James Tracy, Our Digital Martyr

tracy
Dear Comrades:

James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing Academy, has a vision. While the academy has acquired a library of some 200,000 volumes over its 144-year history, Mr. Tracy believes that the future is digital. There is no need for the books.

To those who would deny the human species these bold and seemingly thoughtless steps forward in the name of progress, I submit that James Tracy is only scratching the surface. As someone who has been recognized by Wikipedia as “an expert in digital transition,” I have assembled a Committee to examine the purpose of James Tracy. The Committee has spent several hours paying continuous partial attention. It has illegally downloaded torrents, played several rounds of Left 4 Dead, and studied Mr. Tracy’s present life and sinecure. We are experts here. More importantly, we are correct. Do not argue with us. The Committee has multitasked and, in so doing, determined many viable solutions to the James Tracy problem. After some thought, we have concluded that there are presently very few reasons for the analog unit known as James Tracy to continue inhabiting this planet in his present form. We propose the following digital augmentations:

1. The removal of Mr. Tracy’s penis: The penis has served humanity quite well for thousands of years. But when I look upon the penis today, I see an outdated technology. I don’t wish to discourage Mr. Tracy from fucking his wife, if that is his choice. But this is an outdated form of sexuality. And our conversations with Mrs. Tracy, which were conducted in a sleazy motel room, indicate that she too is hoping to march forward with new digital possibilities. Moreover, there is a considerable hypocrisy to Mr. Tracy removing outdated books from the Cushing library while simultaneously maintaining his outdated penis. And the Committee recognizes that digital forms of sexual intercourse do not require anything as messy or as indecent as ejaculation. There is, of course, the problem of used condoms and Kleenex getting in the way of sleek digital efficiency. Since the machines (along with the Committee) have insisted that trivial feelings such as passion and lust often get in the way of the noble pursuits of knowledge and erudition, we must therefore conclude that Mr. Tracy should set an example and remove his penis. Furthermore, the Committee wishes to spend nearly $500,000 to create a “digital sexuality center,” whereby students and faculty members of Cushing will receive voluntary castrations and purge any lingering sexual instincts through flat-screen TVs projecting pornography from the Internet. These outdated forms of sexuality will be upgraded during the digital revolution.

2. An end to Mr. Tracy’s salary: It is now commonly accepted by the digerati that “the information wants to be free.” Therefore, why should Mr. Tracy expect money for his services? As Chris Anderson has suggested, a machine wouldn’t expect to be paid. No, let Mr. Tracy serve as headmaster on his own time and look upon his Cushing duties in the same manner that a hobbyist takes up stamp collecting. It is frankly insulting for Mr. Tracy to expect money for his human services, when he has clearly set himself up for the efficient and inhuman tasks that will be necessary in the new digital age. Let him find other ways to pay his mortgage. Our committee suggests that he take up a perch at an Arby’s drive-thru window.

3. An iPod permanently welded to Mr. Tracy’s brain. We want to ensure that Mr. Tracy continues to learn. And since those dusty analog books will no longer be available, we believe we can now control the precise conditions in which Mr. Tracy approaches literature. Therefore, the Committee allocates $15,000 to drill two eco-friendly holes into Mr. Tracy’s head so that we can transmit books in audio form and control the precise manner in which he engages with books. One of the Committee’s members had considered electrocuting Mr. Tracy should he fail to understand the audio piped into his head, but we were reminded of the unethical nature of Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies. Fortunately, when Mr. Tracy was hired as Cushing headmaster, he forfeited all of his individual rights, giving Cushing complete surgical control for a new digital tomorrow. We also plan to allocate $30,000 a year to employ two part-time students to beam books into Mr. Tracy’s brain 24/7, which will ensure that at least two bucking lads from Cushing don’t go hungry.

4. Burning all of Mr. Tracy’s books, papers, and mementos. It is unacceptable for Mr. Tracy to maintain analog books and papers in his office. It is also unsightly for family photographs and other needless personal trinkets to infect the forthcoming digital sterility. The Committee therefore recommends the complete incineration of any form of paper found in Mr. Tracy’s office. If Mr. Tracy is seen opening an unfolded piece of paper from his pocket, we will have the newly formed Cushing Fire Brigade incinerate it on sight. We realize that these steps may cause Mr. Tracy to obtain third-degree burns. But let’s not let a little collateral damage impede our necessary progress. You can’t have revolution without risk.

5. Legally changing Mr Tracy’s name. Let’s face it. The name “James Tracy” sounds like one of those outmoded characters from a Frank Capra film. And nobody who participates on a social network believes in Frank Capra anymore. Fortunately, the Committee has consulted a branding firm and we have decided that “Jimbo” — no James, no Tracy, just one name: Jimbo — is a better appellation with which Mr. Tracy can “get down with the kids.” The Committee has already confiscated the nameplate in Mr. Tracy’s office and replaced it with the $15,000 Jimbo logo that will make Cushing a standout among all East Coast prep schools. This will be followed by a legal name change. Any student or faculty member caught using “James” or “Mr. Tracy” will be instantly expelled from the academy.

