Amazon Kindle and the difference between Jeff Bezos and Johannes Gutenberg

In this image there are two recreational implements.  One is a book.  The other is a toy.

As a librarian I swim in the soup of anxiety surrounding civilization’s transition from a print to electronic world.  I’ve made strides in converting large swathes of my print collections to electronic.  I’ve tried shifting from buying books to buying ebooks.  And I know firsthand some of the reasons why the long prophesied revolution has not yet come (many of them relate to industry structure).

I’ve also become acquainted with ebook readers that use epaper technology.  You can read my review of the most ballyhooed, the Amazon Kindle, here.

I see two reasons why people who aren’t gadgetgeeks aren’t rushing to abandon printed books.  I’ve already given the first: the image above includes a book and a toy.  And when a booklover wants to cozy up with a novel they won’t mistake the two.

I say this not just as a reactionary curmudgeon who’s never actually tried it.  I’ve read full-length novels on these devices.  It’s not a bad experience.  But when I’m not intentionally doing it for the experience’s sake–when I finish one book and contemplate the decision of what to read next–I turn to the familiar and more comfortable, and in some ways still more convenient, paper book.

The second reason why paper books continue to dominate is economic.  Here’s where comparisons between the print-to-electronic transition and the 15th century manuscripts-to-print transition break down.

While both new technologies offer functionality the incumbent technologies lack, print offers an advantage over manuscripts that ebook readers may never offer over print: it costs less.  And with the Amazon Kindle representing a $400 initial investment, on top of which you still need to buy the ebooks (which, inexplicably, aren’t any cheaper than paperbacks), it’s hard to see many people whose primary objective is reading books, as opposed to playing with gadgets, taking this plunge.

Surely the price will come down and functionality improve.  People fondly raise comparisons to first generation cell phones, or Apple’s Newton.  Someone will get it right, and then the market will take off.

But I recall something Isaac Asimov said, that the simplest, cheapest technology that fully meets a need will dominate more complex technologies.  (I haven’t been able to find this quote again, perhaps I’m misattributing it.  I’d be grateful to anyone who could source it for me.)  I’m confident this will bear out, making the ebook revolution something that takes place only on an evolutionary time scale.

But what about the more open publishing environment ebooks are supposed to usher in?  I can buy bestsellers as ebooks.  I can buy your grandmother’s self-published erotica.  I can read my Fantasy & Science Fiction as an ebook.  To say nothing of Strange Horizons, Jim Baen’s Universe, and OSC’s IGMS.  They’re online-only.  Who needs paper?

While I could read F&SF as an ebook, I get my subscription in paper.  And while technology has blown the publishing door open, it only opens on the antechamber.  To be published and to be read are not the same thing, despite what vanity presses want you to believe.  Niche markets (and short form speculative fiction is a niche market) benefit from the medium.  Mainstream markets less so.  You might read your favorite author’s story online in Strange Horizons.  But when her novel comes out, chances are you’ll buy it in paper.

And the alternative of spending $400 on a Kindle, plus another $10 for the book, won’t even occur to you.