..What is worth fighting for in the new landscape is not printed matter itself (which will likely survive either way, as a rarified collectible even if nothing else), but the preservation of reading as a special act.
What’s really in danger is the unique bond between book and reader; a pact that is sealed with an artifact to prove the connection — the creases and marginalia we leave on physical books show that we were there; a human touched and absorbed these words. What’s lacking from the digital experience is this sense of ownership and a concrete relationship with the material. E-books lead to a grand flattening of the titles we read.War and Peace on a Kindle weighs as much to lug around as The Sun Also Rises. A reader takes the same clicking actions to purchase Danielle Steel as she does to buy Homer. The web is one big, fluorescent superstore where every title exists in equal and judgment-free aisles, and we have the whole store to ourselves.
This shift has, in many ways, infused democracy into the reading process. It allows for self-published authors to rise along with those minted by major houses, and it frees customers to stock up on the genre fiction that they might have otherwise been embarrassed to bring up to the counter at an indie bookstore. But what we sacrifice, that spark of excitement when opening a new book for the first time, that moment we seal the pact — it’s that thrill that cements many a young reader’s lifelong love of books, and it is a lot to lose.
So how do we make reading an extraordinary experience in the age of flattened text? This is a question that many publishers and authors are trying to answer right now, not only to keep up profit margins, but to preserve the energy that got them into the business in the first place.
One new idea, which comes from the Brooklyn independent publisher Melville House, is that of the “Hybrid Book.” The idea, says publisher Dennis Johnson, is to both distinguish the Melville House e-reading experience from others, and also to push paper books by offering a little something extra on the top. The program, which launched in August, adds the equivalent of DVD extras to books in packages called “Illuminations.”
Often the Illuminations are longer than the book itself, stuffed full of illustrations, maps, articles, photographs and historical documents. It’s the kind of trove of information you might find if, after reading, you decided to Google everything you could about the author and the book’s subject. Melville House has simply run the search for you, and is hoping you’ll find their curated findings to be frosting on top of the text. They’re offering the Illuminations via QR code, e-pub file, PDF — and if that doesn’t work, you can e-mail a member of Melville House’s staff. As Johnson says, “If you want to get the materials, we willfind a way to get them to you.”
The idea is interesting in that it provides a bridge between the e-book and print copies (both come with “Illuminations”), and gives booksellers on the frontlines more ammunition to use when trying to push physical books. But it’s also meant to make the e-book experience feel differentiated, and to give the reader the sense that a person (in this case, one of Melville House’s editorial staff) lovingly selected the companion materials and is presenting them directly to you. If it works, it can create another kind of pact.
“The best publishers going into this transition are the ones that are not trying to change the experience, but are going to create new delivery systems that enhance the experience,” says Dennis Johnson. “Reading has always been a social act, has always been about influencing you as you go out into the world. The Hybrid Book is social as well. It’s a person giving you a gift of extra information. There’s nothing to be afraid of with digital media if you think of ways to maintain an organic experience.”
