Smart thinking: Cory Doctorow on e-novels

Filed by: Darren on March 16, 2007 at 8:09
Filed In: Books

Cory Doctorow has some particularly interesting thoughts on issues such as the (long mooted) development of mass-market e-reader technology and its likely impact (or lack of it) on the future of paper-and-print novels, in his latest Locus Online feature.

"The problem ... isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens ... the numbers tell their own story - people who read off of screens all day long buy lots of print books and read them primarily on paper."

Filed on: March 16, 2007
Filed under: Books
Tagged with: Cory-Doctorow | e-reader | print-novels | Smart-thinking |

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2 Responses to 'Smart thinking: Cory Doctorow on e-novels'

Ed on March 18th, 2007 1:07 pm

I remember Bill Gates stating several years ago that he didn't envision the demise of the printed book for quite some time, despite all the technological advances that should indicate otherwise.

There's something about the physical presence of a book which you just don't get from a screen. The drive is to make everything smaller and more portable, and the thought of having to scroll through every paragraph because the PDA screen is too small is offputting to me. If the ebook reader was the size of a standard paperback and displayed the whole page it would certainly be more appealing. But then the screen has to be just the right brightness and contrast to make reading for longer periods more pleasurable and not an eyesore.
Or the small screen with an eye sensor which could detect where you were and srolled automatically :).
Ariel on March 19th, 2007 7:01 am

Think you're absolutely right there Ed - books have an object value that goes beyond just the words on the pages and the ideas they express.

Plus there's something about the act of swapping and lending books to friends that you wouldn't necessarily get from uploading chunks of data across a wi-fi network.

Listen to us... pair of old luddites, eh?

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