Not so long ago the media went into overdrive after it was revealed that the Amazon-developed Kindle e-reader had surreptitiously reclaimed a story sold to punters when the publisher changed its mind over offering an electronic copy of the text. Amazon electronically deleted all the copies of the books it had sold and credited customers’ accounts, notifying them after the fact. All to perfectly, it turned out that the e-books were none other than George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The pre-packaged poetic symbolism of this story made it a hit but it also very neatly demonstrates one of the advantages that printed material has over digital formats. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos can’t sneak into your room at night at take back the hard copy of the book sold to you.
Stories don’t get much more perfect that this, really. Amazon played the role of Big Brother, sneaking into people’s homes via the glossy Kindle screens, taking control of something that people were under the mistaken impression that they owned. This is another of the interesting circumstances about digital books so far barely investigated. No matter what the hype digital books are in many important ways not at all like regular old books. One of the most interesting of these distinctions is the fact that once we’re finished reading e-books, we can’t resell or even donate them. There a re no second-hand bookstores in digital heaven.
Not only does that make me a little pre-emptively nostalgic for all the marginalia, bookplates and long forgotten inscriptions I might miss; it points also to one of the significant and primary functions that independent publishers will continue to offer readers in one shape or another. A book in the hand. Sure, you might still lose a book or two to a cunning house-guest, or an unscrupulous ex, but it’s unlikely it will be the publisher doing the stealing.
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