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Volume 10, Number 5: May 2011 ISSN 1534- 0937 Walt Crawford

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If you have yet to read the first portion of this essay ( in Cites & Insights 11: 4, April 2011), you should read that first— it’s less snarky and probably a lot more useful than most of this segment, which de- scends more deeply into universalist nonsense.

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Some of the items discussed here may not really belong, and some may be admirable— but you’re going to see a higher percentage of what I might charitably call meretricious nonsense. In any case, here’s a whole bunch of determinism for your read- ing pleasure— if you still read, that is. ( An audio- book version is not yet available, but I have never disabled the text- to- speech functions of PDF or, for that matter, your PC’s operating system. Would this all seem more amusing if “ read” to you by, for ex- ample, a young Scottish woman? Make it so.)

A New Page

This essay, which appeared August 3, 2009 and is by Nicholson Baker, is entitled “ Kindle and the future of reading” as a browser title. The tease: “ Can the Kindle really improve on the book?” This is a New Yorker article, not a blog post, and at 6,000 words, make no mistake: It’s the kind of essay that makes me almost want to subscribe to the New Yorker. But it’s also Nicholson Baker, who has a talent for mix- ing reasonable speculation and batshitsomewhat extreme notions.

He ordered a Kindle 2. “ How could I not?... I was being steered.”

Everybody was saying that the new Kindle was terribly important— that it was an alpenhorn blast of post- Gutenbergian revalorization.

There it is: Everybody. Nicholson cites two sources, both asserting that writing will never be the same, one that “ Printed books… are going to join news- papers and magazines on the road to obsoles- cence.” Nicholson also quotes from Amazon user reviews and accepts rumored sales figures. So, you know, Baker had to buy the thing. Amazon made him do it.

He leads us through the unpacking process in a literary fashion—” the plug… was extremely well designed, in the best post- Apple style. It was a very, very good plug.” OK, I’m jealous: I’ll never get anybody to pay me $ 1 a word or better for deathless prose like that. Then comes the anticlimax, again in Baker’s style:

The problem was not that the screen was in black- and- white; if it had really been black- and- white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

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The Zeitgeist: 26 is Not the Issue .................................. 16

This was what they were calling e- paper? This four- by- five window onto an overcast afternoon? Where was paper white, or paper cream? Forget RGB or CMYK. Where were sharp black letters laid out like lacquered chopsticks on a clean tablecloth?

Baker wasn’t enchanted.

And yet, you know, many people loved it. To be fair to the Kindle, I had to make it through at least one whole book. Jeff Bezos calls this “ long form” read- ing. I had some success one morning when I Kin- dled my way deep into “ The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance,” by Alison Kent…

Maybe I should stop there. I attempted to read Baker’s essay online. That may be a mistake. I also tried to give Baker the benefit of the doubt, taking him seriously. That may also be a mistake. I trust Cites & Insights May 2011 2

he was being paid by the word, since in this essay he is one wordy son- of- a… Ah, but who am I to complain of someone else’s wordiness?

Baker seems to fall for Amazon silliness. He has a rambling story about the development of e- ink and associated devices. He goes through form fac- tors on the Kindle and the Kindle 2. He uses “ un- ergonomicism,” which shows more courage ( or something) than I’d be willing to display. He moans about the Kindle DX’s effect on e- delivered news- papers. “ It diminishes and undercuts them— it kills their joy. It turns them into earnest but dispensable blogs.” And apparently he thinks iPods are great and better reading devices than Kindles ( I may have read that wrong; my eyes were glazing over).

In the end, he does manage to read a page- turner novel on the Kindle. And, hey presto, there’s the end of the essay. Thoughts delivered on “ the future of reading”? None that I could find, or maybe they’re buried in Baker’s prose. I’ve quoted roughly 170 words out of some 6,000. You may find the whole essay wonderful. You may even find that it offers some worthwhile notions on the future of reading. Me? Not so much.

Books will survive, but not on paper

No namby- pamby equivocation here. Susan Hayes says it flat out in this September 4, 2009 piece at The Australian. After all, she sat down with “ US digital guru Bob Stein” to discuss the future of the book— Stein calls books “ user- driven media,” which tells me more than I need to know— and they both agree that “ the paper book, as we know it, will gradually disappear from our shelves over the next 10 years.” Just watch them fade away…

Now that these two great minds have estab- lished a universal truth, she can tell Australian publishers they must be ready. Everything’s going digital and the transition is harder for small pub- lishing houses: “ Setting a manuscript in user- friendly digital format is not simply a matter of pressing a few buttons.” Really? Once a manuscript has been turned into a designed book? There’s more about author contracts and self- publishing, some of it possibly valuable, but given the wholly unsupported absolutism in the title and first para- graph, I’m hard- pressed to pay much attention. It’s fair to say some commenters aren’t convinced she’s made a coherent case. One was at the session Hayes apparently refers to and says, “ It left me thoroughly unconvinced.”

Oh, and Bob Stein? She probably means Rob- ert Stein, founder of The Voyager Company and the Institute for the Future of the Book— and I re- gard his credentials as a surefire prophet on pub- lishing’s future about as seriously as I do Nicholson Baker or, say, Nicholas Negroponte.

Rebooting the Book ( One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)

Here’s Mark Sigal writing on September 22, 2009 at O’Reilly Radar. He sees stagnant book sales, the sad state of Borders ( even in 2009) and “ a world devoid of bookstores.” He quotes approvingly two authors who claim the primary function of a book is to “ fulfill its promise as a transmitter/ inspirer of ideas, art, thoughts, story, entertainment.” From all this, he arrives at the notion that the iPad— not tablet computers in general, not ereaders, but the iPad—” could be a best- of- breed solution” for what he seems to see as the real functions of books.

Why? You’ll have to read that directly. A lot has to do with Apple being The Perfect Company that Everybody Loves and Can Do No Wrong. Here’s a great sentence:

Flashing forward to the present, I see Apple com- ing up with tools that allow prosumers, long- tail media, and publishing houses to create world- class e- books that take advantage of the native ca- pabilities of the iPhone Platform.

Prosumers. Long- tail media. World- class some- thing, to be sure. I find the article embarrassing as I reread it, even down to the final paragraph:

Do people even read anymore? With Apple’s iPad Tablet device, my sense is that they will.

The Book That Contains All Books

Another one where the page title, “ Why the Inter- national Kindle Will Change The Book As We Know It,” is different than the essay title— this time by Stephen Marche at The Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2009. The tease: “ The globally available Kindle could mark as big a shift for read- ing as the print press and the codex”

Marche’s second sentence ( after announcing the global availability of the Kindle 2) is:

The only other events as important to the history of the book are the birth of print and the shift from the scroll to bound pages.

Marche offers his informed comments on those two earlier developments and the pundits of the time who railed about them. And, of course, makes the point that all technological change is Cites & Insights May 2011 3

inevitable. Marche owns too many books and seems thrilled with his assurance that print books are, at best, obsolescent. He has a proper literary name for the ereader: “ transbook, by which I mean that it is the book which can contain all books.”

Marche says it’s obvious where the “ transbook” is headed: “ It will eventually provide access to all text that is non- copyright, and to the purchase of every book in or out of ‘ print.’” “ A single object will contain the contents of all the world’s libraries. It’s just a matter of when that will happen.” Oh, and it’s a matter of “ what the book wants to be.”

It wants to be a vast abridgment of the universe that you can hold in your hand. It wants to be the transbook.

Well, damn, I’m convinced. Since the book wants to be the transbook ( which, 16 months later, is now the universally preferred name for ebook de- vices), the discussion’s over.

Stupid Ideas Are Still Stupid Even When Amazon Does Them

Yes, this Whatever post by John Scalzi from Octo- ber 28, 2009 appears in this section— not because I think Scalzi’s an extremist, absolutist or nonsensi- cal. It’s because Scalzi nailed this in one: An Ama- zon patent for a system to change each copy of a downloaded ebook— the text in the ebook— to wa- termark it.

The patent suggests that “ the modification to an excerpt performed by the synonym substitution mechanism may not significantly alter the mean- ing of the excerpt to a human reader,” which sounds just like the something that someone who doesn’t actually write in human languages for a living might suggest. Perhaps we should suggest we should go into this software engineer’s code and swap some of the code around. Oh, sure, it might not significantly alter the meaning of the code. But then let’s run it and see where it gets us.

As Scalzi points out, this isn’t a new idea— a for- mer SFWA VP, one I’ve long since stopped quot- ing, made the same silly proposal years before. When he did so, he was bemused when SFWA members pointed out that “ actively corrupting their texts was not really a smart idea.” It was a dumb idea then; it’s a dumb idea now— although it does give us more insight into the attitude Ama- zon has about that unimportant content within the echunks it wants to sell us. ( As usual with Whatever, there are many, many comments, some well worth reading. “ Address me as Ishmael” is one of those comments, and it’s hard to argue with that. Or, for lovers of more basic prose, comment # 23: “ It was a poorly shaded, and slightly overcast evening.”)

Writing in a canyon

I’m possibly even more bemused by absolutist thinking from librarians than I am from pundits and gurus, and here’s Michelle Boule at A Wander- ing Eyre on February 17, 2010, and the very first paragraph:

It seems like often when I am talking to my friend, Jason Griffey, we end up talking about the print format and how it is going to die. Notice I did not say if. I think we always circle back to this be- cause usually one or both of us are in the middle of some kind of writing project or other and we are frustrated with the process or the medium. Both, usually. [ Emphasis added.]

There it is: Not if, but how— apparently Jason Griffey and Michelle Boule have some omniscience the rest of us lack. She backs off a bit, although in a somewhat demeaning manner:

I do think print books will be with us for a long time to come but I believe their purpose will be collection and vanity printing, not for reading and certainly not for most research.

Why? I’m trying to dig that out of the rest of the post ( which is mostly about Boule writing a book). She’s used to immediate feedback in online venues and she doesn’t get that from a book. She finds writing in the absence of “ the wisdom of the crowd” boring and unsatisfying.

You might argue that I am just accustomed to so- cial media, I have ADD instead of writer’s block, or that I need instant gratification. Perhaps you are right, but I am not the only crazy person who feels this way and it is one of the reasons why print books are going to go away. And it will hap- pen sooner than we think.

Boule may not be the only writer who feels that way, but claiming it’s a reason books will disappear “ sooner than we think” is a remarkable universal- ism: “ I don’t like writing books. Therefore no- body’s going to write books.” Ah, but there’s another reason [ copied without modification]:

Most books it is out of date as soon as the first sen- tence is typed, let alone edited, typeset, printed, delivered, and actually read by a consumer. Add to that equation a book that involves a discussion of technology and you are in serious trouble. Cites & Insights May 2011 4

And the other side, another universalism: As I am, so the world is:

As a consumer, I believe the print industry is just not a sustainable model in its current iteration.

Which presumably means no other iteration could be sustainable? The evidence for that lack of sus- tainability is, well… hmm. Print book sales aren’t rising as rapidly as they were in the early 21st centu- ry, although they’re still at near- record levels.

The book is apparently about “ the wisdom of crowds”— and Boule believes “ The wisdom of crowds is changing the individual.” I won’t com- ment on that, since I believe we’ve always learned from others— and I learn a lot more from other individual people than I do from mass “ wisdom.” ( In comments, it turns out Boule’s reason for be- lieving that fiction print books— which aren’t part of this “ wisdom of the crowd and instant obsoles- cence” loop— will disappear is because hardcover books are currently “ prohibitively expensive for many” at $ 30+ tax. Which may be why most books sold aren’t hardcover and why many of us use communal sources— public libraries— for most of our hardcover books.)

Books in the age of the iPad

This threnody for print comes from Craig Mod ( craigmod. com), dated March 2010. He opens: “ Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is con- fused. GOOD RIDDANCE.” He’s thrilled by the idea that mass- market paperbacks are going away. Some of the wonders we get from the death of ( most) print books because, you know, everybody owns an iPad or soon will:

You already know the potential gains: edgier, risk- ier books in digital form, born from a lower barri- er- to- entry to publish. New modes of storytelling. Less environmental impact. A rise in importance of editors. And, yes— paradoxically— a marked in- crease in the quality of things that do get printed.

