There is of course much debate, discussion and discourse in publishing circles about the importance and impact of eBooks.  As ever with breakthrough developments, opinion is mostly polarised, as exemplified by an event I attended a while back for publishers entitled “Digitise or Die”.   On the one hand we have those who believe that eBooks represent the future of books (“content” seems such a cold word to use) – an opportunity for publishers to find new markets and new profits, and an opportunity for more people to read, to digest, to think, which at the end of the day is what literature is all about, isn’t it? An opportunity to continue the democratisation of knowledge that began with Gutenberg nearly 600 years ago.

Without doubt Gutenberg’s invention changed the world and the experience of human beings in that world. At the time that he was putting the final touches to his printing press Cambridge University library consisted of 122 books. Reading, and therefore knowledge, but also I would argue to a large extent, thinking, were the preserve of the elite, and mostly the clerical elite at that.

Within 60 years of the first printing press, the entire classical canon had been printed. Ordinary people learnt to read. Everyone had access to ideas. Cambridge University library today has more than 7 million books.

Now, the information in the above paragraph came from books. Some of it was aggregated and edited for me by the folk at Wikipedia. I was able to visit them, not in person but of course via the internet. I was able to find it quickly because someone wrote an algorithm that allowed me to search all that knowledge in less than 1 second. Very handy. But a replacement for books..?

On the other hand of course we have those who position themselves as the defenders of the book - they see digital as an unwanted by-product of technological change; an assault on the rich contribution that that form has made to our world that should, but probably can’t, be repelled; that there is something inherently more valuable in a book than an eBook. An eBook cannot replace the tactile, personal and perhaps beautiful experience of reading a well-crafted book.

I think this polarisation of opinion is artificial and a red herring. I think it has seduced people away from the real question, and the real opportunity, that digital presents, that is: “What is possible with digital that was not possible before?”

Before Gutenberg, our culture was rich with the oral tradition of story-telling and some mourn that loss. But I suspect those people have a very romantic view of what life was like for most people in 1440. I very much doubt that ordinary people happily spent evening after evening sat around fires, enjoying the telling of stories, thanking their lucky stars that they had the chance to spend such quality time together.  I suspect life was generally much harder than that (if you were lucky to make it to adulthood) and that whilst ignorance may be blissful, this was a world in which the vast majority of people had no opportunity to engage with the ideas of their time and so no opportunity to benefit from those ideas or participate in the development of their culture. They were ghettoised.

The book did not make the spoken language obsolete. It made possible that which was not possible before – engagement and participation on a huge scale: a huge shift towards equality of access to knowledge and ideas. And our culture has been immeasurably richer for it. Einstein, who was taught at home for many years and was not enrolled at a University in 1905, but was a clerk at a patent office who studied out of hours, in that year sent his paper, entitled “The Theory of Special Relativity”, to a magazine in the hope they would publish. The rest is history and human thinking was changed forever and can never go back. This could only have happened in an era of relatively easy access to books.

So for me, the argument is not books vs eBooks. It is about what digital can make possible. To see an eBook as simply the digital form of a book is to miss the point, and the possibilities, entirely.

For me, reading a good book is not an experience that can be replaced wholly by an eBook. There is something that can happen in the clear, clean simplicity of the space between reader and author that only books can really provide: it is a function of the black text on white paper, no distractions, no power other than my eyes and my fingers, and the feel of the book in my hands. It’s not just about the “content” for me.

Digital cannot compete with this experience for me, but that’s not what I want. Digital offers the opportunity to create something entirely new: the elegant combination of text, image, audio and video, all in one medium. It can add to my experience of the book or the author. It can update me, connect me to others. It’s not just about the content: it’s about what else can be done.

I was recently on holiday and got the chance to read a good book from beginning to end: Iain M Banks. Yes, I love Sci-fi and for those of you who don’t know, Iain M Banks is one of the best in the genre. The stories are complex, intelligent, incredibly detailed and very other-worldly.

At the end of this excellent book there was a written interview with Iain Banks about himself, his politics, the world of his books, etc. I turned the pages avidly, desperate for more information about the man and this world I had inhabited for more than a week. Man, what a letdown! It barely scratched the surface – it was like having fillet steak for dinner and then getting half a  Cream Cracker for dessert.

Would I have rather read the book as an eBook? No. Did I want invitations for what else I could do or have? Yes. Would I pay a fiver for a year’s access to exclusive online material about the world of the books (or better still get it for free in exchange for my contact details)? Absolutely! Would I have downloaded (and happily paid for) an app with author voiceover there and then? For sure! Would I have checked out a forum about the books? Registered for information about his next book? Would I be interested in work by similar authors? The opportunity to ASK HIM QUESTIONS?!?! Yes, yes , yes! But what did I get? 6 pages of brutally edited interview that offered me nothing of the detail so evident in his books. And this is Sci-Fi!

Now, some of this stuff is available at the author’s personal website, but the Publisher has virtually nothing. A single, short paragraph about the author that barely makes it into the first 5 pages of Google for a search on his name.

So, I think the Publishing world will soon divide between those who embrace digital and pioneer its possibilities and those who get stuck in the trenches of an imaginary, myopia-inducing war that will drain them dry.

For those in the former camp, it will take vision, commitment and investment.

The signs are already out there – see Enhanced Editions’ app for “The Death of Bunny Munro” and of course Apple’s iPad and iBook store could make a huge difference.

Also, see the new MP3 format, MusicDNA, which allows music files to carry up 32Gb of additional information, including video, lyrics and additional songs and dynamically updates with anything new. Apple’s iTunes LP format is similar.

All these are not about competing directly with the old format but about creating something new. Adding value.
Oh yes, if you’re in the latter camp, well, just keep doing what you’re doing. After all, it’s good to be busy.