Electronic Books, Thoughts About, Part One

Many people are pondering the new devices called e-readers, some for gifts, some to own and use themselves. They cost a couple of hundred dollars each, plus the cost of electronic books to read on them.

Some readers sense a serious threat to paper-and-ink. Others believe electronic book reading devices are not very important; simply one more format in a long line of formats, from mud to papyrus, vellum to paper, now electrons encased in plastic.

In other words, The book is dead – long live the book... Again!

My brother bought an Amazon Kindle for his wife’s birthday last month. “I love it, I absolutely love it,” she told me over the Thanksgiving table. Aha, I thought, how do other readers feel about these things? I sent out a set of questions and received back a veritable torrent of responses.

Questions and responses were sent and read electronically. Already we read and write in electrons and hardly notice it anymore.

One of the most informed responses came from Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. She wrote, “As for the Kindle, I have only one problem with it: amazon.com. Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the internet -- and I mean that in the worst possible sense. The relentless downward pressure on prices (for books, for woks, for everything) has brought a slew of hidden costs to the public. Amazon is selling e-books at well below cost in order to capture the audience, and once you buy a Kindle you are well and truly captured, since you can't get your content anywhere else. It costs between $3 and $4 to print and ship a hardcover book, and that should be the price difference. If publishers allow Amazon to establish the market for e-books at $9.99, they simply won't be able to afford to publish. Who wins?”

Two major publishers did announce this week they plan to withhold electronic versions of new books for four months after publication in hard cover. This is a first attempt to separate in customer’s minds the printed book from its electronic version.

Christy continued, “I expect that some of our customers will want to read e-books some of the time, and I'd like to be able to meet that need while keeping a gorgeous selection of paper books in the store. So as a bookseller, I don't have a problem with e-readers. The Sony Reader is a nice gadget ... and I may use mine some day. I can visualize the e-book as a helpful addition to the already-successful formats offered on paper: hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, e-book. The digital version should be priced almost like a hardcover upon release, then be reduced to the trade paper cost, then the mass market. This system would keep the markets for paper books and e-books healthy.”

Deb Kvaka wrote, “Just like with newspapers, there is something gratifying about holding the printed paper in my hands to read. I do not have Kindle, nor have I ever tried it; I really don't even want to. I do use a computer, an internet radio, and other new-fangled contraptions. ...Browsing in the bookmobile or a small bookstore is one of the true pleasures in life. Carrying an engaging book with me to read in those spare moments, or cuddling up in front of the woodstove with a cup of tea and a good book......ahhhh.”

Tess Albin Smith: “I can't fathom reading a book on the computer, or watching TV on the computer either, for that matter. I use the computer
for too many other things... What I do with current technology is rent (audio books) free from the online county library, download them to my mp3 player, and play them for my walks and long drives. It gets me out of the house for lots of exercise, since I can't wait for the next installment. I still read 'real' books too once in awhile.”

Susan Lowery: “I have a Kindle, and admit to being somewhat ambivalent about it... It's nice to be able to change the type size when it feels too small – or large, for that matter. Not so great on illustrations, but then, one doesn't think of Kindle for art books or coffee table books. I use the Kindle for travel. It's far more portable than a stack of books, and I like to travel as light as I can. The built-in dictionary is really nice, as is the ability to make notes, highlight, etc. I love the battery life, weight, size, all that stuff.”

Jill Hannum: “I haven't used Kindle, or even seen it. If it's like the computer screen, it's toast in my pantheon (is that mixing a metaphor?). Paper, print -- good. Glare, electronics -- pretty hard to endure for more than an hour... Good books are everywhere -- in friends' (homes), at the library, flea market, second hand store. I've paid virtually nothing for that two-foot stack of really good reads. Remind me why I'd spend good money to buy a new device to access good words... Does Kindle automatically power off if you fall asleep on the couch while reading?”

(MUSIC) There is much more to say about the future of books, electronic or otherwise, yet no more time. We’ll continue this discussion next week. In the meantime, if you have an opinion, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I also enjoy reading your comments there.

NOTES:

USA Today has a good recent article on the e-reader question... And if you search you’ll find many, many more articles from numerous sources.

How do you like your e-reader?

Questions for a new Kindle user...

