The Future of Books @ EIBF

 

The big sea-change may be upon us; apparently e-books are now outselling hardbacks on Amazon whilst Barnes and Nobel is up for sale. The panel (Nicholas Spice, Mary-Kay Wilmers, James Shapiro, Andrew Franklin and Andrew O’Hagan) discussed the potential effects that this could and is having on the book world. The internet and the digitisation of books is already having a noticeable effect in the academic world, and O’Hagan made an interesting point that the ease with which we can find information online has lessened our interest in the provenance of facts. The discussion, however, seemed to stay in the academic world as the panel focused on the possible loss of ‘gatekeepers’ in the midst of a ‘tsunami’ of available writing (the more work available to us, the less quality control and the less need we might have for the London Review of Books to tell us what to read). The possible difficulties for writers to sustain a living in the age of ever reducing prices (never mind breached copyright) is a worrying possibility, but Shapiro’s quotation from A Winter’s Tale that ‘you speak of things dying, I with things new born’ just highlighted how light on any positives the discussion was. Provoking audience questions were left hanging, as time curtailed a discussion which felt like it never got going. [Libby Cooklin]