So you may have noticed I've been talking a lot about technology lately, and not so much about writing. There's a good reason for this. Really, there is. The world of publishing is in a state of flux right now, and it's changing the way both readers and writers approach the written word. Consequently, my life is in a bit of upheaval as well.
For authors whose sole medium is black text on a white background the issue isn't all that critical, since the words are all that matter: the vehicle by which the story is delivered is essentially irrelevant. So long as the reader is able to access the story in a way that's comfortable and cost effective, they will continue reading one way or another.
But I like images as well as words, and I've always had my mind set on adding illustrations to my stories. Because of this, the medium by which my art is presented becomes a much more complicated issue. Even with black and white illustrations such as pens and inks there are inherent difficulties involved with incorporating them into an electronic text. For one thing, every digital format has its own quirks and requirements, some part of which is bound to be incompatible with the author's intended vision of the final work. For example, resizeable text, while a boon to straining eyes focusing on small screen readers, makes it impossible to be certain a given image will accompany a specific section of text, or even fall on the same page. This is made all the more troublesome if you want to wrap the text around a non-rectangular piece of art in creative ways. In addition, custom typefaces such as the Rune fonts I used in
The Saga of Beowulf are not allowed, since generally only a handful of standard type fonts are available on dedicated e-readers. And of course, the size of the viewing area ranges widely from one device to another, making anything like standard formatting an impossibility.
But when it comes to full color artwork such as that which you find in graphic novels and children's books, the options for ebooks are even more limited. Electronic ink is still in 1920's black and white, and LCD screens have glare that strains the eyes and washes out outdoors. Only now is color becoming even a foreseeable possibility for anything other than a full-scale computer system, which most people will agree are less than ideal as a reading medium (even as nice as today's flat screen monitors have become). The divide between electronic and printed text is still pretty wide.
But as vast as the distance may seem to be, it's one that modern authors and their readers all must cross one day. For as often as I hear some stodgy reader say they'll never give up their love of holding a printed book in their hands, I have to wonder if it's the story or the book they really love. Because as far as I can tell, authors don't generally sit down to write a book and start by making the paper and ink. Authors write words, create stories, develop plots and take their made-up characters through lands constructed entirely of the imagination. A hero constructed wholly of binary bits of data is no less noble or heroic than that impressed in liquid dye on shredded pulp. Like it or not, it won't be long before the pressures of ecology and economics dictate that books be produced solely in electronic form, with only a handful of limited edition printings remaining for the art collector to treasure. I offer vinyl records as a point in case. Digital is now the standard format for music, just as it will one day be for the written word, whether or not you want it to be.
Either way, for those of us determined to move on into the looming future, it's a reality we have to deal with now. Ebooks are becoming an ever larger share of the reading market, and as much as some would like their books to be enshrined in gold and their covers layered with gleaming gems, those days are gone and fading fast. I haven't seen too many authentic reproductions of the
Book of Kells on my local bookstore shelves of late, and in a hundred years the same will be true of pulp and ink. Get over it already.
Time goes not backwards.
The future will be filled with a wealth of marvels as yet unperceived. Just as computers themselves have gone from unfathomable to indispensable in the course of a single lifetime, so too will many other as yet unconceived of wonders become reality, and then commonplace. The youth of today don't know a time when there were not mobile devices everywhere, and their kids will not miss the printed books etexts will replace. There are a great many things that can be done in electronic format that could never be achieved in print, such as animated graphics, and stories that teach our kids to read by reading to them, or provide added interactive content to inform and educate, or just to entertain. The ability to buy a book from atop a mountain in Tibet and not have to rent a second U-Haul to cart your library across town to your new digs are just a couple of the reasons I can think of to get rid of hefty tomes right now (not that I plan on moving to a Tibetan monastery anytime soon, or across town for that matter). In fact, I am utterly certain that from this point in my life I will very likely never acquire another physical book in my life. I can honestly see no good reason to do so - unless of course it's a nice, full-color illustrated novel. But then, even their days are numbered. Somehow I'll work out how to incorporate all this 3D color art that I've been working on into the stories I probably should be working on instead. And when I do I know it will be really cool.
Sometimes I wish I was just a writer, and all I had to fret about was how my sentence structure flows and if my narrative is clunky. If all I had to worry about were words and syntax my life would be a whole lot easier, and it wouldn't really matter to me at all if books were printed on barn doors or projected in holographic data. But adding artwork to my stories has changed everything, and it's complicated my life in ways I could not possibly have imagined just a year ago.
But then, no one said the future would be easy.
weighs in at two full pounds.