1.      Are you happy with the thing?
2.      How are you using it in real life and what are you reading now?
3.      Best thing(s) about it?
4.      Aspect(s) you don't like?
5.      Are you concerned about going obsolete?
6.      Some report a drawback not being able to share Kindle books with
friends. What do you think?
7.      Have you tried reading a book on a computer? How was the experience
compared to an e-reader?
8.      How & why did you pick Kindle over other e-readers? Have you been
able to compare with other e-readers?
9.      Are you comfortable with the tech features and how to use them?
11.     Is the screen too small? Big? Just right? Howabout the font(s)?
Happy with black and white?
14.     Anything else you'd want me to know?

It all started with the first book my mother suggested: One look at “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and I was hooked.

Were these goats all gruff, or did they each HAVE a gruff? Why were all three named Billy? What’s a gruff? Mom read the book to me, over and over and over again, she once sadly said, because I kept asking and I couldn’t read it myself. And over again.

In first grade I was frustrated when Miss Cooney handed out copies of “Dick & Jane.” By then I was way beyond Look! Look! See! See! with its exclamation points and capitalized words. I had mastered the Billy goats. I was reading “The Ballad of Stewey Stinker” and I chafed having to wait for my classmates to tweeze out what S-P-O-T spelled.

By fifth grade, girls had become impossibly smart, with their straight A report cards and all, and the boys had gotten correspondingly dumber, with our kick ball and our running and our general moping around. They read Nancy Drew. We traded Uncle Scrooge for two Little Lulus and thought we were in heaven.

One boring summer I must have stumbled into the public library because I discovered the adventure books of Howard Pease. His now-forgotten heroes were all named Todd and worked second mate on tramp steamers. Then came the adventures of Dr Doolittle, a total gas.

Dr Doolittle of course set me up for “Freddy the Pig” which in turn prepared me for the assigned books of private high school English, such as “Fortitude” by Horace Walpole. “Fortitude” was so old-fashioned we laughed at it, and at Madam Ovary, I mean “Madame Bovary.” We struggled with Somerset Maugham, skipped through Voltaire’s “Candide,” read the non-technical chapters of “Moby Dick” and finally grew old enough for the smutty sections of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Years went by and then I bought a bookstore in Mendocino and I was soon asked for book recommendations but of course I never had time to read, which was OK because I learned to say, “Well, I haven’t read that one yet, but a lot of people have said they liked it” which was often true.

As recipient of a pre-Prop 13, shallow-as-a-rain-puddle liberal arts education, I had learned many useless bits of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, perfect for my role as bookseller. In any given half-hour I might discuss Diderot and Voltaire, compare Robert Heinlein to Frank Herbert, and recommend “Mushrooms Demystified” over the Audubon Guide. No one ever did ask my opinion on Billy goats, or “Fortitude,” and I doubt I ever sold a book by Somerset Maugham.

Now I’m on the far side of the bookselling adventure, in a good place where the alarm clock rarely rings. Friends once again feel free to suggest books. Sometimes I pay cash for a book someone mentioned, and sometimes that book turns up in review here.

The other lunchtime I was finishing up a Thai burrito when the café owner, Meredith Smith, paused for a chat. She had a book to recommend.

She was excited about Extremely Something & Incredibly Something Else by Jonathan Safran Foer, how great it was, how I’d like it even if I don’t read much fiction. I walked across town trying to remember the title: Extremely Something And Very Close, Very Loud and Extremely Close, Very (something) and Incredible (something else)...

A friend/employee at the bookstore told me I wanted “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by the author of “Everything Is Illuminated” and we have one copy in the fiction section, and by the way, Meredith over at the café  recommends this book to everyone.

That’s OK. I’m enjoying the book, and you’ll read about it here one day. And I could use some more suggestions.

NOTES:           

“The Three Billy Goats Gruff” is out of print currently in the Golden Books edition I remember. You can find it used for very little, however. It was originally a Norwegian fairy tale, who knew. Wikipedia: “De tre bukkene Bruse” is a famous Norwegian fairy tale in which three goats cross a bridge, under which is a fearsome troll who wants to eat them. The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. It has an ‘eat-me-when-I'm-fatter’ plot (Aarne-Thompson type 122E).”

“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin paperback $13.95. ISBN 0618711651.

Eating History

All over Facebook this week people were wishing Happy Thanksgivings on each other. At the same time I was reading “Eating History” by Andrew F. Smith. In America it’s all about the food, and the football, but mainly the food.

