The Slow, Moronic Death of Books (As We Know Them)

The cover story in Seattle's The Stranger is by Paul Constant who went to BookExpo America where "thousands of people scavenged the bones of the publishing industry."

From the story...

The author Sherman Alexie flew to New York for the convention to promote his upcoming story collection War Dances, and he announced at a panel that when he saw a woman on his flight reading on a Kindle, he "wanted to hit her." He also referred to the Kindle as "elitist," causing the kind of flap that can only happen on the internet: Alexie was accused of "reverse elitism" on Twitter and blogs and over e-mail. In an interview with litblogger Edward Champion, Alexie responded: "I don't think I'm so crazy to worry that large corporations may not have my best interests in mind when they are offering me deals... When it comes to this, many people are taking the side of massive corporations over one writer trying to get answers."

The e-books "gold rush"—as Alexie called it in that interview—was the weekend's main topic of conversation. Sci-fi author China Miéville told me, "If I was starting now, I'd be very pro e-dissemination. I think it's one of those things where it is both inevitable and desirable." It was hard to find an author or publisher who would disagree with him. By the end of the show, Google had announced that it will begin selling e-books, in direct competition with Amazon.com, by the end of this year. This is a tremendous change for Google—traditionally it sells services, like advertising or mobile-phone operating systems. Though there's no sign that Google will be making an exclusive reader for its e-books—presumably readers will be able to read their books on whatever e-reading platform they prefer, including cell phones and laptops—this will be its first endeavor into any kind of mass-market retail, and Google doesn't do things halfheartedly.

And what will happen to printed books? On the second day, author Stephen Elliott looked out over the hundreds of booths and said to me, "There's no place for literature here."