Literature Needs Much More Than E-Books

So says James Bridle on Wired.

From the piece...


But this innovation has been hampered by an entirely understandable misunderstanding of new technology and what it means for the book, as well as a historically misplaced idea of what constitutes "quality". The role of the editor -- the filter, the gatekeeper -- is not one of much value in a world which is as happy watching a camera phone video as it is 3D IMAX. Books, and the publishing industry with them, have been radically decentred by technology. The most common metaphor employed by publishers trying to understand what is happening to them is the music industry, but this turns out to be an error. The radical ephemerality of the MP3 file suits music in the same way that it destabilises the book, which has always existed to provide the corresponding physical weight to literature's intellectual heft. Freeing the idea of the book from paper and hard covers thus entails reconceptualising what "the book" is -- a weight that has proved hard for devices to take on.