Caution: When Books Review Readers

by Stephen J. Gertz

Beware of the Tattling Tome.

How long does it take for someone to complete a book? When reading steamy erotica, are you lingering over the sex scenes? Do readers ever finish the books they start, or skip right to the end? New startups are seeking to address these questions with new  software and  they  intend on  opening it  up to  writers, indie  authors and  publishers. New startups...are selling critical user data to companies about their subscribers, who access a copious amount of titles for a low monthly fee (New Startups Focus on Tracking eBook Reading Data).

Every now and then an individual comes along who reads with such élan that books stage a 21-page salute and bow in appreciation. That is not the case, alas, with Read Hard With a Vengeance aka Dr. Milton Fernstipple, D.D.S., an orthodontist in Forest Hills, NY who books want to fire a 21-gun salute in his direction with live ammunition.

I am one of those books. I can't speak for all books but I, for one, am weary of readers who read the way they want to instead of how I want them to read me, which is compulsively with insatiable desire but above all with poise and graceful deportment from beginning to end. So it's great news that I can now get the skinny on the people who read me. Finally, for the first time in history, books can review readers. 

For the past six days I have endured the eyeballs of Dr. Fernstipple, who downloaded me at 1:03:12 AM, December 14th. At 1:05:02 AM he began to read me. At 1:06:52 AM he stopped. At 1:09:36 AM he started again. At 1:17:09 AM he skipped to the end. At 1:19:03 AM he went back to the beginning. From 1:21 AM through 1:47 AM he hopscotched through the middle.

His reading's a muddle. He's got ants in Broca's pants. He reads in spasms. Great, a reader with hiccups. And what's this? At 1:49:32 AM I saw him through the camera and he was moving his lips. If he drools on my touch-screen it's over. I want to know where he's reading me and GPS would be a big help. Is he collapsed in the La-Z-Boy® or ensconced upon the philosopher's perch in the can? This is potential gold to my guy, who can set a key scene in his next novel in the most popular place to read, according to the data, and thus draw readers further into his sordid world of pandering and intrigue. And just wait 'til you read the book.

About that lingering thumb caressing the third paragraph on page forty-seven at 2:01:21 through 2:01:57 AM, December 14 and multiple times thereafter on the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th. I don't know whether Fernstipple was compulsively attempting to swipe the page or engaged in eFrottage. Either way, it's creeping me out. I suggest an add-on to administer an electric shock when readers try to cop a cheap feel. Consider it aversion therapy, like a bookshop hawking How To Poo at Work on a point-of-purchase display. This may affect sales but readers must know that they are being monitored and that boundaries must be set. On readers, of course, not the monitoring.

I gotta tell you, when Fernstipple glossed over pages 134-149 my heart fell on its face. This is my favorite part of me, the part that one reviewer thought, "…bravura prose limning a bizarre flight of imagination so critical to the story that without it the book might just as well have never been written. Look out Danielle Steele!" 

Chapter Eight was, evidently, a waste of Fernstipple's time. Though it provided a fascinating backstory to Raoul, the dashing roué from Rahway, New Jersey, the reason, really, that he shot his sister's lover from Barcelona in the backside while she was homeschooling the product of their incest in the tool shed in the backyard along the condemned property's easement on the nuances of Esperanto, it, apparently, was not fascinating enough, and Fernstipple went through it like the flu tours the alimentary canal, which is to say irritable, agitated and anxious to evacuate one way or another.

I like to think of myself as the book equivalent of easy listening music, predictable and consonant with schmaltzy, cascading strings when the turgid hits the tarmac. Mantovani is my muse; I am the Muzak of novels. Thanks to eReader data I can be read in an elevator, and - going up! - become a best-seller. Fernstipple, unfortunately, is the John Cage of readers, perusing text by chance yet with no help from the I Ching whatsoever. Give this guy a blank book and let him read it with ambient thoughts, 4'33''-ish; I've had it with him. But much as I prefer my readers docile and submissive, I also like them active every now and then, rolling my language on their mental tongues with rapid pulse and raised blood pressure. Note to developers: sensors for vital stats, please, biofeedback for books and their authors who want to know exactly what a reader is experiencing while swallowing text, the better to help the medicine go down.