Really? Editors will be more important when any- body can publish their own ebooks? That’s re- markable. But that’s just the start of what’s a fairly interesting essay on future possibilities, once you filter out Mod’s attitudes. ( He throws in a wholly unwarranted slap at Danielle Steele along the way, but never mind.)

The gist of Mod’s argument is, I believe, that print books should be reserved for books where the layout— the “ form”— is vital to the content. Along the way, we get inevitability:

One inevitable property of the quality argument is that technology is closing the gap ( through ad- vancements in screens and batteries) and because of additional features ( note taking, bookmarking, searching), will inevitably surpass the comfort level of reading on paper.

Oh, but wait: He was saying that you should only print books where the form is vital to the content, but the iPad changes even that. Not that you should replicate the form of a book. After all, flip- ping pages “ feels boring and forced” ( his emphasis) already on the iPhone and will feel even more so on the iPad— to all of us, because Mod is every- man. Mod expects that there will be new forms of storytelling because everybody owns an iPad. Maybe; new media should yield even more forms of content. Then he tries to establish what few books might still be allowed physical form. It’s a manifesto of sorts. You can read it in the original. I’m not buying it.

The Carr Cluster

Arranging the sources in this section chronologi- cally results in a cluster of five items from April and June 2010 either by Nicholas Carr or about Carr’s writing ( the Atlantic Monthly 2008 “ Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and the more recent book The Shallows). I think it makes sense to look at all of them— and more pieces from later in 2010— together. My feelings about Carr are com- plex. He’s sometimes a good writer but sometimes a really sloppy thinker, very fond of the “ As I am, so is everyone” trope— or, just maybe, good at milk- ing extreme ideas for the income- producing arti- cles and high- selling books that can come from them. But he’s also sometimes pretty good at pointing out the absurdities of other folks.

The pieces under consideration here are, in chronological order, “ The post- book book” ( Carr’s Rough Type, April 1, 2010), “ Burying the book” ( Rough Type, June 3, 2010), “ The internet ate my brain” ( The Boston Globe, byline Wes Stephenson, June 6, 2010), “ nick carr & the species of reading” ( Matthew Battles, library ad infinitum, June 24, 2010), “ shallows: dusty voices & the plastic fantas- tic” ( library ad infinitum, June 28, 2010), “ The me- dium is the… squirrel!” ( Rough Type, August 22, 2010) and “ Interactive storytelling: an oxymoron” ( Rough Type ¸ December 8, 2010).

“ The post- book book” appeared on April 1, and maybe that’s significant— or maybe not. Carr says Cites & Insights May 2011 5

“ the model of book reading ( and hence book writ- ing) the iPad promotes seems fated, in time, to be- come the dominant one.” To Carr, this model is “ an app, a multihypermediated experience to click through rather than a simple sequence of pages to read through.” And, sigh, he quotes Steve Jobs’ infa- mous “ People don’t read anymore” statement— then quotes the CEO of Penguin Books who sees “ all sorts of cool stuff” that, he says, Penguin anticipates add- ing to everything they do— audio, video, streaming.

He foresees sprinkling movie clips among Jane Austen’s paragraphs in future editions of “ Pride and Prejudice.” No need to conjure up a picture of Lizzie Bennet in your own mind; there’s Keira Knightley stomping through the grounds of Neth- erfield, cute as a mouse button.

My first response is “ Holy crap.” My second is to wonder how much more you’d have to pay for a version of the novel that allows you to create your own mental pictures instead of some movie direc- tor’s version. Carr refers to The Shallows and his assertion that “ When a printed book is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it turns into something very like a Web site.” He quotes some other pundit on books being merely delivery systems for text with the medium having no significance, and counters that “ history shows” each change in medium has resulted in a change in reading and writing habits ( which might or might not be true). The finish:

Jobs is no dummy. As a text delivery system, the iPad is perfectly suited to readers who don’t read anymore.

Great snark but, in my opinion, considerably wide of the mark. One commenter takes the whole idea seriously and wonders what happens to imagina- tion when reading novels and just where the mul- timedia- fluent authors are to be found. I certainly resemble this commentary ( by Eric London):

I think it is difficult enough to develop the word- smithing skills to produce a novel, at least, one others want to buy and read,. But now I must learn Gimp and video cameras and CGI and sound editing? Wouldn’t these ‘ books’ be something more like a film than a novel? Perhaps closer to graphic novels, but with more moving parts. Seems to me it would require more creators than a lone fiction writer. If so, wouldn’t the funding be closer to the Hollywood or game models?

London also asks why, if the “ iPad novel” is such a natural thing, there aren’t more of them already out there. Hyperfiction’s been tried for many, many years. It’s mostly failed.

Carr touts The Shallows in the June 3 “ Burying the book”— pointing to NPRs feature of an excerpt from the book and how, you know, this time for sure: Even though pundits have been proclaiming the Death of the Book for two centuries, this time it’s real. “ The continued existence of the codex, though it may provide some cheer to bibliophiles, doesn’t change the fact that books and book read- ing, at least as we’ve defined those things in the past, are in their cultural twilight.” Why? The usu- al stuff: We devote “ ever less time to reading print- ed words” and when “ we” ( all of us!) read, it’s “ in the busy shadow of the Internet.” Sit down and read a magazine, newspaper or book without a browser open alongside? What kind of Luddite are you? The NPR excerpt is long— and, frankly, most- ly convinces me I won’t be running out to buy The Shallows. It’s fair to say that commenters at NPR’s site are not uniformly kind to Carr’s thesis. I like this one, from Bo Sson:

What a blatantly self serving article! An author that has a problem with the new medium. Like all things in life, personal choice is just that. Nothing more. Information is absorbed in different ways by each individual. One would think that with the ability to have hand held devices that can deliver instant information would be a boon, but for the royalties of the printed word.

Although there are certainly those who basically said “ Hey, who has time to sit and read a book the- se days?” All of us, if we choose to. None of us, if we choose not to.

Stephenson’s piece in the Boston Globe points to the supposed neuroscience evidence for Carr’s claims that our brains are being irrecoverably changed by the internet and Carr’s seeming asser- tion that, to quote the Borg, resistance is futile. The thing is, the same malleability of the adult brain works the other way: If you choose to focus, you maintain and regain the ability to focus.

Carr sells short our ability to choose our fate. In the face of the digital onslaught, I can curl up in a fetal position and let my mind waste away, or I can stand and fight. The fact is, I can still decide how— and how much— to use digital media. Per- haps I’ll belong to an ever smaller slice of society that moderates our use. Or perhaps more will join in the resistance. I don’t know, but I wanted to see Carr grapple with these questions. Cites & Insights May 2011 6

Books and the Internet, literary culture and digital culture have coexisted for many years. It may be that an engaged intellectual life will now require a sort of hybrid existence— and a hybrid mind that can adapt and survive by the choices one makes. It may require a new kind of self- discipline, a willed and practiced ability to focus, in a purposeful and almost meditative sense — to step away from the network and seek stillness, immersion.

Indeed. But, you know, that wouldn’t make for a provocative best- selling book. It would be too close to the complexities and choices of real life.

Battle’s first essay (“ nick carr & the species of reading”) takes on the “ golden age” view of the last five centuries of reading portrayed in Carr’s book as being wrong on most counts, especially when Carr credits Gutenberg as a critical turning point. Battle says Gutenberg was trying to corner the ( ex- isting) market in Bibles; that moveable type is not what made book reading a popular pursuit ( you could just as easily say increased book reading en- couraged the rise of inexpensive printing); and, primarily, that “ there is no unitary mind at work in history,” either in the past or present.

[ I] f the modern mind truly is the direct descend- ant of Gutenberg’s invention, then so is the Inter- net. And like the host of cultural innovations that partook of the possibilities of the press— humanism, the Reformation, rationalism, the modern novel— critics fear its disruptive powers. In retrospect, we mistake those innovations for the charted course of history; to our counterparts in their respective eras, they looked like the Inter- net does to Carr: exciting but disruptive, soothing but dangerous, seductive but corrosive.

Battle is bothered by Carr’s “ simplistic definition of reading”— that is, deep or literary reading as the only reading that matters.

[ H] e writes as if these are all that reading has been ( ever since Gutenberg, anyway), as if the kind of reading he ascribes to the Web— quick and fitful, easily distracted— is a new and disruptive spirit. But dipping and skimming have been modes available to readers for ages. Carr makes one kind of reading— literary reading, in a word— into the only kind that matters. But these and other modes of reading have long coexisted, feeding one an- other, needing one another. By setting them in conflict, Carr produces a false dichotomy, pitting the kind of reading many of us find richest and most rewarding ( draped with laurels and robes as it is) against the quicksilver mode ( which, we must admit, is vital and necessary).

There it is, applying my own biases: Carr assumes a single past and single future, a single mode of reading, creating a false dichotomy. It has always been the case that deep reading accompanied shal- low reading. I spend more time reading magazine articles ( somewhere in the middle) and internet stuff ( mostly on the shallow side, but not entirely) than I do reading books, and I don’t sense a di- chotomy. Unlike Nicholas Negroponte ( see later), I don’t find it difficult or impossible to read long- form narrative, but that’s not the only form of text I read or find worthwhile.

Battle’s next post ( in a longer series— you may want to read the whole series) goes further into Carr’s I- am- everyman transformation from deep reader to one unable to edit on the page. Battle’s discussion here is charming but needs to be read in the original. He notes that books aren’t always “ quiet counselors” ( there’s no more a single model for The Book than there is for The Blog or The Written Word). There’s an interesting take on Carr’s claim that neuroplasticity is making us shal- low ( all of us, and it’s a one- way journey?):

The susceptibility to transformation that Carr dis- cusses in The Shallows is real. It’s our native en- dowment— what the brain evolved to do. It is the vogue among scientists to call it neuroplasticity; before that, it was called learning.

Ya’ think?

Carr’s little post on August 22, 2010 is mostly a quote from Nicholas Negroponte’s latest non- sense, not only telling us that print books are dead but now also that long- form reading is dead. The direct quotation:

I love the iPad, but my ability to read any long- form narrative has more or less disappeared, as I am constantly tempted to check e- mail, look up words or click through.

I’ll buy that. Negroponte has an attention problem, and maybe people should stop listening to him. My sense is, though that Carr is quoting him approving- ly as a high- profile example of what’s happening to All Of Us ( that is, Nicholas Carr). One comment is particularly interesting: Tom Panelas points out that Negroponte earlier reported that he was dys- lexic and never much liked reading— so now he predicts that “ the thing he never liked is going away.” As Panelas says, “ How convenient.”

Finally for this cluster, although it’s less direct- ly related to Carr’s book, he takes on Craig Mod in Cites & Insights May 2011 7

a December post— specifically, Mod’s claim that “ e- storytelling” will and should be substantively different. Quoting Mod:

The biggest change is not in the form stories take but in the writing process. Digital media changes books by changing the nature of authorship. Sto- ries no longer have to arrive fully actualised ... [ Ul- timately,] authorship becomes a collaboration between writers and readers. Readers can edit and update stories, either passively in comments on blogs or actively via wiki- style interfaces.

As Carr notes, that’s not new— there was enor- mous enthusiasm among literary theorists in the 1980s and 1990s for hypertext fiction and other multimedia storytelling, and even the “ death of the author” concept ( where the author’s simply one participant in the storytelling). Didn’t much happen then, for the same reason it’s unlikely to happen much in the future:

Digital tools for collaborative writing date back twenty or thirty years. And yet interactive storytell- ing has never taken off. The hypertext novel in par- ticular turned out to be a total flop. When we read stories, we still read ones written by authors. The reason for the failure of interactive storytelling has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with stories. Interactive storytelling hasn’t be- come popular— and will never become popular— because it produces crappy stories that no one wants to read. That’s not just a result of the writing- by- committee problem… The act of reading a story, it turns out, is very different from, and ultimately incompatible with, the act of writing a story. The state of the story- reader is not a state of passivity, as is often, and sillily, suggested, but it is a state of re- pose. To enter a story, to achieve the kind of im- mersion that produces enjoyment and emotional engagement, a reader has to give up not only con- trol but the desire to impose control. Readership and authorship are different, if mutually necessary, states: yin and yang. As soon as the reader begins to fiddle with the narrative— to take an authorial role— the spell of the story is broken. The story ceases to be a story and becomes a contraption.

