​The Printed Internet

​                           by Molly Simons

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            From libraries to kindles, the trajectory of publishing the printed word has been one that has had, and is currently going through, periods of radical revision and change.  It may be interesting to begin with the question: What is a book?  A manuscript held together with a binding and made of ink and paper? No, that excludes Braille books, which contain no ink. For the purpose of the argument, we might land on “[books are] material objects, which occupy space and have weight, such that no two books could occupy the same space at the same time” (Shillingsburg 13).  The techno-text-revolution (as I like to put it) is reincarnating these books and manuscripts in digital form.  It is no longer a book, per say—it is a text that can exist in physical forms as well as able to exist in multiple forms at one, and is therefore, not itself physical but must instead be conceptual or symbolic.  The move from printed books to electronic prose is widely scrutinized, lucrative, impending, monumental, and currently happening.  The effects on the publishing industry and consumer vary from beneficial to unsustainable, and in this paper I explore this shift and what is means to the future of publishing.

                 Author Peter Shillingsburg from From Gutenberg to Google aptly explained the entirety of an all-encompassing modification of the publishing industry to the electronic realm through an anecdote from a conference in Singapore.  A professional who had worked for Apple, IBM, and Adobe was enthusiastically talking about moving print texts into e-space. He spoke of electronic texts on screens that look and act like sheets of paper that can be folded and put in a pocket, as well as hard drives that could already hold all texts that have been or will ever be created (Shillingsburg 20).  His view of the trajectory of electronic publishing wholeheartedly committed to the digital world.  But this left a glaring question—with those reincarnated or copied texts, all in that hard drive, who can vouch that each text is unblemished? Who can say that each is without error and/or identical to the original text? The professional ended up answering this question in the vague form of, “We all have to learn to put up with noise,” meaning they cannot ensure the accuracy of the texts reproduced on the hard drives, but that the errors will register as noise which readers will filter out (Shillingsburg 20).  Is this something you or I are willing to do? Little changes in words mean the world to a text—and the “noise” describes one of the more glaring issues of reproducing literary works on the digital page; that is, the beginning of error and consumer capacity for that error.  Will the publishing industry be able to successfully minimize this error?  We must first take a look at the actual publishing process.

                   As I defined “books” earlier, I will now define “publishing,” as written in Jessicah Carver and Natalie Guidry’s book Rethinking Paper & Ink, a book on sustainable publishing and the electronic revolution.  Publishing is “the process of making literature and information available for public view” (Carver and Guidry 77).  Electronic publishing has thrown the industry for a big loop—pricing wars, format debate, skyrocketing sales, new devices, print outsourcing—these are all issues that are discussed and reported on each day.  The use of e-reading devices reduces in-house paper flow for publishers pretty significantly.  As an advocate for protecting the environment, this entices me. Manuscripts can now be accepted and accessed in digital formats, eliminating the cumbersome and wasteful printing and reprinting of lengthy manuscripts for review.  Digital manuscripts also allow for more streamlined collaboration among editors and production managers, while also cutting down taxing and unorganized access by making it easy for marketers and salespersons to access many scripts on one device instead of a lot of separate copies (77).  The digital book can also offer an increased profit margin for publishers and low retail prices for consumers, because of the lack of material cost related to print production.  What constitutes the majority of the price of any given book? Traditionally, it is figured based on all in-house, pre-production expenses plus all out-of-house production costs like printing, shipping, and distribution fees, and then passes these costs on to the consumer.  E-books have none of the printing or shipping costs (78).  Yet the books do need extra production and copywriting focus, but time and employee concentration is the main factor in this, rather than direct cost.

Electronic publishing does come with roadblocks, such as the mastery and training needed for these newer devices, expanded technology for electronic editing, etc.  Right now, you can buy an e-book for a lower price than a printed book, which reflects the low production costs.  But an industry as large as publishing is scrambling for effective business models now—it has trouble adjusting to evolving market demands and smaller profits, which is creating arguments across the board on price ceilings for e-books.  Big retailers like Amazon have argued for lower prices to drive sales of their new devices, while publishers are worrying that this may devalue their investment in an author’s work and the established retail price of the printed book (78).  This proves problematic to the foundations of the publishing industry itself—if the liason between publisher and author are faulty and tumultuous, there may be unforeseen problems that stem from this issue itself.

​There are also other advantages to an e-book that many people may see as anti-literary.  This, in my opinion, immediately translates to anti-classical-literature, which may be a problem to some, but is not to others.  For example, some e-books have interactive elements that go without a true equivalent in printed books.  A reader can access hyperlinks that allow him to jump to specific places in the text or to external sites through a web browser, which is especially useful for endnotes and footnotes (79).  You can actually even search the entire text for specific words and phrases at a very rapid speed, which you could only do by physical scanning in a printed book.  Not to mention, some e-books actually have more advanced HTML 5 and Flash elements, such as videos and interactive images (79).  E-books also prove to be easily changeable and malleable, meaning that editing or fixing mistakes is almost easy.  You would not need to make 100,000 extra reprints of the entire work to correct a mistake, but rather edit it and alert consumers that it is re-downloadable with new corrections.  This could prove very lucrative in academia, since science, research, etc is ever-changing.

            There are also supplementary downsides to the literary technological revolution.  Some people complain about reading on a computer screen, the straining of their eyes, etc.  E-books have tried to eliminate this by the use of e-ink and backlit LED displays, or sometimes a display called electrophoresis (a process in which charged titanium dioxide display particles are suspended in conductive fluid that react to voltage emitted from panels beneath the display), which saves immense amounts of battery energy (80).  Socially, however, the e-book falls short.  A consumer is unable to physically write or mark anything in an e-book, smell its pages, or pass it along to a friend.  Since internet piracy is so pervasive right now, e-books are virtually impossible to share, because they come with a set of Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions.  This also even eliminates the used book trade, which is hugely influential in the antique business, and library/special collection businesses.  Speaking of libraries, the printed word is traded and re-accessed through a free local library system.  If libraries had to rent out e-reading devices, the consumer would have to definitely pay some kind of deposit to cover the costs in case the device was damaged.  Also, currently the prices for e-books are not significantly lower than market paperbacks, making the purchase of an e-reading device difficult to offset for those with less disposable income (81).  As Carver and Guidry so eloquently explain, “If the driving force behind books is to share information with any audience who wishes to access it, then the prohibitive cost of e-readers is a major problem and a social justice issue that should be thoroughly considered before consumers, governments, and publishers rush into a paperless world. The triple bottom line principle states that sustainability encompasses not only the preservation of natural and economic capital, but also human capital. Without widespread accessibility, e-books cannot truly be deemed socially sustainable” (81).           

            Are books are staying in print or moving to electronic literature?  The future is uncertain at the very least.  Yet it is an incredibly exciting time for publishing nonetheless—there are new formats to be explored!  Creatively, this opens so many doors.  It is giving authors new freedoms to imaginatively test out new venues and vehicles for published word.  Through blogs, self e-published books, etc, writers have a new ease of getting their work seen that had never been present before.  I even have a friend, Dan Kolitz (printedinternet.tumblr.com), who combines the print AND the Internet by scanning his printed work onto the screen.  There is an ever-evolving medium to tap into, and whether the market calls for it or not, it is here and giving innovative people the ability to be read without a publishing contract.  This, in my opinion, is great news.