Oxford English Dictionary 'will not be printed again'

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Originally Posted by Hilde Bracegirdle

Ah, and when browsing through those hundreds of thousands of words you're likely to meet a few new ones! Can't do that nearly as easily on line.

Precisely! I had to look up a word in the OED in our school library once because the dictionaries in my lit teacher's room just didn't have it (the word in question, I found out was not actually English in origin, which is why it wasn't in other dictionaries). I stumbled upon some other interesting words that day too.

[LadyBrooke]

Unless they plan on making the electronic readers cheaper they're not going to be able to get rid of paper bound books. I currently live in a relatively poor area of the country and while I am fortunate enough to be able to buy books, I know many people who are solely dependent on the public and school libraries for books. There is simply no way that the people in this area would be able to buy a Kindle or iPad. What are the publishers going to do, subsidize electronic readers for everybody.

Dealing with the OED specifically the rate to subscribe for one year is $295USD, the price for the OED Print Version on Amazon is $995USD. Assuming that a person who bought the OED P.V. would take care of it and make it last for longer than four years they would actually come out ahead because the by the end of four years online subscribers would have paid $1180USD.

It looks like I've found another soapbox. Anyways if anybody is interested in a good book about the beginnings of the OED there's one called The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. The U.S. title is The Professor and the Madman.

[davem]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

Unless they plan on making the electronic readers cheaper they're not going to be able to get rid of paper bound books. I currently live in a relatively poor area of the country and while I am fortunate enough to be able to buy books, I know many people who are solely dependent on the public and school libraries for books. There is simply no way that the people in this area would be able to buy a Kindle or iPad. What are the publishers going to do, subsidize electronic readers for everybody.

Not wanting to come across as some kind of loony socialist, but I suspect that publishers don't think very much about those too poor to be able to afford an e-reader (let alone an ipad). They're producing the devices for those with the funds to buy them - they aren't in the business of social care.

It looks like I've found another soapbox. Anyways if anybody is interested in a good book about the beginnings of the OED there's one called The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. The U.S. title is The Professor and the Madman.

There's a book specificall about Tolkien's time on the OED - Ring of Words http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...f_words_pb.php

I can see the argument that language changes so fast now, that life generally is so fast, that on line access is preferable - & I can't really put the other side of the case because I tend to go on-line for that kind of stuff, but I just like the idea of having the physical books around somewhere.

E-books are far more desired by publishers than readers, I think - they cost nothing to produce(no raw materials costs, no manufacturing costs, no transport cost, no storage costs - & can be sold for close on the price of the physical book. And that's after you've paid out a small fortune for your e-reader....

The way things seem to be going is a combination of e-texts & print on demand (cf http://www.tolkien.co.uk/PrintonDema...sdt=1&sort=son ) which will all mean that fairly soon we would start to see an end to the book except as luxury item, or as sellable item - the e-books are mostly restricted to use on one or two devices so can't be sold on or lent.

Do we need physical books though? Or if we do, will our kids & grandkids? For myself, I can see how reference books can be replaced by on-line access, but not novels - Lord of the Rings on an ipad just seems wrong, a denial of the essential nature & message of the work itself - which at its heart is the story of a physical book of history & its transmission down the ages.

[LadyBrooke]

I can't imagine growing up without books, but if they truly become a luxury item I guess a lot of people will grow up with the privilege of reading books. Which rather scares me, seeing as the literacy rate is bad enough without denying access to people who want to read.

Also the idea of being completely dependent on an electronic device for my books scares me. Electronics don't work half the time.

I work in the Middle School Library this year. I also read to some of the kindergartners and first graders on the bus. I can tell you that for some of these kids there is nothing compared to a physical book. So I don't think that today's kids necessarily want book publishers to stop publishing physical books.

[Morthoron]

A thought came to me. It's not really epiphanic, but if publishers shift to e-readers completely, doesn't that then make their jobs obsolete in many cases? As an author, what exactly do I need a publisher for, if I can self-publish on the internet? All one really needs is a generic e-reader that will accept a file off the 'net and voila! I no longer have to share the profits of a book with a publisher or, rather, the publisher won't be doling out scant percentages of my profits to me.

Of course, there is the marketing aspect of publishers, and I suppose that will remain an effective tool for many years, but national book chains are already suffering in the U.S. (Barnes & Noble is still healthy, but Borders is hovering near bankruptcy), and if books are eventually going the way of the dodo, what would be the point of going to a book store at all?

Naturally, trade books and dictionaries may still require publishers, but it seems that encyclopedias are already becoming irrelevent, what with the ease of finding information on the internet. I have a copy of the OED sitting on an antique lectern, and it looks very smart -- literally -- but I do not go to it as often as I used to. Seeking out words on the internet is far easier. But I do not like e-readers, personally, in regards to simply reading a book. I skip around and backtrack too much -- the cursed thing hurts my eyes. I also still read a newspaper every morning, even though the publishers have the exact same info on the 'net. But I am probably one of the last generation to find solace in a paper and a cup of coffee to start my day. Besides, I don't believe they have found an adequate internet solution for crossword puzzles.

As far as Tolkien's view on the matter? I think he would be appalled. But this is a man who deeply distrusted automobiles and other forms of technology, which made him old-fashioned even 50 years ago.

[Nerwen]

Winchester's just using hyperbole when he says books are "about" to vanish. Or maybe he's thinking in terms of a slightly different time-scale from most of us. He's quite old, you know, and he was trained as geologist.