We had the son of a vegetarian over to our house for Thanksgiving, because his mother doesn’t serve turkey and he likes turkey. Come to think of it, that was the only meat of our feast: every other dish, from the baked stuffed mushrooms to the sponge cake with almond flour and caramelized pears on top would suit a vegetarian just fine. Not a vegan, not a fruitarian, but a plain ordinary vegetarian.

“Eating History” is a great read, a thorough, verging on textbook-like story of how we got to where we are today, food-wise. In short and engaging chapters food historian Andrew Smith covers “30 turning points in the making of American cuisine.”

Beginning with Oliver Evan’s automated mill, which transformed flour production from a medieval, back-breaking exercise into a kind of Rube Goldberg-style automation, Smith covers representative topics that include the Erie Canal, Delmonico’s, the McCormick reaper, Thanksgiving, Gail Borden’s Canned Milk, the transcontinental railroad, and that’s just up to the Civil War.

There are discussions of canned food, the calorimeter, Cracker Jack, Fannie Farmer and Julia Child, Corn Flakes and Upton Sinclair (not in the same chapter, of course), radar, and much, much more. Alice Waters is in there, and McDonalds, the Flavr Savr, plus mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs and the fact “the agricultural system uses about 30 per cent of the oil consumed in the United States.”

Indeed because of this careful documentation the book never ceases to be pointedly entertaining. It’s one big historical story, with startling developments and surprising connections between them.

With its much heralded opening in 1825 (it included a three-hour-long rolling cannonade) the Erie Canal showed Americans that food could be transported long distances; it also replaced the habit of buying locally.

Cyrus McCormick, “a southerner by birth who owned slaves and opposed the Civil War, became one of the major contributors to the success of the North.” His revolutionary harvester “freed up an estimated two or three farmworkers (per farmstead), many of whom enlisted in the Union cause, contributing an estimated half of the Union’s million-man army and navy.”

Readers accustomed to books that uncover the horrors and ethical compromises of American food production may find Smith’s approach too mild. In the hot house context of current food issues, Smith stands alone not only for his judicious tone, but his fairness to all sides.

Smith explains in a preface that his book is “mainly explanatory and descriptive... For those who believe that the modern American approach to food is on the right track, this book offers a partial history of how we arrived at a system that has emphasized convenience, superabundance, low cost, and consumer choice. For those interested in changing the current system, (“Eating History”) offers insight into how we ended up where we are today, and perhaps will suggest alternative approaches for the future.”

On speaking tours, Smith will ask the audience questions related to food: Do you prefer organic food to food grown with petrochemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides? Do those of you who eat meat prefer that the animals be free-range, organic, and slaughtered humanely, or doused with hormones and steroids and raised in highly concentrated animal feeding operations?

“By far, he reports, most people want the homemade, the organic, the locally grown. He finds this fascinating: “I’m a culinary historian, and the system that most (people) say they favor is pretty much what existed in America two centuries ago.”

We all say we want the good stuff, yet most Americans buy and eat the not-so-good stuff. How did we get here? Read “Eating History” and ponder what’s on your plate.

NOTES:

“Eating History, 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine” by Andrew F. Smith. Columbia University Press hard cover $29.95. ISBN 9780231140928.

On the Columbia U site the author is featured in a short video, plus you can download a .pdf of his chapter on Thanksgiving.

Smith’s own website...

on Cornwell...

I've been indulging myself recently with easy readers. Not Dick and Jane or John Grisham, but something like that: the historical adventure novels of Bernard Cornwell.

For many people, reading all the time is simply what they do, no matter how hard they labor at other things. A friend of mine who works full time is forever recommending books she’s actually read. She must read several a week. And she remembers what she reads. Amazing. For me it’s always been a struggle to put aside distractions and focus on the simple joy of reading.

I’m always conscious that sooner or later I’ll be reporting on what I’ve read. This creates a kind of internal dialog where I’m taking notes for the next radio show rather than enjoying the pages in front of me. Challenging and rewarding as that can be, it also takes away some of the fun. So a couple of weeks ago I ate dessert first because life is short. I dove into a pile of books I’d been saving for fun, not for review. No pressure cooker. All fun, as reading should be.

Bernard Cornwell is a so-called “genre” author of historical novels. He’s not reviewed much in prestigious journals or newspapers, but he is read prodigiously by a large band of fans. I’m one of them.

On vacation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I hauled out “The Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles” and pondered the American Civil War between bouts of snorkeling. I then turned to Merry Olde Before-There-Ever-Was-An-England and read the “Saxon Novels,” four of them so far.

