Scroll On …

“My brother-in-law asked me a question about fonts last weekend. I was like, how the hell does Ted know what a FONT is? He’s an engineer!”

– Comment from a friend and fellow journalist over lunch, 1996.

We had a discussion in class on Tuesday that keeps replaying in my head: the future of books. Dr. Crovitz was talking about how encyclopedias have changed in the last few years as the Digital Age erupted, and publishing began transforming from the deliberately honed craft of professionals to a tool (or plaything) of the masses. One response of the encyclopedia companies was to write extensively longer pieces, but to include fewer topics, Dr. Crovitz said: The encylopedia companies hoped that adjustment would keep them relevant and profitable. Some of my classmates expressed concern that libraries are now “media centers”; they worry that libraries are becoming so digitalized that shelf space for books is shrinking.

“We’ll always need books,” somebody said.

I can’t shake that conversation: It hit too close to home. I’ve never worked for an encyclopedia company, but I’ve spent more hours of my life in those Britannica meetings than I want to remember. I spent the last 10 or 15 years of my career as an editor sitting in meetings with the marketing people and the circulation people and the product development people and the beancounters and the corporate heads and the techies. We talked about innovative strategy and new business models and brand identity and differentiation and blah blah blah blah blah. We racked our brains trying to figure out a way to keep our print products relevant: People now demand their information online, but they won’t pay for information they receive electronically. Can we create password-protected sites? If so, how do we keep a single subscriber from sharing a password with multiple users? Can we deliver a product by e-mail, and if so, how do we keep the e-mail from being forwarded? What can we do in for-profit publishing that is so indispensible that people will continue to pay us to create content and we can still make money?

So Tuesday’s class conversation was almost painful; I guess I’m still a little raw from my years of dealing with these questions every frickin’ day. I don’t have the answers, but I’ve come to some conclusions, developed some opinions. My conclusions may end up entirely  off base, but I want to throw them out there because they’re getting too loud in my head after that class discussion.

The sad truth is, we won’t always need books. If you want evidence, look at book retailers. Remember when you could go into cool, hip little independent bookstores and browse all day? Maybe they’d have once-a-week poetry readings or book clubs or a guitar and flute duo on Sunday afternoons. Some of them had specialties, like the old Sphinx on Piedmont, which exclusively stocked books about the paranormal. Or they carried an eclectic selection covering a wide range of topics, like the old Oxford Books at Peachtree Battle, which later moved to Pharr Road. And even the chain bookstores were convenient: it seemed like there was always a Chapter 11 nearby. Didn’t every mall have Waldenbooks and B. Dalton? In 2009, you have the three big-box retailers: B&N, Borders and Amazon, and you can only touch a book at two of them. Most of their money isn’t made selling books; it’s made selling shelf space to people who want to sell books.

No, we won’t always need books. We as consumers have already made that decision. Which makes sense really, when you consider that we haven’t always had books. Before books, we had scrolls. Before scrolls, we had tree bark and stone and wax tablets and etched clay and cave walls. Books, really, are a technology in their own right.

It’s a cold reality: Your grandchildren or great-grandchildren probably will never know the seductive touch of crisp new pages that smell like fresh ink, or the dreaminess of opening a book that’s older than your grandparents and inhaling its dusty musty breath. They won’t touch books, or read them, except possibly on occasion for some directed purpose, much like we might spin a 45 today.

And while books will go away, stories won’t. Hopefully, the Kindle or some other hand-held will emit the same magic for future generations that we paperophiles found in books.

For those of us whose lives have been changed by the power of a book, who have been molded by books, it’s an emotional revolution that we can’t quite bring ourselves to acknowledge yet, much less embrace.

We’ll always need books, won’t we?

I don’t want to punch you in the stomach or anything, but … NO. We will not always need books. It seems impossible and unfathomable, right? Yeah, well, that’s called denial. It’s OK. You have time to stay in denial for another decade or two. Me? I’ve already spent too much time trying to force the toothpaste back into the tube.  The e-train has left the station; If I run fast enough, maybe I can catch up to it.

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