A Companion to the History of the Book (98 page)

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Authors: Simon Eliot,Jonathan Rose

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Print remains resilient because there is a continuing demand from consumers and it offers a model of publishing that publishers understand and know how to make work. They are comfortable with the book: the sale of a physical item yields a return against a predictable cost. A digital product can be highly creative but since there are no set boundaries, there are uncertainties over the costs involved and profitability is more difficult to control. Publishers remain fearful of digital piracy and copyright infringement.

There are anxious debates over the long-term decline in reading. How can this trend be reversed? Is it right to head downmarket? Should the industry reduce the number of titles published and reduce the clutter in the consumer’s mind? As UK literary agent Caroline Michel has commented, “a Dickensian mix of wild optimism and gloomy despair does seem to characterise much of what is written and said about publishing nowadays” (Michel 2005).

Does the book have a future? As a portable and durable item of technology, it remains in good shape. It can be taken most places, read in bed or in the bath, and passed around friends with ease. The production standards of the average paperback are not high, but it can be sold at a highly competitive price. As a simple storage device, the book remains highly functional. You may not have the equipment to play a vinyl record from the 1960s or an 8-track from the 1970s, but you can still pick up Shakespeare’s First Folio and read it. Print solves the archiving problem of the modern age, when formats change with great rapidity, and the pages of websites alter or disappear overnight.

For an author, appearing in print remains better than being published on the Web. There is an affirmation of one’s worth as a writer, and receiving a beautifully printed hardback of one’s work is an undeniable pleasure. For readers, print still holds out the prospect of disappearing into another world, away from computers, into a rich landscape of discovery and imagination. The book remains for some a status item, to be displayed prominently at home or carried around in public. The marketing campaign “Good Booking,” run in the UK by Penguin Books in 2004, was based on research that men seen reading a book are more attractive to the opposite sex. The success of reading groups – one estimate is that there are 50,000 groups in the UK alone (Michel 2005) – reveals reading to be a social activity: we like to read, share, and discuss. The distinction can be drawn between “lean forward” technologies like the Internet, which are becoming the primary means to access information for work and education, and the “lean back” technology of the book, still important for enjoyment and relaxation (Adams 2001).

The book can also work with and alongside other media; for example, through cooperation with television shows that recommend titles. In virtual reading groups, readers discuss authors online and offer up new plot directions for their favorite titles. Published books may have their origins in blogs; textbooks offer added value on associated websites; a travel guide can include a mini-CD; and authors offer extra content on their own websites.

If the digital revolution poses new challenges to the book, it also offers fresh opportunities. The choice available on Amazon dwarfs that in any terrestrial bookshop, and new features on the Web enable browsing inside books as well as among the selection of titles available. The Web has stimulated the second-hand market in books, and shops that could not make a profit as physical entities have found a new lease of life online. Digital printing means that books no longer need go out of print. Genuine print-on-demand produces a single-copy reprint to each customer order. It could also enable customization to the customer’s specification. Presently, it can provide large-print editions at economic prices – why not have your copy of
Pride and Prejudice
in the fount, type size, or binding of your choice? In the 1990s, Umberto Eco looked forward to a time when people could communicate directly without the intermediation of publishing houses:

A great many people do not want to publish; they simply want to communicate with each other. The fact that in the future they will do it by E-mail or over the Internet will be a great boon for books and for the culture and the market of the book. Look at a bookstore. There are too many books. I receive too many books every week. If the computer network succeeds in reducing the quantity of published books, this would be a paramount cultural improvement. (Eco 1996: 301)

In fact, more books are published than ever before, and the feasibility of short printruns is stimulating self-publishing. For those with a novel or memoir bursting to be written, there is now a mechanism – and a publisher – who will help you to get into print. As Gabriel Zaid muses, if “our passion for writing goes unchecked, in the near future there will be more people writing books than reading them” (Zaid 2003: 9).

References and Further Reading

Adams, Douglas (2001)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Future.
B
BC
Radio 4, April 21 (available at
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hhgttf
).

Anderson, Chris (2004) “The Long Tail.”
Wired,
12.10 (October).

— (2006)
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.
New York: Hyperion.

Andrews, Amanda (2006) “Will Readers Do for Books what iPod Did for Music?”
The Times,
February 4.

British Library (2005) “British Library Predicts ‘Switch to Digital by 2020.’ “ Press release, June 29 (available at
http://www.bl.uk/news/pressreleases.xhtml
; accessed October 31, 2006).

Bury, Liz (2005) “Expanding the Book Market.” Supplement to the
Bookseller,
March 11.

Cope, Bill and Phillips, Angus (2006)
The Future of the Book in the Digital Age.
Oxford: Chandos.

Creative Commons (2005)
http://creativecommons.org
(accessed October 31, 2006).

Eco, Umberto (1996) “Afterword.” In Geoffrey Nurnberg (ed.),
The Future of the Book,
pp. 295–306. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Epstein, Jason (2002)
Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future.
New York: W. W. Norton.

Feather, John (2003)
Communicating Knowledge: Publishing in the 21st Century.
Munich: Saur.

Greenslade, Roy (2004) “Why We Went Tabloid.”
Guardian,
November 8.

