The Real Difference between a Book and an E-Book

It is a matter of the way you read it. I know a man who brags he reads a thousand books on his Kindle. I don't doubt it.  The Kindle takes a book and turns it into the equivalent of an IPOD tune or a picture on your hard drive. Getting rid of the physicality of the book changes it. We no longer experience the book we experience an E File on a hard disk that is not so different from any other file on a hard drive. It has to be dealt with and then returned to oblivion. So the real difference between a book and an E Book is the experience.

One experiences a book. Literature we experience pulp we finish. In other words the ebook becomes something to be dealt with quickly. Accomplished. It goes back to that old saying that Midwesterners read for self improvement while Southerners read for pleasure. What are we reading for then with an Ebook? Is it the I better watch so many hours of Jeopardy so my brain doesn't turn to mush morphed into I better read this book so I can get to the next book and the next book so I can eventually say I read a thousand books.

Take it another way. The physical creature in our lap changes the experience. The book is experienced as a thing .The page turns slowly. It falls to the next page. The digital experience is a swipe a silent movement of a page appearing and then vanishing for the next silent swipe. Like a painting versus a picture of a painting the experience is changed. Ask anyone who prints out a picture versus looking at it on your phone. One is ephemeral the other is there for all time

So we may think we have all the answers with our Kindles and Nooks but like the IPOD the experience has morphed and changed. Digitization is all bout economy and convenience. That was never art and never will be.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

The Lasitude of Writing in the Digital Age

Writing in the digital age can be depressing. We hear of Google digitizing millions of books and millions of people self publishing and how books will be downloaded from sites all over creation and who will pay for these pirated books anymore? Serious writers making their living shiver. There seems to be no end to the leaking ship royalty and why should anyone bother when a twenty six year old can pop a bunch of troll novels online and make millions? Well that's not really why you write now is it?

No. Certainly there is a higher calling but making a buck is not to be trivialized. It comes in pretty handy down here bub as George Bailey said to his guardian angel and so worrying about the IPOD era of books is as silly as worrying about aging. You can not control either. But we should understand we are not in the Fitzgerald Perkins era of publishing anymore, if we ever were.

You could make a case that literary fiction might be circling the grave. Not that people don't appreciate literary fiction, but like grass being pushed out by weeds the mid list author is close to being moribund. There is just so much accessible fiction that the extra effort will not occur for many readers. And to that end the digitization of writing has had an effect. Ease of use is not be shrugged away.

Still, a good story is a good story and people will pay for a good story. We are humans. Humans want to understand their place in the world every day. We see ourselves in a story and it gives us comfort and takes us away for a little while. So yes the times are more trying with so much out there now, but talent does still rise to the top along with the cream. Maybe it just takes a little longer now to find that blade of grass in all those weeds.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
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