The bearable lightness of being

Just for a minute, can you suspend all knowledge of e-book readers and smart phones?

The upper limit for the weight of a book, the old cellulosic sort, is about 18 kg. This, in many Western countries, is the maximum allowable weight that can be lifted by one worker, as mandated by occupational health and safety regulations.

Of course, except for the odd coffee table unit, books never really made it over, say, 2kg as this was considered the toting limit for accommodation in a woman’s handbag. Even at 2kg the bed toss-and-turn was inevitable as a result of lactic acid build-up in the arms.

If an author ever had much to say, for example the complete 18 kgs worth of pulp fiction, then this was usually sequestered into nine 2 kg books in a series.

Looking back at the evolution of book mass it is clear that technology has played a major role in the book obesity epidemic of the 20^th century.

Way back when, an author’s only means of writing a book was with a pen or a quill. In this era, RSI considerations kept books mercifully short (except for the odd mad Russian).

And then along came the typewriter which allowed authors the opportunity to write longer pieces with less physical effort. As a result, book mass crept up slowly over the next century.

But the real turning point was the word processor. Combined with electronic typesetting, this let the authors and their publishers right off the leash.

Unconstrained by the minimalism of poverty the savages gorged. And gorged.

Books got fatter and fatter. Series became ongoing.

One can only guess that the commercial success of fat books was dependent upon wide-scale adoption of speed reading. Or more likely, a lot of purchased but unread books. Especially by book club members.

Now you can unsuspend the suspended belief.

And then along came the e-book. The mass of a book isn’t apparent in an e-book. It is not a selling point. Its spine cannot support a legible advertisement.

The book obesity epidemic is dead even if no one has called it.

In fact the book itself might be dead.

An e-book is a series of pages. There is no reason why one reader should see the same pages as another reader. Indeed the progress of a reader through a story does not have to be a single linear journey. Imagine if we can choose which way we want to go depending on our mood.

But setting aside such esoteric ideas, every day the average length of something that is read is getting shorter and shorter.

Twitter of course helps bring down the average. But even discarding this, the most popular e-books are getting shorter and they will end up as pamphlets with a bit of luck.

I have always said, especially for non-fiction, that if you can’t make your point in an essay then you either don’t know what you are writing about or you actively want to piss off your readers.

Even for stories of fiction, serialisation is returning as a more attractive format. We don’t have to face the brick any more. And good riddance I say.