In case you didn't see it, let me draw your attention to a substantial article on the publishing impact of e-books that appeared in the Financial Times last week. You can read it here.
The version in the newspaper itself was superior, in that it featured an excellent montage illustration using this picture of Gutenberg in his print workshop, but holding an iPad.
Anyhow, it's a thought-provoking piece and one of the points made in it is that publishers need to learn lessons from what happened to the music industry when music moved online, and Apple ended up setting the prices to the lasting regret of the music moguls.
While this is a valid comparison in some respects, it falls down in others. When I think about the hundreds of CDs gathering dust at home, there are perhaps two or three that I can actually single out in terms of some sort of emotional connection with the physical item because of its individual packaging or design. It's hard to form a fond bond with a jewel case, and the CD's relatively small, standard format hardly lends itself to creativity.
My books are very different. The smell of a new book. The smell of an old book. The feel of the paper, the format, the weight, hardback, paperback, embossed cover, matt lam cover, crisp type, exquisite colour reproduction... the list goes on. And as the FT piece points out, there's a fundamental difference regarding downloading a single track, whereas who wants to read a single chapter of a novel?
A colleague recently loaned me The Learners, by Chip Kidd. Even rendered on the cleverest possible Apple device, I cannot conceive that this title would ever work as an e-book. In fact, one of the things that I find most odd about my Kindle is the loss of book covers.
But I mustn't be Canute-like in my views, and I realise that I am effectively an old fart. Fresh-faced young folk, damn them, have grown up in a mostly screen-based world and perhaps they will not care. I like to think enough of them will do, though.
Its very familiarity makes it easy to overlook the many benefits of print. I really, really hope that publishers don't close the book on such a creative and versatile medium in their rush to ensure they cash in on the e-world.
