{"id":302778,"date":"2010-02-10T10:53:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T15:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35690"},"modified":"2010-02-10T10:59:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T15:59:32","slug":"will-the-kindle-make-books-thinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/302778","title":{"rendered":"Will the Kindle Make Books Thinner?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Henley wonders if the Kindle and its brethren won’t reverse the trend towards thicker and thicker books<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I understand the impulse on the supply side toward thick books: I
\nmyself have witnessed bookstore shoppers choose one book over the other
\nbecause “this one’s thicker.” (Said out loud in so many words.) And I
\nwitnessed a shift in mass-market printing strategies toward using
\nthicker paper, bigger fonts and wider margins. Compare a mass-market
\npaperback from the 1960 or 1970s with a reprint of the same title from
\nthe 1980s or later and the difference is stunning. In the earlier era,
\nthe publisher was plainly trying to keep the physical size down; in the
\nlater era, puffing the same text up like a blowfish.<\/p>\n

What interests me is how the ebook era will affect book lengths.
\nRight now, all ebooks look “the same size” on the (virtual) shelf. The
\nKindle store gives you a “print length” but, at least for me, that’s an
\nabstract fact I take little notice of. Baen Books successful
\nWebscriptions store doesn’t even do that<\/a>.
\nPerhaps one day ebook vendors will list a book’s word-count instead,
\nbut I don’t think that will make as much impression on shoppers as a
\nphysical package’s relative bulk does. Also, my Kindle’s progress bar
\nis relative rather than absolute. No matter how long the text, the
\nprogress track runs the width of the screen. If you’re a third of the
\nway through a 100,000 word book, the progress bar extends a third of
\nthe way across the screen. If you’re a third of the way through a
\n200,000 word book, likewise.<\/p>\n

Every change in “printing” technology\/economics has affected the forms of literature. This one will too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the one hand, it will be nice that books no longer have to sell
\nthemselves by adding “doorstop” and “paperweight” functions.  On the
\nother hand, one can imagine it going the other way–longer books are
\nnow cheaper to print, and easier to store.  Also, to the extent that
\nebooks have lower margins, editors will have less time to invest in
\nsweating loquacious writers down to a more appropriate number of
\nwords.  I have no doubt that the new technologies will change the forms
\nof literature, but I have no idea how.

\n

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Jim Henley wonders if the Kindle and its brethren won’t reverse the trend towards thicker and thicker books: I understand the impulse on the supply side toward thick books: I myself have witnessed bookstore shoppers choose one book over the other because “this one’s thicker.” (Said out loud in so many words.) And I witnessed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}