I don't think we'll see printed novels phased out for while to come, at least– and then it'll be because e-readers of the future will come to match printed books in ease of reading, aesthetic appeal, cheapness etc. You know, so it'll be just like reading a book (only with a search function and everything). What we have now is the very first, expensive, primitive version of the technology– it won't stay like that.

Reference books are another matter. As someone already pointed out, they're already more convenient in digital format. Also OED, Encyclopaedia Brittanica and similar works have always been beyond the means of most people anyway, so it's not like anyone is going to be suddenly deprived of them through not being able to afford an i-pad.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

As both my husband and I have been involved in the publishing industry at some point in our lives, and have known many professional authors, we've been following this debate with interest for quite a while. There are a lot of people stirring up fears that books will disappear because of the threat posed by electronic devices, but in more careful analysis, it becomes clear that the people doing the stirring tend to fall into one of two camps: bibliophiles or publishers. The actual writers know that they will continue to have a market regardless of how the "book" is delivered to the consumer; many, in fact, view the change as something good, because they're hoping it won't be long before the publishers, who take the lion's share of profits but would have nothing to produce without the authors, will go the way of the dinosaur. Many of them are also bibliophiles and would hate to see physical books disappear, so you wind up with something of a conundrum. To top it off, I know many bibliophiles (aging ones in particular) who have been decrying ebooks at the same time they admit that those physical books they love so dearly have become a millstone around their necks, because of their sheer numbers and the difficulty of keeping them clean and moving them around. The minute they get their hands on any kind of book reader, they see the potential benefits, but still don't want to get rid of their books. Such is the way of the world.

I imagine Tolkien would likely have been much the same as they. As I recall, he wasn't too keen on the idea of using a typewriter, but after being forced to use it to get his manuscripts published, grudgingly saw its benefits. If one dropped him into the middle of today's debate without benefit of living through the changes that have occurred since his death, I daresay he would be appalled. I myself was appalled when my husband brought home our first computer back in the early '80s. I had been writing novels for over a decade by then, and had been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of composing at the typewriter only a few years before. Even so, within a few months of the Commodore 64 becoming a part of our household, I was using it, tape drive not withstanding, to write another novel. The benefit of being able to do editing without the need for hours of retyping was a powerful draw, and has been to many writers I've known who were extremely leery of the depredations of technology upon the art and society. I don't know if Tolkien would have ever used a computer himself, but I imagine he would've had little against having his son, for instance, use it for him. The computer has a lot to offer in the management of drafts, notes, and multiple versions, especially for someone with such a large and complex amount of such things to keep straight. So perhaps if he had lived through the intervening years and the dawn of the computer age, Tolkien may not have been quite so horrified as folks imagine. He would, I think, have mourned the changes of the world, but he had already lived through many world changes which left him philosophical rather than militantly opposed. It's all speculation, regardless.

As to the issue of availability to those of lower income, I don't believe the OED was ever available to the poor, except via libraries — and despite the gloomy forecast from some doomsayers, I don't see them going away any time in the foreseeable future. They serve a strong and positive benefit to communities as more than repositories for books, and even though the people who view them as parasites to their profits would like for them to go away, it's not likely to happen, IMHO.

It's funny, in the circles in which I have moved for much of my life, I've been branded as someone who is resistant to technology and its changes. Here, I'm beginning to feel quite the opposite. It's a strange, strange world....

[davem]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

The computer has a lot to offer in the management of drafts, notes, and multiple versions, especially for someone with such a large and complex amount of such things to keep straight.

Exactly - & in Tolkien's case that would have meant no HoM-e - in fact, no Sil as we have it at all - there would have been no multiple drafts for him to play around with, return to, amend, switching around different versions. We'll never see anything like HoM-e in the future, because writers no longer work that way, & that's because the computer has made it unnecessary - & as a nasty by product has bequeathed us the dreaded 'Extruded Fantasy Product':

That was a sign of things to come. Publishers began to discover the selling-power of big books and multi-volume novels, and after the disappearance of the dollar paperback, made them the mainstay of their business. The loose and sloppy prose of the word-processor generation was perfectly suited to their needs. They were publishing books in greater numbers and at greater length than ever before, with editorial staffs constantly shrinking; one hears of cases where a single editor is expected to acquire and publish a hundred books per year. Meanwhile print runs were shrinking, advances and royalties remaining static at best; so that a mid-list author, to survive, had to become a hack, churning out vast quantities of work and sending them to press only half revised. The result: countless acres of what in our especial field is called, with a perfectly justified sneer, ‘Extruded Fantasy Product’. (The more general term ‘Extruded Book Product’ is occasionally used as well. I Googled that phrase and found to my chagrin that my own LiveJournal profile topped the list.) http://superversive.livejournal.com/49083.html

I think its perfectly possible to argue that Tolkien's entire legendarium is as much a product of the 'limitations' he faced in terms of producing the work as anything else. He produced the work in the same way as his characters created the Red Book - by writing it with a pen & paper at a desk. In other words, I don't think the means he used were simply incidental to the creative process involved.

And yet I'm not using a pen & paper to produce this text.....

But... I think its important to recognise that computers/websites are not merely a 'different' form of the book - they are something entirely different & the approach to producing & telling the story is entirely different. A generation (maybe two or three away) brought up entirely on e-texts/websites will not 'get' a book like LotR in the way we do, because 'books' will not carry the same meaning or relevance to them.