And when those weren’t quite filling enough, I also read “The Spies of Warsaw” by Alan Furst, “The 25th Hour” by David Benioff and John Marsden’s young adult novel, “Hamlet.” Gems, all of them.

Back to Mr Cornwell. After devouring several servings of his books I discovered they follow a pattern. The stories are told from the point of view of a fighting outsider hero. It may be Nathaniel Starbuck, a displaced Northerner fighting for the Confederacy. In Ninth century Britain it’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a displaced Northumbrian fighting for the southerners of Wessex. Or Richard Sharpe, a common soldier raised to officer status during the Napoleonic wars, or the protagonist may be Thomas of Hookton, a skillful archer during the Hundred Years War seeking not just the Holy Grail, as if that isn’t enough, but also revenge for the massacre of his family. All of these characters are involved in various aspects of revenge, come to think of it, plus the occasional manly love affair.

Simply, these are ripping tales that don’t stop. Cornwell never bogs down in literary description or gratuitous subplots. Although the scenery’s often lovely, there’s very little of it.

He brings alive a far-off time and place as few others are able. If you time-traveled me to, say, Northumberland in the year 891, I could tell a Dane by his arm rings, a Viking by his dragon ship, and a Saxon by his stink. I have learned the old place names and fought the old battles. It’s like studying history with the most entertaining teacher you could imagine.

Now and then Cornwell does get all poetic: “...and so I turned south and rowed away from the shore, while in the west the sun leaked red fire through rifts in the cloud so that the whole sky glowed as if a god had bled across the heavens.” (from “The Pale Horseman”).

But the adventure never falters: “And next day the eight dark horsemen came.” (from “Lords of the North”). He begins well: “Darkness. Winter. A night of frost and no moon. We floated on the river Temes, and beyond the boat’s high bow I could see the stars reflected on the shimmering water.” (from “Sword Song”) and of course he ends well, too: “...but in the end he had pulled the trigger because he had to live with himself. Though God alone knew where that would take him. Night fell. The smoke of a broken city vanished in the dark. And Sharpe sailed home, a soldier.” (From “Sharpe’s Prey”).

Cornwell sets up the reader to crave more: “While at Bebbanburg, where the gray sea never ceases to beat upon the long pale sands and the cold wind frets the wolf’s head flag above the hall, they dreaded my return. Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves.”

Ahh. History for dessert. Delicious!

You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments here.

NOTES:

Pick up any of Cornwell’s novels and you’ll find a current list of all his works, by series, and sometimes by chronological order within series. He’s written at least 42 novels, probably a few more than that, and he’s only 28 years old (I made that up. Born in 1944, he lives with his wife on Cape Cod, where the adventures roll in like the Atlantic tides).

Cornwell's home on the web.

The American publisher of all these books is HarperCollins.

A fascinating exchange on Cornwell’s site:

Hello Mr. Cornwell, I am curious about your process for developing (and writing) a story. Stephen King says that he gets the idea for a situation--say, a crazed fan holds her favorite author hostage--and lets the story develop however it happens. Do you do the same, or (for example) do you have the climax of the story mapped out inside your head in advance, and just have to figure out the way to get there? Do you outline story before beginning to write? Also, when you are in the process of writing, do you try to write a certain amount every day (like King), and do you try to write the first draft through all the way without edits, and then go back and make changes when you are finished? Anything else you can share about your process would be welcome. Thanks and best wishes, Warren Firschein Safety Harbor, FL

A:   An outline? No, I don't. I have a very broad idea of where I want the book to go, then just let the characters sort it out amongst themselves. I'm not saying this is the right way to do it - some writers plot very carefully, and their books are great, but others, like me, leave it to instinct. I write maybe eight, nine hours a day? That includes daydreaming. I always start with a stick figure . . but there ain't no rules. I like to get the story straight so I write fast, pushing the story line ahead, but I revise constantly. I always think that writing a novel (for me! not for everyone!) is like climbing a mountain - I get a quarter of the way up, look back and see a better route, so it's back to the beginning and start again and that better route takes me halfway up, I look back, and so on and so on. Once that 'first' draft is finished I rewrite the whole thing maybe two times, and it's then that I add lots of detail. (B.Cornwell)

pricing update....

