Sam Harris might be Public Enemy Number Three to a lot of Christians (1. Dawkins; 2. Hitchens…) but he has written an insightful article on the shaky future of print media. The first issue he identifies is – surprise, surprise – TIME. He claims most of us just don’t have the time to invest into a large book, especially if we didn’t get the return on our time investment we were hoping for from our last big book.
“When I really want to get a book into my brain, I now purchase both the hardcover and electronic editions. From the point of view of the publishing industry, I am the perfect customer. This also makes me a very important canary in the coal mine—and I’m here to report that I’ve begun to feel woozy. For instance, I’ve started to think that most books are too long, and I now hesitate before buying the next big one. When shopping for books, I’ve suddenly become acutely sensitive to the opportunity costs of reading any one of them. If your book is 600-pages-long, you are demanding more of my time than I feel free to give. And if I could accomplish the same change in my view of the world by reading a 60-page version of your argument, why didn’t you just publish a book this length instead?”
Why indeed. Most of us will have felt the frustration of finishing a book and realising that there was really no new content after chapter three… Harris’s explanation for this might surprise and disappoint you – it’s issue two: MONEY.
The internet has spoiled us. We have become accustomed to getting content – quality content – off the net for free. And so why would you pay for an author’s printed content, argues Harris (who is himself buying less books these days and about to drop his subscription to the New Yorker) when you can access similar material from them in other formats? So to compete, he suspects authors’ books are being padded out.
Publishers can’t charge enough money for 60-page books to survive; thus, writers can’t make a living by writing them. But readers are beginning to feel that this shouldn’t be their problem. Worse, many readers believe that they can just jump on YouTube and watch the author speak at a conference, or skim his blog, and they will have absorbed most of what he has to say on a given subject. In some cases this is true and suggests an enduring problem for the business of publishing. In other cases it clearly isn’t true and suggests an enduring problem for our intellectual life.
I suspect many of us fall into that category – unable to discern between a subject that is Youtube-able and one that is not. Students I have observed in recent years often have very little ability to identify the quality content from the questionable. Harris even says of his own material and audience that few have an understanding of how much extra time he puts into a “published” article than a blog.
It is challenge to us all to work on becoming more discerning readers – even if we have to pay for it.
And least Harris himself log in and level the same accusation of “poor quality” and “padding out” to this piece, I will sign off now and give you time to read the full article here.
P.S. In our own little contribution to the field of irony – you might consider heading to www.insectandbuffalo.com and checking Compass’s 80-page summary of the Story of Scripture – available in print and electronic versions…