As a universal truth, that’s as silly as most other universal truths: Of course there will be some suc- cessful interactive and multimedia stories. Maybe the final sentence is appropriate:

An encyclopedia article can be “ good enough”; a story has to be good.

I wonder why this Nicholas Carr seems so removed from the other Nicholas Carr, but such is life. ( One comment of many is truly strange: “ True art is never about story telling, and science… isn’t story telling at all.” Really? Boy, does that narrow “ true art.”)

the end of writing

Although this little post by “ caleb” at a blog I can only render as control- f appeared on August 7, 2010, I’m inclined to believe it was intended for four months and six days earlier:

Eventually, the intellectual and technological elite, which includes me, and you also, is going to have the same arguments about writing as we are now having about reading.

People will shift away from keyboards to produce written words. We’ll speak into microphones, at first clumsily and eventually efficiently with our own individual shorthands. Words commonly mistransformed by software will enter formal and spoken language. Academic papers will be written about it, this time not without irony.

There will be backlash. Writing is a lost art, we will say. Anyone can put text on a screen, but real writing is done with fingers pressing on keys, with keys pressing back on fingers in kind but ulti- mately yielding. Our new writing, in contrast, yields to the computers representing it.

Then we will stop writing altogether.

It’s conceivable that Caleb is serious, but I choose to believe otherwise.

The Future Of Reading

I know, I know: This is shooting fish in a barrel— it’s on a Wired blog ( by Jonah Lehrer on Septem- ber 8, 2010), so the perspective is predictable: Not only “ I am the world” but “ It’s inevitable” and “ there’s only One Way.” The first paragraph— which, oddly, takes almost precisely the opposite tack from Craig Mod:

I think it’s pretty clear that the future of books is digital. I’m sure we’ll always have deckle- edge hard- covers and mass market paperbacks, but I imagine the physical version of books will soon assume a cultural place analogous to that of FM radio. Alt- hough the radio is always there ( and isn’t that nice?), I really only use it when I’m stuck in a rental car and forgot my auxilliary input cord. The rest of the time I’m relying on shuffle and podcasts.

The future— period. Oh, and the only use for FM radio today is rental cars. Lehrer claims “ I love books deeply,” but it’s the kind of love we might be able to do without. He recognizes “ the astonishing potential of digital texts and e- readers”— and how does that potential spell doom for print books? Because there can only be one kind of book? Cites & Insights May 2011 8

Clearly, for Lehrer this is the case: “ My problem is that consumer technology moves in a single direc- tion.” Oh, there’s more— the heart of the post is cog- nitive “ science” claiming we’d understand text better if it was harder to read. As I read this, it appears that Lehrer is saying the Kindle offers higher- quality text than print books, which makes me wonder.

Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘ book’

Here’s a case— John Naughton on December 19, 2010 in The Guardian— where with just a small change or addition to the text, I’d applaud rather than criticizing. Change “ altering” to “ expanding” and I’d say that, while we’ve been getting expanded varieties of books for years, tablets might yield even more expansion of possibilities. But an expanded range does not negate traditional forms, and there’s not a word in this column that suggests otherwise.

Naughton talks about The Economist as a fine magazine and a form of “ appointment reading,” how he finds it easier and more pleasant to read the iPad version ( and basically ignores the print version) and how much he likes one book- as- app that he purchased on his iPad. All of which is fine, until he generalizes— after saying most print pub- lishers have been lulled into a “ false sense of secu- rity” that the Kindle is just another way of presenting text.

If that’s really what publishers are thinking, then they’re in for some nasty surprises. The concept of a “ book” will change under the pressure of iPad- type devices, just as concepts of what constitutes a maga- zine or a newspaper are already changing. This doesn’t mean that paper publications will go away. But it does mean that print publishers who wish to thrive in the new environment will not just have to learn new tricks but will also have to tool up. In par- ticular, they will have to add serious in- house tech- nological competencies to their publishing skills.

If Naughton really means the concept of a book, I regard that as nonsense, without a shred of evi- dence. If he means a concept or several concepts, he’s probably right— but, just as magazines and newspapers aren’t vanishing overnight because of iPads, linear text in narrative form isn’t likely to go away as a major form of book just because other forms are becoming more plausible. The comments are interesting, including notes that there have been four decades of experiments with new book forms, mostly unsuccessful— which doesn’t mean new forms on tablets will also fail, but does suggest that there’s nothing here that would spell certain massive change in existing forms. ( There are also bone- stupid comments from both extremes, in- cluding “ anyone using ipad and kindle for reading are not book readers… they are fashion/ gadget freaks,” the kind of comment that strikes me as even more idiotic than it is ungrammatical.)

Ads in ebooks

Two related items here: Joe Grobelny’s “ Ads in ebooks and why silence matters,” posted August 22, 2010 at all these birds with teeth, and switch11’ s “ What happens when there’s advertising in books?” posted January 16, 2011 at Kindle Review.

Grobelny’s post begins, interestingly enough, citing a faketv post from August 18, 2010 that seems to refute Nicholas Carr’s thesis. This person took a beach vacation, two weeks with “ minimum internet,” and found that in only two weeks, “ My attention span grew back, from about 10 seconds to several hours. I could read half a novel at a time, without the itch to look at something new.” ( Their peripheral vision also improved, they learned to enjoy ignoring email for long stretches and they now regard Twitter as “ an insufferable commo- tion.”) Wow— so maybe brain elasticity works both ways— we can go from the shallows to the deep if we decide to?

Grobelny calls the novel “ the sacred retreat of those who are regaining their abilities to focus on one task” and says that, thanks to ebooks, “ content providers” are likely to “ try and leverage every tiny bit of space to try and sell you something.” A different Carr— Paul this time— worries that we’ll find product placement within books. I suspect there’s been some product placement for years, and that’s not really Grobelny’s primary concern:

What concerns me the most about both ads in ebooks and product placement advertising in print and other forms is the impact it has on our attention. While it can just be a quick semiotic love- note from the author to the reader, it can also be a lovely mental jumping off point that would lead somebody into a little internet- link- clicky jaunt. So much for avoiding the “ new tab” syn- drome that haunts us. While it could just be inevi- table, and the advertisers might win a place in our novels, it would still bug a lot of people. Namely those who still would like a small part of their lives to be free of the interests of commerce, or at Cites & Insights May 2011 9

least a place where they can derive pleasure from doing one thing at a time.

Good points— and I’m hoping ( and guessing) that hyperlinked ads in ebooks will be no more inevi- table than are interspersed ads throughout print books ( some mass- market paperbacks have had ads for years, but not integrated into the text it- self). The “ silence” part? That comes in the last paragraph, where Grobelny— a librarian— was talking with others about noise levels in part of the library and the need for some silent spaces. The final sentences:

If you are quiet, and you listen instead of talking, it gives others the chance to have a voice, and it al- lows you to hear them. That is what Carr is wor- ried about, and what libraries provide.

“ Silence” in this case may mean the absence of in- ternet interruptions, other media, advertising and regular noise; it’s the optimal situation for truly deep reading ( which is not what most reading is or needs to be), and I don’t see it going away entirely.

With switch11, who believes all books will be ebooks in the very near future, it’s not a matter of if but when there are ads “ in books.” The first two paragraphs:

The first question – Is there any way to avoid ad- vertising in books?

The Answer: Not really.

Why? Because publishers are desperate, because Google needs to offer something different, because “ most online companies have begun to feel adver- tising is the answer to everything.” That means— wait for it—” It’s inevitable that some company will deliver books subsidized by advertising. There’s little we can do about it.”

Then, with all doubt wiped away by The Magic Inevitable, switch11 turns to the question of what happens with advertising in books— and whether books with advertising will “ take over.” The rest of the post considers various scenarios, all of which appear to be posited on the fixed notion that all books will be ebooks real soon now— and switch11 concludes that “ The most effective ads will start being included in all books.” Not some books, not just ebooks, but all books.

As it happens, switch11’ s view of advertising it- self is as bizarre as their view of future books: they claim people “ shy away” from ads when they know they’re advertising. That is pure nonsense: At least in print magazines and newspapers, well- made ads are attractive additions, not nuisance interrup- tions. Even in TV, there are people who watch the Super Bowl as much for the ads ( which are clearly identified as ads) as for the football.

The rest of the post is so dystopian and bizarre you’ll have to read it for yourself. I can’t bring my- self to fisk it.

Undergraduates and E- Books: A Marriage Made With a Shotgun

At this point, it’s nice to have a big dose of com- mon sense and uncommonly good writing, as in this January 19, 2011 library babel fish column by Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed. She notes the big increase in ebook sales and includes this won- derful paragraph:

We also can tell from comments posted to virtual- ly any news story about e- books that people feel passionately about them, both pro and con. For some, this is not just a wave of the future, but a tsunami of progress; for others, it is a catastrophe. For many on both sides, it seems inevitable: we will have e- books, and nothing but e- books, like it or not. I see this as being rather like the fuss kicked up when mass market paperbacks were first introduced to the market and many predicted the End of Publishing as We Know It. In fact, it became just another option, one that profoundly affected the marketing and distribution of books, but didn’t put an end to what we had before, and I suspect that will be the case with e- books.

Gee, Barbara, so ebooks might be another kind of book, not The End of Publishing as We Know It? That kind of thinking will get you nowhere on the pundit circuit.

It’s also not the point of the story, which be- gins with a survey relating receptiveness to ebooks to age. Sixty percent of readers over age 60 weren’t tempted by ebooks— and 58% of readers under 30 also had no interest in ebooks. “ Of that group, price wasn’t the biggest issue. They just prefer the experience of a printed book.” ( Greatest interest was among readers in their 30s and 40s.)

How can that be? Isn’t this the digital genera- tion, the kids who never read print books in the first place and despise dead trees?

Fister teaches as well as being a librarian, nov- elist and columnist. She had her students conduct a “ wholly unscientific survey” of other students, 176 of them. A minority of those had bought or read ebooks— and of those who had done so, print Cites & Insights May 2011 10

was preferred to ebooks ten to one. ( The others preferred print by similarly huge ratios.)

This is, of course, just a self- reported prejudice among a convenience sample, not an indicator of actual behavior. Students are sentimental about books, but maybe they’ll grow out of it. As anoth- er librarian pointed out to me, it’s not particularly useful information for academic libraries as we decide what to acquire. Neither of these surveys addresses students’ preferences when doing re- search, and many students resist using books al- together when writing papers if articles and Websites will do the job. Printed books are long and complex, and worst of all, you have to leave your computer to go find them on the shelves…

There’s more here, some of it a trifle depressing— but one key is that, while academic libraries may find it necessary to favor digital over print, it’s not because students prefer ebooks. Different situa- tions and uses favor different media and methods. And, well, go back to the last few sentences of the paragraph quoted earlier.

All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing! All Singing! Dancing!

That some folks would rather watch movies than read books is not news. That some folks believe all books should, in effect, be movies isn’t news either. That some folks have the audacity to suggest all books will be multimedia spectaculars: that’s news of a sort. Here’s a little more material I could write off as silly season stuff.

Books that sing and dance

That’s Doug Johnson at The Blue Skunk Blog on November 16, 2008. Johnson’s a school librarian, and maybe this applies primarily to kids and chil- dren’s books. He attended a panel on digital books for children, one in which commercial reps showed digitized books made available on a sub- scription basis, with many of them “ taught to sing and dance through clever programming and de- sign, creating materials that are meant to be ‘ played’ more than read.”

These products have much to recommend them and great potential. Such collections may well give more children greater access to more quality liter- ature. Books that are more interactive in nature may well attract and engage reluctant readers. Stories that read themselves aloud may well be a boon to struggling readers. This is a market ( as much or more targeted to the classroom/ reading teacher as the school librarian) that will mature and expand. Get used to it.

