No end to e-books

The controversy about e-books set off by the release of Apple's i-Pad last month continues on and on. Charlie Rose interviewed Ken Auletta, who wrote an article about e-books in the New Yorker. If New Yorker readers, who must be more print-oriented than almost any other Americans, are fascinated by e-books, you can imagine what the general run of young readers must think. The Los Angeles Times book festival last week featured a panel on the future of e-books, which according to the report in Publishes Weekly was a lively discussion. The pricing of e-books continues to be a factor in their popularity because the average reader cannot fathom why an electronic file should cost just as much as a heavy, print on paper creation. The work of authors, editors, and publishers is unseen and less valued by people who think of the book as a commodity. Of course, the erosion of editorial work on many books, leading to sloppy typos, factual mistakes, and misspellings that litter many new books, has lessened everyone's respect for the traditional craft of copy editing and fact checking. And the insistence of publishers on producing outsized, hard covered editions that are inconvenient to read or to carry around, irritates many potential readers. Instead of insisting loudly on their rights, all participants in book production ought to look to improving their services and the value of their products. Then perhaps readers would be willing to pay for a well-crafted, well-edited, and attractive reading experience.