In light of the the digital advances that are currently taking our breath away, any self-respecting book lover has to have considered the question of what constitutes a real book. It used to be easy to answer: a book is that ‘thing’ you hold in your hands that has pages bound between two covers. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe a book is just what the writer writes and what the reader reads. But if that’s true, then a digitally distributed haiku qualifies as a book. Or is there a length rule? If a piece of digital writing is a certain length, maybe then it’s a book.
Most of my books have been made available by the publishers as e-books these days. When I say that, I mean that the books were originally published as pages bound between two covers. But when I’m writing a book, that book resides on my computer’s hard drive. When I put the finishing touches on the electronic file, is it a book yet?
So many questions; so many opinions. If you haven’t seen this new video yet, you might like to take a look at their answer to the question and then join the discussion. (By the way, it’s done with stop-motion not animation. The producers went into the bookstore from 6 pm to 10 am for five nights and moved books and things. Quite a job!).
Patricia J. Parsons 