We trust that these digital augmentations will be executed at the earliest possible opportunity.

Sincerely,

James Fennimore Coupland
Acting President, The Cushing Academy Committee

(Image: Mark Wilson)

BEA 2009: The Truth About Book Piracy

At BookExpo America, Wet Asphalt’s Eric Rosenfield entered into a lengthy conversation with Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media. And it became necessary to capture their quasi-caffeinated colloquy for reasons that will soon become apparent.

I had seen O’Leary earlier in the year at the “Challenging Notions of Free” panel at Tools of Change, along with O’Reilly’s Mac Slocum and Random House’s director of business development Chelsea Vaughan. O’Reilly and Random House had agreed to participate in a study hoping to pinpoint the effects of P2P distribution — namely, the impact of digital books, both in pirated and legitimate form, on print book sales. And they were standing in a conference room in February to present Magellan’s results to the public.

The results were a bit surprising. According to O’Leary’s subsequent report, “Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales,” book piracy wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as some had suggested. While O’Leary’s report had only O’Reilly and Random House as participants, it appeared that some of the publishers’ fears about piracy were unsubstantiated. Only eight frontlist titles published by O’Reilly in 2008 could be located as torrent files. When these books did become available as torrents, the torrents were uploaded to the Internet far later than expected: some 20 weeks after publication date on average. Furthermore, for the titles available as torrents, on average, sales were 6.5% higher for these books during the four weeks after they were uploaded.

Despite the braying of New York Times guest bloggers, book piracy was hardly the Manichean scenario that some of the DRM advocates had implied. And the chances of Stephen King and Toni Morrison riding on motorcycles appeared to be unlikely. In his report, O’Leary suggested “a less binary model to evaluate the use of free” — one doing away with the parallel experiences from music and movies and accounting for tangible interface realities.

But before the “information must be free” acolytes begin offering a Nelson-like “Ha Ha,” it’s important to note that this isn’t a scenario in which a partisan can dance a jig jig one way or another. O’Leary is pointing out quite rightly that both publishers and open source advocates are making statements about piracy without specific correlative data to draw from. O’Leary’s results are a great step forward, but with Amazon offering a new version of the Kindle seemingly every two months and publishers remaining understandably mum about sales data, it isn’t exactly possible to locate the theory of everything.

In the interview, O’Leary pointed out that not only were there differences in book piracy between fiction and O’Reilly books, but even within specific types of fiction. And getting publishers to participate in ongoing efforts to study this unexamined issue might allow reliable correlations to be formed. O’Leary also alluded to additional studies conducted by John Hilton that involved studying the effect of free digital books on print sales. Hilton was surprised to learn that Tor Books gave 24 of its books away, but saw 20 of the titles with decreasing sales. Random House’s ebook experiments, by contrast, had seen increased print sales for all four titles that it had used for the experiment. But was it the type of books? The specific titles? The way the free ebooks were introduced?

“Certainly when you see that big a swing, you want to look at the type of book or the type of genre or the type of test,” said O’Leary. “I mean, keep in mind that not all digital tests are the same. If you’re using digital content on the first book in a science fiction series to promote the tenth book, it’s different from using digital content to promote the current book. So you want to capture all those things and then start to mix and match over time.”

But with only O’Reilly and Random House willing to use the machines in O’Leary’s laundry room, one wonders if anyone can iron out all the wrinkles.

BEA 2009: The Cool-Er Reader

As widely reported over the past week, BookExpo America featured several $249 e-readers. And while I certainly observed many people salivating over e-readers as a whole, a good deal of drool congealed around the edges of Interead’s Cool-Er Reader. Teleread’s Paul Biba reported that the Cool-Er is “very light and feels good on the hand.” (The Interread people did not allow me to corroborate Mr. Biba’s findings. While I don’t desire to undermine Mr. Biba’s understandable excitement, I would not be doing my duty if I didn’t point out that the same words might be said of a freshly washed and folded beach towel.) Wet Asphalt’s Eric Rosenfield reported that the Cool-Er people were very defensive when their device was compared with other e-readers. And I suppose that companies are indeed prone to getting a little defensive when are greeted with legitimate questions instead of marketing opportunities.

On Sunday, May 31, 2009, I was more or less off-duty and somewhat hungover. I had devoted the morning to baking cookies and alotted the afternoon to my theatrical appearance at the Firebrand blogger signing. Under such conditions, the only apparel you can really wear is a Cocaine Fiends t-shirt. Nevertheless, I felt it necessary to check the Cool-Er Reader out for myself. I talked with marketing director Phil Wood and did my best to separate the booth’s beach imagery from all the hype.

Sherman Alexie Clarifies “Elitist” Charges

As noted by Kassia Kroszer and others, Sherman Alexie recently expressed some controversial remarks in relation to the eReader. At a BookExpo panel, Alexie called the Amazon Kindle “elitist” and said that he wanted to hit a woman sitting on a plane who was using a Kindle on her flight to New York.

