How Many Good Books — And Authors — Will We Lose In The Shift To Digital?
I stumbled across Roger Zelazny’s jewel-like science fiction stories in the early 1970s, when he was still on the leading edge of sci-fi’s new wave. He won six Hugos and two Nebulas (sci-fi writing’s Oscars) and despite his untimely death in 1995 at the age of 58, his name — at least among the older science fiction readership — is instantly recognizable.
In other words, he’s famous, and his books likely still sell.
So why can’t I buy any of his books in a digital format?
Who’s Getting Left Behind?
Publishing finds itself at a digital crossroads, and whenever a wholesale shift in technology occurs, something — or somebody — gets left behind.
Sadly, some writers simply won’t merit the transfer of out-of-print books to digital formats — especially if the writer is dead, their books are out of print, and there’s no estate interest driving the conversion.
In Zelazny’s case, it’s inconceivable that a six-time Hugo winner will vanish entirely from the sci-fi landscape, but at this point, only a tiny handful of his books are available on Amazon’s Kindle (even fewer on B&N’s Nook).
It seems likely that Zelazny’s better-known efforts eventually will appear in digital form, but will the happily engrossing, lesser-known Doorways In The Sand appear alongside his multiple-award-winning Lord of Light?
Or will a spreadsheet jockey in the bowels of a publishing firm decide Zelazny’s less-popular works and jewel-like short story collections aren’t worth the cost of transfer?
Bear in mind we’re talking about a famous writer; what’s going to happen to less-famous authors?
My Alltime Top 50 Boo… Oops…
It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where a midlist author dies, and from heaven (let’s assume writers have a chance) sees his books fail to make the jump to digital, eventually fading from view.
Sci-fi writer Walter Jon Williams suggests exactly this scenario when asked who isn’t going to make the jump to digital:
There are some people who are just going to fall through the cracks — people who are deceased, who aren’t yet in the public domain, whose heirs aren’t in the literary world and don’t know about the changes going on, and whose agents wouldn’t make money through the ebook conversion, and therefore aren’t pressing it.
For now, used print books are easily searched for and bought, so with a few keystrokes, you can order the collected works of even mildly successful writers.
In ten, twenty or thirty years, that might not be the case.
Sure, nature hates a vacuum, and it’s likely a special breed of digital-only publishers are already moving into the space, but there’s little doubt a whole class of worthwhile literature won’t make the jump.
Right now, if you wanted to assemble an ebook collection of 10 50 100 titles you couldn’t survive without if stranded on a desert island (that rare desert island with electricity but no wi-fi), could you?
How many of your favorite written works wouldn’t make the trip?
In my case, a distressing percentage.
I’d like to think that less-popular works by Roger Zelazny and the gems from less-famous authors will eventually find their way to my ereader.
But I’m starting to wonder how much good stuff is going to disappear — and if this is in fact the argument or Google’s book-scanning service, the legality of which has concerned me in the past.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
Don’t you find it slightly ironic that these sci-fi writers are getting left behind by technology? I mean, I’m sure it’s other writers too. But there seems to be something especially… wrong about these future-gazers getting left behind.
~Graham
Graham Strong(Quote) (Reply)
I think it’d be ironic if Zelazny wasn’t dead. When you’re dead, pretty much everything becomes faintly ironic. Or maybe irony is only for the living.
If he were still around, well then you’d have yourself some irony.
More ironic was Ray Bradbury’s rant against ebooks and the Intertubes where he said the Internet was just a distraction before finally allowing the publication of Fahrenheit 451 in ebook form (turns out seven-figure contracts speak loudly even to the curmudgeonly).
TC(Quote) (Reply)
I’m really surprised that Zelazny’s books are not available in e-book form. He passed away long before the advent of digital rights.
His son Trent writes sf and is very active in the e-sphere (turns out we went to the same teeny-weeny alternative high school in Santa Fe, albeit a few years apart). We’re FB friends; I’ll ask him what’s up and let you know what I find out.
Paul Lagasse(Quote) (Reply)
Do report back. Walter Jon Williams was also pretty surprised to hear Zelazny’s stuff hadn’t yet made it online, and figured something odd was going on.
The larger picture remains; will all of Zelazny’s work make it into ebooks?
TC(Quote) (Reply)
I, too, certainly hope so. I now have to re-read both books, and do some research on the rest of his work.
