I have a record to set straight.

I have a bee in my bonnet.  A bone to pick.  Whatever - I need to get something off my chest.

Last week, Affinity Lab hosted a DC Week event on the future of publishing (called "The Future of Publishing.")  The Labbies, wonderful coworkers that they are, proffered free coffee and candy and bagels (with cream cheese!) to attendees, and my morning seemed full of promise. Interesting discourse and tasty treats were mine.

Is this a book? Gotcha!

But as I sat in the back of the crowd, partaking in my morning caffeine ritual, a dark cloud descended over the Lab.  It was a very localized cloud, pretty much limited to the region directly above my head.  I listened to the panelists, a handful of their comments rendering me crankier and crankier.  Soon I was in a crank that coffee would not undo.

"I doubt anyone here would say this isn't a book," grinned one panelist, holding a Kindle aloft.

"Here's a question - is The Odyssey a book?" posed another panelist.

Ugh.  The English-major-bibliophile rancor rose within me.  And it still hasn't subsided.  For my own sake, I need to clarify a few things.

The Odyssey isn't a book, nor has it ever been: it's an epic poem.  And Pride and Prejudice is a novel.  And Pygmalion is a play.  And Essais is, you know, a collection of essays.  Just ask Wikipedia: they're not books.  They come in books (sometimes).

The book is a medium for the text, just as a Kindle is, or an online pdf on Google Books is.  They aren't interchangeable.  They are different from each other - and I suspect over the next decade we'll see how much so.

Now that I've defined my terms, let's address the claim that the book is dead.

Book of Kells: cooler IRL

I'm a defender of the book.  I spent enough time in undergrad tracking how authors play with the text-as-physical-object motif to want the text-as-physical-object to stay relevant.  And for the record, I think it will.

A book, since it is a physical object, has possibilities its digital brethren have not.  A book is an artifact, bearing the smudges, coffee stains, and scribbled marginalia of every person who has been exposed to it.  It can be a personal relic, conjuring associations of the texture and smell of the pages with how you felt, what you thought, and where and who you were when you read it.  It can be an aesthetic object - no digital text can replicate the splendor of an illuminated manuscript.  I will always defend the book, commercial viability be damned.

But I'm not blind to the advantages of new textual media.  I get why my dad read War and Peace on a Kindle, not as a clunky, five-pound paperback. (I haven't actually weighed it, but I assume it's about the same as a toy dog).  An online nonfiction can supplement text with interactive graphics, video, and running commentary from author and audience alike -- I won't deny educators the possibilities this opens up for textbooks.  And a digitized text, like those available on Google Books, does wonders for academic research: instantly you can locate a quote you half-recall, or find, for example, every instance of the word "pale" in Lolita (40 times in about 300 pages, by the way).

Evolving to their own niches

The point is, these media are distinct from each other. Each is suited to different kinds of texts, purposes and audiences.  New textual media don't need to supplant the book - nor do I think they will, ultimately.  Instead, I imagine all these media cohabiting the literary ecosystem, each evolved to its own niche.  We can take these media for what they are and what they're best at - and not confuse, conflate, or condemn any of them.

Whew. I feel better.  Time for coffee.

- Kate Zavack