Invisible Books, Disappearing Readers

Stephen King recently wrote a book commissioned by Amazon, specifically by and about the Kindle. It’s a novella called UR. I don’t have a problem with authors writing works on commission as long as they’re clearly stated to be such--I figure it’s no different from being paid to write TV commercials or ad copy. It is only $2.99.

What bothers me is that it is only available on Kindle, and that I only found out about it when a friend who just bought a Kindle told me about it. (Update: it is now also released as an audio book.)

I know it’s not illegal, but it strikes me as a little sleazy. By commissioning their own works, Amazon creates an elite class of books available ONLY to those able to afford a $300 device. What a kick in the teeth to King’s long-time fans who cannot afford the Kindle.

And how cruel, really. Books always seemed truly democratic, available to anyone with a public library card. (Or without, if you have the patience to read while sitting in the library.) You could be 12 years old. You could be poor. Maybe you’d have to wait for the paperback, or wait for the library to stock it, or wait for a friend to loan it to you, or find it used or on the Barnes & Noble clearance rack for $4.99. But generally, I never noticed my choices of reading material were limited by cost.

Thank to interlibrary loan programs, I'm not even limited by location--a godsend when I was growing up in a rural town with a tiny two-room library. Audiobooks, Braille and large print books made reading material even more widely available. Books were not one-of-a-kind Picassos hanging in a rich man's private library. Books were mass-produced, and anyone with a half-decent education could walk into a library and read.

Enter the e-readers.

I've only read a few reviews of various e-readers and they all seem to focus on the same things: the complaints of the privileged. The color of the screen, not having physical pages to quaintly rustle and turn, rhapsodizing nostalgically about the smell of ink on paper, the lack of illustrations, not liking the choice of font. It's just like election season, when everyone talks about whether or not a candidate ever smoked pot or how much they paid for their clothes rather than the real issues. Who cares about the cosmetic quirks? They'll get worked out. I'm more concerned about readers, the people, than readers, the product.

Nicholson Baker wrote an essay in the New Yorker that made me want to do something I would not do with the expensive and breakable Kindle: throw the magazine across my living room and hear it hit the floor, which is a very satisfying expression of frustration. I zoned out when he compared jokes, reading a passage from a print book: funny! He reread it on the Kindle: not so funny! Um...what? Was he joking? Maybe I didn't get his snark because I was reading it on paper. I guess I should read the New Yorker's online edition to see if that was e-funnier.

Will the King book eventually be published on paper? Even if it comes out in a year or two, that seems more fair—let those who can invest in a Kindle read it first, as long as eventually it makes it way to the rest of us unwashed, low-income, late adopters.

By making it Kindle-only they create two classes of readers, the haves and have-nots. Those who can afford to read certain authors, and those who can’t. It seems almost hateful. Maybe spiteful is a better word. This turns the world of reading into a gated community, a country club with a pool where only members can swim.

A company like Amazon could afford to create a stable of authors under contract to write only Kindle books. I'm sure many authors would jump at the chance to trade wider readership for guaranteed income. Are there going to be entire groups of authors that those without electronic access just never discover? How do authors feel about this? Would the average, non-bestselling, struggling author care that her book was not on library shelves where poor folks might find it? Will e-readers make certain books invisible?

I didn't even hear about the new Stephen King book--actually, it's a novella (182KB, not sure how many print pages that translates to). This also disturbs me. Normally you can't help but hear about a new Stephen King book, whether you read him or not. There are people carrying it on the train, people leaving it in the lunch room at the office. You see it in the window at Barnes & Noble. You don't need to be plugged into the world of book reviews to know about it; it's just out there via cultural osmosis, the same way I know that Project Runway, a show I have never ever watched, switched cable networks. And I don't even have cable.

E-readers make books invisible. I suppose if you want to read smut on the train without your fellow passengers knowing, this is a good thing. But I like seeing what people are reading. I like seeing books and authors I never heard of. I like looking at the person on the subway, trying to guess what they are reading. The elderly lady in the church hat and sturdy shoes? Must be a Bible. Nope--Twilight. Well, you can't judge a book by its cover, or a reader by her age and outfit. E-readers don't just make books invisible, they make people invisible, impenetrable.

I'm just feeling disgruntled: it figures that new technology now forces me to overhear inane cell phone conversations, something I hate, yet will soon prevent me from checking out what people are reading, something I adore.

