On the front page of the New York Times today, there begins a long article about the most current attempt by print publishers and editors to hold onto their turf. And the attempt? Elaborate book covers. A dramatic shift from a supposed emphasis on content to an emphasis on packaging.
Sell the cover, never mind the words. E-books don't have tangible covers, so produce unique tangible covers and sell them.
It's not a joke. Quoted among others is Julie Grau, a senior executive at Random House: "We're rethinking the value in certain cases of special effects and higher production standards. Now in some cases, creating a more beautiful hardcover or paperback object is warranted."
The book as an object. Never mind the words, never mind the content, never mind any literary art, never mind the ideas -- it's an object, buster. The editors, salespeople, publicity people, booksellers -- no one needs to actually read anything anymore (if they read anything at all). Just sell the damn cover!
Of course, the shift itself is packaged -- we're told the idea is to improve the "reading experience" -- sales talk words for stockholders.
It's truly a wonderful metaphor for the demise of print publishing. Acquiring editors will now look to acquire books that can be dramatically packaged to seduce brick and mortar bookstore customers. Not e-book customers. Who the hell wants e-book customers? Print publishers and editors want print customers because they think they know how to sell to print customers. And if print customers are drifting to e-books because of a basic interest in content rather than packaging, get them back by packaging print books in spectacular covers. Brilliant originality, isn't it?
Not really. In the middle ages, the covers of books were bejeweled and encrusted with gold leaf, books sold for the equivalent of $5,000 or $10,000 to the very rich, the tiny minority who had money and who could maybe read more than a page without their lips getting tired. Books sold as expensive objects for conspicuous consumption. Gutenberg made print books so cheap, the rich were fearful of the poor getting educated.
At the present time what is going on in American publishing is an attempt to hold fast to a fantasy, the holding fast maybe due to the large fraction of technophobic English majors in New York book publishing, technophobes who have their jobs as a result of nepotism or literati social networking, the difference between an English major bookstore clerk and an English major assistant editor more a consequence of who one knows than what one knows.
An exaggeration? Not really. Most book editors don't do line editing anymore because they lack the skill for it. And most copy editors with high standards and knowledge of details are dead and haven't been replaced.
The consequence of general technophobia and incompetence is a desperate attempt to avoid the natural transition to new technology for writing, producing, and distributing books.
Instead of throwing whatever business and creative talents they have into forging new paths in e-book publishing, print publishers and editors wrinkle their noses at e-books and give us ga-ga words about seducing customers with ornate book covers.
Are they neglecting e-book publishing by design or lack of competence? Maybe both. Here's a pungent example of neglect involving both design and incompetence:
The most prolific and popular author of the 20th century was Georges Simenon. A master of both literary fiction and popular detective fiction (the Inspector Maigret series). Some of Simenon has been translated from French into English. The short detective novels are still popular. Penguin, for example, one of the largest commercial publishers in the world, has recently put out new editions of the Inspector Maigret series.
Consider the following:
The Hotel Majestic by George Simenon (Penguin).
Paperback $12.00. Kindle e-Book $10.99.
As Amazon points out on the web page for the book, the e-book price is set by the publisher -- the high price an obvious attempt to protect paperback sales. But that's just the beginning.
The joker is that no competent editor or copy-editor at the huge house of Penguin has ever read this book. If they had, the e-book would not contain a blatant error that appeared in the print edition.
On page 30 of the print edition, you find the following sentence:
"It was a miracle he didn't choke. What was the point of forcing him to talk, when his throat was constricted as if by a vice?"
Vice? No, friend, it should be VISE.
The translator, we suppose, made the error. The acquiring editor and the copy-editor either did not read the book and catch the error or they were both not competent enough to know it was an error. And obviously the text for the e-book was never read and checked by anyone, or if read and checked it was read and checked by someone who belongs far away from serious publishing.
At the least, the error ought to have been corrected in the e-book edition -- if e-books were taken seriously.
That's the essence of it. E-books are not taken seriously by the big publishing houses -- and the subtext of that is that these publishers are not involved in serious publishing. They are producing and selling objects and not content.
For the most part, the people now in place in print publishing belong elsewhere. The baloney years of publishing are coming to an end -- an end driven by new technology apparently beyond the understanding and competence of the current crew.
David Whelan: Are the Books Back?
And if you think E-books are ever going to supplant hardcopy, then you probably didn't write anything somebody wanted to keep forever and pass on as an heirloom; it's the same difference between a Bible and a Gutenberg Bible. I've got an original copy of Lost Horizon, the first-ever paperback.
Rabid eBook boosters, with their attention diverting, deep reading killer buttons and rattles, find cover art the last gasp of print on paper books. Maybe. But readers, real readers, should be careful what they scoff at. And this doesn't mean the Big Buck corporate publishing houses get a free ride. They're disgusting, too.
Furthermore, books will continue to be published in hardcover editions, we will not see the end of this in our lifetime, and there have been mistakes in books for a long time, more so since the use of Spell Check.
How do you know the same error you mention wasn't in the print book and just carried over to the ebook version? It's almost certainly the case. This is hardly glaring, blatant or catastrophic. All books have errors, even the most well edited and proofed - and irrespective of whether they are digital or print. Even books that were edited for American spelling in the 1980s - long before editors, as you say, lost the ability to line edit.
If you're going to put together an argument about the death of the editor or the editor's neglect of digital, then I think it might have been worth doing your research and finding an example that isn't quite so 'pungent' - because this one really is.
And for what it's worth, every editor I know - based in the US or internationally - is very enthusiastic about the possibilities (and realities) of digital publishing. The protection of pricing isn't about holding on to a dead business, it's about protecting the value of our authors' copyrights. The majority of the cost of any book - be it digital or print - is not related to the cost of printing. If you really want to see editorial skills go down the toilet then you should keep advocating for lowering prices - then you'll see what a book
After I became good at collecting, I was able to acquire other pieces of history that connected to the events in some volumes. I love books, and always will. Computers are for working at things, but a book is for reading.
E-books have a long way to go before they are as easy on the eye as printed paper.
So ... anyone want to split the costs of a bejewelled, leatherbound copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel?
The advantages of e-books are obvious, so what advantage do print books have?
If you read the comments on any article about e-books, many of the commenters simply like printed books. They wax poetic about the feel, the smell, the taste, etc. Publishers are wise to try to appeal to those folks.
I like the occasional coffee table book, and heavily illustrated books are best in print. But for serious reading, nothing beats the e-reader. The instant order and download capability means that you can, as soon as you read one book in a series, download the next and start reading in minutes.
Publishers need to emphasize the book as object, because text is going electronic.
My Kindle book: http://www.amazon.com/Eater-Souls-Food-ebook/dp/B006GT3CT0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323046010&sr=8-1
One might even point out that it should be vise, not VISE if you really want to do it correctly.