In a somewhat random conversation over the holidays about Led Zeppelin, someone randomly remarked that for all the hype and onslaught of technology, vinyl still sounded better than any of the other formats that the music industry, who are so good at planned obsolescence that they are brokering themselves out of jobs, have foisted on the public.
Whether you believe that or not, it’s difficult to argue with the tactility of an album, from its oversized cover to the art-book quality of the liner notes to the concentration required to put the needle on the record just so vs. the CD or the MP3 player. The newer formats may be more convenient; but the experience of going to a record store, being dazzled by the album’s packaging and actually treating music as a physical object, rather than binary components (if that’s even correct terminology) does lose something in the translation.
That’s old news, but worth revisiting in the context of the Amazon Kimble, the e-book which anyone logging onto the site since last Wednesday will have seen. We’ve known e-books were coming, of course, waiting only until resolution issues that make the printed page easier on the eyes than the screen were solved. And now that the day has come, anyone who thinks books are not going the way of vinyl is the most cock-eyed of optimists.
Still, although it’s pissing in the wind, here’s a last-ditch ode in praise of books. For whatever reason, a book feels like a direct link between the writer sitting in his or her cubbyhole, and the reader. It’s real. It’s unique. It’s important enough to be printed on acid-free paper and treated like a permanent keepsake, like a favorite portrait, a reminder of hours spent and time, at least for a moment, suspended. Corny, maybe. But there’s not a reader in the world who won’t know what I’m talking about.
You want an easier reason? Although it costs virtually nothing to produce an e-book, the cost for accessing them is about ten bucks, compared to an average price of $15 for the same book, available in hardback on Amazon. As anyone with a basic knowledge of publishing will confirm, the considerable savings of producing a paperless book are not being passed on to the consumer. And unless you’re someone like James Patterson, who “co-writes” a book with someone every eight weeks, you can be sure it’s not being passed on to the writers, whose advances over the years have been slashed to virtually nothing.
So, knowing you can’t stop “progress,” this year, give books as presents – while you still can.
