Books Not Simple, Convenient, says Bezos
Speaking at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference in New York on Monday, Jeff Bezos has—as ever—given book people and bloggers lots to talk about.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from an interview Bezos did with Steven Levy, helpfully transcribed by Jacket Copy:
Levy: For a special book, do you still want to read the physical book?
Bezos: No. No, in fact, I now … I kind of am grumpy when I am forced to read a physical book. Because it’s not as convenient. Turning the pages … I didn’t know this either, until I started using the Kindles a couple months ago, I mean a couple years ago, I didn’t understand all of the failings of a physical book, because I’m inured to them. But you can’t turn the page with one hand. The book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. They’re heavy. You can only take one or two of them with you at a time. It’s had a great 500-year run. [Audience laughter.] It’s an unbelievably successful technology. But it’s time to change.
And, as a point of contrast, here’s another soundbyte I found especially interesting (via the Times’ Bits Blog):
“We humans do more of what’s easy,” he explained. “If you lower friction, you always get more of what’s easy.” On the Kindle, he added, “you can think of a book and have it 60 seconds later. That is driving book sales.”
Bezos certainly has a point—the ability to think of a book and be reading it 60 seconds later using the Kindle is, I can attest from first-hand experience, very simple—but really, are books neither convenient nor simple enough?
I should take a second to say that I don’t have any particular attachment to books as physical objects. In fact, despite being an avid reader and working in publishing, I own very few books myself; frequently moving has a way of showing you that the pleasure of books have little to do with their physical presence. However, I don’t think the book will go extinct any time soon (nor do I want it to).
To my mind, the main problem facing publishers isn’t friction from the physical form, it’s something different: how do you slow today’s fast-paced, Twittering, blogging, up-to-the-second readers down enough so they’ll stick around for long-form content? The Onion recently joked(?) that most adults spend 90% of their waking hours starting at screens—oops, I mean “glowing rectangles.” E-ink might not glow, but is putting a different rectangle in front of readers’ eyes really going to change their reading habits?
It seems to me that people read more than ever, but we’re reading online, and in different formats. I think neither the book nor the long-form story is dead. But I do think there’s real value—for readers, authors, and, yes, eventually, publishers—in reimagining “books” on a deeper level, not just creating a device to hold books as we have known them.
