A few thoughts on Amazon’s Kindle 2 and electronic media in general, and their impact on publishing writers.

Short version: I’m not hiding beneath my bed in panic (at least, not from the Kindle).

Here’s the deal as I see it. Yes, the Kindle 2 does appear to be the first electronic reader deserving of notice by writers. And that’s all it deserves, notice, like a possible penny on the sidewalk. Whether that penny turns out to be a quarter (wahoo!) or a dome of dried gum (lesshoo), it probably isn’t going to dictate my financial plans for the rest of the fiscal year. I don’t see any electronic platform acting the lethal meteor to good old-fashioned books, at least not in the foreseeable future. Kindle certainly ain’t it. The novel reading public has not transitioned to acceptance of electronic readers; to the contrary, such a transition is in its infant stage. It’ll take a while, and even as people acclimate and explore this new medium, they won’t abandon the old standard. That won’t happen until (or unless) proficiency with the new technology becomes comfort, and comfort becomes preference. We’re decades away from that, at least (I’ve seen this in my crystal ball, which is jet black, so you know it works).

Now, I’m not saying the Kindle won’t have an impact on the market. It will carve it’s own niche, just as audiobooks have. But that niche isn’t going to kill the established body of distribution for published fiction. It’ll just change the shape a bit. In fact, I suspect this is a good thing for all of us writers. Electronic reading will initially be adopted by techies more than lit junkies and recreational readers, so in some ways the Kindle will broaden most authors’ market exposure, not shift established readers from book to electronic format. Book people will be likely to buy our work in book format, so electronic media represents a chance to expand our audience. And a wider readership can only be good. If a few people do transition from book (comparatively profitable for writers) to electronic form (comparatively unprofitable for writers), it won’t break the bank. And the additional readership is likely to generate additional word of mouth, which is the great god at whose table we all wish to feed. Now, if too many readers switch transition to electronic format… Well, ain’t going to happen. I’ll cover that in a moment.

Before I move on from the Kindle to electronic readers and media in general, here’s my two cents on Kindle’s text-to-speech option. Having a machine read a story with all the performative skill of Stephen Hawking in the middle of an electromagnetic storm doesn’t count as infringing audio copyright. An audiobook is a performance, distinctive even from reading the text (and less pleasant, in my opinion). A linguistic annunciation of prose is more akin to a well-worn mathematical formula or proof—the answer may make sense, but nobody cares. I’m not certain it even counts as story. I’ve worked with a few students who are blind using the Jaws reading program and trust me, machines will never threaten storytellers with their oratory. Besides, if I buy a book there’s no copyright against my reading it out loud to a friend. Why should a machine doing so in a far inferior manner do so? For those who disagree with me, know that I agree with Neil Gaiman, which settles the argument. If you still wish to debate, do so with him here.

Okay, so why won’t electronic media’s narrative take over the world and save forests everywhere from paper production? Because electronic media, from web journalism to the Kindle, is about ease of access and convenience. We hear all the time how these things are coming to dominate our culture, and in many spheres this is true. But you know what? Some things just can’t be made into a sound bite. Some communicative genres don’t fit certain media well. Try memorizing a phone book as an oral tradition. It wouldn’t work unless you provided mnemonic devices so frequently as to reinvent the genre itself. (For other examples, written alphabets and media development such as papyrus and paper played a part in the separation of poetry from prose. For most of human history they were, by necessity, the same, because the rhyme and meter were needed to aid in memory of the narrative.)

Long narrative is not an especially accessible form, nor are the genre’s contained therein. By necessity, it demands prolonged dedication of time and sustained concentration to read. Generally speaking, such attributes are not dominant characteristics of cutting-edge electronic media consumers. Congruently, such readers are usually not traditional novel readers or purchasers. A book person isn’t likely to simply be a fan of long narrative; they’re likely to be a fan of books–old, familiar, tangible, feel-their-weight-and-substance-in-your-hands books. It is unlikely a computer can match this expectation, no matter how light, or readable, or simple to operate. The media’s strengths do not match the character of the narrative form, and I don’t think that dissonance is going away any time soon.

Also, as Kindle keeps racking up more available titles, writers and publishers in the technological know are most likely to have their work available in this format early. This will define Kindle’s early consumer base, and thus its primary readership and discourse community. Not all genres will thrive equally well on Kindle. As previously said, it will change the market by shaping it, bubbling off its own niche and accreting to the already established cluster that is modern publishing.

For these reasons, among others, I anticipate that most people, at least for the foreseeable future, when they go looking for a good long story are likely to seek out a book.