What is a book?

I've been thinking about this a lot and for all sorts of reasons: Because of my Kindle, and what it is, what it contains; because I saw this very short snippet on a wonderful website that collects together clips of Marshall Mcluhan to mark the centennial of his birth; and because I was reading the latest instalment in Ava March's Bound series.

The word 'book' is thought to derive from the Old English for 'beech' apparently. The Latin for 'book' (codex) meant block of wood. Its etymology is thus related to its physical form. And when a reader buys a print book, they are buying a physical item, one containing, if it is fiction, a story. That book is theirs to do what they like with. They can read it, lend it at will, re-sell it to someone else, give it away to a charity to sell, use it to prop up a rickety table. Anything they wish. If they wish, the book is theirs forever. It may grow worn and fragile but until it is destroyed or falls apart, it will remain a possession of the reader.

That book contains a story. The words are fixed but individual reader responses to the story are infinitely variable. In this sense, each reader experience is unique. When the book is opened, the reader notionally enters a new world, opening their figurative senses to it and exploring its landscape and inhabitants. In this way, the physical book, the one that may usefully prop up a rickety table has another, separate existence. One in another dimension almost, a private dimension inhabited only by the reader. Of course, it might be said that it is not the book that has the separate existence but the story contained within it. That may be true, yet the physical book might well influence the story's other existence in the reader's mind through its cover and look.

So what about ebooks? When I buy an ebook, it pops up on my ereader, an electronic facsimile of a book. Not a physical book, but still manifested through a physical thing. A story, accessed via a machine that looks a lot like a book, that uses e-ink technology to make me feel I'm reading a book.

Again, I get a story, probably (but not necessarily) forever, depending on precisely what I've bought and from whom. Because I've only really bought the rights to read it, I can't lend it at will (though I might be able to on a very restricted basis) or sell it or give it away, unless I want to give away my Kindle too. And I certainly won't use it to prop up rickety kitchen tables!

So, I have something not-physical but that can be manifested physically through my ereader. Something that is easily transportable and constantly available wherever I go. And yes that story, one that has another existence in that other dimension, when I read it.

Books and ebooks sharesomething essential - they are each a medium to access the story. They are a route to that other world. Yet they are different too.

In that short snippet linked to above, Marshall McLuhan, talking in 1966, explains that 'we are heading' (45 years ago) for a time when, instead of buying a book, we will telephone someone, tell them exactly what we want (his example is someone who wants information on Egyptian arithmetic) and with Xerox machines and Computers, they will send us exactly what we want. He concludes that products will become services.

How prescient. (Though interesting that he imagined a human service provider, helpfully delivering what this hypothetical consumer wants when the truth is that the internet is more self-service than table service).

McLuhan is talking about knowledge; forseeing the rise of the internet. But his conclusion, about products becoming services, has some relevance to fiction - although perhaps serviced is a better term to use in relation to fiction. I don't think you can really think about it in terms of individual products. It's more about participation in the medium - not the individual book but the hardware. The e-reader. Through it, we access a giant warehouse of books. Using it, we can catalogue and annotate those books; comment on particular passages privately or public. Tweet that we've read it. All at the touch of a button. We connect, we participate, we become loyal customers.

But regardless of whether the story is in a print book or an ebook, that story's the same, isn't it? Aren't the differences fundamentally in the functionality of the medium?

Do you think?

Short stories and novellas didn't used to be as common as they are now. Categories were 55-60k, single titles 75-100k. There was a uniformity and an expectation around those standard industry lengths. Epublishing has changed that drastically. Now, length doesn't matter, especially when price can be used to reflect how long or short a book is. Shorts can be lucrative. More, they can be good branding, teasers, a way to keep loyal readers happy.

Why did I mention Ava March's Bound books earlier? Because they're a (very enjoyable) example of a trend that seems to me to be rising: a series of novellas about the same romantic pairing. Not a series of episodes telling a single story with cliffhangers at the end of each episode but rather a series of complete novellas, each with its own HEA (or HFN) that gives each novella a completeness within itself. I don't think we'd have seen that emerge in print publishing (though feel free to correct me).

And so, I think, the emergence of ebooks is not just about form and funtionality, it's actually changing our notion of what a book is, or can be.