Hampson, John and Richardson, Paul (2004)
Kitchen Table to Laptop: Independent Publishing in England.
London: Arts Council.

Hanajiri, Madoka (2003) “The Challenge of a Saturated Book Market in Japan.”
Publishing Research Quarterly,
19 (3): 52-9.

Institute for the Future of the Book website (available at
www.futureofthebook.org/
).

Kasdorf, William E. (2003)
The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing.
New York: Columbia University Press.

Lessig, Lawrence (2004)
Free Culture.
New York: Penguin.

LISU (Library and Information Statistics Unit) (2004)
Annual Library Statistics 2004.
Loughbor-ough: LISU.

McCurry, Justin (2005) “Mobiles Turn over a New Leaf among Japan’s Youth.”
Guardian,
March 25.

McEwan, Ian (2005)
Saturday.
London: Jonathan Cape.

Michel, Caroline (2005) “Follow Mr. Colman’s Recipe”.
Guardian,
March 5.

Nance, Kevin and Thomas, Mike (2004) “The End of Books?”
Chicago Sun — Times,
July 22.

National Endowment for the Arts (2004)
Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America.
Washington: National Endowment for the Arts.

National Statistics (2005)
Social Trends.
Basing-stoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Negroponte, Nicholas (1995)
Being Digital
London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Phillips, Angus (2004) “Where is the Value in Publishing? The Internet and the Publishing Value Chain.”
International Journal of the Book, 2:
241–5.

Staley, David J. (2003) “The Future of the Book in a Digital Age.”
Futurist,
September–October.

Taylor, David (2003) “Biggies and the Black Hole”.
Bookseller,
June 13: 22–3.

Tenner, Edward (2004) “Rebound.”
Boston Globe,
April 25.

Thompson, John B. (2005)
Books in the Digital Age.
Cambridge: Polity.

Tonkin, Boyd (2005) “A Week in Books.”
Independent,
April 22.

Worlock, Kate (2004) “The Pros and Cons of Open Access” (available at
www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate
; accessed October 31, 2006).

Xin, Guangwei (2005)
Publishing in China.
Singapore: Thomson Asia.

Zaid, Gabriel (2003)
So Many Books.
London: Sort of Books.

index

Abelard, Peter

al-’Abidin, Miraz Zayn

Aboab da Fonseca, Isaac

abolitionists

Abrams, Harry

abridged texts

AbuBakr

accentuation systems

accounting systems

accuracy of texts

Acher, Abraham

Acosta, Jose de

acquisition lists

acquisitions and mergers

Adalbert, Saint

Adam, Robert

Adams, Douglas

Adams, Hannah

Adams, James

Adams, John

Adams, Sam

Adams, Thomas

Addison, Joseph

administrative documents

Adobe: PageMaker; PDF; PostScript

Adorno, Rolena

Advent

advertising: bookmarks censorship cheap books color printing costs cover pages ephemera illustrated newspapers paperbacks Rome printers title pages

Aelfric

Aenham Council

Aesop

aesthetic movement

aesthetics

al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din

Africa

aggregators

al-Ahram
newspaper

Aitken, Robert

Akbar, emperor

Akkadian language

Albatross Books

Albion press

albums

Alcuin

Alden, John Aldhelm’s
Riddles

dAlembert, Jean le Rond

Alexander the Great

Alexander Street Press

Alexandria

Alexandrian Library

Alfonso II

Alfonso X

Alfred the Great

Algonquin

Ali, Muhammad

Allardice, Robert

Allen, Ralph

Allen and Unwin

Allert de Lange, publisher

almanacs

Almeria library

alphabet: Aramaic Christianity Glagolitic Greek Korean learning to read movable type

Alston, Sandra

Altamirano, Ignacio Manuel

altered books

Alternative Service Book

Altick, Richard

Amado, Jorge

Amazon.com

America, North: Bibles Declaration of Independence education literary critics newspapers pamphlets printing Protestantism recycling European novels religious titles science
see also
Canada; United States of America America Online (AOL)

American Antiquarian Society

American Arabic font

American Bible Society

American Book Company

American Booksellers Association

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil War

American Education Publications

American Library Association (ALA)

American Minerva

American Publishing Association

American Quarterly

American Sunday School Union

American Tract Society

American War of Independence

Americanization

Amerindian culture

Ames, Nathaniel

Amin, Ahmad

Amsterdam

Amsterdam letters

Analytical Review

an-an
magazine

Anchor Books

Andersen, H. C.

Anderson, Benedict

Anderson, Chris

Angevin empire

Anglo-American book culture

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules

Anglo-Saxon texts

animation film

Annales School

Annambhatta

Anne, Saint

annotations

Annual Register

anonymity

Anselm of Laon

Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine

anti-Lutheran tracts

Antu, shrine of

Antwerp

Anu, shrine of

Anu-uballit Hunz

Apple Macintosh LaserWriter

Applegath, Augustus

apprenticeships

Aquinas, Saint Thomas

Arab Renaissance

arabesque

al-Arabi, Muhi al-Din Ibn

Arabic language translations

Arabic script

Aramaic language

architecture titles

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