I get it. I understand all the reasons to hate e-readers. I miss the sensuality of ink and paper: the weight, the covers, the carefully chosen typography and the feeling of truly owning a book. I miss the dream of having a personal library filled with hardcovers that serves as a permanent, boldly visual declaration of my love of letters. I miss the fantasy of meeting my soulmate when he’s intrigued by the cover of the book I’m reading on the Arriba shuttle. Most of all, I miss page numbers because citing “location 6879” in an essay doesn’t cut it.
It’s true that e-readers are morphing, and maybe killing, the very concept of the book. But I love e-readers regardless because of, not in spite of, this distinction: I don’t love books, I love reading. The Kindle’s business technical functionality is democratizing the spread of ideas — and that has always mattered so much more to me than fetishizing a sack of pulp.
There’s the old pro arguments about how the Kindle allows you to carry books everywhere, but more important is the link between e-books, cheaper price and exposure to books that people would never otherwise pick up. Sure, Kindle versions of books are cheaper, but the real gem is the cache of free pre-1923 books, which is something that even the library can’t offer. This is a godsend for literature majors — I haven’t paid for non-textbook required reading for over a year. For everyone else, this is a trove of interesting ideas that can be kept forever. I’ve spent hours browsing Project Gutenburg and manybooks.net just downloading books on a whim. Esoteric Christianity? Sure. The Philosophy of Despair? Can’t hurt. I don’t need to spend any money. I don’t need to return them. Someday, when I’m waiting in line at Mandeville, I’ll get to these books, and my world will be expanded because of it.
Of course, the previous argument is valid only if, like me, you have always loved reading a little too much and believe that every book changes you. But the effects of e-readers on the publishing industry are widespread, even for someone who would never download A Pluralistic Universe.
By spurring the rise of self-publishing, e-readers are offering the tantalizing promise that anyone can be a publisher writer — no book deal needed. The rise of the 99-cent e-book means that almost anyone can make some profit, and some can make a lot, thus diluting the badge of being a “bestselling” author. Laura Miller of Salon has complained that the advent of self-publishing means that there’s more drivel out there to read. The overabundance of books might make it more difficult for “legitimate” authors to get book deals, she says.
No one who’s glanced at the list of top-selling Kindle authors can dispute this. Look at 26-year-old Amanda Hocking, whose self-published series of paranormal romance novels has sold over a million copies and earned her a cool $2 million. Hocking’s vampire and zombie novels aren’t original, and don’t qualify as “literature” as we think of it, but they’re selling because there’s a demand outside of what publishers believe. They’re selling because people want to read them.
Just as blogs have cluttered the Internet with more trash than once thought imaginable, but also more niche content that appeals to people with every interest, self-publishing enabled by e-readers is widening the spectrum of available books — even if they’re “trash.” My fellow lit majors might shoot me for saying this, but it doesn’t matter if people are reading “good books” as long as they’re reading.
The world of books might be getting cluttered with more of what Miller calls “crap,” but no one is forcing others to read it — not to mention that there’ll always be critics and the Paris Review to tell the elitists about the next Franzen or Eugenides. And even if the next literary darling has a more difficult time finding a book deal, she, too, can turn to self-publishing.
From rare, beautifully lettered status symbols to mass produced pulp novels to today’s pirated PDFs, books have always been evolving. But if the Kindle ensures that the love of reading is staying the same, even if people are eschewing Jane Austen for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, that’s fine with me.