Can you share e-books? I had to read a book for my reading group* recently that I did not want to purchase as a $25 hardcover. My disposable income is limited, and I just wasn't willing to part with it for this particular book. I was #69 on the library waiting list. There was no way I'd get it in time for our next meeting. (*Yeah, I'm trying to kid myself, hence "reading group" not "book club." I'll let you know how that works out.)

So, a friend loaned it to me. I trade books with friends and sister ALL THE TIME. I guess people of a certain income don't do this, because I haven't seen it mentioned when discussing e-reader drawbacks. Sharing books promotes wider readership, not to mention friendship and actual face-to-face conversations. Anyway, I liked the book, then recommended it to a friend. Considering I was not going to buy this book, no way no how, I feel like the author got a fair deal: at least he gained a happy reader who spreads good reviews. I get a free read, and he gets more fame. I now know the name of Jonah Lehrer. Maybe I'll read his next book. Maybe I'll even pay for it. (Probably not--I'm library-centric these days--but you never know.)

But you can't share e-books unless you hand your Kindle over to someone, and who would share such an expensive device that also contains your whole library? Not the same as passing along a Sookie Stackhouse paperback, and don't worry if you spill coffee on it or take it to the beach and get sand in it, it was $5.99 at Target. E-readers make books less social, if more portable (and after lugging 9 books with me to Alaska, I definitely see the advantages of e-books). It just makes books more selfish, somehow. You can't read an e-book and then pass it on to a friend or donate it to your local library or school (or prison, as the charity Books Behind Bars does), or trade it for credit at your local used bookstore.

People say they buy more books with the Kindle, since they're so cheap, and since, as I just learned from reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, people are more likely to overspend and make rash purchasing decisions when paying with plastic. Yet I can't help but think that e-books cut down on readership--sales may increase, but actual readers decrease, since that book lives only in your personal e-reader library and is never shared.

Library books and trading books with friends is essential to my reading habit. I read a lot and I read fast. If I'm really engaged in a story, I can tear through two or three in a week. $9.99 per book seems cheap unless you realize that for someone like me, that's $120/month, plus tax. Young kids are even worse--I see parents stagger out of the library with bags of picture books, 10 or 20 at a time. It makes me sad to think that the lower classes of readers, like me, who read a lot but don't spend a lot, will disappear when books go exclusively digital.

Friends recommend books all the time, but I find I often will read it only if a friend literally puts it in my hands and says, "You HAVE to read this!" Because I am a crank, I often need to be forced to open my mind to other people's influences. I like what I like and I know what I like. If they just tell me about it, well, sure, I'll add it to my list and get to it someday...but if they hand it to me, and it's sitting on my nightstand, piled up, visibly, and I have to get it back to her sometime--then I'll actually read it.

Being pessimistic and prone to reading a lot about dystopian and apocalyptic futures, I'm just worried that entire classes of books will, effectively, disappear behind the gated community of expensive technology. At first it seemed that new technology was getting cheaper and cheaper, and everyone had a cell phone and MP3 player. Lately it seems like the class gap between those who have access to technology and those who don't is widening. Everyone assumes that if they have something, everyone else does, too.

As someone without cable TV--I decided internet access was more important--and currently without a cell phone, I assure you this is not true. When television switched to digital, the government was apparently shocked to find so many people still did not subscribe to cable.

(Thanks for that, by the way--instead of getting all basic channels, I'm now limited to ABC and PBS. At least I can watch "LOST" next year. And WTF is with PBS in New York; do they ever air anything besides cooking shows and Gwyneth Paltrow driving around Spain?)

On the plus side, I watch a lot less television. On the negative side, I can't watch television even when I want to. I worry that someday books will go the same way as my NBC and CBS.

Yes, I'm paranoid. But if they did it with television, why couldn't they do it with books? It could be a new ecological initiative to save the planet and decrease our carbon footprint. Mandate e-books only, and let the poors scramble to afford e-readers for the kids and affordable book-subscription programs.

I pessimistically see a future where instead of PETA throwing blood on fur coats, we'll have angry eco-ragers throwing the soil of Mother Earth in our eyes as we try to read a book printed on a murdered tree. Stephen King should write a book about that. I'd read it, if I could.