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I have been thinking about how I read and buy books, and the publishing industry, and whether I'll actually make any serious amount of money if I ever actually sell any of these books sitting partly-done on my hard drive, because maybe the angry Luddite men are right and the internet has doomed the publishing industry. Doomed! With capital letters and exclamation points and FOX News.
(Doom is something I think about a lot, actually, but I think that's a personality thing.)
Pre-ebook-revolution, I had a reading process: whenever I bought a book or checked it out from the library, I'd enter it into a log on the computer and note down the purchase or check-out date. When I'd finished it, I'd usually go back and put in a second date. I say "usually" because most of the time these dates were pretty close together - I knew the read-date would be within a week or two of the get-date, so I wasn't very careful about it.
But in 2008 - I suspect that it was in April or May, judging by what I was writing here at the time - I noticed that the number of ebooks easily available for piracy had increased dramatically. Perhaps for reasons related to Amazon's recent behavior! I was in school full-time in Japan at the time and couldn't justify the expense of buying English-language books; thus, I pirated. The habit became more pronounced over year-and-a-half I lived there. I didn't stop buying books, but the way I was doing it shifted.
Because at some point during this time, my attitude towards physical books changed. They had been desirable to me, previously, not only because I wanted to read them, but also because of whatever the mental process is that makes people want things. The acquisitive impulse had been playing a role in my conception of books, and by extension written stories of a certain length. My villainy modified the conception, and transferred extended written narrative into the mental space occupied by blogs, anime, and manga. (Anime and manga were online first for me.*) It was around this time that I really stopped reading books within a couple of weeks of buying them; it no longer felt important to the process.
I feel as if I've started buying books less because of the consumption impulse and more because I want to give the authors money (something that now makes used book stores, formerly the site of all wonders, much less attractive to me). It's now about Being Good rather than Being Whatever Consuming Makes You. It's faster and easier to pirate than to buy, so now I buy books for the same reason I obsessively sort my reycling and try to find charities that'll take old shoes.
( Read more... )
(Doom is something I think about a lot, actually, but I think that's a personality thing.)
Pre-ebook-revolution, I had a reading process: whenever I bought a book or checked it out from the library, I'd enter it into a log on the computer and note down the purchase or check-out date. When I'd finished it, I'd usually go back and put in a second date. I say "usually" because most of the time these dates were pretty close together - I knew the read-date would be within a week or two of the get-date, so I wasn't very careful about it.
But in 2008 - I suspect that it was in April or May, judging by what I was writing here at the time - I noticed that the number of ebooks easily available for piracy had increased dramatically. Perhaps for reasons related to Amazon's recent behavior! I was in school full-time in Japan at the time and couldn't justify the expense of buying English-language books; thus, I pirated. The habit became more pronounced over year-and-a-half I lived there. I didn't stop buying books, but the way I was doing it shifted.
Because at some point during this time, my attitude towards physical books changed. They had been desirable to me, previously, not only because I wanted to read them, but also because of whatever the mental process is that makes people want things. The acquisitive impulse had been playing a role in my conception of books, and by extension written stories of a certain length. My villainy modified the conception, and transferred extended written narrative into the mental space occupied by blogs, anime, and manga. (Anime and manga were online first for me.*) It was around this time that I really stopped reading books within a couple of weeks of buying them; it no longer felt important to the process.
I feel as if I've started buying books less because of the consumption impulse and more because I want to give the authors money (something that now makes used book stores, formerly the site of all wonders, much less attractive to me). It's now about Being Good rather than Being Whatever Consuming Makes You. It's faster and easier to pirate than to buy, so now I buy books for the same reason I obsessively sort my reycling and try to find charities that'll take old shoes.
( Read more... )
