On Feb. 16, Borders Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. This nationwide popular bookseller is closing 200 of their 600 stores. The Washington Post reported that these stores are expected to close by the end of April.
The Washington Post further reported that the start of their decline started with expansion overseas increasing their already existing debt. But another kicker, a big one, is that Borders didn’t even start carrying e-readers until 2010, three years after Amazon Kindle launched and a little less than a year after Barnes & Noble’s Nook. With 3G hardly beating out 4G and an iPhone 4 only being a placeholder until iPhone 5, Borders waited a decade in technology time. The launch of iPad in April 2010 just gave consumers more nails to put in Borders’ nearly-buried coffin.
In the 1930s, in the face of hardcover booksellers, paperback publishers popped up, eventually buying books from hardcover publishers and distributing them in places like gas station magazine racks and drugstores and the backs of bookstores. Soon enough, they made it to the front of bookstores and went from relying on hardcover publishers and started publishing both hard and softcover books, in addition to buying from authors’ agents directly. This was a groundbreaking evolution in publishing.
Hardcover publishers were old, academic, high class and of a certain expectation. Paperback publishers were young, not as well-versed, middle class and accessible. Sound familiar? Chances are, your grandparents weren’t the first people you knew with and iPad or a Kindle. So has the e-reader just created an evolution of book buying or has it sacrificed the printed book’s integrity?
First, one thing has to be clear: e-book companies are not publishers. They’re distributors. Authors get an agent. The agent sells their book to a publisher. Then, publishers market and sell the book to distributors like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
In a press release in October 2010, senior vice president of Amazon Kindle, Steve Kessel, said, “For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than two to one. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it’s across the board.”
“This is remarkable when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months.”
Still, Jack Romanos, former president and CEO of Simon and Schuster Inc., said that 90 percent of books sold today are still paper and ink. Further, he said five out of six books read is borrowed. It’s a little more inconvenient to borrow someone’s Kindle than their worn out paperback copy of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” but, beyond inconvenience in book leasing, there is a lot that the e-reader is lacking.
An e-reader has less of a negative impact on the environment than a print book, and while paper, printer and distribution companies are suffering drastically, writers’ royalties in the e-book market are higher. There is still 28 percent of Americans who don’t access the Internet at all, so it doesn’t seem that an e-reader would be on the top of people’s lists of needs.
Sure, you can take notes and highlight on an e-reader. But page margins on a print book are a more instantaneous reaction to a reading. People can underline, circle, draw arrows and make notes all the while escaping from the screen of the computer or phone. But is this affinity for the tangible soon to be nostalgia? Or is it already?
From a design perspective, how can you judge a book by a cover if the cover of an e-reader is always clinical white? Often, when looking for leisure reading, people go into a bookstore with a couple of titles or authors in mind, but find other covers, that make then change their mind from wanting to buy a romantic comedy novel to a political theory book. Amazon’s “You might also like” generator doesn’t factor in randomness of interests.
Searching for a book online is a science of specificity, not giving the shelves a chance. Chip Kidd, a famous book cover designer, said in an interview with Q TV “As long as it’s 400 bucks and looks like something you would use to test your glucose levels…it will have limited appeal.” That interview was in May 2009 when the price of a second generation Kindle would cost you $359. Since then, you can get a Kindle for $189 and a Barnes and Noble Nook for $149.
But just because the device is getting thinner, lighter and cheaper with each generation, what are the e-book companies bringing to the table that I can’t get from my print books?
News publications like The New York Times, Washington Post and District don’t just scan in a print version of a story and put them online. With all the possibilities of technology, e-readers are almost the equivalent of that. It seems that they have not yet gained footing on the possibilities of the medium, and further, the appeal that separates them from a book. An e-book can have animated illustrations or videos. A print book can’t.
Humorist writer Roy Blount Jr. recently visited the Savannah Book Festival and made adamantly clear, “I don’t want God-damned videos in my writing.” After all, the best writing doesn’t need videos. Who has read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and thought, “I can’t really picture Gatsby’s mansion. I think I would like a virtual tour.” Probably not Blount, but his disclaimer for his aversion is, “That’s just ‘cause I’m an old fart.”
But that old fart’s not alone. The fact of it is, e-books are an evolution not just in the business of book distribution, but as Romanos pointed out, the concept. Borders ignored this evolution, but their audience did not. It’s also an evolution in technology. It’s lightweight, simple, accessible and with new anti-glare screens, you can take e-readers most anywhere you would take a book.
Romanos said that books will keep their “furniture value,” which is a gut-wrenching insight to hear for a reader and writer, but print books will become increasingly more rare over time. There is still some compromise to take place and e-readers need to settle into their niche, and hopefully this will leave a niche for the fans of the print book.
It’s a change in technology, a change in aesthetics, but bookshelves are still being made. After all, Romanos pointed out, be it hardcover, paperback book or e-book, they’re all “containers” for the story. Thankfully, the words stay the same.
