There is a lot of junk on YouTube, but there is also a lot of clever stuff that otherwise would never see the light of day.īut I do hope there will always be physical books. But I don’t think self-published pieces are any threat to literature any more than YouTube is to Hollywood. There are a lot of cheap, common, even trashy books, and there will be a lot of the same in any other venue. They are going to be more interested in marketability than quality, and the two are not the same, so I don’t think traditional publishers are the last bastions of quality against the perceived cheap and common offerings that will proliferate with the availability and ease of self-publishing. I don’t know if I like the idea of publishing houses being the “gate-keepers” of what is considered good literature. I can see the appeal of electronic publishing in alleviating those factors. I didn’t realize until this article that publishing houses absorbed the economic failures of the trade, from giving advances to authors whose books don’t sell to taking non-selling books back from stores. I wonder if the “coziness” we bibliophiles feel with the tactile sensation of a book will be replaced in the next generation with the feel of a electronic device.
However, the only one of my sons who is an avid reader reads almost exclusively via electronic means. I like the idea of the portability of it, but I can barely get through a text message on my cell phone without it bothering my eyes, and the idea of reading very long on a tiny screen just doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve not gotten into reading on a cell phone or PDA or e-reader. On the other hand, if I am studying something, I like having various sources opened up in different tabs on the computer and being able to just click back and forth between them rather than having the same number of books spread out on the table. There is just something soothing and comforting about curling up on the end of the couch with a good book, a throw blanket, and a cup of coffee that is not quite the same at the computer. It bothers my eyes after a while and it’s not terribly comfortable. I don’t read much in the way of actual books on the computer. It is only natural that technological advances in other areas are also going to affect the world of reading, just as the invention of the printing press did.
Computers and digital media are changing everything we do these days, whether we realize it or not, and that includes our beloved books. Go read this great article from Time Magazine: Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature. The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:įirst.
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