On The Future of Books and Writing
by Theresa Moore
It is hard to imagine that books have survived a myriad of attempts to remove them from the human cultural landscape over the course of several centuries, and yet it may be that books will not emerge from the internet era unscathed. Yes, I am employing a double negative, because even now publishers are shedding authors and old business models like so much dead skin, and bookstores, even large chains like Borders, are closing stores right and left. Such draconian measures are a direct result of the unintended consequences the internet has created. Even dear old eBay, which prides itself as being the best place to sell anything under the sun, has lowered its listing fees in order to generate more product. The problem is, booksellers know that the readers aren’t buying.
It used to be that religious sects, then the Third Reich, tried to ban and burn books deemed “unacceptable.” Now many of them are classics of literature, and Google has seen fit to add them to the global library it wants to digitize. That it wants to digitize every book ever published may seem like a laudable goal, but another unexpected consequence the Googlers overlooked was a lawsuit from uncompensated authors and other copyright owners. The fact is that everyone wants to be compensated for their contributions to society.
When I was much younger, I remember what an impression the concept of the “library computer” from an episode of Star Trek had on me. It seemed like the best way for education to be spread to all users, from the poorest farmer in the meanest plains of Africa to the Esquimaux at the top of the world. At the time, the idea was a twinkle in Gene Roddenberry’s eye, but I know that many computing engineers of the day were already hard at work trying to make it possible. And so I waited for thirty years and then some for the idea to take root and bloom. But my mind was still rooted in the idea that most of the content on the library computer was either in the public domain or out of print, or at the very least the author and publisher was well paid for the privilege of hosting the book. Now it appears that a subscription, or prepaid content, has become the normal way for the creators to receive compensation. Ebooks are just an extension of that concept.
That many readers expect to get their content from the internet for free is much of the problem. And aggregation of content has become a distraction for internet users now conditioned to expect most content to be free no matter where it comes from. Now they are bombarded by spam and flash animation which pops up at the most inconvenient moments, email phishing, social networking sites demanding more and more of one’s time and energy. We read about bloggers who are addicted to blogging for its own sake instead of having something truly meaninful to say, and even about one author whose book was suspended by his publisher because he could not finish the project due to the amount of time he wasted blogging.
But then, what of the future? Can I expect that anyone wanting to read my books will bother to buy them, or must I give up and do something else? Many speak of the value of giving out free samples, but some have learned that once the spigot is open you can’t close it. Once you offer something for free, it becomes the sample everyone uses as a foil if you try to charge for it later. Many small amateur magazines hosted on the internet contain stories by authors willing to give that one story away for free, with the hope that future works will be bought. Instead, the readers avoid buying the books altogether, saying “you gave that one away, why not all of them?” That will spell the doom of writing, and books, and then ebooks, and then a whole industry will collapse and there will be nothing to read. Period. It boggles the mind how shortsighted we have become, thinking that there are enough readers in the world in the first place to suppost an industry of ideas, that they are willing to pay for it, and that they understand what it takes to make a book. Apparently, a lot of them don’t. I compare it to the music industry, and we saw what happened. Even mighty Tower Records, that monolith of the record, casette and CD retail stores, went under because so many of its customers preferred to download the music for free. And they still do. So there is little the media companies can do about it.
Books are a source of learning, of knowledge, of ideas, and of the storage of human history. They are a picture of things as they were, are, and will be. But unless we recapture the value of books and restore their worth, the next human age will be very dark indeed. Authors have to eat, too. But the readers want it all and have no gratitude to spare. They are merciless in their hunger for entertainment. The entire global economy is too interdependent, too bound up in the trading of goods and resources. If one thing stops, everything will stop. This is what many young people do not understand. When commerce stops, the computers will crash, the televisions will stop working, the batteries will go dead, all the machines of industry will fall silent. The cell phones, too. And all because no one wants to pay for it, or learn what makes things work or how much it costs. As that happens, all those who depend on industry for their livelihoods will stop spending altogether. So many gameplayers have never known what it is really like to live in a post apocalyptic world. It won’t be “game over”, and they can start over the next day. It will be a day to day struggle to survive like no game they have ever played before, and they won’t be able to win no matter what they do. That is reality.
It is happening even now. As the predatory lenders tighten their grip and jack up interest rates on credit, many consumers are not using their cards already, hoping to head off the inevitable rate hikes on the horizon. They have already switched to cash as a means to pay for everything, and are trying to pay off their balances to zero, or declare bankruptcy to get out from under their mountains of debt. As they do so, the credit lenders will find themselves unable to pick up new victims to shore up their capital. When that happens, many of them will go under, or go to the government for a subsidy, like AIG or Goldman Sachs. But the government is already taking steps to stop their forward march past the line. We are in a deep recession, so giving things away for free is very like letting go of the farm altogether. Most of those advocating for free items want to preserve their way of life without doing what it takes to get it. They will lose.
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Tags: books, ebooks, free, future, publishing
