In the News--Amazon Again...

Today, the New Yorker, made available online an article they will publish in next week's issue, Cheap Words by George Packer. It describes how Amazon went from pubishing friend to foe in 20 years or less. I got sucked into yet another article about the big, bad, scary Amazon, because this article promised to examine how Amazon was not only the end of the brick and mortar business of selling books, but also the end of books themselves. There have been rumors of the coming end of books and the book business for years, even before the advent of the e-book. In reading Cheap Words, I was curious to find out if Jeff Bezos had finally figured out a way to kill off books; perhaps I could sleep in tomorrow--no need to go to the isle of Manhattan, red pen in tow if books were in fact dead.

In reading the article, I got a very thorough and thoughtful run down on the history of Amazon and intriguing anecdotes about the first time publishing professionals I know well met Jeff Bezos and what they thought of him then versus what they think of him now. I learned about Bezos' initial business model--that books were just a way to get customer data to sell them other things at cost later on. I found it interesting that though books represent only abou 7% of Amazon's billion-dollar business, because books were his "gateway drug", Amazon and the book industry find themselves inextricably linked (as publishing is unnervingly dependent on Amazon) while it hardly gets a second glance when Amazon prices an electronics business out of existene. But still, this isn't news to me. This is my every day existence. Where were the details of the much balleyhooed end of books? It wasn't there. Though the details of, in not the end,certainly the failure of Amazon publishing were quite clearly laid out, but not the end of books. Hmm...

Does that mean the book endures? Perhaps I am needed in the office tomorrow after all? That's good...because I like my office and my red pen. And I like that throughout Amazon's history and interesting relationship with the book industry, the book endures. As one publishing professional quoted in this astute article noted: “There are certain things it takes to be a publisher,” the head of one New York house said, hardly concealing his Schadenfreude. “You have to have luck, but you also have to have judgment, discernment. I have no sense of the character of their house. . . . We care more than they do. Bezos has moved on to diapers and jewelry—we’re still doing books.”

Amazon has done a lot of wonderful and detrimental things to the book business, but even in that they are synonymous with the book business, they are not,in fact, the book business. And they are not, in fact, god. And we must remember that. The book doesn't live and die by the life cycle of Amazon and I dare say the book will outlast even Amazon. Amazon may endeavor to be the store of everything, but a publishing lesson I learned a long time ago that proves true to this very day is that if you try to be everything, you'll get no one. That's a book lesson. I do books. Amazon, at 7% of its' business, is not so much doing books. This is as much a fact of life as the sky's deal with the color blue. This will probably be the last Amazon is killing books article I'll ever read.

Stacey

In The News

Today there was a curious article in The New York Times titled "Out of Print, Maybe, But Not Out of Mind". It was an article basically lamenting the death of the book (again) and all the ways in which technology is killing trying to improve it. I'm of the mindset that a physical book is a perfect thing. This will never change. I'm not exactly adverse to technology and how it is changing (and okay, in some instances improving) the reading experience, but I'm not exactly chasing after it either. To me there is nothing better than snuggling up on a chilly Sunday afternoon or evening with a really good book and a cup of tea. It's true. I'm a book-loving cliche. I have wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with stacks and stacks of...you guessed it: books. I get a thrill just thinking about my stocked bookshelves and wouldn't have it any other way. A Kindle filled with documents parading as books (no matter how many of those documents I can fit on a Kindle and thus in my purse) just doesn't give me the same thrill or the same sense of comfort. For me, the physical book is a comfort and I suspect I am not alone in this, which is why the many companies listed in this article endeavoring to improve a perfect thing are floundering. This quote from the article says it best for me:

“A lot of these solutions were born out of a programmer’s ability to do something rather than the reader’s enthusiasm for things they need,” said Peter Meyers, author of “Breaking the Page,” a forthcoming look at the digital transformation of books. “We pursued distractions and called them enhancements.”

So improvements are being made without thinking of the reader? Yes, that's wise... (This is sarcasm btw.)

And then there was this: 
 
“The ability to commit 10 or 15 hours to a book is going to be an increasingly fraught decision,” said Mr. Meyers, who came across Citia in the course of his research and found it so intriguing that he became its vice president for editorial and content innovation. “So we need ways to liberate the ideas trapped inside them.”

 But perhaps if this is the mindset from which these companies looking to "improve" the book and their ideas spring forth, then perhaps it is no wonder these companies are, in fact, floundering. They're regarding reading as a chore, when reading is actually a joy. A perfect joy.

Check out the article for yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/technology/e-books-hold-tight-to-features-of-their-print-predecessors.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Stacey