Sunday, August 01, 2010

A Row of Heavy Stones


The house is quiet this morning. It’s seven-thirty and Eric decamped to the dreaded Litchfield Flea Market, so I am alone, wrapping books and thinking about their future. I’m in a decidedly contemplative mood this morning, so I apologize in advance if this post takes a more somber tone than usual. A couple days ago I went to a board meeting of the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (NOBS), host of the annual Akron Antiquarian Book Fair. You may recall that in April I displayed my books there for the first time since I opened my business in 1997. I was one of the new kids at the fair and am definitely the new kid on the board. Don’t laugh, but in a away I really AM a kid at NOBS because it’s a decidedly older group. There are only three of us “kids” on the board and every single one of us teeters on the brink of our sixties! (NOW you can laugh.)

I mention all this because age is germane to what comes next. The fact is, like it or not, the physical book is “old school”. In its August newsletter Americana Exchange reported, “Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition.“

In that same issue Americana Exchange also revealed that Andrew Wylie, a major New York literary agent, recently cut a two year exclusive deal with Amazon to publish 20 classic titles penned by his agency’s clients (including John Updike) in Kindle format with no inclusion of the publisher in the deal. It doesn’t take too many brain cells to discern that the figures on Kindle sales hit traditional booksellers right between the eyes, but the second story is what makes it a one-two punch. At first glance it seems that Wylie’s deal is only the publisher’s problem, but look again. The symbiotic relationship between bookseller and publisher insures that the publisher’s problem BECOMES the bookseller’s problem.

And so we can only ask the obvious questions. What happens when publishing is no longer profitable? Do the floodgates open and anyone with a computer “publishes” his or her own book, uploads it to amazon and sells it as an e-book? What happens when there are no gatekeepers to differentiate books of literary and scholarly merit? Without editors and publishers how will we find the best books in the noisy current of rushing words? Will the Emily Dickinsons, the John Updikes, the Stephen Hawkings of the future be lost because we can’t hear them over the roar of the rapids? How will authors make a living when their royalties are falling like late summer crabapples? How will booksellers sell “real” books if no one’s publishing any? The answer, of course is that we don’t know yet because we haven’t a clue how it’s all going to play out.

What we do know is that, fortunately, there are still people who love the physical book and are still buying it. As I write this I am enjoying a marked uptick in sales these past two weeks after the slowest summer of Garrison House Book’s existence. But I do believe that the buyers of these books are, for the most part, older. It’s a rare day when I talk to a customer on the phone who is under forty. At the NOBS meeting the owner and founder of Akron’s oldest used and rare bookstore spoke at length and with great passion about his fears for the future of books and bookselling. Oddly, no one responded with the same vigor. While I made it clear that I do not have, nor do I plan to buy, an electronic reading device, I failed to give voice to the overwhelming sense of loss I felt in that moment. The thought of a world without books and bookstores, of libraries flanked by computers instead of books, renders me mute. There are simply no words for it.

I’m sure some would argue that I’m being melodramatic and that we’re a long way from the loss of the physical book, but the truth is that technology is on a rampage, careening us forward at breakneck speed. I agree that it’s too soon for rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, but the indications of clear and present danger flash like a lighthouse beacon -- we ignore them at our peril. As a bookseller who has nurtured this business like my third child, I need to position myself for any eventuality. As a writer I must find a way to somehow be heard above the din of competing voices.

But, as much as these worries keep me awake at night, they‘re personal, and in some ways, venal, concerns. The loss of the physical book far transcends both the venal and the personal. Whether we realize it, or not, we are the preservationists of our time and culture. Already we have seen the loss of the personal letter, first to email and now, even more dangerously, to texting, a loss the depth of which has yet to be realized, but which will ultimately leave glaring holes in our understanding of the minds of the brightest writers, artists, scientists, and historians of our generation. We simply cannot allow further erosion on our watch. To keep safe their ideas, voices, and stories solely in rows of pixels is risky business at best, tragedy at worst.

And so gargantuan tasks line up before us, a row of small gray stones weighing heavy on the heart. But before we can even begin to chip away at them we have to find a way to to lie down with the lion. E-books are not going to go away, so wasting time and energy railing at them is clearly not the answer. The only reasonable choice is to find a path to peaceful coexistence. I have little doubt we can find one for the short term. It's the long haul that adds a boulder to the row of stones.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps I am being pollyanna, but I do see a small ray of hope here. This eloquent defense of the beauty of book is written in electronic form and immediately accessible to people in far flung places....I'd like to think that we can find some kind of balance between our old and new worlds...but then again, I am approaching 50 and my glasses might be a little too rose-colored...

tess said...

Thanks for writing. I sincerely hope you're right. Maybe at 59 my glasses are fading! Time will tell.