But even if Amazon doesn’t serve as a traditional editorial curator with Encore, other companies more than fill the void. And they’re not all publishers and retailers.
Ebook innovation is also happening at two other kinds of places. The first is behind closed and double-locked corporate doors, behind walls of security, at tech companies like Apple and Amazon. The second place is on the fringes, right in public view.
To me, the second kind of place is more interesting. That’s where passionate inventors come together to show off their latest homegrown e-readers or applications. In my time at Amazon, I found myself more at home with these kinds of people. I’d often fly at the drop of a hat to join one of their conferences. I liked the feeling of frenetic innovation, the fervency of the converted who gather together and create. These were builders. These were my people.
One of the places I’d find myself was at the Internet Archive. Run by dot-com millionaire and former Amazonian Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive sees itself as a library for all kinds of media—instructional films from the 1950s, public domain ebooks, live concert recordings, even software and old video games from the 1980s. You can download them all for free from the Internet Archive.
The Internet Archive is housed in a beautiful, whitewashed old church by the marina in San Francisco. When you walk inside, you feel something holy. You feel like this is the kind of place that deserves to safeguard our books and music, like that’s a holy mission. And maybe it is. There are still varnished wooden pews, even though the chapel has been converted to a massive conference room.
Now that he’s made his millions, what Brewster does in life is based on idealism. There’s a subtle attitude you can see in someone who does that—a shift, a lightness of being, or something special in his bearing. Call it what you will, but something shows through in someone predisposed to ethical idealism.
Brewster reminds me of an avuncular 1950s propeller-head, someone who would rather be tinkering and building a ham radio in his basement workshop, someone who enjoys the smell of a soldering iron. He was one of those dot-com millionaires who didn’t fit his image very well. But man, he loves books! He pays out of his own pocket for a small army of people to scan in old books to digitize them.
He and the other idealists at the Internet Archive are like monks in the Middle Ages, only instead of recopying ancient manuscripts with pen and ink, they use massive server farms that hum underneath the wooden pews. The Internet Archive is like a Google held together by duct tape and idealism.
Brewster organized great conferences, and I’d be the only person attending who represented a major ebook retailer, probably because Apple and the others didn’t have time for this. But I did. It was important. I’d be there in the back of the conference, listening to each person as they stood on the stage for a half hour with their PowerPoints, all those university professors and gee-whiz tech wizards and independent entrepreneurs.
You have to understand that all of these people were genuinely interested in books. They were technological revolutionaries, but since they were often millionaires, they were more like revolutionaires. Anonymous though they may be to the eyes of history, these were people who were making the digital reading experience incrementally better. These were people who wanted to make ebooks more hi-fi, who were passionate about such things as style sheets, fonts, and ligatures. These were people who understood that we had to do more than just replicate what print books have given us over the last five hundred years. They knew that for ebooks to work, we’d have to make them better than print books.
When it comes to the soul of the ebook revolution, the smaller, independent ebook entrepreneurs can make contributions that are just as important as those of the technology giants. But the more the revolution marched forward, the more the tech giants began awakening to ebooks.
And eventually, one giant in particular finally awoke from its slumber. A huge, new player made its mark on the book scene—one that was larger than Apple but playing by a different set of rules than anyone else: Google.
Bookmark: Bookstores
There’s a used bookstore in Seattle, right in Amazon’s shadow, called Couth Buzzard Books. When I talk to the owner, he says he isn’t worried about electronic books. “I used to be a teacher,” he says, “so as long as children are reading, it’s all good.” He just wants to ensure that people are reading, which I agree is important. That said, he’s going to retire in a few years, so is he worried about the future of print books? He shrugs his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter too much.”
Maybe he’s wiser than I am, but I think print books still matter. A lot.
Though I worked at Kindle for five years, though I own almost every e-reader known to man, though I pioneered the writing of ebooks more than ten years ago, and though I still love my Kindle, ironically I do have problems with digital books.
When I was a student at MIT, I used to love going to the Avenue Victor Hugo Book Shop in Boston. It had cavernous rooms and creaky wooden floorboards and handwritten signs in the aisles directing you to some great reads. Like most independent bookstores, it’s shuttered now. In fact, most were shuttered in the 1990s with the advent of mass-market retail concerns like Borders and Barnes & Noble. Consumers got cheaper books and a wider selection of popular books, but they lost access to the more interesting obscure books. They also lost the feeling of connectedness, of being able to talk to patrons and storekeepers who also loved books.
I think this loss sets us back, because sometimes the most interesting books are the ones that are hardest to find. They’re the books that Amazon never recommends to me and that even newer sites like Goodreads never get around to mentioning. Sometimes, to find a good book to read, you need to first find a kindred spirit—and that was often the special role filled by people who worked or shopped in independent bookstores.
Some retailers, like Barnes & Noble, still have chairs set aside in their stores where customers can read and socialize. There are sometimes Tarot card readings, and if you bring your Nook into the store, you can get often get free desserts or coffee from the pastry bar. Fortunately, there are still great spaces where a community can come together around books.
Reading is like an act of bathyspheric descent into the depths of an inky-black ocean. You’re alone as you descend into the dark, as you discover strange creatures. On surfacing, it can be a great feeling to share the excitement, to discuss with others all the luminous eels and unexpected fish you discovered in the depths. (And in the best books, you find these unexpected delights inside yourself, not on any page. The best books tell you what you already suspected about yourself but were perhaps too afraid to scrutinize.) Talking about what you’ve read is a great feeling, whether it’s about a fiction book whose characters interest you or a nonfictional account whose ideas intrigue you and that you want to explore with others to make better sense of them.
I don’t know whether physical bookstores will disappear in the digital revolution. But for the moment, thankfully, many of them seem able to hang on and maybe even thrive. I will be hoping that they continue to do so. But I also hope they learn from what the online retailers are doing. It’s not enough to keep selling books the same way as always. Bookstores will need to adapt and innovate just as much as any tech startup or nimble publisher.
Bookstores are safe havens for intelligent minds and often are free from the tumult of street sounds and outside stress. Bookstores, especially casual independent ones, often have prowling cats, comfy couches, and the feeling that you could spend all day inside, in warmth and comfort. I’m sure you’ve passed many hours in the aisles of bookstores big and small, and if you’re like me, you have some favorites. Care to share any of yours?