He focuses on two questions. The first is, basically, “ who needs libraries and librarians?”— and John- son appears to be one of those who believes school ( and, unfortunately, public) libraries as physical collections are and should be doomed. The second:

Does experiencing literature in highly inter- active, multimedia formats actually lead to more reading? Or does it simply create a desire for more multimedia experiences? If the print book is vanilla ice cream, the electronic book that sings and dances is the whole hot fudge sundae with cherry and whipped cream. Who’s going to want the plain vanilla anymore?

Johnson then makes the logical leap to “ a post- literate society.” I’m not buying it— not because some books won’t become multimedia but because we’ve had the answer to that last question for years. There have been highly attractive multimedia books ( Dorling- Kindersley’s CD- ROMs and many other forms) for more than a decade. They haven’t doomed plain text any more than movies have. ( One comment notes that multimedia books prob- ably aren’t the way to encourage reluctant readers— whereas, you know, reading to your child and with the child seems to work. Oddly enough, Johnson says “ it doesn’t have to be either or” when it comes to online stories and personal reading— but seems unwilling to make the same assumption as regards online multimedia books and print books.)

Digital Independence Takes A Step Closer…

Bill Hill runs a blog called The Future of Reading. This appeared October 19, 2009, and it’s clear right off the bat that Hill has a single- minded view of the future. Not a future, not part of the future, but the future:

There’s no question now that if reading does have a future— and it must— then that future is digital.

There’s no question: Isn’t that easy? Because Bill Hill says so, and since he helped develop ClearType, he should know. He wrote a “ Digital Declaration of Independence” because that’s so clear and, I guess, inevitable:

We hold this truth to be self- evident: That every human has an equal and unalienable right to the means to create, distribute and consume infor- mation to realize their full potential for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness— regardless of the country they live in, their gender, beliefs, racial origin, language or any impairments they may have.

That’s strong stuff. Not only do you have the right to create, you have the same right to distribute as Cites & Insights May 2011 11

any other person or corporation. How is that going to happen? You got me— and, in fact, this post re- ally isn’t about books and reading at all. It’s about that inalienable right of every human being to high speed access to the Internet. Supposedly, Fin- land has made broadband a legal right. Will it be free? Will the gummint provide computers as well? Really? Well, since we now have universal access to and affordability of health care, quality education, clean air and healthy food, I guess this is the next step toward utopia.

Forget E- Books: The Future of the Book Is Far More Interesting

That’s Adam Penenberg on December 25, 2009 at Fast Company— and I wish I could say he’s having some fun with his readers. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the case. I think he believes this stuff.

Take a long hard look at a book, any book. Pull a favorite off a shelf, dust off the top-- maybe it’s the Bible, the Koran, a novel by Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy…. Now say your goodbyes, because there will soon be a day that you may view such analog contrivances as museum pieces, bought and sold on eBay as collectibles, or tossed into landfills.

What replaces the book? Not the e- book, “ which is, at best, a stopgap measure.” Nope. “ We are on the verge of re- imagining the book and transform- ing it something far beyond mere words.”

You got it. “ Mere text on a screen… won’t be enough.” The neobook will have “ authors acting more like directors and production companies than straight wordsmiths” as we replace “ stagnant words on a page” with video, photos, hyperlinks, social networks…

There’s more here, and it’s a bizarre vision, with nonfiction authors creating “ the proverbial last word on a subject, a one- stop shop for all the information surrounding a particular subject mat- ter.” Isn’t that what we all want? The one true source of information, and the hell with narrative.

It’s not just nonfiction:

A novelist could create whole new realities, a pas- tiche of video and audio and words and images that could rain down on the user, offering meta- phors for artistic expressions. Or they could warp into videogame- like worlds where readers become characters and through the expression of their own free will alter the story to fit. They could come with music soundtracks or be directed or produced by renowned documentarians. They could be collaborations or one- woman projects.

Ah, but then, as Penenberg possibly realizes that most of us are saying “ What a load of…” he cau- tions us that he’s not predicting the end of immer- sive reading ( even though he’s predicted the end of books and mere text), he’s seeing “ a future in which immersive reading coexists with other liter- ary, visual and auditory modes of expression.” Not because there would be text- only books and other forms— you know, like music recordings, movies, TV, other futuristic possibilities like that— but be- cause you could ignore all the other stuff that would be in every book.

And ask yourself: Which would you rather have, the hardcover book of today or this rich, multi- media treatment of the same title? Suddenly mere words on a page may feel a bit lifeless. And re- member that today’s youth are tomorrow’s book buyers, and they have been brought up on a steady diet of entertainment on demand, with text, pho- tos, and video all available at the click of a mouse. I’m skeptical that simple text will cut it for them.

I was wondering when Today’s Youth would ap- pear. There they are, and they’re all smart enough not to stand for boring old text. The last line? “ And besides, it’s inevitable.” Maybe Penenberg is get- ting paid for a bad joke. Or maybe he’s deluded.

The idea that some “ future books” will have multimedia elements is as new as the 1980s, and certain to be true in the future. The idea that all books will or should be these vast arrays of nested content might have one consequence some folks would consider favorable: It would reduce the number of new books, probably by more than 99%, since each book would require the resources of an indie movie at the very least. Don’t have a production team and a $ million or so to put this all together? Then, sorry, but you’re not going to be an author. ( One of the comments, from an author of 13 novels, says none of those books would ever have seen the light of day in this singular future.)

If you want to make a movie, make a movie. If you want to make a hyperlinked website or publi- cation, make a website or a title CD- ROM. Just don’t tell us every book needs to be a movie or hy- perlinked website: That’s nonsense, and it’s dysto- pian nonsense at that.

As books go beyond printed page to multisensory experience, what about reading?

Whoops. Here the assumption is right there in the title— not “ if,” not “ when some,” but as books… Cites & Insights May 2011 12

The author, Monica Hesse on December 28, 2009 in the Washington Post, starts out commenting on a ( shudder) Vook, a video/ book hybrid from Si- mon & Schuster.

Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative. In one chap- ter, the Greek ambassador receives a mysterious DVD, and readers must click on an embedded video to learn what’s on it.

That’s right— the future is here! Only, according to Hesse, it’s wrong: The mental image she formed of one character is dashed by the “ accompanying vid- eo” showing an entirely different image.

Hesse seems convinced there will “ certainly be more of” these multimedia books, and apparently Vooks are done on the cheap (“ thousands of dol- lars, not even tens of thousands of dollars” for each project, which must yield some really first- rate video!) And, sigh, we have good old Bob Stein tell- ing us that “ the dominant mode” will be “ multi- modal and multilayered”— yep, there it is, tradi- tional novels and nonfiction books are dead.

There’s more here, including descriptions of other Vooks and hybrid books. They don’t do much for me, but that’s just me:

If readers visit every hyperlink, watch every video and play every game, it is possible for the experi- ence of consuming a single book to become limit- less— a literal neverending story. It’s also possible for the user to never read more than a few chap- ters in sequence, before excitedly scampering over to the next activity.

Maybe it’s not book become movie; maybe it’s book become videogame? In any case, Hesse seems to think these are great for “ modern life” with their “ instant gratification.”

What they don’t feel like, at least in certain exam- ples, is reading.

Because they’re not. Instead of immersion into a fictional world, creating your own mental images, it’s all right there— no imagination required or al- lowed. And, of course, those digital natives who don’t like books anyway are the natural market. So what if Vooks don’t free you to use your imagina- tion? Who has time for imagination?

Towards A World of Smaller Books

This comes from Henry ( Henry Farrell, I assume) on February 9, 2010 at Crooked Timber— and in part it’s an interesting set of suggestions for ways “ ebooks” can increase possibilities. Except that, in niche markets at least, much of this is already happening even with print books.

Henry thinks most of the non- academic non- fiction books he reads, those he does not find “ a complete waste of time,” are padded: At least twice as long as they should be.

They make an interesting point, and then they make it again, and again, padding it out with some quasi- relevant examples, and tacking on a conclusion about What It All Means which the au- thor clearly doesn’t believe herself.

That’s clearly true for some nonfiction books I’ve read and just as clearly false for some others. In some areas ( best- selling Big Business Books, for example), the padding is more extreme. There’s a reason two different companies peddle 24- page synopses of Big Business Books, and I’m guessing those synopses contain all that’s actually useful in the BBBs. He thinks this is especially true for books that spring from articles written for The Atlantic or similar magazines, but assumes that these overlong books are there because of print economics: Pub- lishers assume readers will only pay “ book prices” for thick books.

All this may be changing as we move towards an electronic book publishing system. The econom- ics of electronic text production are not the same as the economics of book production ( as best as I understand either), and there aren’t the same pressures towards standardization of length. I suspect that people who would feel cheated if they paid ‘ book’ price for a long essay ( say around 20,000 words or so) will feel less so if they buy an electronic version. Ideally, we will end up in a world where people won’t feel obliged to pad out what are really essays to book length in order to get published and compensated.

If we set aside “ as we move towards an electronic book publishing system” or substitute “ as electron- ic publishing becomes a feasible alternative,” then— given that Henry admits to not understand- ing the economics— he might be right. But would people who grumble about paying $ 20 for a 40,000- word book be any less upset about paying $ 9.99 for the same- length ebook? I don’t know. ( I should note that the library book I’m reading at the moment, Steve Martin’s The Shopgirl, is a no- vella and stated as such on the cover—“ too short” to be a book, but it sure does look like a book.)

I’d like to see some of the results he suggests: A lot more essay- length e- publications, possibly an Cites & Insights May 2011 13

explosion of very short “ books,” a decrease in books of “ standard length” ( he uses 60,000 to 90,000 words) and rough stability for long books, which cost a lot to write and edit. I’ll choose not to comment on his note about future print books be- coming more expensive and more beautiful be- cause “ their main value will be as display items rather than use items,” but otherwise this is an ex- pansionary perspective that I rather like.

Except, except. Trade paperbacks in the 30,000- 40,000 word area ( novellas and nonfiction equivalents) aren’t unusual. In library publishing, as one example, they’re becoming the norm for some publishers. For that matter, even shorter books aren’t that uncommon. It’s also true that previous attempts to make e- essays financially via- ble haven’t worked that well, but maybe the future will be different. I’d like to think so.

Some comments take this farther. One com- menter finds that substantive book reviews fre- quently substitute for the books themselves; another notes that some self- help books reveal very little beyond the title. One person fears “ an exciting world of epublished 20K- word books” would preclude those 80K- word books that need to be that long. There are a lot of other comments; they may reward your reading. That includes at least one who strongly disagrees with the concept that most or all books will be “ e” in the future:

I think it somewhat narrow- minded, to use the politest word I can think of in this context, for the post to assume that everyone shares the same preferences and that everyone would rather read all the time on a screen rather than a page. I can- not believe I am alone in taking strong exception to this assumption.

Henry says he doesn’t see where the person’s get- ting this from, that he implied nothing of the sort. I got the same implication. Which is the only thing that keeps me from being wholly enthusiastic about the post, since the concept of “ appropriate length” is one I find attractive. There is, to be sure, one issue that’s mentioned by several commenters: It’s harder to write short than it is to write long.

Writing about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about WritingWriting about Writing

Let’s end this journey with a few items focused more directly on the writing side of the equation. If these seem a little miscellaneous, you’re not missing anything.

Charitable Writing

Iris Jastram posted this on March 17, 2009 at Pega- sus Librarian. She starts with a phrase I have trou- ble with: charitable reading, which she defines as “ read what people write and assume that those people meant well and that they are not stupid.” I’ve probably been accused of uncharitable reading as much as anybody, perhaps because I assume people mean to say what they write and that they are not stupid— that they have in fact written what they meant to say. The way it seems to get inter- preted, for certain writers, charitable reading seems to suggest you’re supposed to look past what the person actually wrote and come up with the most favorable possible version of what they might have intended to write. To me, that carries the im- plication that the writer is, if not stupid, at best semiliterate— that they’re incapable of expressing a thought clearly. I’m unwilling to make that as- sumption, which I regard as highly uncharitable.