On the other hand, what about the many authors who either write only in electronic form and/or have railed against the publishers who pay by the word, and demand a serial format that dictates length and climax sequences. There is convolution on both ends.
My jury is still out on ebooks. I just love a good bookstore and the heft and smell of paper books, but I also can take all of The Bard, Sherlock and Lord of Light on vacation in my iPad. Is it a quibble, or do I just like owning stuff?
See ya in the SF section, John
JJP(Quote) (Reply)
Yours might be, but last numbers I saw said ebooks were over 30% of the market and headed upwards fast. I think a lot of people are to the point where we’re buying paper books as something of a last resort. As a wholly unsubstantiated opinion, I’d guess ebook sales will probably assume a much slower growth rate once they hit between 50%-75% of the market.
I admit to being somewhat skeptical about them at first, but once I got past the concept of worshiping the physical book as a religious artifact and focused on the goodies inside, ebooks just allow me to read more, and more often.
TC(Quote) (Reply)
“30% of the market” , WOW! Whodathunkit?
I am impressed. Just in the sheer volume of written literature fiction and nonfiction, this is as freeing as the printing press. Perhaps, the real trial will be to see what happens to copywrite and publishing on paper.
JJP(Quote) (Reply)
For the first time (in 400 years, anyway), the world of books is feeling the impact of a medium change. Movies, on the other hand, have gone through several. When Beta/VHS came out, everything made in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were put out on tape. When DVDs came along, a lot of those movies weren’t converted — or at least weren’t widely available. They were, essentially, lost to the consumer.
Now that we’re moving to a more online model of movies, one would hope that a lot of these lost movies would be found again and stored somewhere on the Inter-me-net.
But here’s the thing: it’s all up to whomever owns the rights to those movies. AKA, “The Publishers”.
I suspect a similar thing is going to happen for books. Some will get lost, and not make the jump to ebooks. We’re already seeing that others will be published exclusively as ebooks.
The lucky thing for us though is that in order to read those books that don’t make the jump, we don’t have to dig through flea markets for an old Betamax…
~Graham
Graham Strong(Quote) (Reply)
All true, books are trading in one form of existence for another, though I think the real change is occurring within the industry; publishers are reeling as writers suddenly have direct access to readers (disintermediation). It’s not an option for everyone, but I’d guess it will be — in the long run — far more disruptive than a switch from paper to digital.
TC(Quote) (Reply)
For the truly dedicated (dessicated?), if the book goes into the public domain, Project Gutenberg provides a solution for getting it into ebook format. It involves manually scanning the book, running OCR, then proofing the output. If a book isn’t worth converting to digital format for a publisher, perhaps it won’t be worth renewing the copyright either, allowing them to fall to the public.
I did a quick search of SciFi on PG and found an odd group of stuff by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G.Wells, Jules Verne, two by Phillip K. Dick and oddly, one by Vonnegut. There is some hope.
Jim Ferguson(Quote) (Reply)
I downloaded the Burroughs “John Carter” series off Gutenberg (interestingly, people are selling all the public domain books on services like Google Play, etc).
I think the Google Books scanning service — which seems to be running into a lot of legal roadblocks — offers some hope of an archive of less-popular works, though obviously they won’t be readable in their entirety if they’re still under copyright.
TC(Quote) (Reply)
Just one thing to remember: there are NO books which will be lost because of the switch to digital. Zero.
The books you cite here are out of print and will remain so. It’s much cheaper to bring books back in digital than to reprint. Digital is their only hope.
If you’re mourning the loss of orphaned books, the real guilty party is the extension of copyright so far beyond the death of the author. If a book is neglected by a copyright holder (or the holder is unknown) the only people who will be archiving it are the pirates.
Camille LaGuire(Quote) (Reply)
That’s a unique perspective, but an unrealistic one. I can get any number of copies of Zelazny’s “Doorways in the Sand” on the used book markets, so while it’s out of print, it’s also widely available.
The same can not be said for the digital version, which doesn’t exist, and may never exist (the cost of bringing books to a digital format is high enough that many won’t make it).
Yes, extensions to copyright are also an issue, but none of the above alters my point: a lot of good books won’t make the jump to digital technologies, which will become a problem when digital becomes the dominant reading technology.
TC(Quote) (Reply)