The steady decline of the book review in American newspapers has been puzzled different ways–as symptomatic of a general cultural malaise, as the arts crunched in the crucible of economic forces, as the rise of digital technology (specificially) and decline of the newspaper (generally.) Sergei wrote a recent post on the rise of the fully-realized citizen critic, and it’s put in my mind power shifts in general. Here’s one that may not seem readily apparent, but it harbingers hope:
I think the Kindle could save the book review as we know it.
In true understanding of something by its negative–all of this hinges on the idea that the Kindle is the tip of the iceberg in digital readers. In a market where it will exist side-by-side with the ipod, its hard to imagine that the system for buying books with the Kindle–exclusively from Amazon, with approximately 80,000 titles–will stand up to comparison. Sooner or later you’ll want something that Amazon doesn’t offer–which right now seems limited to classics and contemporary hits. Venture into the obscure titles, and it is hit or miss. It’s clear the Kindle wasn’t necessarily designed to hold everything that appears as a book, and it’s clear Amazon won’t be offering all that material. (A testy summary comparison of the ipod and Kindle can be found here.)
It’s interesting, and perhaps inevitable, that the success of the Kindle will be measured against the ipod. It’s arguable that the ubiquity of the ipod has revolutionized the music industry by solidifying what was then just a trend: that more people were buying, listening, and storing their music digitally. When you want new music now, you first go to your computer. It’s clear that books are headed in this direction, and if it’s clear that there is a market for the Kindle, then we’re likely to see versions of an e-reader (i-reader?) with greater open source potential, and with more flexible interfacing (and maybe one hooked up to the Goolge Library?) Just as the music industry has changed, the book industry will too.
And this is a good thing, I think–or at least not all will be lost. I think there’s no value in imagining books as an endangered species–they aren’t. What we will lose are cheaply produced books (poor bindings, bad paper, bad design.) This doesn’t strike me as a terrible loss.
What the Kindle (and the digital readers it precedes) has the potential to do is recreate the market, however marginally, for beautifully designed books and ephemera. More broadsides, more chapbooks. Cormac McCarthy cloth-bound on cotton paper. I think we’ll want this–we’ll want ink with our pixels, and if anything, I think digital readers could make this market grow a little bit. Book arts will become an increasingly viable source of income.
The really exciting change is the chance digital readers could dramatically liberate the publishing industry. If a major publisher takes a manuscript based on the projected number of copies it may sell, then it is arguable that a lot of worthy work isn’t making it to the press. The digital format of books will change that–because production costs will shrink. You’ll see more and more books out there–a lot more–both more of the good, and more of the dismissible.
That cloudy future full of digital text vying for our reading time will be overwhelming. We’ll need help sorting through what is worth free moments and what isn’t, and I think that this fact will reassign value to the roles of editor and reviewer. The market will demand their resurgence, to help us wade through all those books available in spades.