But that’s not what the post is really about. Jastram offers a new term, charitable writing— and it’s an interesting one. Here’s her definition:

Assume that your audience is not stupid, that they mean well, that they are probably trying to do the best they can or think carefully or otherwise conduct themselves well, and that they wouldn’t be reading and interacting with you if they didn’t want to.

She finds herself unsubscribing from blogs and feeds that might have potentially useful content but present it in a condescending tone.

Somehow that tone of writing screams “ I’m pretty sure I’m smarter than you!” so loudly that it drowns out the calm murmur of the authors’ in- teresting ideas. This tone forces to me to work far harder at Charitable Reading than feels fair. It eventually wears me out. And so I unsubscribe and trust that others will point me toward the tru- ly important posts.

Jastram regards charitable reading as hard and charitable writing as even harder. I think she’s on to something. I think about science writing— or, rather, attempts to write about science for nonsci- entists. There’s Isaac Asimov, among other things a brilliant popularizer. There’s the magnificent 90- year- old science editor at the San Francisco Chron- icle, David Perlman. Both writers assume intelli- gence on the part of their readers, clarify without talking down and explain complex subjects with- out dumbing them down or getting them wrong. There are others— but there aren’t a lot of others. Cites & Insights May 2011 14

In technology, it’s worse: Writers who Know Better than You Do but will Patiently Explain the Truth are legion.

It’s about respecting your audience. It’s also about recognizing that other people aren’t you, that you really are not the model for the universe. It’s tough to do.

Free as in “ Me”

The article cited here is by Merlin Mann. It ap- pears on his website, 43 Folders. It is dated April 10, 2009. I do not claim to have written this article; nor am I attaching any ads to it or suppressing Mann’s byline.

In some ways, it’s not really about writing. It is about ethics and the freedom of a writer to decide whether it’s OK for somebody else to reuse their material en masse— especially without attribution. I know my answer to that last question: In the ab- sence of a CC0 or Public Domain license, it’s pla- giarism, unethical and just plain wrong.

Mann calls the article “ This unbelievably long article”— but it’s only 3,250 words, which is on the long side for a blog post ( albeit shorter than the average In the Library with the Lead Pipe post) but fairly typical for an article. And boy, is it readable, blunt and worth reading. What does make it long- er, to be sure: He tells you to read seven other posts and tweets ( unfortunately, not all the links work) before continuing— all related, apparently, to a Dow Jones- owned website that started “ featur- ing” material from other websites without permis- sion and with accompanying ads, in a manner that made the material appear to be contributions di- rectly to the site.

And that’s as far as I’m going to go. Go read the article— by Merlin Mann, on his website. I don’t really have more to say.

Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old, or, Hey, Publishing is Slow

John Scalzi offered this essay on June 24, 2009 at Whatever. He starts with an email he received:

Whenever I hear about a “ new” novelist, they turn out to be in their 30s. Why is that? It seems like you hear about new musicians and actors and other creative people in when they are in their 20s.

He offers some reasons— setting aside “ the me- chanics of why it pays to be young in the music and acting industries.” As always with Scalzi, you should read the whole post, but here are the key points, with very little of his elaboration ( my notes in parens):

1. Writing an entire novel is something most people have to work up to. ( Lots of people abandon early novels for good reason and learn the craft through short stories first… and that’s probably fine.)

2. Most people’s first novels well and truly suck. ( He says you’ll find that most “ debut novelists” wrote two, three, or four novels before finally writing one worth publishing. “ Debut novels are almost never first novels; they’re just the first novels you see.”)

3. The physical act of writing a novel takes a long time. ( It’s not just banging out the words; it’s developing plot, character, dia- logue, etc., and quite possibly research— meanwhile taking time for your day job and life. So those three or four “ practice novels” will likely take years.)

4. Selling a novel takes a long time. ( Agents will open the door to more publishers, but first you have to find an agent— and if you submit without an agent, you can antici- pate a long wait even from publishers who will work with “ slush piles.” Baen Books estimates nine to twelve months.)

5. Publishing a novel often takes a long time. ( He describes all the steps involved, some of which have very little to do with one particular book and lots to do with the publisher’s overall schedule.)

Scalzi offers himself as an example— noting that he’s lucky, as his “ debut novel” is only the second novel he wrote. He started “ learning to write well enough to write a novel” in 1969, and wrote his first novel- length manuscript in 1997. He wrote his debut novel in 2001; the contract was signed in 2003; it was published in 2005— and, by the way, it was good enough to win the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2006, by which time Scalzi was 37. He says 37 is pretty much the average age of Campbell winners over the last 35 years. ( One commenter looked at the nine of ten most recent winners who have birth years listed. With one exception, Cory Doctorow at 29, everyone was between 35 and 40 when they won.)

There are exceptions— there are always excep- tions— and, of course, there’s self- publishing. Cites & Insights May 2011 15

But for the folks who do it the old- fashioned way— and, currently, the way that still affords them the best chance for notoriety and a chance at a long- term career as a novelist— the combination of writing skill development and the mechanics of contemporary publishing conspires to drive the age of most debut novelists into the thirties. It doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.

Great stuff if you plan to be a young novelist or a novelist of any sort— but then, you’re reading Whatever already. Aren’t you?

I didn’t read through all 173 comments— that would be a long read. Given that it’s the Whatever audience, I have no doubt it would be worthwhile.

How the Internet Changed Writing in the 2000s

That’s Kevin Kelleher on January 3, 2010 at gigaom, and you have to wonder about a blog post that starts by summarizing a 45- page passage in Ulys- ses— a “ famous” passage that those of us who are educated are doubtless familiar with.

I’ll read charitably and assume Kelleher isn’t just showing off his erudition, even though the introduction adds almost nothing to a remarkably lightweight discussion of how Kelleher believes the internet has changed writing. He says writing itself has transformed, no small feat, in “ a dra- matic and subtle way.”

It has something to do with all the casual writ- ing people do in the internet. Kelleher asserts “ all of that practice is making online writing better.” Really? He admits to YouTube comments as a counterexample; I’d add Yahoo! comments, IMDB reviews, Flickr comments, many blogs, most tweets… His proof of his assertion? “ Many of the thoughtful people I know are producing some great stuff on the web.” OK.

What he really applauds is that the “ open structure” of the internet “ pressures us to write in a way that’s at once more concise and flexible”— and points to Jakob Nielsen’s argument that web writing should map Nielsen’s concept of web read- ing, which basically means bullet lists, highlighted keywords, short and simple paragraphs and brevi- ty. In other words, writing meant to be scanned, not actually read— which, to Kelleher, seems to be a good thing. Oh, and “ people are mastering more kinds of writing” because of IM, blog comments, Twitter. Mastering? Really?

Kelleher undermines his own “ transformed” assertion when he says “ The informal writing we do on the web doesn’t supplant formal writing, it complements and influences it— and is influenced in return.” In other words ( ahem), the internet en- courages additional ways of writing: Not transfor- mation but extension.

I don’t see a transformation in traditional modes of writing. I do see new media and methods complementing, not supplanting— as Kelleher says. Influencing? That’s hard to say. The same writers who tweet away at 140 characters or less seem fully capable of churning out 6,000- word articles and blowing them up into 60,000- word books if there’s a market. The comments are interesting— and one takes issue with Kelleher’s statement that “ The best way to learn good writing is to write a lot.” This per- son has been told, correctly I believe, that the best writers read a lot. ( This commenter thinks most writing on the web is making people into worse writers. I’m not sure I buy that either.) I’m tempted to quote one comment in full because it’s such a ( probably unintentional) lovely summary of what the web does to some writers:

Thank you for posting this excellent article. I plan to tweet it so others can read this. I like to use bullet points and lists to call attention to important sec- tions of Web copy. They are visually appealing and make it easy to quickly find pertinent information.

Let’s hope that’s not the endpoint of web- influenced writing. ( There’s another comment praising the post and discussing how web forms have “ progressed” this person’s writing. I wonder whether it’s another example of what the web can do to writers… but that’s snarky, and Kelleher in- forms us that a little snark goes a long way.)

ConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusion

Conclusions? The same ones I began with:

 We’re adding new ways of reading ( and maybe writing), which may encourage different additional ways of publishing— more essays, hyperlinked and multimedia stuff when that works, and so on, and so on.

 These new ways complement existing ways of writing and reading. There’s no credible evidence to suggest that they supplant exist- ing ways— just as there’s no credible evi- dence to suggest that ebooks will sweep print books off the face of the earth.

 Gurus will continue to make generational generalizations that are not only unsupport- Cites & Insights May 2011 16

ed by facts but in direct contradiction to facts, to assume that everybody else is the same as they are, and to get big bucks for lit- tle thinking with pat slogans.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far. This sprawling essay is roughly half the length of a “ typical” book, whatever that might be: some- thing over 32,000 words between the two parts.

The ZeitgeistThe ZeitgeistThe ZeitgeistThe ZeitgeistThe ZeitgeistThe Zeitgeist

26 is Not the Issueis Not the Issueis Not the Issueis Not the Issueis Not the Issueis Not the Issueis Not the Issue

If that number— 26— doesn’t speak to you, you haven’t been involved in a multipart conversation that began February 24, 2011, may have reached its peak in mid- March 2011, and is likely to go on for years to come.

The rest of you will think HarperCollins or maybe # hcod. You may think a lot of other things as well, informed partly by where you are in the library community. Even filtering more actively than usual, I started out with close to 100 source documents ( blog posts and others), an astonishing number for what was largely a three- week wonder.

Before going through the facts, a range of li- brary reactions, calls for boycotts and manifestoes, non- library reactions and some related items on libraries and ebooks, I’ll start with a few observa- tions, some predating this brouhaha but made more vivid by recent events:

 Public libraries are neither underfunded academic libraries nor “ slow” academic li- braries. They serve fundamentally different purposes and communities.

 There are good reasons most public library users think of books first when they think of libraries, and librarians who wish to flee from that image continue to act in what I regard as a suicidal manner. ( That’s only my opinion, to be sure.)

 Those who have never worked in public li- braries or who haven’t worked in such librar- ies in years maybe shouldn’t dictate what’s best for such libraries or assume they know better than current public librarians. Public librarians should be deeply skeptical of ad- vice from such sources, and from pundits in general, when it seems to conflict with expe- rience on the ground and the needs and wants of your own community.

 “ Deals with the devil,” henceforth DWTD, are so named for good reason.

 All DRM is not the same. Some DRM— that used on DVDs and Blu- Ray Discs, for exam- ple— restricts fair use rights but has no effect on First Sale rights, the basis for li- brary circulation.

 “ Big Media” are not all media. These huge companies tend to be profit- driven, block- buster- oriented product- pushers with little real interest in the content within those products. In the book field, there are the Big Six and everybody else— and “ everybody else” may be far more important to the fu- ture of books ( print and e) than the biggies.

Nothing in this essay or anything else I write should be taken as saying that I know what public libraries should do or that I know better than pub- lic librarians. I’m noting what’s been said, offering my comments and, in some cases, my opinion. I’m a public library user. I have never been a public librarian ( or any other kind of librarian).

As usual, if the title of a post or item doesn’t appear in quotes, that’s because it’s the italicized heading just above the discussion.

The MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe MessagesThe Messages

Joe Atzberger seems to have been the first to post, on February 24, 2011 at Atzblog with the title “ New OverDrive DRM terms: ‘ This message will self- destruct’.” Atzberger quotes a paragraph from a “ Library Partner Update” from Overdrive, the ebook supplier used by many public libraries:

To provide you with the best options, we have been required to accept and accommodate new terms for eBook lending as established by certain publishers. Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licens- ing change from a publisher that, while still operat- ing under the one- copy/ one- user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher’s requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library ( and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one cus- tomer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached. This eBook lending condition will be required of all eBook vendors or distributors offering this publisher’s titles for library lending ( not just OverDrive).

OverDrive had, until then, operated on something like a purchase model: The library purchased the ebook and OverDrive made it available on a single- Cites & Insights May 2011 17

circulation basis: One copy could be out to one user at a time.