Now since I’m a man known to make extraordinary statements myself, I recognized Alexie’s pugilistic promise as the conversational theater he intended. Nevertheless, I was baffled by Alexie’s position. So I took it upon myself to contact Alexie to figure out where the guy was coming from. I didn’t believe the boilerplate message on his website was enough. Alexie was very gracious to respond to my questions.

alexie Why do you consider the Kindle “elitist?”

I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven’t yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap. And that’s a vital question considering that Bezos wants to change the way we read books. How does he plan to change the way that poor kids read books? How does he plan to make sure that poor kids have access to the technology? Poor kids all over the country don’t have access to current textbooks, so will they have access to Kindle?

Have you ever used a Kindle? What has been your experience?

I’ve played with a Kindle. Didn’t emotionally connect with it like I immediately did with my iPod. That’s been the fascinating thing for me. I’m not even remotely a Luddite. I love all of my tech toys (and I love Amazon.com), but I have a visceral negative reaction to eBooks. I recognize that it is partly irrational and that’s why it was easy to be influenced by some of the powerful letters of dissent I read from Kindle lovers.

Several eReaders were introduced at BEA with a $249 price point. If your objections to the Kindle involve price point, would you consider the Kindle (or any eReader) to be elitist if everybody could afford it?

Is there an ideal price point? Capitalism decides that. But I do want to know about Amazon’s social commitments to literacy and other social issues. If eBooks do take over the market, then dozens more independent bookstores will close, and all sorts of communities will lose a vital social force. Does Amazon have any plans to fill the social gaps left by those closed stores?

If more people wanted to read your books in digital form than in print form, would you still refuse to make your books available in digital? Why?

I have to make my books available electronically. I have held out on the matter for as long as possible, but I have no author allies in this fight, so I have to submit. I have to sign contracts for eBook rights. I’m doing this in the blind because none of us know what’s going to happen. The last screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood was largely the result of this same issue. The legal issues regarding the Internet and copyrights and revenue are still unclear. And I don’t think I’m so crazy to worry that large corporations may not have my best interests in mind when they are offering me deals. I guess this is the thing that amazes me most. I am taking a very tiny stand against many large corporations. I am asking what I think are serious, tough questions and all sorts of people are vilifying me for it. When it comes to this, many people are taking the side of massive corporations over one writer trying to get answers. They’re treating me like I’m Goliath. It reminds me of the way people think of professional athletes and their salaries. All sorts of middle-class folks agree with the billionaire owners of sports teams that the millionaire players make too much money.

Isn’t it reverse elitism to be against those who use eReaders?

And I’m not against eBook readers. I’m worried about the eBook’s influence on the whole culture. And while I certainly insulted Kindle lovers, I meant to tease and razz the Kindle itself. I meant to razz Amazon.

What makes a digital copy of your book any different from a book on tape? Surely, a recorded version of your book is just as much of a corruptible form.

I am in control of my audio books. And, as you will notice, I have only done three audio books, and have not been happy with that process, either, for various reasons. But when it comes to subrights, it seems that the farther one gets from the original writer and publisher, the more likely it is that the subrights licenser thinks of the books as product and not as art. The author of the original work becomes less and less important. And at every step off the way, the original artist makes far less money and has far less power than any of the companies profiting from the work.

In what manner are you embracing digital media? What is your present familiarity with technology? Can you say anything positive about e-books?

I am also worried about what effect our video screen culture is having on us and our children. We all spend so much time looking at screens-TVs, computers, video games, cell phones, PDAs, and now eBooks-but we don’t know yet much about the negative effects of this technology on us. I seem to recall plenty of times when human beings rushed to use a certain technology because it was incredibly effective and convenient, and only later learned about the minor and major negative effects of that technology. A friend said something interesting to me and this is a paraphrase, “Those eBooks are like a gold rush, and people get irrational during gold rushes. Sherman, you’re being negatively irrational about the technology, but lots of people are being positively irrational.”

I love my iPod, my cell phone, my computer, and my HDTV. I have and enjoy a strong Internet presence with a great website and I have published poems and stories all over the web. In fact, I just published a poem that’s in the current online and print versions of the New Yorker. People are eager to portray me as being anti-technology, but that’s not the case at all. I think the iPod is as vital as the fork and wheel. So I’m not even sure why I have this strange, subterranean fear and loathing of the Kindle and its kind. I think it’s really about childhood. Books saved my life, Edward. I rose out of poverty and incredible social dysfunction because of books. And all of my senses-sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste-come into play when I think and read about books. Books are tactile and eccentric. An eBook will always be a gorgeous but anonymous box. It will also be just a tool–perhaps an amazing and useful tool-but I don’t want it to replace the book. And I’m worried that many people don’t care about the book itself, and see the eBook as a replacement. And I’m worried that Amazon and other eBook distributors will completely replace bookstores. The careers of nearly every successful writer are based on the amazing human interaction between bookstore employees and readers. I enjoy an amazing career because, over the last seventeen years, bookstore employees, librarians, and book lovers have handed a copy of my book to another person and said, “You have to read this.” That face-to-face interaction will become more and more rare. Sure, the Internet can launch careers, but there is a loss of intimacy that should be acknowledged and mourned.

edrants