Some nice comments from an author of children's books about taking Sundays off.
On another note, there's book designer Craig Mod, with this discussion of "books in the age of the iPad": Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.
He makes a case for the "canvas" being what's changing: it's not that books themselves are dying, just that the most disposable versions of books are being phased out in favor of digital devices. Books where the canvas of paper is indispensible — e.g., graphic novels, art books — will continue to exist, although at premium prices. Books that are "just text" will simply move to another, more malleable and portable container.
In short, we're seeing another iteration of what happened with books back when cheap paperbacks entered the market and created a priced-down alternative to hardbacks. This didn't phase out hardbacks entirely, though; I've written elsewhere about why hardbacks continue to be important to publishing. (Early access, collectible form factor.)
I'm still iffy on dedicated reading devices, if only because I dislike the idea of throwing hundreds of dollars at something that essentially duplicates most of the functionality of something I already have. The Kindle is twice as redundant now that there's a Kindle app for the PC, which I can install on any machine that has a net connection. Yes, I don't get the (dubious) comfort of reading on the Kindle device itself, but at least I have access to all the same content — and by Craig's own admission, that's what really counts here.
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I dunno... I find electronic formats to be far more transient, disposable, and well, ephemeral than books. Books exist, as a physical object, and just handling them can get the mind going. Scrolling through a document or a pdf or a webpage isn't the same at all, and I've yet to see anything that makes me think it ever will be.
And, should the 'unthinkable' happen, books will continue to exist. If we are (as we so often seem to be intent on proving ourselves to be) so short-sighted and nihilistic that we bury our heads in the sand on the issues of climatic shift, with all of the attendant geopolitical instability it will cause should we ignore it... then infrastructures will be horribly damaged. Books exist. Where are the 1s and 0s when the power grid's down? How many e-books get read in a blackout?
Books exist, and can be read without anything but you, and the book. e-books will never have that, by their very nature. Nor are they intended to last. They are meant to take up space until you are ready for the next book, and then they're gone, stored, as we've already seen from Amazon, only so long as the company you rent permission to read from wants it stored.
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I agree with you about one of the virtues of a book being its relatively primitive design: all you need is your eyes and some light. Music (barring performance) always required some degree of electronic technology, but I think there's always going to be room for low-tech reading of one kind or another. Despite all that can go wrong with books -- acid in the paper, bad bindings -- they have a pretty stupefying level of durability at their best.
It also makes me think: if everything's gonna be on the Kindle in ten years, what am I going to autograph for people when they come to my booth?
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