As a free market bibliophile, I love the idea of living in a world where every book is sold at “between zero and $9.99″ (and since my own book doesn’t sell for much more than that, I’m fine with it as an author too). My favorite format is the trade paperback, though I now read ebooks on my Kindle and iPhone. Hardcovers have always been too bulky and expensive. And I hate paying $10-15 more for a book when I know that in a few months it will be released in my preferred form.
Large publishing houses like Hachette Livre may suffer in the short term because of technological changes and market pressures, but the end of the hardcover would be a boon to authors, publishers, and book buyers. By reducing the distribution cost—and reducing the cost of entry into the world of publishing—new companies could enter the market, providing a range of new opportunities and options for writers and readers.
But maybe I’m missing something? What would be lost of the era of the hardcover were to end?
This caused me to respond as follows:
I’m sitting here in my office looking at my shelf and my eyes falls upon a hardcover book. It’s an 1895 3rd edition of “The Foundations of Belief” by Arthur Balfour. Inside I see marbled end papers and gold embossing informing me that the book was bound by E. H. Wells in London. Another label tells me the book was sold by W. Whiteley, Scribner and C., located on Westbourne Grove (London as well.) I flip through the book and I notice it is rock solid. Even after 114 years not a page is loose and the spine is perfectly intact. But mostly, it feels like a book, a real book. It feels like it is meant to last, and not simply a commodity to be consumed.
Near this book I see another book, a paperback; a good quality paperback. It’s a Dover paperback, printed sometime after 1966, “Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings”. The back of this book solemnly informs me, “The binding will not crack or split. This is a permanent book.”
I notice the binding is split in two places. The front and back covers are creased, and a small piece has been torn from the back cover (the result of one of too many moves probably.) There are no loose pages (despite the cracks), so there is no thought of replacing the book. It still can provide everything it provided me when I bought it in the 1980’s. Yet…there is nothing beautiful about this book. If I lost it tomorrow I could just buy a new one and that would be that. It is merely a thing. Yes, it contains interesting ideas and theories, but, as an object, it has no history, no connection to other human beings. Consequently, it feels like less of a book then the bound volume.
As I look at my shelves in general I see a pattern. The books I really love are in hardcover, regardless of the format I originally read them. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’ve just seen them in a used bookstore and thought, “Oh it would be nice to get this.” Why? They contain the same words. I could just go home and pull out my old trade or mass market paperbacks and it would be exactly the same experience, right?
Yet, there they are. William Dalrymple’s “From the Holy Mountain,” Richard Adams’ “Watership Down,” Pope John XXIII’s “Days of Devotion,” and many others. Now, I could chalk it up to my being nothing more than a profligate spender…but, for the life of me, that doesn’t ring true.
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