eri on the interweb

Stephen Page is the head of publishing house Faber and Faber. He was interviewed by Monica Attard on Radio National for Sunday Profile last week. This post summarises the interview.

The central question was how will publishing respond to e-books? Will it like newspapers loose market share? Will it struggle to find its feet in a new digital distribution mechanism like music? Page thinks that publishing, will learn from the experiences of the movie and music industries. He did not see e-books threatening publishing in the same way that the internet has threatened newspapers. Newspapers are a medium that deliver information quickly, which is something that the internet as a medium does better. But the physical book, Page argues, has an inherent advantage. A book has an aesthetic quality that cannot be compared to the experience of an e-book. People “furnish their house with them”, but people cannot fetishise an e-book. People do fetishise Apple products though. Page referred to the iPad as “a machine trying to do many things” but not a device suitable for the experience of reading a long narrative. The Kindle however, with its e-ink technology solves the problem of eye strain caused by luminous screens. Its devices like the Kindle that are more likely to grow the small channel of the e-book and offer another route to readers.