while on a treadmill, I'm wobbly enough as it is -- can't do page-turning of any kind! I made the mistake of purchasing a few cookbooks on my Kindle, and you're right -- bad idea. The Kindle screen constantly goes to sleep and I have to keep waking it up with flour-covered fingers.

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  9. Lorena, I would be willing to bet that someone will design an 'app' for the Ipad to address your complaints. The screen is big enough to allow 'thumbnails', like those that appear on pdf s, which would allow selection of pages at random. It's a 'no brainer. Regis

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  10. I love ebooks. I'm a total convert. I recently picked up a printed book and thought to myself, 'wow, this feels so bulky' lol.

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    1. Absolutely! I like to set the Kindle up in front of me and read while eating, which is harder to do with a paper book.

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  11. If you are considering the purchase of an Ereader, look at http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/ . It is free, apparently unbiased, and has short videos showing the features as well as the disadvantages of many brands. Some do allow good control of the pages, featuring lookback etc. The range of features is amazing.
    Regis

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    1. Thanks for that, Regis! CNET has great information, too.

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