An update on the predatory pricing, from today's Publishers Weekly Daily newsletter (30 October 09)


Wal-Mart, Amazon Limiting Discounted Purchases
Plans by independent booksellers to buy the 10 November titles being offered at steep discounts by Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been foiled by the big box retailers who are limiting the number of books one customer can buy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is limiting purchases to two copies per customer, Amazon has a three-copy limit and Target five. There has been lots of discussion in bookseller forums about buying quantities of titles at the big box retailers as a protest to the discounting policies, but also as way to get a better margin since the 10 books would be cheaper to buy from the stores than from the publishers.

Bill Petrocelli on the Price War

Under the title “Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read” Marin bookseller Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera has published an absolutely right-on screed about the current price war on books.

I mentioned the situation here two weeks ago, and was planning to say more. Writing for the Huffington Post, Bill said it for me and for all fans of good books. I’ll devote the rest of this Words on Books to excerpts from Bill’s article:

“What looks like a simple price war between Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart over a handful of bestsellers is symptomatic of a much deeper problem in the book business. The larger fight is really over what you get to read.

“The price war began October 15 when Walmart.com dropped its prices drastically on several bestsellers. Amazon.com and Target.com quickly followed suit, and within a couple of days the prices were down to $8.99 and heading lower... these behemoths were clearly selling those books below cost and engaging in an illegal form of predatory pricing.

“The authors affected by this price slashing were not amused. James Patterson said, "Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week's new movies for $5. You wouldn't be able to make movies." John Grisham's agent added, "I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted bestsellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers." The American Booksellers Association saw things the same way, saying in a letter to... (the) Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, that these companies are using books as loss leaders to sell other kinds of merchandise. ‘The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war.’

“Predatory pricing is a means of driving other booksellers out of business. When this happens, the choice of books is one of the first things to suffer.

“... the literary life of America has to go through two very narrow choke points: publishing and bookselling. Both of these choke points have become more and more constricted in recent years as a result of economic concentration and market manipulation.

“Publishing is now consolidated in the hands of a few large conglomerates that control most of what is published in America. There are, to be sure, many booklovers in the publishing divisions of these giant corporations, but they are outnumbered and out-maneuvered by the bean counters... It is not an atmosphere that favors innovation or literary discoveries...

“... The chain stores had been doing their best to squeeze out the independent stores over the last 20 years or so, and now they in turn are being squeezed by the mass merchandisers... Big-box mass merchandisers, like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, have taken over 30 percent of the book market. These mass merchandisers are now selling as many books as Barnes & Noble and Borders combined.

“It's hard to exaggerate the consequences of this mass-merchandiser dominance. These (big-box) outlets carry, at most, a few hundred titles at any given time. This means that a handful of books -- far less than one percent of all the books published -- are probably accounting now for more than 30 percent of all sales in America. Price wars in this segment of the market... (are) driving more customers to these merchandisers in search of quick bargains on a handful of big-name books.

“Publishers are under more and more pressure to subsidize these new, ruinous prices, and they will probably end up pushing more and more of their resources in that direction. But it's a devil's deal...

“...There's a big difference, say, between 500 buyers all buying for their own stores and one chain-buyer purchasing for 500 outlets... ...when the system is dominated by a small handful of powerful buyers, their decision can make or break a book... One of the dirty little secrets of the book business is that publishers often check in advance with the buyers for the chain stores and mass merchandisers before agreeing to publish a book. If the answer they get is no, the book may never see the light of day.

“One of the ironies of the current price war is that it includes ‘The Lacuna,’ the latest novel by Barbara Kingsolver. But Kingsolver wasn't always a bestselling author. When her first novel, ‘The Bean Trees,’ was published in a modest print-run in 1988, independent booksellers recognized it as a literary treasure and sold thousands of copies. After that the chain stores climbed on the bandwagon, but without that first push from independent booksellers Kingsolver's career might never have taken off.

“Anyone who loves books should worry that the doors seem to be closing on the Barbara Kingsolvers of tomorrow.”

NOTES:

"Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read" was published on the Huffington Post on October 28. Read the entire posting here, with references and attributions to document his points:

From the bookseller newsletter Bookselling This Week: “William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. He spent a few years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and then as a poverty lawyer in Oakland, California, before going into private practice. For the past 30 years or so, he has been the co-owner with his wife, Elaine, of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.

Petrocelli is the author of ‘Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders’ (McGraw-Hill) and co-author of ‘Sexual Harassment on the Job: What It Is and How to Stop It’ (Nolo Press). He is also the author of the forthcoming novel ‘The Thirteen.’ ”