Debates: VERSUS?
Curation, Scarcity and Value
John: By drastically lowering the barriers to publication and distribution, ebooks are increasing the volume of uncurated garbage, and making it increasingly difficult to find books worth reading. I know that all advances in print technology — from Gutenberg's time through on-demand digital — have had a similar effect. Ebooks have made the flood much worse. Good content has always been scarce, and worth the price that scarcity commands, but ebooks make all books seem like commodities, which drives down the price. Publishers get a bad rap for making it difficult to publish, but someone has to curate and add value, and ebooks aren't helping.
John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.