Atzberger raised an additional set of issues that play into this discussion indirectly:

The previous model already forced libraries to pre- tend a digital " copy" was a single physical thing. On- ly one library's user can have it " checked out" at a time. And only on one device. The clearly misap- plied language around this tells you what a terrible idea it is. To be clear, this model eliminates almost all the major advantages of the item's being digital, without restoring the permanence, durability, ven- dor- independence, technology- neutrality, portabil- ity, transferability, and ownership associated with the physical version. [ Emphasis added.]

Is it a terrible idea for free circulation of ebooks to be limited to one patron at a time? If so, then we have a messy dichotomy: Either library circulation of ebooks fundamentally undercuts copyright and the ability of authors to make livings, or libraries can’t circulate ebooks. ( Or public libraries accept pay- per- use as a model, which may be great for the largest and best- funded but could be fatal for smaller, poorer libraries.) We’ll see hints of this dichotomy elsewhere— but it’s secondary to the primary issue, an attempt by “ a publisher” to move from a model that at least emulates first- sale rights to one that’s effectively pay- per- read.

While I disagree with “ the. effing. librarian”’ s proposed solution—“ national buying programs” make me as nervous as any other national library mandates— it’s hard to argue with the first sentence of t. e. l’s comment: “ Why is anyone surprised?”

By the way, since it really doesn’t fit into this essay, I’ll use this spot to note a remarkable April 4, 2011 post— also by Atzberger but at a different spot, Library Hackers Unite! This post, entitled “ Underdone: Autopsy of an OverDrive EULA,” does something few of us do— actually goes through an end- user license agreement critically. The results aren’t pretty ( or, as Atzberger suggests, likely to be legally enforceable). The post is well worth reading.

HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations

A day later ( February 25, 2011), Josh Hadro con- firmed at Library Journal that HarperCollins ( henceforth, frequently, HC)— was the publisher in question. HC’s first statement:

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our au- thors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come.

Josh Maxwell of HC claimed the 26- circ limit was based on factors such as “ the average lifespan of a print book, and wear and tear on circulating cop- ies.” How would HC know how often print books actually circulate in public libraries? It wouldn’t.

Hadro’s piece notes that, with a two- week lend- ing period, 26 circs is a year of use but also that two others of the “ big six” ( Macmillan and Simon & Schuster) don’t allow ebooks to be circulated in li- braries at all. Hadro quotes other sources, including a somewhat bizarre quote from Christopher Platt at NYPL, calling HC’s 26- circ limit “ a great first step and an interesting development.”

Hadro also notes another big issue in the OverDrive statement, one Atzberger failed to high- light: It was also raising questions about the size of consortia and shared collections, including the statement that publishers " seek to ensure that sufficient copies of their content are being licensed to service demand of the library's service area, while at the same time balance the interests of publisher's retail partners who are focused on unit sales." Consider that wording: It suggests that pub- lishers should be able to determine how many cop- ies of a book a library or group of libraries should acquire. Anybody ready to sign on to that “ inter- esting” idea? The Hadro story has 114 comments, including the usual good sense from Barbara Fist- er, a surprising number of people willing to bend over and welcome their new overlords, early calls for boycotts and people suggesting “ solutions” like moving directly to a pay- per- use model.

Publishing Industry Forces OverDrive and Other Library eBook Vendors to Take a Giant Step Back

That’s Bobbi L. Newman on February 25, 2011 at Librarian by Day. As I suspect most librarians who received the OverDrive PDF did, she’d set it aside to review later, until the first post alerted her to an issue. She quotes additional relevant portions, e. g.:

Publishers are expressing concern and debating their digital future where a single eBook license to a library may never expire, never wear out, and never need replacement.

and

In addition, our publishing partners have ex- pressed concerns regarding the card issuance pol- Cites & Insights May 2011 18

icies and qualification of patrons who have access to OverDrive supplied digital content. Addressing these concerns will require OverDrive and our li- brary partners to cooperate to honor geograph- ic and territorial rights for digital book lending, as well as to review and audit policies regarding an eBook borrower’s relationship to the library ( i. e. customer lives, works, attends school in service area, etc.). I can assure you OverDrive is not interested in managing or having any say in your library policies and issues. Select publisher terms and conditions require us to work toward their comfort that the library eBook lend- ing is in compliance with publisher requirements on these topics.

I’ve added different emphases from those Newman added, but the gist is clear: A sudden call to en- force “ geographic and territorial rights”— on a ba- sis that’s specifically agreeable to publishers. In California, at least, I can get a legitimate library card from any or every public library in the state— and ebook borrowing should presumably be pos- sible for anyone with a valid library card. ( That’s true for Massachusetts as well.) Thus, any geo- graphic limit short of one encompassing one- eighth of the nation’s citizens is automatically a reduction from current rights.

There are 154 comments and backlinks on this post; I didn’t attempt to read them all. Publisher apologists were already hard at work—“ Mark” says “ very few copies circulate as many as 26 times and this isn’t a policy that’s going to hurt libraries.” Even that early, others had facts: Paula L noted that her library had more than 61,000 books with more than 26 circulations— including paperbacks with as many as 43 circs. Others decided to attack all publishers and claim they should be bypassed entirely, and one “ if it’s digital, it’s perfectly ethical for everybody to copy it” pirate went on at length.

HarperCollins to libraries: we will nuke your ebooks after 26 checkouts

Cory Doctorow weighed in at boingboing on Feb- ruary 25, 2011, alerted to the situation by “ Library- Goblin” ( presumably Josh Neff). Doctorow goes to an extreme, making an assertion that would elimi- nate all library purchases of DVDs and Blu- Ray Discs as well as ebooks: “ libraries should just stop buying DRM media for their collections. Period. It’s unsafe at any speed.”

The post certainly makes good points, and DRM— especially as practiced for most items with- out physical carriers— is frequently more dangerous than useful. You may find his argument more com- pelling ( and part of me wants to agree), but I’m not convinced. Doctorow does walk the talk: his novels that are available as ebooks are also available as CC- licensed free downloads. But the model that works for him does not appear likely to work for most au- thors. There is DRM and there is DRM; I’m not sure it can be an all- or- nothing situation. Specifically, there are flavors of DRM that still assure first- sale rights while, unfortunately, restricting fair- use rights— and there’s DRM that negates both sets of rights by turning purchases into licenses. It’s a use- ful distinction. Another big bunch o’ comments ( 121), some unsurprisingly suggesting that public libraries would gain by going to a pay- per- use li- censing scheme for all materials— and, in one case, seemingly suggesting that libraries bullied publish- ers into allowing free circulation in the first place, in another asserting that libraries should be charg- ing for circulation in any case. ( Ah yes: Those terri- ble bullies, public libraries, pushing around those tiny little publishers like NewsCorp!)

Another set of real numbers, from “ lalien” this time: At their public library, the average paperback can last upwards of 50 circs; hardcovers “ can have circs in the hundreds without showing significant damage.” Also, as several librarians pointed out, OverDrive ebooks lack the discounts libraries fre- quently get on print books.

A message from OverDrive on HarperCollins’ new eBook licensing terms

Steve Potash ( CEO of OverDrive) posted this on March 1, 2011 at OverDrive’s Digital Library Blog. Based on feedback from “ library partners,” Over- Drive moved HarperCollins ebooks from its gen- eral catalog to a separate collection on March 7, 2011, and removed listings of HC books from its library marketplace. Potash takes exception to suggestions that OverDrive “ failed to stand up for you and your readers in this situation” and stresses OverDrive’s advocacy efforts for libraries. It’s an interesting message— even if it does assume that library patrons are “ customers.”

Open Letter to Librarians

The 2011 award for Most Ironically Named Library- Related Blog must go to Library Love Fest, with its banner of butterflies and flowers— and its owner- ship: HarperCollins. Which, oddly enough, didn’t Cites & Insights May 2011 19

see fit to spring for its own domain or platform: the URL is harperlibrary. typepad. com/ my_ weblog/, so it’s a freebie. This message, from Josh Marwell, President of Sales, appeared on March 1, 2011. Giv- en that the letter’s explicitly described as open, I’m quoting it in its entirety, other than an email ad- dress and the salutation:

Over the last few days we at HarperCollins have been listening to the discussion about changes to our e- book policy. HarperCollins is committed to libraries and recognizes that they are a crucial part of our local communities. We count on librarians reading our books and spreading the word about our authors' good works. Our goal is to continue to sell e- books to libraries, while balancing the challenges and opportunities that the growth of e- books presents to all who are actively engaged in buying, selling, lending, promoting, writing and publishing books.

We are striving to find the best model for all par- ties. Guiding our decisions is our goal to make sure that all of our sales channels, in both print and digital formats, remain viable, not just today but in the future. Ensuring broad distribution through booksellers and libraries provides the greatest choice for readers and the greatest oppor- tunity for authors’ books to be discovered.

Our prior e- book policy for libraries dates back al- most 10 years to a time when the number of e- readers was too small to measure. It is projected that the installed base of e- reading devices domes- tically will reach nearly 40 million this year. We have serious concerns that our previous e- book pol- icy, selling e- books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e- book eco- system, hurt the growing e- book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors. We are looking to balance the mission and needs of libraries and their patrons with those of authors and booksellers, so that the library channel can thrive alongside the growing e- book retail channel.

We spent many months examining the issues be- fore making this change. We talked to agents and distributors, had discussions with librarians, and participated in the Library Journal e- book Summit and other conferences. Twenty- six circulations can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand, and much longer for other titles and core backlist. If a library decides to repur- chase an e- book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point. Our hope is to make the cost per circulation for e- books less than that of the corresponding physical book. In fact, the digi- tal list price is generally 20% lower than the print version, and sold to distributors at a discount.

We invite libraries and library distributors to partner with us as we move forward with these new policies. We look forward to ongoing discus- sions about changes in this space and will contin- ue to look to collaborate on mutually beneficial opportunities.

Well, now that that’s taken care of… With the usu- al exceptions ( those who think paying per use is a peachy- keen idea, one “ author and publisher” who thinks it’s just great), most comments I scanned state reasoned opposition to HC’s practices, and a fair amount of doubt as to the extent of library consultation before making this move. ( It’s also clear that nobody’s checking comments for spam, but that’s not surprising in this case.)

Early Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library ReactionsEarly Library Reactions

Items above deal with the actual messages from HarperCollins and OverDrive, including some re- actions. This section considers more early library reactions, excluding those directly calling for boy- cotts, bills of rights, manifestoes and the like.

Another Ebook Rant

Christina Pikas offered this on February 25, 2011 at Christina’s LIS Rant. Her lead paragraph offers a hint as to how she feels about the HC/ Overdrive announcement:

Oh, this just kills me. It’s absolutely despicable, and I don’t mean cute like the movie.

Pikas notes that the 26- circ limit “ could mean that a book costs about $ 1/ checkout” and that this is “ totally not sustainable”— certainly true for many public libraries. Further, “ I used to see books with more than 200 lifetime checkouts.” She notes that, with this model, there’s no point in “ buying” at all— and Pikas spots the other problem:

Oh, oh, and another thing. They want to audit that you’re not giving library cards to people out- side your geographic area. Boooogus.

Pikas is a special librarian, but seems to see things through a public librarian’s perspective. Not much to add here.

Harper Collins, Overdrive In Library E- Book Mess

Here’s one from a public library— February 26, 2011 on The Short List from the Essex Library Associa- tion ( Connecticut). Cites & Insights May 2011 20

Once upon a time. For all us librarians wondering how the fairy tale of e- books might play out, we’re seeing it become a horror story instead.

Essex uses OverDrive through the LION Libraries Consortium. “ With a limit of 26 check- outs on any given e- book— and you can anticipate other pub- lishers will be climbing onto Harper Collins’ re- strictive bandwagon, LION’s 365,000 patrons will find their ability to access Overdrive’s e- books so severely diminished as to be useless.” The writer wonders, “ What can libraries do to keep e- book patrons happy?” and notes Cory Doctorow’s advice and the growing library outrage.

None of this can be resolved until publishers come up with a viable business model for digital books. It won’t serve them well to distance their authors from potential readers, digital or print. The publishing industry as a whole is in trouble and alienating libraries who serve millions of readers by spending billions of dollars on materi- als just doesn’t seem productive.

