by Scott Anderson
What is the future of books? That’s a good
question. Right up there with: What is
the future of art? Or, what is the future of music? The answer to all of them
is, I don’t have any idea, but I’m not afraid to make some guesses.
To draw reasonable conclusions of what the
immediate future holds for books we need to look backward at the history of
commerce. Mankind throughout time has placed value on things based on the
perceived rarity of the object under consideration. Gold, diamonds, oil, even Van
Gogh oil paintings are all valued based on this same yardstick. Virtually any
commodity or service derives its value through the public’s perception of its availability
or exclusivity.
Is a digital print as valuable as the original
canvas painted by Van Gogh? Of course not. Anyone can have a digital print of
Starry Night. The same isn’t true for the painting.
The devaluation of music and the shift from
recorded music to live performances as the dominant source of musical artist’s
income today is based on an unmitigated flood of digital musical output into
the marketplace for little or no cost. There were gems in the flood somewhere,
but pirated, copied, and downloaded versions being offered for virtually
nothing rendered the legitimate versions almost worthless to the merchants
offering them. The outcome was the demise of the local record shop most of us
grew up with.
Self-publishing, e publishing, mass-market
hardbacks and paperbacks, all of these things are a part of the flood of supply
that is pushing the publishing industry, and bookstores in particular, to the
brink. Gutenberg didn’t start off selling 80,000 copies a month of his bible,
but he revolutionized the printed word and started us down the path that led to
digital downloads and the creation of electronic media. With each step on that
pathway the unit price of “the book” has diminished. That’s good; a lot of us
have learned to read because of it. But it didn’t help Guttenberg who
underestimated the effect of competition and as a result ended up penniless.
Books, as we know them, will survive for the
foreseeable future. They may become rarer as many readers flee to the
simplicity of the digital download, but that very rareness will, in the end, enhance
their value. Perhaps at some point almost no one will start off being published
as we currently perceive it and only those that have demonstrated value in the
electronic sphere will ever be considered for paper publication. Who knows?
Hardback volumes will fare better than
paperbacks, cheap and disposable paper loses to digital in a heartbeat. Textbooks
and reference books are more difficult to predict. I still have my old copy of
the first edition of Johns and Cunningham, a physics textbook covered with
underlining and notes made in my own hand and decades out of print. But modern
students will have different values I suspect.
I am an author with a book out in e-format right now. I run IsoLibris
Publishing, we started with e-books only and have only just started to venture
out into the world of POD. A friend of
mine, a book collector, asked, “What are you going to do, sign my Kindle?” I understand
his concern because I collect signed first editions, too. I love books. They
have value to me and I am willing to pay to own them. I think some people
always will. ________________________
Russell Scott
Anderson M.D. is a Radiation Oncologist who serves as the Medical Director of
Anderson Cancer Center in Meridian, Mississippi. He is a former Navy diver who
worked in operations in the Middle East, Central America, and in support of the
Navy’s EOD community, SEALS, the US Army’s Green Berets, the Secret Service,
and the New York Police Department at various times during his time in the
service.
He has written the
family oriented literary columns Una Voce and The Uncommon Thread
in the JOURNAL of the Mississippi State
Medical Association as Scott Anderson M.D. for the past five years. He has
also written as screenwriter R. S. Anderson on several feature films and
written novels as Russell Scott. Time Donors Wanted was his first novel
and his second, The Hard Times,
is due out in the Spring of 2012.
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