• by Jason Stahl , September 5, 2008

The last page.

Imagine you're on the road and you have this sudden urge to read On The Road, but there's no bookstore near you, nor an Internet café to order a copy delivered to your destination. Well, thanks to Amazon's $359, 10.3-ounce e-reader, Kindle, you can download any book - there are currently over 150,000 e-books available on amazon.com - in under 60 seconds, and its wireless capability allows you to do so anywhere.

Jane Friedman, former CEO of HarperCollins, says, "Booksellers are recognizing that this is happening. I don't believe that any of this is science fiction anymore. Now it's a matter of how we deal with it." And how are they dealing with it?

First, look at what's become of the book industry: Too many books get published each year. Mid-list books are becoming extinct. Publishers want authors with a following. Warehousing has become expensive. Editors are overworked and paying less attention to manuscripts. Publishing houses have become little more than distributors, and are spending even less time and money on marketing and publicity.

Despite the changes from hardcover to paperback to audiobook (and even that went through format changes, from cassette to compact disc and now downloads), moving forward, Friedman says, "For the first time in our business, we're seeing a real paradigm shift. And I say this with almost four decades of experience: There has never been a paradigm shift of format."

Speaking with Amazon is difficult because its corporate communications department is, ironically, muzzled. Basically, per a couple of publicists and Jay Marine, director of product development for Kindle, this is what one can get out of them: Kindle targets readers; Amazon doesn't focus on the possibility of illegal e-book downloads; it's company policy not to announce to the public or even to shareholders how many units of Kindle have been sold, but they are "extremely happy" with sales; there will be a next, a fifth and a tenth Kindle; Amazon has no plans to change the price of the device, or the books, or add places where you can purchase Kindle; Amazon's goal is to digitize every book in every language and have it available in under 60 seconds; Amazon hopes Kindle replaces physical books; Amazon will eat your children if you leave them on its doorstep. (One of these statements wasn't made by them.)

At least they responded. Barnes & Noble declined to "participate" on this subject.

Amazon's e-reader does receive positive feedback from customers, and from Friedman. "It is a book. The e-reader is getting to a point where it's going to be extremely, extremely influential and may indeed change the economic model of publishing." She adds that if you're reading a newspaper or a magazine on your Kindle and a book review catches your eye, you can download the book right then for a very inexpensive price.

Traditional book readers complain that the Kindle diminishes the experience of reading a physical book. "I think once you start reading on one, you sort of lose yourself," Friedman says. "You don't really feel you're reading on a computer screen - I don't. Once you lose yourself in the content, and if you like it, you may decide that's going to be what you look for."

Not everyone shares that sentiment. Literary agent Luke Janklow, who only uses his Kindle to read manuscripts, says, "It's a bad meal. If you're reading Harry Potter on a Kindle, it's not magical. It doesn't feel right. You're denying yourself the private or dirty escapism. I don't think it's going to replace books. There are people who want that tactile feeling of touching a book."

Matt Holt, vice president and publisher of John Wiley & Son's Professional & Trade Group, adds, "I don't know about taking [Kindle] to the beach, taking it to the bathtub - people are going to want to do that. There's nothing romantic about holding this electronic device."

And in regards to the changing publishing model and royalties, Janklow argues that e-books screw up the whole economy of books. "It costs $5 a book to manufacture it, ship it and all that crap. If that's eliminated, that money should go to the author."

Kindle isn't the only technology affecting the book industry. Slowly, we're seeing print-on-demand. The idea is based on Jason Epstein's Espresso Book Machine. "It's a fascinating device," Friedman says. The on-demand device, which is entering bookstores at a snail's pace, can call up any book in any translation. Print-on-demand, along with Kindle, will help with a publisher's inventory. Before, if you wanted to reprint 200 copies, you had to print 1,000 and warehouse the rest. "You print what the consumer wants," Friedman adds.

"Publishers should be able to print quicker; they should be able to capitalize on a buzz," Janklow says. "They're renowned for taking a month to reprint a book, so it's the great irony of a book that's selling well and sells out that nobody can get it - which is a great 19th-century characteristic of publishing."

What's the point of having these new technologies if people aren't even reading - or are they? Friedman contests, "In my most recent tenure as CEO of Harper, I saw more people buying books than ever before, so I don't buy it. There are reports that boys between 18 and 25 don't read. Maybe they don't, but they come back after they're 25, so who cares?"

Janklow agrees: "I think about the phenomenon of Harry Potter or Stephanie Meyers. Harry Potter had 5.8 million pre-orders for a $35, 850-page book. A book is like a spoon. It's the perfect machine that you can't improve on. There's something tactile about it. There's something reactive and proactive which is really important, and quality trumps the format. In the final analysis, the format that everyone prefers is a book, because there's something escapist and magical about the physical act of reading a book."

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