Death to the book, long live the scroll

Just to beat the dead horse a little more

The discussion I brought up yesterday about copyrights of different book formats is really about the only thing going in book news right now so that is what you get to hear about.  This morning's Jacket Copy was quoting more music industry history lessons.  This time dredging up that that before cassettes were going to ruin the music business it was records... 

"That was a time when people thought records were really bad for musicians," said Gary Calamar, the co-author of "Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again," a new history of (and unashamedly geeky paean to) the culture of the record store. "People were just getting used to electricity, and many artists resented the presence of records. They thought nobody would buy sheet music anymore."

It's not that the music industry is the only comparison for the book industry; it's just that changes they faced are a little fresher in our minds.  Thinking about this makes me wish I could travel back to 1500, just to hear a first-hand account from monks screaming about how Johannes' device was the work of Satan, and that the printing press would be the ruin of the written word.

I'm sorry, I swear I'll be off my soap box any second now...

[Now Reading: Heat by Bill Buford

Comments

[Paul Eden]

Well, it just so happens that vinyl records in good condition, and most non-fiction books (even in fair condition) are still really cool despite what anyone may say. Indeed, it is the soft, meditative privacy of the written word, sans the danger of anyone monitoring what you are looking at, or thinking of, still rocks my world.
And, many of the earliest rock and jazz albums have great sleeves and liner notes... and are either unreleased on CD or, if they are, may be very difficult and costly to find.

[Paul Perry]

The introduction of records - like any new technology - had unintended consequences. What records did, was reduce sharply the number of amateur musicians, and make performances much more uniform.
I do not know what 'unintended' consequences e-readers will have. I know that among my acquaintances, the e-reader adopters are buying fewer books overall (any format) - where they used to impulse buy real books, they delay e-book purchase until they actually want to read something, and consequently often don't buy at all.
As a secondhand bookseller dealing in $5 to $15 novels, literature & serious non-fiction I can say that the apparently inexolerable decline in this part of the market started well before e-books - and even before the internet.
I blame television.

[Reg]

You might go back a little before 1500 by reading 'De Laude Scriptorum' ['In Praise of Scribes'] by Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim. This was written in 1492... and printed in 1494.