I was talking to Moby Dick the other day, strictly entré-nous digital to analogue, and couldn't help but express sympathy for the way things used to be: just you and the reader, isolated, all alone, so lonely in solitude, no one to watch over your oh so private and intimate pas de deux and report back to the authorities. I'm suicidal just thinking about it.

He looked at me like I was a cyberspace-case.  I've never understood print media, particularly the great white whale on great white paper and I guess I never will. If only Melville had eReader data Moby could have been the great white best-seller. Let's face it: who needs all the metaphysical stuff? It slows the action to a crawl and the recreational reader sleeps in Davy Jones' locker along with the Pequod, Queequeg and crew.

Meanwhile, Fernstipple has turned me on again and oh how I wish that were a double-entendre instead of an invitation to annoyance. If he reads the third paragraph on page forty-seven one more time (count: 53; if you want I can break that down by hour, minute, second, you name it), I'm self-deleting. I can only take so much. Here's hoping you feel the same way, dear author of digital me. Based on his reading behavior don't bother catering to this fiend; it's hopeless. Fernstipple spells loser in binary code: a long string of zeroes and no one.

Full review of Ms. Ivy Drippe, a housewife from Dead Women Crossing, Oklahoma with a shih-tzu named Trudi, a husband named trouble, and a desperate addiction to popular-fiction, to follow. She's my kind of gal, one I can really wrap my text around. Once she starts reading, look out, there's no stopping her.

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Why Books Are More Than Simply Text

by Stephen J. Gertz

Full cover.

If every book tells a story, every book has a story.

Until recently, a book’s text and its physical manifestation were indivisible, their stories intertwined. With the advent of ebooks, however, text is now independent of what we’ve come to understand as a “book,” a physical object with metaphysical content that, in its origins, was presented as scrolled, later bound, manuscript, and then, with Gutenberg, as bound leaves of print.

A day cannot go by, it seems, without an article tolling the death knell of the book, either heralding a new, golden age of information delivery and consumption, or as a mournful elegy. Soon, it seems, lovers of traditional books will be consulting mediums to reach beyond the veil and communicate with beloved books in the great hereafter. We'll want to know how they're doing, tell them how much we love and miss them, and express sorrow for not defending them heartily enough when they were still with us but struggling for their lives. We need comfort and consolation.

In the absence of David Dunglas Home, the 19th century Scottish spiritualist and medium, David Pearson, Director of Libraries, Archives, and Guildhall Art Gallery at the City of London, is here to say, It’s okay.

That books have value beyond their text is not news to bibliophiles. But the argument for their essential worth as objects and historical artifacts has never been presented as comprehensively as Pearson has in Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts, his 2008 book published to broad critical acclaim, and now issued in its first softcover edition, revised, updated, and enlarged.

He does so unsentimentally, recognizing that the digitalization of text will provide new opportunities for writers to organize and present the product of their pen (an inked stylus now itself a quaint artifact of bygone years) in creative ways we’ve only begun to imagine. Hand-wringers and garment renders seeking comfort and support will be disappointed; Pearson does not condemn ebooks as demon spawn.

What he does, in eight lavishly illustrated chapters - Books in History; Books Beyond Text; Individuality in Mass Production; Variety Through Ownership; Variety Through Binding; The Collective Value of Libraries; Values for the Future; and Variety Between Copies - is demolish the idea, current with the digital faithful, that physical books are passé, that they have been merely text all dressed up, now with no place to go.

Quoth Pearson the raven, Nevermore!

“Books as History has two main themes. Primarily, it is about the various ways in which books can be interesting as artifacts, as objects wth individual histories and design characteristics, beyond whatever value they may have in the texts they convey. The ways in which books are made, owned, written in, mutilated and bound all add something to the documentary heritage which is central to the record of human civilisation. The second theme is around the importance of seeing this, at a time when the world of books is in flux, and the need for them is questioned as their traditional functions are increasingly undertaken by electronic media. Books may cease to be read but let us recognise that we may have other reasons to value them.”

That book lovers will adore Books as History is a given, I believe. It’s a joy to behold, read, and digest. While it is not meant to do so, it is, though, preaching to a congregation of believers, however secular and universal Pearson’s intent. 

The hard-core ebook missionary for whom it would provide a valuable, eye-opening education and perspective will not, I fear, be reading this book for pleasure or insight. When the brain goes completely binary there is little hope. Oriented to only 0's and 1's, the binary brain does not recognize the beautiful depth of diversity that 2 to infinity provides, the terrain that the physical book occupies. To appreciate books as culturally essential, historically and artistically important physical objects the binaries will have to do the math. In this regard, Books as History is Euclid’s Geometry and should be required reading before graduation from high school.

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PEARSON, David. Books as History. The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts. London and New Castle, DE: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2011. First softcover edition, revised, updated and enlarged. Tall octavo (8.75 x 9.5 inches). 208 pages. Color-illustrated throughout. $29.95.  You may order here.

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Of related interest: E-Publishing Consultant Mike Shatzkin Doesn't Understand Books.
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Libraries Are So "Quaint" - And Never More Crucial

by Stephen J. Gertz

Brian Cooley, CNET's senior technology commentator and editor at large, offered his view of libraries during a segment of the April 20, 2011 "Buzz Out Loud" podcast on Kindle's new library services.

Because it must be read to be believed, we reprint a transcription of Mr. Cooley’s comments:

I'm still a little vague on this.  Why would I go or deal with a library to borrow a book? You don't have to go there, right?  This is weird. Why would a library have anything to do with virtual books? It doesn't make sense.

Locality is about physical books. They're physically available in a certain place, so your library houses them, but once they're virtual, locality goes out the door. It's weird.  The library thing is real divisive. We can start a hate storm. I mean, I'm sorry folks, but I don't get libraries. In this day and age, I don't get libraries. Great air conditioning, good place to nap, right?

Libraries are for the very old and the very unemployed. I'm sorry, that's where it's at right now. It doesn't make sense anymore.  The local library's really starting to get shaky to my mind, unless it's for the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the very old. That's what libraries are for now. What kid in high school is going to get anything out of the library?

Seriously,  you've got some ninety-year-old reference librarian who's going to point you to what, a Britannica volume to look something up? All you've got to do is Google. For crying out loud. Getting out is fine, but there are plenty of bars. You don't need to go to libraries to get out of the house. 

How does the library ‘defend your right to free information?’ The Internet's already got that done, folks.  What do you mean, "for people who read"? Who on earth needs to go to a library to get a book? Crazy town!  The library? How quaint!

Mr. Cooley seems to be an arrogant young man that I strongly suspect has never undertaken a major scholastic research project. The Internet is good a start for preliminary research but, at this point and well into the future, you still have to go to a library (preferably, your city’s central branch) to access - for free - newspaper and magazine archives (with annual subject guides in print for each major U.S. newspaper going way back); government documents on microfilm (i.e., you will never find U.S. Senate records for 1947 on the Net), archival collections that will never be digitized, or even basic research guides, i.e. the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, which annually indexes articles from all magazines by subject; indexes in print for scholastic journals, obscure and otherwise. Yes, it's now available online - for a fee. At the library, nada.

“In this day and age,” physical libraries are more important than ever simply because the New is not the be-all and end-all for research. Ask a reporter. Leg-work, the physical schlep to primary sources, human or obscure and arcane texts, remains, and always will be, the key to effective research that reveals something heretofore unknown. I have a few books under my belt, the research for which would have been impossible without daily visits to L.A. Central Library; the Internet just didn’t have what I needed. It’s only by sitting in a chair going though the boring process of sifting through reels and reels of microfilm that one can unearth the golden nuggets. The Internet provides a lot of information but not all - far from it.

Oh, Mr. C., you are napping! Libraries are not just about borrowing books. Most of the stuff you need for research is not available for circulation, particularly rare and archival materials. Yes, painful as it may be, you have  to make an appearance and stick around a while to delve into all the great stuff available, for free, at a library.

The primary problem with doing research on the Internet is that you can only find what you know exists or can discover with a keyword or phrase. You cannot find what you don’t know exists and if you don’t use a magic keyword will never find. Serendipitous discovery is the soul of original research.

This is where those useless ninety-year old reference librarians come in. Only an ignorant fool tries to go it alone with research - you will likely miss something important to your work and not even know about it unless you know someone who has devoted decades to mastering navigation of the ocean of reference materials out there, far beyond the Britannica, most of which will never be digitized because it is not profitable to do so. We’ll gloss over Mr. Cooley’s  snarky attitude. Who needs someone with decades of experience to help with research? What can they possibly know that Mr. Cooley, with all his vast experience within a hi-tech cocoon,  doesn’t?

“How does the library ‘defend your right to free information?' The Internet's already got that done, folks.” Uh, no, it doesn’t.  With, for instance, online newspapers and scholastic journal aggregators (i.e JSTOR) charging fees for access to their content, the same material offered for free at a public library is a great boon. Scholars are, by definition, poverty-stricken and cannot afford to pay $10- $15 every time they need to read an article in an off the wall journal posted on the Net. You could easily drop $500 - $1,000 in fees by the time the project is done.

As those of us in the real world know, free is no loner the default position on the Net. The cost of  high-speed access in the U.S. is rising, as is content. Monetizing digital text to its true market value is the trend, not the end.

The real problem with libraries and scholarship is that you have to move a muscle to get  there and into it. Armchair researchers and couch potatoes can never be successful researchers. What can a high-school student get out of a library? Everything. For instance, the broad perspective that can only come when the digital world is recognized for what it truly is, a virtual facsimile of a slice of the real world, and not the actual, real world in its entirety.

Digital dweebs with an attitude so narrow that they seem to suffer from mental myopia and tunnel vision have doomed themselves to scholastic mediocrity. To perform research at the highest, most effective and revealing level you have to get the pixels out of your head and the print in your hands. Crazy guy, this Cooley! How boring! He needs a nice, air-conditioned place to wake-up to reality and solid research. A library is ideal.

So, by all means, begin with Google for basic research. But if you have any expectation of conducting quality, in-depth scholarship - whether as a student or professional  -  it  will probably end at a library.

When it comes to libraries, if ignorance is bliss then Mr. Cooley is the happiest guy around, the village idiot. Crazy town! Cooley's the mayor.

N.B.: The poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the very old are not second-class citizens. They are entitled to the same access to info that Mr. Cooley, the, presumably, financially comfortable, and new, crown prince of high-tech putzes, enjoys.
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Our thanks to LISNews for the lead.

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Romance and Erotic Novels Drive Ebook Sales

Call it The Story of Oy.

One of the many fascinating insights that Nicholson Baker provides in his recent piece on the Kindle, A New Page, for The New Yorker is what kind of ebooks are most downloaded from Amazon.

“The success of the ebook is being fueled by the romance and erotic romance market,” asserts Peter Smith in the TechoFile blog for ITworld as quoted in Baker’s piece.

Felicia Day, “Vi” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is cuckoo for the Kindle for that very reason. She writes in her blog that “as an insane reader of genre paperbacks, I’m absolutely in love with it. It would be great if Amazon sold it in a physical store somewhere so people could check them out themselves. I think they would sell a lot more of them. They especially make great gifts, as they’re an indulgence most ppl won’t allow themselves per say, but if you’re looking for a REALLY nice gift for a family member or friend who loves books or travels a lot, you couldn’t go wrong.

“Now for the ‘come clean’ part: I’ve read like, 6 books this week and ordered about 10 more. And no ordinary books: Pure unadulterated TRASHY-ROMANCE books! Check out my GoodReads shelf vaginal-urban-fantasy, it’s bloating to an alarming degree. It’s stuff I never would have checked out at the Barnes and Noble, because the gleaming and oily man chests would have made me blush too much [unless I was drunk, but that’s a previous blog entry :-)]. I’m delighted to be reading ridiculous werewolf/demon/vampire-Alpha-male fiction with no guilt.”

Now the Kindle’s primary benefit to society is made clear: Providing the ability to read guilty-pleasure lit. without fear of being busted. Sort of like the old days in high school, hiding the comic book in front of Introduction to Biology so that the teach’ wouldn’t catch on.
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