There’s a reference to Matthew Hamilton’s pro- posal ( in the Boycotts and Proposals section, be- low) and a call: “ Anybody got any great ideas?” There are, unfortunately, no comments.

Discriminating Against Libraries, 26 eBook Circs at a Time

Not much doubt how Heather Braum sees it in this February 26, 2011 post at Librarian in the Cloud. She addresses, among other things, the impact on small public libraries and the consortia that make it feasible for them to lend ebooks at all ( noting that about 80% of U. S. public libraries have service area populations under 25,000 and budgets under $ 200,000), so that this policy increases the digital divide between haves and have- nots. Braum also quotes a discussion indicating that at least one reader gets it— but a bit later makes the common mistake of assuming ebooks really don’t cost any- thing to publish. Near the end there’s this:

Reading promotes more reading, which promotes more demand for books. Right? You’d think so! But if you restrict the ability of institutions to purchase materials in any form, institutions aren’t going to buy books and readers aren’t going to access them. Period. The entry level to do so is too high.

The rest of the post is also worth reading.

The other shoe has dropped

After an introductory paragraph, this February 27, 2011 post by Michael Sauers at The Travelin’ Librar- ian offers what he has to add to the conversation ( emphases in the original):

Why the hell is everyone so frickin’ surprised!?

He isn’t saying “ I told you so”— but is noting that in his speeches he’s always been leery of ebooks:

The DRM, the licensing instead of owning, the impermanence, the reliance on easily out- of- date- able hardware, the platform lock- in. Does any of this ring a bell with anyone?

Unlike some of us, Sauers has an ereader— and “ every eBook app possible on my droid and my desktop.” But he doesn’t “ buy” many ebooks be- cause “ I just can’t figure out how to justify to my- self something that I just don’t own.”

Publishers that only want to sell someone a li- cense are only in it for themselves! They are not our friends and they love the corner they’ve put us into. Hell, if the library doesn’t have it people will have to buy it. More money for them.

Yes, I’m pissed off about all this. But I might just be more pissed off at all the librarians who are act- ing all surprised and betrayed. Betrayal assumes there was trust in the first place and I don’t believe it was ever there to begin with.

There’s an update noting that he was not intend- ing to attack individual libraries or librarians. I see that. He’s upset that library people haven’t been paying attention all along. He has a point.

HarperCollins hit by several types of stupid stick

Always one for understatement, Phil Bradley post- ed this on his eponymous weblog on February 28, 2011. He paraphrases HC’s decisions:

They have decided that libraries will only be able to loan one of their eBooks 26 times before it im- plodes on itself like a Mission Impossible cassette tape. They also reserve the right to check library records to ensure that books are only being lent to appropriate members of the library. ( Which I im- agine is against a fair number of privacy laws.)

Well… HC wants someone to assure that libraries don’t serve extended populations. I think that’s ridiculous and unenforceable ( and in pretty much every state in the U. S., at least, Bradley would be right as to the parenthetical statement), but HC didn’t quite state their invasive request that baldly. Still, it’s not an unreasonable extension.

I simply cannot begin to describe what a stupid, backward looking and retrograde step I think this is. It is a direct attack on a library's users, making it difficult for them to borrow electronic books that they might otherwise be unable to read. Cites & Insights May 2011 21

Worse than that, it is going to make libraries think twice about purchasing eBooks in the future if publishers think that they can just change the rules whenever they feel like it.

Again, there’s more to the post than what I’m quoting. Bradley posted “ Further thoughts on eBooks” on March 14, 2011— and there’s so much in that post, all of it interesting and well- stated, some UK- specific— that rather than attempting to ex- cerpt and comment I’ll point you to the blog ( phil- bradley. typepad. com) and say you may find it worth your time.

Artificial Scarcity: I attempt to identify the root cause of the # HCOD debacle

Nicholas Schiller is an academic librarian. This appeared February 28, 2011 at information. games. Schiller sees himself as a big- picture type and seems convinced that publishers are anachronisms and that “ artificial scarcity is the real problem.” He goes on to assign two functions to publishers: owning printing presses and providing distribu- tion channels. If you neatly eliminate all editorial, selection, layout and other value- added functions of publishers, that might be right— just as if no- body needs to make a living, giving away your work may make sense. “ Artificial scarcity” is one of those great- sounding catch phrases that works beauti- fully as long as you assume that it’s only distribu- tors and other middlemen that get revenue from the current system. Writers work for the love of it, right? Schiller consistently talks about publishers’ bottom lines; the authors are nowhere to be seen.

His advice? “ Stop living in the past.” He seems to think libraries are defined as middlemen. He claims as a “ traditional definition” that “ libraries are agencies that pool resources from a population, spend these resources to purchase content from publishers, and make this content available to our population of users.” Really? That’s the traditional definition of libraries? Who knew?

This is a long and “ philosophical” post that I find wholly unsatisfactory but that you may find convincing. Schiller concludes that the HC situa- tion “ isn’t a problem in and of itself”— whereas he’s interested in what libraries are “ after our col- lections stop being our raison d’etre.” There’s only one direct comment— and while that one immedi- ately provides a more meaningful definition of li- braries, “ Libraries are about discovery,” it’s from another librarian ( I’d guess an academic librarian) who thinks libraries “ willingly gave up on first sale doctrine in the name of convenience a long time ago. We like to think we’re buying ‘ things,’ but what we’re actually buying is conditional use li- censes.” Sorry, but for most public libraries and most of their resources, that is simply not true.

HarperCollins & the future of ebooks in libraries

Anna Creech, an academic librarian, posted this on March 3, 2011 at eclectic librarian. It’s relatively brief and includes both a suggestion I continue to find questionable when applied to public libraries and an interesting additional comment.

The suggestion:

I think the best solution for popular ebooks and libraries is a subscription or lease model. Give li- braries unlimited simultaneous access to ebooks. Let the libraries regulate who can access them. Charge a flat rate or per use rate or whatever will make a profit on the whole without breaking li- brary budgets.

The problem with that last sentence is that the deals are dictated by publishers and intermediar- ies— so that “ make a profit” translates to “ make much higher profits than most industries and most content fields” and “ breaking library budg- ets” translates to “ your library doesn’t need hu- manities monographs, special collections… and, you know, what are all those staff doing?” Maybe I should just abbreviate “ lease it all/ pay per use” ad- vice as Deals with the Devil, DWTD, and let it go at that. I don’t believe it’s at all workable for public libraries, I believe academic librarians are eventu- ally going to regret their avid adoption of DWTD, and I’m probably repeating myself.

The more interesting part— except that it makes what I regard as an improbable assumption, that is, that publishers would continue to provide access to ebooks that weren’t achieving some rea- sonable level of annual return:

The benefit to libraries is that as the popularity of titles wane, they aren’t stuck with a bunch of un- wanted ebooks. The benefit for publishers is that their entire catalog, front and back, is readily avail- able to readers, lengthening the long tail of sales.

And that’s the aspect of library books that isn’t giv- en as much weight as it should. Granted, I am a book person, so perhaps my experience is skewed. However, there are several series and authors that I collect in hardcover now that I was introduced to through my library. I am a cheap reader, so buying in hardcover is something I reserve only for things I Cites & Insights May 2011 22

really enjoy and plan to hold onto for a long time. I’m not going to buy a hardcover of something un- known, particularly not at list price. I think too of- ten publishers don’t take advantage of the marketing opportunities that libraries provide.

I agree fully with the last sentence. I’m also a cheap reader ( probably cheaper than Creech). But I see nothing in a pay- per- use model that would either encourage or mandate that publishers maintain eternal availability of titles that are no longer earn- ing out— even assuming that publishers never go out of business, a wildly improbable assumption. ( Maintaining a title in your backlist has ongoing costs quite apart from physical inventory.)

The reality: DWTD means the library has no collection, nothing it owns. If you don’t think that’s dangerous for the future of public libraries, I probably won’t convince you.

Open letter to HarperCollins

Jamie LaRue is a public library director, and I think that’s significant. I’m quoting almost the entirety of his March 3, 2011 post at myliblog ( other than the intro), and I’m sure he won’t object. I’ll have one small grump at the end, but I’ll leave it for that— and you might note the issues LaRue recognizes:

Dear HarperCollins:

I have three concerns and one suggestion. My first concern is that as a volume purchaser, libraries should get discounts, not price hikes coinciding with new limitations of use. A second concern is that content licensing is itself profoundly destruc- tive to the emerging ebook ecosystem. At present, libraries greatly assist authors in finding audienc- es. Passing things around— pulling copies from the library and distributing to booksales, church bazaars, charter schools, etc.— not only helps people find authors in ways they can afford, it also encourages reading, which is clearly one of the li- brary’s role. From the other side, many libraries RECEIVE donations from people who bought a book but are done with it. How does one donate an ebook to the library under your model? My third concern is simply the long tail problem. What happens when our license expires, but the file is no longer available for renewing? You won’t let us own things. How can we be sure that titles endure past some arbitrary time?

My suggestion is this: instead of punishing us for being among your best customers, make us sales partners. My library has over 2 million website vis- its a year. All of those people are looking for books. Douglas County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, and highly tech savvy. We’re working on prototype systems for the dis- play of ebooks, further simplifying the process of locating new authors.

The way it works now is people like what they read, so buy it. But there’s no reason we couldn’t make that an option right from our catalogs. And for every borrowing that turns into a purchase, the library should get a shareback, or credit for pur- chase, or reduction in the cost of future purchas- es, or some mix of the above. Buying through a library is a perk provided by the library, leveraging the cooperative purchasing power of their taxes ( and yes, our patrons should get a discount, too). Advantage to you: a nationwide sales system, with eager salespeople you don’t even have to pay.

Remember, all we’re guilty of is the desire to buy books from you, and to generate ongoing interest in them. If HarperCollins isn’t interested in selling to us, I am confident that many small, independ- ent publishers – and a growing number of self- published authors – certainly will be. And that might be a change in the ecosystem, too, acceler- ated by such decisions as the content licensing model. But I can’t see how HarperCollins would benefit from it.

You can probably guess the grump: If a buying link is only to the publisher, or ( more likely) to Ama- zon, or… then it’s further disadvantaging local bookstores. If, on the other hand, it’s to some clearinghouse that features local bookstores when they have the items available for sale, well, I’m hard- pressed to find an objection.

More on eBooks and Libraries

Sarah Houghton- John posted this at Librar- ianInBlack on March 3, 2011. It’s mostly urging ALA to make an Official Statement on the HC con- troversy— and H- J finds it offensive that AL Direct didn’t consider the HC controversy to be the most important news item of the week.

Psssst, ALA! Your members are making news. Your members are the ones who are upset, on be- half of their profession and their communities. Your members are the ones who are making news by protesting a publisher’s short- sighted and anti- quated decision that is not only anti- library but anti- consumer. Perhaps you can listen to your membership, and cover what’s going on in a more intentional way. Perhaps you can issue a formal statement to the press about what libraries believe in, and how publishers’ choices on how to sell or not sell digital formats to libraries is subverting a core value we hold dear.

The silence is deafening. We’re waiting. Cites & Insights May 2011 23

After ALA President Roberta Stevens posted some- thing on Facebook, H- J called the placement of the message “ a cop out of responsibility for the mes- sage itself” and repeated the need for a “ central- ized voice speaking with authority.”

Speak out and speak out now, ALA. Reassert librar- ies’ rights to lend materials. Reassert libraries’ re- sponsibilities to the public good. And reassert libraries’ roles in our communities as cultural and thought leaders. That doesn’t require anyone to say anything specific about HarperCollins or any other publishers, or endorse any specific action. Give voice to our professional ethics and responsibilities re- garding the content we provide, regardless of for- mat. Please, say something to the world– or the rest of us will keep talking loudly, angrily, and unofficial- ly. And those are the voices the press will pick up in- stead. My guess is that is not what ALA wants.

