Print vs. digital, addendum
Sep. 4th, 2010 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Two different people have brought up to me in the comments on my last post a point which I wished to call out and separately address. To wit, that part of the question of print vs. digital is a question of privilege.
It absolutely is, I agree. That I am able to own not one, not two, but three different devices capable of reading ebooks (my nook, my iPhone, and my computer, and yes, the computer counts) is absolutely a question of my privilege of having enough income to do so. This is me acknowledging that. Since I grew up in a family environment that had quite limited income, I daresay this went a long way towards books being the one big indulgence I generally allow myself. (I apparently lack the usual girly genes involving clothes, shoes, purses, makeup, etc. All my disposable income goes to books, electronic devices, and music.)
I very, very much respect and acknowledge the fact that even though prices on ereaders are dropping regularly, they are still very much luxury devices. Many will not be able to afford better than secondhand prices for books in general, which counts them out of buying most if not all ebooks, and never mind the expense of a device to actually read them on. This is one of the biggest reasons that people who like to read digitally really, really should never snark on people who prefer to read in print.
At the same time though let me point out that the question of privilege is not entirely one-sided here. There’s also the question of health and age privilege; consider for example the oft-quoted scenario of a nearsighted person who finds that reading on an ereading device, and therefore being able to adjust the font size to something comfortable for them, means they can suddenly read a lot more easily than they can a print book. I’ve seen countless people testify to this on various blogs and on Twitter, and a couple of people have talked about it directly to me.
This though was the point of my original post: i.e., that both print and digital readers have very good reasons for preferring to read in the formats they do, and to express the hope that each side will refrain from snarking about the other. As I said in the comments on that post, publishing is going through massive upheaval over not only the formats of books to be published in, but over its ongoing ability to make money in general. Nobody knows how things are going to shake out in ten, fifteen, or twenty years down on the line, although predictions abound. It’s very scary, all around!
One thing though I’m pretty sure we can all agree on: books will survive, in one form or another, and as long as that is the case, there will be people to read them.
P.S. Sorry about comments being disabled on the LJ and DW mirrored versions of that last post. I’d forgotten I turned those off for a previous poll post, and never turned ‘em back on! You may now comment on the original WP post as well as its LJ and DW mirrors.
Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.
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Date: 2010-09-08 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 12:52 am (UTC)At the time I felt it would be easier to write a new one than to add 20,000 words without weakening the story, so I got started on the next one and searched Ralan's for small presses that would look at a manuscript under 50K.
But if professional agents were telling me they'd look at 10,000 to 15,000 words under the standard minimum, then,unless I was badly misinformed--which seems unlikely--you shouldn't have trouble with 5,000 under what I've heard was the maximum.
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Date: 2010-09-08 01:10 am (UTC)Yeah. That's been the main issue. That and the fact that the whack-back really did some serious damage to the story that I'm not happy with. After all, I lost over a third of the original manuscript in that cut. It's not my first manuscript -- it's my sixth -- so I like to think it's not just me being unwilling to kill my darlings.
If I can ever reconcile the length issue with the story issue to my satisfaction, then I'll start marketing it in earnest. But until then, well, I'm working on another novel right now [wry g].
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Date: 2010-09-10 05:13 am (UTC)I'm going to have to do a whole new round of hunting down interesting agents. Maybe we should have an agent-querying party!
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Date: 2010-09-10 05:15 am (UTC)Ooh! Moral support! I like that idea.
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Date: 2010-09-14 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-14 02:57 am (UTC)Feel better soon.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-14 03:59 am (UTC)