How would ALA do this, given that it’s a member- ship organization? The principles discussed in this paragraph are already represented in statements on ALA’s website. How, exactly, would ALA “ reassert” these in a meaningful way without referring specifi- cally to HarperCollins? And who, exactly, is in a po- sition to say, “ This is what all librarians believe,” in a controversy where several public librarians came out early on supporting HC’s position? For that matter, why would ALA not be happy about a di- verse range of librarian voices being heard in the media? The ALA is not the Catholic Church, with an “ infallible” head whose positions cannot be chal- lenged— and I think that’s a good thing.

Mission: Impossible

Steve Lawson is also an academic librarian— and he recognizes there’s an issue with academic librarians telling public librarians how to run their libraries good. This March 4, 2011 post at See Also… includes several thoughts worth paying attention to, whether I agree with all of them or not. There’s enough there that I’m inclined to point and say “ go read it,” but I’ll note a couple of things.

Before the HC/ Overdrive announcement, Lawson raised a question within the Library Socie- ty of the World group on FriendFeed— in essence, if the CEO of one of the Big Six wants a vision for retail and library access to ebooks in 2021 “ that is both realistic and optimized for the publisher’s interest,” what would you ( as an executive at that publisher) say? Here’s the library portion of his own answer— again, speaking as a “ Harper & Pen- guinMifflin House” exec:

As for libraries, I think once we get the DRM fig- ured out, the library strategy will fall into place. Right now, I envision smaller libraries paying per- use ( i. e., per “ checkout”), while larger libraries will want to just have a flat yearly payment for unlim- ited access. We can calibrate the per- use payment to ensure we meet revenue goals, so that bestsell- ers might circulate at a discount while other new and specialty books may be at a premium. It will be important that we make our books available on many types of devices to maximize circulations. We will need to work closely with libraries to pre- vent abuse by their patrons— smaller libraries will be highly motivated to comply to avoid incurring per- use charges from people outside their service areas; larger libraries will have no such disincen- tive. Perhaps library cards will need to be regulat- ed more closely, like state IDs.

Recognize anything there? It’s not exactly what HC decided, but it’s close. Which leads to another comment on HC’s attempt, after some thoughts on atoms, bits and code and why HC’s looking to pro- tect their own interests:

It doesn’t mean that librarians and readers have to like it, or accept it. I do think it’s time we stopped being surprised by it. [ Emphasis added.]

And this:

As an academic librarian, I have been a little shy about writing about this issue. This particular in- stance seems to be up to the public libraries to handle, and they seem to be handling it fine with- out my comment.

Rather than trying to say what public libraries and librarians should do, I’d suggest they look at what has happened with academic librarians and the Big Deal from commercial journal vendors. Once you go down that road of ceding choice and con- trol to the publishers, it is extremely difficult to claw your way back.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it this time, is to advocate for code and norms that enable and encourage access to publications for whomever wants it; preservation of the cultural record; a sys- tem that works well for libraries large and small and for all people who can’t afford to buy all the books they might want to read or consult.

DWTD as a desirable model for public libraries? Reread that paragraph beginning “ Rather than…”

Open Letter to HarperCollins

In this case, the letter is from San Rafael Public Library’s director— and Sarah Houghton- Jan, the Assistant Director. It appeared March 7, 2011 on LibrarianInBlack and, as with Jamie LaRue’s letter, Cites & Insights May 2011 24

I think it’s worth repeating in its entirety. I invite you to compare and contrast the two approaches:

Dear HarperCollins:

The San Rafael Public Library is strongly opposed to your new eBook licensing policy for libraries.

The policy you propose is contradictory to the spirit of libraries and damaging to the relationship libraries have long held with publishers. You are demanding that libraries rent eBooks from your company, but if the same title were to be pur- chased in paper copy we would still own them. This seems to encourage paper- only purchases from HarperCollins, something that would not help your company’s brand or financials.

The arbitrarily chosen “ self- destruct” number of 26 circulations is not reflective of the reasoning you gave in your public statement. Paper copies, hardback or paperback, last much longer than a year and many books see much more than 26 total circulations in their first year alone. As written, your new policy seems greedy, especially consider- ing the low cost involved in producing an eBook “ copy” as compared to a paper copy.

The larger practice of digital content licensing is profoundly destructive to the burgeoning eBook market. Libraries help authors find audiences – and therefore help your bottom line. A 2007 study done by ALA ( see: http:// bit. ly/ dYk84S) shows that 40% of adults and 36% of youth purchased a book after checking the same title out from a li- brary. Discarded library copies find new audiences with book sales, donations to schools, and more. In addition, libraries receive donations from indi- vidual consumers who purchased a book but are done using it. With the current model of licens- ing, consumers cannot donate eBooks. This re- moves one additional way for your authors to get more exposure— and future sales— through li- brary check- outs. Libraries raise exposure for your authors and your books. Let us continue to play that vital role for your company.

You may, if lucky, see some financial benefits in the short- term in more affluent areas of the coun- try that can still afford to ascribe to your model of rentals. However, in the long term libraries will be forced to stop offering your eBooks and increas- ingly rely solely on paper books. That does not help your bottom line or public image.

Libraries want to buy your titles— in print and in digital copies. As publishers’ most loyal and long- term customers, it is extremely confusing to be punished for wanting to give you money. If, how- ever, HarperCollins is no longer interested in sell- ing to libraries, libraries like ours look forward to the long list of independent publishers and self- published authors waiting to fill the gap you will be leaving in the market. We realize that these newer methods of publishing are perceived as a threat to business by traditional publishers like HarperCollins. This change in the market will only grow exponentially faster in response to decisions like your “ rule of 26.”

All of the limits you have placed on library digital content are short- sighted, at best. eBook licensing, and the digital rights management that comes along with it, acts like a tariff in its inhibition of the free exchange of ideas, literature, and infor- mation— the ideas, literature, and information that your authors have worked so hard to put out into the world. We encourage you to maintain your pos- itive relationship with libraries and sell your eBook titles to libraries outright, not rent them.

Grumps? I think any focus on “ the low cost in- volved in producing an ebook ‘ copy’” is an unnec- essary digression and at least implicitly overstates the role that hardcopy costs play in most book prices. Otherwise… well, do your own comparisons.

Restrictions on library e- book lending threaten access to information

This press release from ALA emerged on March 14, 2011, perhaps not timely enough for some but probably as rapidly as ALA could craft a reasonable message. Omitting the boilerplate final paragraph on ALA’s size and significance, here it is:

As libraries cope with stagnant or decreased budgets, the recent decision by publisher Harper- Collins to restrict the lending of e- books to a lim- ited number of circulations per copy threatens libraries’ ability to provide their users with access to information.

“ Libraries have a long history of providing access to knowledge, information and the creative writ- ten works of authors,” said American Library As- sociation ( ALA) President Roberta Stevens. “ We are committed to equal and free access for the millions of people who depend on their library’s resources every day. While demand has surged, fi- nancial support has decreased. The announce- ment, at a time when libraries are struggling to remain open and staffed, is of grave concern. This new limitation means that fewer people will have access to an increasingly important format for de- livering information.”

Data collected by the ALA shows that libraries are responsive to the needs of their users. Nation- wide, 66 percent of public libraries report offering free access to e- books to library users - up from 38 percent three years ago. Cites & Insights May 2011 25

Stevens continued “ Crafting 21st century solutions for equitable access to information while ensuring authors and publishers have a fair return on their in- vestments is our common goal. The transition to the e- book format should not result in less availability.

“ The marketplace for e- books is changing rapidly. We encourage publishers to look to libraries as a vehicle to reach and grow diverse audiences.”

Libraries have proven to be powerful marketing tools for e- books. According to a white paper pro- duced by library e- book distributor OverDrive, Penguin’s runaway hit, " Eat, Pray, Love" ( Viking), was published in February 2006 with an initial run of 30,000 hardcover copies. The title didn’t become a bestseller until March 2007. In the meantime, copies of " Eat, Pray, Love" changed hands thousands of times through book clubs and libraries, scoring rave reviews and stirring up chatter among leading library blogs. Thanks to word- of- mouth marketing and library lending, when the paperback hit newsstands, " Eat, Pray, Love" sales skyrocketed.

I could do without “ the transition to the e- book format” but will pass that for now. Still, if I as a loyal ALA member find it offensive for my organi- zation to make statements that appear to agree that the future of books is ebooks… well, why are we surprised that ALA can’t speak out forcefully right off the bat?

Boycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and ProposalsBoycotts and Proposals

Stuff in this section appears to constitute a formal call to action of some sort— calling for a boycott, asserting a bill of rights or set of principles or the like— or comments on such actions. I don’t know when the first call to boycott— either HarperCol- lins ebooks, or all HarperCollins books or even, possibly, all OverDrive offerings— emerged, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hours after the OverDrive announcement.

Library eBook Revolution, Begin

This February 25, 2011 post by Sarah Houghton- Jan on LibrarianInBlack is both an early fisking of OverDrive’s announcement and a call to action of sorts. The commentary’s worth reading in the orig- inal. I’d disagree with at least one comment— “ Remember though that libraries do not have the right of first sale with digital content— we never have.” That is not true. Libraries have first- sale rights for digital content purchased on a physical carrier, including CDs, DVDs, audiobooks- on- CD, CD- ROMs, Blu- Ray Discs. The distinction is the lack of a circulatable physical item, not whether or not the content is in digital form.

Come to think of it, what follows is misleading as well as far too optimistic: “ What we need is for digital copyright laws to change ( libraries need an exemption for digital content, just as we have for physical content).” First- sale rights do not repre- sent a library exemption; while there are special library clauses in copyright law, first- sale rights aren’t among them. I’d question the next sentence as well: “ We also need legislation introduced that specifies that that libraries, as public lending insti- tutions, are not required to comply with consum- er- intended terms of service.” There’s nothing about the OverDrive situation that’s intended for consumers, since OverDrive markets to libraries— and, in a lot of areas such as scholarly journals, libraries would be a whole lot better off if they were treated as consumers.

The sections on authentication, consortia and limiting service areas are more detailed and better stated than I’d seen elsewhere that early on, and I do recommend reading them in the original. Un- fortunately, that’s followed by a claim I regard as nonsensical unless you assert that physical media have already disappeared or that end- user license agreements on entirely- digital media are new:

The lack of legislative leadership and advocacy in the last decade has created a situation where li- braries have lost the rights to lending and preserv- ing content that we have had for centuries. We have lost the right to buy a piece of content, lend it to as many people as we want consecutively, and then donate or sell that item when it has outlived its usefulness ( if, indeed, that ever happens at all).

That’s wrong. Libraries have lost nothing that they previously had. That existing first- sale rights for physical carriers do not automatically extend to bitstreams is neither new nor novel. Libraries nev- er had the right to purchase the content of a novel and do with it as they pleased; they had the right to purchase any number of copies of the book and do with them as they please.

What’s she calling for? Other than slamming somebody— I’m guessing ALA— for “ lack of legis- lative leadership and advocacy”— she wants every- body to contact OverDrive and HarperCollins, and suggests boycotting HC content. And there’s this:

I call on as many libraries as possible to seriously consider dropping digital content vendors with Cites & Insights May 2011 26

restrictions and move toward only providing open access titles and formats. Yes, that means forgoing most popular titles. But you know what? Unless we take a firm stand we will not be heard.

I wonder whether H- J understands what “ open ac- cess titles” really means in this case, or if she’s at- tempting a redefinition of OA. In any case, what this translates to is “ don’t license digital materi- al”— an interesting stance that rules out not only “ most popular titles” but nearly all digital re- sources. That’s a loose translation; “ move toward only providing open access titles” would mean abandoning at least 98% of current print book ac- quisitions and at least 99% of popular magazines.

The first comment repeats the same false state- ment about “ any digital content”— that you’re only licensing it. Are people generally unable to separate content from carrier? Many other comments and trackbacks, of course… including, sigh, those from an anti- copyright zealot and those suggesting that the U. S. enact a pay- per- use model for libraries.

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

A few days later— February 28, 2011— Houghton- Jan was back with this, explicitly placed in the public domain ( a CC0 license) and repeated here in full:

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights is a statement of the basic freedoms that should be granted to all eBook users.

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

 the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations

 the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses

 the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright

 the right of the first- sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re- sell pur- chased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors,