Books replaced scrolls because they were so handy. You could do things with a book you couldn't do easily with a scroll, like carry it around with you. You could flip to what you wanted without having to roll and unroll feet and feet of material. You could bookmark your place and easily pick up where you left off. You could put it in your pocket, loan it, collect it, put it on a bookshelf and so find it again with ease. New replaced old because it was better.
What about ebooks? Are they better than print books? Evidently not yet because, even though surfing the Internet for hours and hours a day is becoming the norm, it hasn't yet translated into an explosion of ebook readers. Yet stop and think: Surfing the net for hours means reading for hours, and on a PC at that. Why haven't these net surfers embraced ebooks en masse? Could part of the problem be because ebooks have yet to catch up with the technology that people adore, or because so few are using the available technologies to create something better than a print book?
A number of technological advances are in place, or will soon be, that make it practical to create ebooks that can do so much more than their print cousins, allowing authors to stop imitating print forms and let ebooks spring from what the new technology allows. But this is possible only if epublishers and writers become more interested in and knowledgeable about technology and begin using computers as creators of art and beauty, not just as purveyors of text.
What can an ebook do that a print book can't? Pretend for a moment that you are Jane Austen contemplating today's technology. What can she creatively do now that she couldn't do then? For starters, she can use software like E-ditor Pro, or use her iMac to include music to accompany the text, enhancing the emotional impact (http://www.e-ditorial.com/software.htmlhttp://www.apple.com/publishing/ama/0202/makingmusic/). It works for the movies, so why not in an ebook? If she wants to, she can go for one of her walks in the countryside, sit down by a brook with her wireless Apple iBook (http://www.apple.com/ibook/features.html), and compose her own music for Pride and Prejudice — or she can import music from her favorite CDs (with permission, of course). She can use graphics that move. She can include pictures, taken with her own digital camera, or video clips. Thanks to computers, her creative limits are not bound by nature, so she can show her reader what Pemberley ought to look like, how he looks in her mind's eye. She can let the reader click to a page showing a photo or a video clip or artwork of the way she visualizes her characters. She can include biographical information, with pictures or video of herself and her family and friends. She can read the book aloud and include her voice in the book, with the text onscreen for the reader to read along with her. How wonderful to listen to Jane read her own book, in her own style, with her own emphasis. If she doesn't feel like reading it herself, text-to-speech software can handle it. The ebook can also include an interview with Jane. Let HER tell us what she means by this or that, whom she modeled her characters on, and so forth.
Why stop here? Jane can also make her own movie of Pride and Prejudice now, bypassing Hollywood completely, using, for example, the Apple PowerMac G4, or if she's on a tighter budget, the iMac, with iMovie (http://www.apple.com/powermac; http://www.apple.com/imovie). Imagine! No more disappointment when you see how Hollywood has miscast, misunderstood, violated, and rewritten your masterpiece. Jane is in full control of her creative vision, from start to finish. If she wants to, she can release the book as text and movie simultaneously because this year, blank DVDs are becoming available, and they can hold much more than a CD, more than two hours of video, computer data, and audio all at once (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-327194.html?st.ne.fd.mdh; http://www.ati.com/na/pages/showcase/dvd/dvdintro.html).
Of course, Jane cares about marketing her book, so she puts video clips from the ebook and chapter titles up on her web page or on her epublisher's page, and lets the reader choose which chapter he or she would like to sample before buying. She also invites readers to send her questions and feedback, which she posts with her responses on the website so others can see the questions and answers and comment, too, if they wish. If she wants, she can set it up so that anyone who clicks to her page can chat live with any other reader who has clicked to the page at the same time, so people can meet others who liked the same book they did (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,20200,00.html; http://www.getgooey.com). The only thing better than an ebook like that would be to be best friends with Jane Austen and to walk through the English countryside with her while she chatted with you personally about her life, her book, the characters, why she wrote it, and what she was trying to convey.
Could Jane resist such creative possibilities? What about you? Given a choice, would you now buy Pride and Prejudice in print or as this ebook?
The key is forgetting what printing presses allowed and thinking of ebooks as an expanded opportunity to convey thoughts, feelings, or simply enormous amounts of organized information. One of my favorite reading experiences recently was reading Pride and Prejudice on an Internet site that had cross-referenced everything you ever wanted to know about the book, the author, what was happening in her life at the time she wrote a passage, her relatives, the characters in the book, every place each character appeared in the book, simply everything, all linked and cross-linked so you could read the book in the normal way, but you had endless options to click and find out more (http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv1n01.html). It was definitely better than reading a print book with a foreword or a biographical appendix giving you the same information because you could choose what interested you — not that any print book has ever offered all this information. Even if a print book tried to, the inconvenience would be a tremendous drag on your willingness to use it. Now even hyperlinking has been updated. Thanks to a new Xerox invention, announced at the recent Comdex conference, you can embed information behind words in the text so that clicking on the word will allow the reader to instantly access more information about the word. No more jumping back and forth between footnotes or links (http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/bw.111599/193191156.htm; http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/software/overview.jsp?id=askOnce&cat=%2fSoftware%2fDocument+Management).
Think what all this technology can mean for how-to manuals. Ebooks were born for this. Why would anyone want a text-only manual any more? Take a computer manual, for example, something no one enjoys reading in text. Now you can use streaming video and audio, and show how to do it, not in words and still pictures or drawings, but with arrows pointing and text moving and lighting up as needed, interactively, and people actually doing what is being explained, with text you can read or listen to at your preference. And you can update the manual as much as you wish, as often as you need. You can get a hint of what can be done by taking a look at the free ZDU computer classes on smartplanet.com (http://www.smartplanet.com/fp.asp?layout=course&learning_zone_id=4&topic_id=152). What an easy, fun way to learn! Your brain no longer has to jump back and forth, left brain to right, book to reality. Both sides of your brain are fully engaged in the learning by doing.
How about an ecookbook? What could be done now that no print cookbook has ever done? You can read the recipe and then click to see streaming video of the recipe being prepared, or just the tricky parts, or switch to speech and listen to it being read as you cook along. No more hunting for your reading glasses with dough on your fingers! New audio-capture software was just announced that allows you to find just the part in an audio stream that you want, without having to listen to an entire broadcast, so you can fast-forward to the part you want, or go back. Tell the ecookbook what ingredients you have in the house and ask what can be made with those ingredients. Hyperlink or embed information to show the reader which menus incorporate that recipe, what wine is good with it, what other frostings go nicely with a cake recipe, how folks cook the same ingredients in Thailand or France. Not interested in the chapter on hors d'oeuvres? Download just the parts of the book you want. Annotate the recipe in the ecookbook, too, for later reference, so you won't forget you want to use less salt next time. You want to know if you can use honey instead of sugar? That's no problem with substitutions and proportions — the ebook can tell you all that. Data can now be as deep as you wish, as readily available as a thought.
Think of historical works, which can now include newsreels and television interviews and news reports from the past, as well as photographs and hyperlinks. Worried about using your old VHS-format videos? Transferring them to digital format so you can include them in your ebook is no problem. What about science or other textbooks? Because they can be read on computers, ebooks can be designed so that the reader can be sent to other places, not only in the book but also on the Internet. An example of this is Stephen Hawking's Life in the Universe book on CD, which includes a web page for the book, with links to other sites for those who want to dig deeper into the subject.
Have you thought about personalizing children's ebooks? Take a look at Mattel's Barbie site (http://www.barbie.com/mydesign/). There little girls get to decide what color Barbie's hair should be, her eyes, her clothes, her name. When I was a child, if the heroine in a new book had hair my color, I bonded with her. Such little things matter to children. For that matter, why not let children choose elements in the story? The heroine could have a best friend or not. He or she could have a dog or not. This could happen or that. Let the reader participate in the fantasy. When I was little, my mom would sit at the typewriter, and I would dictate stories to her, and she'd type them up and staple them together with a cover page that I drew, and voila! ... my very own "book" and I loved it. Now, thanks to technology, any child can go to an epublisher's site and write his or her own ebook; illustrate it; add music, animation, and sound if desired. Classes in school could create an ebook as a class project. Could there be a better way to let the next generation become familiar with the creative tools available to us?
This is not the future. Everything I have mentioned can be done right now. Broadband is already here, but it will become less expensive and more readily available now that the FCC has ruled that phone companies have to share their lines with ISPs. When broadband becomes the norm, and it will, probably in the next year or two, the speed it makes possible will enable ebooks to come into their own. Now is exactly the time for epublishers and writers to start doing some seriously creative thinking about what ebooks can do.
These are just a few of my ideas. Feel free to create! The technology is in place. Why not use it? If you want a jumping-off point, I suggest a look at some of the gadgets announced at Comdex, including new audio-visual technologies for handheld devises like the Palm (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,32546,00.html). Or look at what is happening in wireless Internet tablets that free you from sitting at your PC. You can sit on your couch and read your ebook on your pad; you can bring the entire web with you to your pad, too, so ebooks can be offered on the web and read on the pad, thanks to a wireless transmitter that broadcasts data received from a 56K or a DSL (broadband) modem and powers the units. Yes, the pads have speakers for sound. And you can have several pads in use from the one transmitter, so everyone in the family can use his or her own simultaneously (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,32573,00.html). This is truly the future. Want to move farther away from your computer? Use Apple's Airport feature with an iBook instead (http://www.apple.com/ibook/airport.html). It uses radio waves, not infrared, so it can transmit through walls and allows a larger, 150-foot radius. So Mom can use her iBook in the kitchen, for her ecookbook, of course, while Johnny is in his room reading Mark Twain, and Dad is putting together some furniture with his emanual in the basement. People say they don't enjoy reading on a PC? They might with Apple's G4 PowerMac, which has a 100 percent flicker-free screen, large enough for a display of two pages side by side, just like a book, so you don't have to scroll, scroll, scroll (http://www.apple.com/powermac/splash/). Or use software to greatly reduce flicker on whatever screen you do have. We need to learn about these options and share what we know with readers, so they can enjoy ebooks.
So much is now available. As we all start to create using the new tools, no doubt fresh and thrilling ideas will come to us. And when that happens, and we offer readers something exciting and useful they can't experience with anything but an ebook, they'll come running!
Pamela Jones is a freelance writer with a particular interest in technology. She is currently working on an ecookbook project and a book on privacy and the Internet.
Ebooks: The Publisher's Dream
David Palmer
One night the chief financial officer of a major book publisher fell into a blissful sleep and had what she felt was a most enjoyable dream. She dreamed that her company owned the rights to only one manuscript....
But everyone at her publishing house instantly agreed that it was a brilliant work, which required no editing. In fact, the author had even presented the manuscript to them as a Quark file; the text was laid out impeccably, and the author had included an absolutely perfect graphic design for the cover, with all the illustration and photo rights already secured at a very low cost. No rights would need to be cleared, and no prepress work would be required. The publisher printed this book using an inexpensive paper and binding, sufficient for the needs of customers but nothing fancy. There was only one press setup for the printing, and the print-run was a mammoth 25 million copies. All 25 million finished books were stacked automatically in a warehouse at the printer. Directly adjacent to the warehouse was a bookstore. Without any additional in-house sales meetings, one person from the publisher's sales force made a phone call to this bookstore — he didn't even visit in person — and after a two-minute conversation, the bookstore owner ordered all 25 million copies of the book. Working — briefly — with the publisher's Promotion Department, the bookstore owner ran just one advertisement for the book in a local newspaper. Based on this marketing campaign, people from all over the world came to the bookstore the next day to buy the book. As the bookstore employees needed more copies to replenish the stock on their shelves, they simply walked through a door at the back of the store, entered the warehouse, and brought out the copies they needed. At the end of the day, all 25 million copies had been sold — all this without the author going to the store to create a promotional "bookstore event." The next day — and indeed the next weeks and months — no one came to the bookstore, or to any other bookstore, to ask for the book. The entire market of interested readers had been built and fully supplied in a single day through that one store. There were no returns to the publisher of unpurchased copies, and since there was no more demand for the book, there was no need to reprint. ... And everyone lived happily ever after!
And why wouldn't they be happy? The author had fame, a fortune in royalties, and a fabulous sense of creative fulfillment endorsed by the marketplace. The printer had printed 25 million books with a single press setup; his profit margin was ... well, dreamlike. The bookstore owner had sold 25 million books, so her revenue was beyond her wildest imaginings. But happiest of all was the publisher's chief financial officer because her company had managed to minimize costs at every step in the complicated supply chain from author to reader. Transforming the manuscript into a book had required practically no editorial or graphic design costs. Paper, ink, printing, and binding costs had been held to a minimum. There was really no cost in getting the finished books from the printer to the distributor's warehouse, nor was there any cost in getting the books from the warehouse to the bookstore. Her sales force had been involved hardly at all — no big planning meetings or sales conferences, no expensive travel, just one phone call from one salesperson to one bookstore. The advertising budget was minuscule, and the promotional campaign had required practically no time or expense by her Promotion Department. All the books sold in one day, so the cost of warehousing at the distributor was about as small as it could be. The estimate of 25 million copies for the first print-run had been stunningly accurate: There were no returned copies that had to be written off on the profit and loss statement, and there was no need to pay the printer for a second printing to meet unanticipated additional reader demand. Publishing this book had gone perfectly.
In fact, it was so perfect that the chief financial officer suggested to her CEO that they close the company for the rest of the fiscal year: Send all the staff home with full pay; let them take a rest until next year. Just don't let employees make any phone calls, send any faxes, hold any meetings, do any lunches, sign up any new books, make any trips, attend any conferences, use any computers, turn on any lights, require any heated or air-conditioned offices ... in short, don't let them do any business that will incur costs. With this one book, our publishing company has already vastly exceeded its profit targets for the fiscal year. The Wall Street analysts who track the company's performance will be amazed. Investors will be ecstatic. The stock price will soar. Why ruin a good thing by adding costs for other projects where the threat of financial failure can only jeopardize these truly record-breaking revenues and profit margins. And there's more! By sending the employees home, we can get them to stop working twelve-hour days. They'll get more sleep, which means they won't get sick as much, which means they won't file as many medical claims with the company's health plan, which means we can save money there, too. This is looking better all the time! Send the employees home. Shut the place down. Minimize ongoing costs and don't threaten existing profits. We'll start again next fiscal year and hope we find another phenomenal manuscript that requires no work to sell 25 million copies. (Actually, we'll need something more like 29 million next year — I know that sounds wild — because we'll want to show at least 15 percent annual growth to keep the Wall Street guys enthusiastic ... but that's next year's problem.) I'm outta here, guys! Close the fiscal year now. I'm taking my annual salary, Brobdingnagian bonus, and stock options, and financing that personalized balloon trip over Tibet I've always wanted to go on. See ya next year!
A labor-intensive, complicated supply chain
This febrific fantasy, despite its sarcasm, contains a few basic truths about the business of commercial publishing. The parody's point is just to show that print-on-paper book publishing is a complicated business where lots of overheads and variable costs need to be managed so that a profit can be realized at the end of the fiscal year. And unlike a business such as Coke, where revenues are produced by selling billions of units of the same commodity, publishers generally make their money by selling a few thousand "units" of many different "commodities" — a few thousand copies of each individual title they publish. Publishing is labor intensive. Each of these individual books, unlike a bottle of Coke, presents a unique set of editorial and marketing problems and requires unique preparation. Reader demand for any given title is difficult to anticipate precisely, which makes it hard to manage printing and warehousing costs. Unsold books can be returned by booksellers and must be written off by the publisher as a loss. Reprinting to meet unanticipated demand adds to the cost of publishing. Publishing each book and financing all the promotional and retail support it needs to find its way in the marketplace is a significant financial gamble.
In surfing ebook sites, we've all come across bitter comments about how closed and clubby book publishing is. Generally, the sentiments are something like these: "It's not how well you write, it's whom you know." Or "Publishers aren't concerned with creativity or enlightenment, they're just trying to sell lots of copies; so they go back to the same old authors who they know will sell." Or "Well, they did published my book, but they didn't do anything — and I mean nothing — to promote it. If that's all the sales punch they could give it, why'd they bother to print it at all?" Unfortunately, these statements do reflect some of the sadder realities of book publishing. But these realities don't arise from the malice, arrogance, or fundamentally philistine proclivities of publishers — most publishers I know are actually pretty cultured and decent folks. Rather, this situation results from the economics of trying to run a stable business that shows a profit.
In any business that is run with fiscal prudence, managers try to keep costs low and revenues high, and they try to reduce the financial gamble they take in funding new projects. Like any of us, these managers want evidence that a new project will succeed before they take the gamble of investing in it. In publishing, this reality of prudent business means trying to make as much money as you can from a few titles because each new title is a new set of costs and a new gamble. It also means that you try to go with authors or topics that have shown sales strength in the past or in market testing. The "newer the new," the bigger the gamble. And the publisher's up-front gamble includes lots of costs for each title that need to be managed before any revenues are seen: author advances; editorial and design expenses; paper, ink, printing, and binding; warehousing and distribution; maintaining the sales force; promotion and advertising; paying the retailer's percentage of gross revenue. It's a long and costly supply chain from author to reader; there are many places where misjudgments can lead to significant reductions in profit and even an overall loss. Profit margins are narrow. So it's easy to see how this business model leads to the absurd parody of the CFO: One book = one risk. Keep the costs as low as possible. Reap incredible revenues. Let's stop now. Let's not take any more risks. I'm outta here until next fiscal year!
Ebooks: A new distribution system provides a lower-risk business model
Ebooks can change this entire business model because the Internet provides a distribution system that reduces the costs of publishing and creates a more efficient way for customers to get access to the books that interest them. The coming ebook revolution should bring about a proliferation of publishing houses and imprints, and an overall increase in the number of titles published each year. Why? Because with ebooks the financial risk in publishing a title is reduced, and niche markets where publishers could not make a profit in the past can now build online into the needed critical mass of customers where profitability is possible.
Here's how it could work. With ebooks, many of the cost centers in the print-on-paper supply chain are radically reduced.
"Printing" and book creation: With ebooks, the costs of paper, ink, printing, and binding disappear. Admittedly, there is an epublishing cost in the technical creation of the ebook file and its encryption to protect copyright, but these costs are far less than the book-by-book expense of print-on-paper. With ebooks, once the encrypted file is created and placed on a server, there is practically no cost in delivering it by download to a customer; you don't have to buy paper and ink, and print a book for your customer — unless you want to print just one copy as print-on-demand from a company such as Ingram's Lightning Print, which could make good economic sense. But print-on-demand is in a way just the "fiber-based delivery of ebooks." It's essentially the same server-based, always available, instant delivery of content to the customer. It's one more way in which a book lives on a server and never goes "out of print." It does away with the risk of faulty print-run estimates, warehousing, and returns.
Warehousing and distribution: Files are cheaper to store on a server than books are to store in a warehouse, and it's cheaper to download files than it is to ship books to a bookstore, so there's a huge saving in warehousing and distribution.
Print-runs and returns: Similarly, since the ebook is downloaded only when a customer orders it, there is no longer the risk of printing more copies than the real market demands and having to write off returns. Nor is there the risk of underestimating the demand and having to pay for a second printing. That saving can be significant for the publisher's profit margin.
Marketing: Because information about new books can be posted on publisher's websites so easily, the publisher's sales force shouldn't have to travel as much. More of their selling should be able to be done by a phone call to the bookseller and a mutual look at the new book's description on the web. In fact, booksellers will be doing much of this browsing for new titles on their own. The publisher's marketing costs should decline. This is true not just for ebooks but for print-on-paper books, too.
Promotion and advertising: With the rise of the Internet, every publisher, every bookseller, indeed every business owner is in the direct-marketing business whether he or she wants to be or not. It's all about keeping a database of your customers, sifting your customer list to divide it into categories or interest groups, and then building a direct one-to-one relationship with your customers based on their interests. Doing this right is time consuming and costly in the beginning, but the return can be extremely profitable. With this direct method, you are after all trying to sell your customers something they already have told you they have an interest in. What better marketplace could you want for your promotional pitch and advertising? Ebooks are like any kind of online purchase: The customer tells you what she wants, and if you're a smart marketer, you keep a record of everything she buys from you over time until you have a pretty good sense of what she is interested in, what she likes to read, and what she is likely to buy in the future. You then send her information on new ebooks that fit her interests. You nurture your customers with information that interests them, and they reward you with sales. Everybody wins. The Internet and email are extremely efficient and inexpensive vehicles for this type of marketing: no printed brochures, no costly postage, no annoyingly disruptive phone calls. The advertising is targeted and effective. Like all other online products, ebooks will benefit from efficient, cost-effective direct marketing via the Internet.
Retailing: It's cheaper to build, staff, and manage an online bookstore than a brick-and-mortar site, especially if you don't have to worry about fulfilling orders for print-on-paper books. Packing and shipping are one of the most complicated areas for online retailers, and that goes away with ebooks. The content is simply downloaded. So retailing costs for ebooks should be smaller than for print-on-paper, whether it's an online bookstore or a brick-and-mortar store. And ebooks should have a presence in brick-and-mortar stores. Come in. Have a cup of coffee. Pull up to the ebook kiosk and browse for new titles. Download a few and pay for them by credit card right through the kiosk. Purchase a magazine and maybe a hardback edition of a high-end art book that you really want on paper instead of digitally. It's an enjoyable afternoon.
So what do all these cost reductions and efficiencies mean? Basically, they mean that the epublisher's up-front investment in a new book is less costly: His gamble is less risky. He has to spend less to develop a book and position it for a reasonable entrance into the marketplace. He doesn't have to spend as much before he sees revenues being returned on his investment. That means that epublishers should be willing to gamble on more books than their print-on-paper counterparts who are burdened with a more costly business model. More companies should be willing to get into epublishing because the financial risks are lower. So we should see more books being published overall and more publishing houses emerging.
One of the most amazing things to me about the Internet is that it's such a simple idea — at least once you see it. In its essence, the Internet is just the high-speed, easy-to-browse, global delivery of information to individuals. It enables people to easily find what interests them. Yet this new information distribution system is completely revolutionizing industries, and certainly publishing will be among them. Thirty years ago, when the proto-Internet was first being constructed, who foresaw that a seemingly simple change in access and distribution would have such far-reaching social consequences?
Elements of the world of ebooks
More publishers and more books being published: The actual shape and membership of this new world of ebooks is still evolving, and certainly the next decade will be among the most revolutionary in the entire history of distributing written words among people. What will actually take place remains to be seen, but some elements are already coming into sufficient focus for us to guess at.
More special-interest publishing sites or imprints: More publishing houses or imprints within larger houses will arise, and most of these will serve niche or special-interest markets. It's not just that the Internet and epublishing reduce the publisher's up-front gamble on new titles; the Internet also provides customers all over the world with easy access to the publisher's offerings. Just click on the publisher's website or his retailers' websites, and you have instant access to products that can be delivered by download in seconds. That easy access via the Internet builds individuals with similar interests into that critical mass of customers that publishers need in order to make a profit. It's difficult and expensive to publish for small audiences with special interests in the traditional print-on-paper world because of the high costs of short-run printing and long-distance distribution; profits are hard to make. With ebook titles selected and distributed over the Internet, those costs are reduced and these audiences now can be served. Niche sites will emerge where editors with a fervent interest and rich knowledge of a subject area attract the best authors in the field. These authors in turn will attract interested readers, and these sites will become destinations for the cognoscente. This is already happening in genres such as science fiction or romance. There's an opportunity here for big-name authors whose image is associated with a literary niche or for companies whose brands have a certain image; they can become publishers. Imagine an ebook publishing site hosted by Michael Crichton that not only sells his works but also the works of new science fiction authors who he thinks have promise and whom he wants to introduce. Robert Pinsky could lend his name to a site for new poetry. Home Depot could be not just a retailer of home supplies but also a major publisher of do-it-yourself home improvement manuals.
The end of the "studio system": Commercial publishing today is much like the Hollywood studio system. Big-name authors are like studio stars. If you want to see their work, you have to buy a work that the publisher's "studio" has produced. But just as independent filmmakers arose, so should we see independent publishing projects. Groups of writers, editors, graphic designers, attorneys, promotion and advertising specialists, marketing gurus, ebook technology masters, and others will form ad hoc consortiums for individual projects. When the project is done, the team will disband, each of the players moving on to new independent projects. This is just a continuation of the trend in publishing to outsource key functions to freelancers rather than having them handled by in-house staff. It used to be that a whole universe of publishing services coalesced in the publishing company: editorial, design, marketing, promotion, management of contracts for printing and distribution. Now all these services can be pushed outside the publishing house to groups of freelance experts who will handle these tasks for a variety of publishers and projects simultaneously. The "publisher" becomes something like a film producer: She's a banker and coordinator, someone with sufficient capital and organizational know-how to pull the team together and fund the project up-front while she waits for the revenues to come in. And since ebooks reduce the costs of publishing, more people can get into this publisher/producer role with less financial risk. Publishers will proliferate.
Changes in royalty structures: In commercial publishing, the author is the brand, not the publisher. People buy a book because it is by Toni Morrison, not because it is published by Random House. Despite this, most authors get more or less the same royalty, somewhere in the 5 to 15 percent range. With the decline of the studio system of publishing and the rise of independent publishing teams for ad hoc projects, authors who have developed a name and following may be able to demand higher royalties than their less well-known colleagues. The author's royalty will reflect not just "units sold" but also what the author's renown had to do with generating those sales. Truly big-name authors will command huge royalty percentages, whereas new authors who are still trying to build a name will see a much smaller share of the revenues. The range of royalty percentages will vary widely and be more negotiable.
Publisher vs. content arena: A distinction will arise between a publisher and what we might call a "content arena," such as Fatbrain's eMatter. Ideally, being published means that the author's work has cleared the critical hurdle upheld by the publisher's editorial gatekeepers. Potential readers can assume that the published work has a certain level of quality. The constituency the publisher seeks to serve — his marketplace — is a set of readers, not authors. Authors are the creators of the value the publisher provides to his marketplace of readers; authors are not the publisher's marketplace themselves. The publisher's main goal is to make a profit by providing readers with content that is worth their valuable time and money. When a publisher publishes a book, he is making the claim to his constituency of readers that the content is worthy. This validation of content is a traditional and valuable service that publishers provide to readers; publishing is not about making just any indiscriminate content public so that readers can get at it. Thus, a true epublisher works in much the way publishers always have. He nurtures an author, both editorially with advice and financially with an advance. He works with the author to develop a marketing strategy and promotional materials, and he guides the book into the marketplace so that it finds its proper readership and flourishes both critically and financially. The publisher is a partner in the development of the author's manuscript into a fully formed and properly promoted book in the marketplace of readers; and for that up-front financial gamble and service to the author, the publisher has a significant stake in the revenue the book produces. (OK. That's a bit idealized, but all the publishers I know do hope that the process works this way and do sincerely try to make this happen.) A content arena, on the other hand, is a service primarily to authors. It's a place where authors can make their content public and sell it, and pretty much any content is acceptable. The content arena charges the author a fee for posting her material. Even if no one reads the author's work, the fee the author is charged at least covers the content arena's costs. In posting an ebook, there is no financial risk to the content arena, nor is their any editorial commitment to either the author or the potential reader. I don't mean to suggest that content arenas aren't valuable, and I'm certainly not disparaging them. This kind of content portal is a valuable service to authors who have no other way of presenting their work at a well-known Internet site that readers will seek out and browse. An arena also can serve readers, especially when the readers can quickly recognize the content posted there as something of value or personal interest: for example, the notes from a conference they attended, the out-of-print works of an author they just discovered, or remarks on an obscure event that is of interest to only a small audience. But the business model of the content arena is quite different from the publisher's model, both in its financial risk and in its editorial commitment to readers and authors. The content arena's market is selling a service to authors. The publisher's market is selling validated, worthwhile content to readers. We shouldn't delude ourselves that the two businesses are the same.
Lower prices, different markets: Since the supply chain from author to reader for ebooks is less costly than the supply chain for print-on-paper books, the cost of ebooks should be lower than most paper books, around the price of a mass-market paperback. For some of the publishers who publish only ebooks, this is already the case. But print publishers need to be wary of ebook versions of works undermining the market for print versions; print publishers need to honor their commitment not to hurt the retail businesses of their print-on-paper booksellers. Until print publishers see how the ebook market and the print-on-paper market interact, they'll be cautious about changing pricing structures or reducing prices for ebook editions. Most publishers, however, seem to view the rise of ebooks like the rise of paperbacks in the mid-20th century. Just as low-cost paperbacks proved to be a new market, not the demise of the market for hardbacks, so ebooks will be a new market, not the end of print-on-paper publishing. Today, some books are issued only as paperbacks, and in the future, certain kinds of books may appear only as ebooks. But the future surely holds a place for both paper and digital books. The medium will be matched to the type of book and its expected market.
Every ebook is an anthology: An anthology is a collection of individual elements arranged in a unique way. The collecting and arranging constitute a creative act and can be copyrighted even though each of the anthology's elements is copyrighted itself. In digital texts, it is easy to cut and paste elements from one place to another and to combine elements from several different sources into a single new work — much easier than it is with print on paper. Digital texts invite a repurposing and reconfiguring of contents in a way that print-on-paper books don't. Therefore, it will be important to give each element in an ebook a digital object identifier (DOI) so that rights for its repurposed use in new configurations and compilations can be tracked. It no longer is sufficient just to give the book as a whole a code number, an ISBN. The book as a discrete, indivisible, cohesive entity is an artifact of the print-on-paper world. In the digital world, the ebook is a much more ephemeral compilation, each of its distinct parts has much greater potential to have a life of its own. Thus every ebook is in a sense like an anthology, a copyrighted entity compiled from smaller copyrighted elements, and having a system for coding and tracking the rights to all these elements will be important.
All of a sudden, everyone is in the same business: In the print-on-paper world, we all have a pretty clear idea of who does what: authors, publishers, printers, distributors, and retailers. With ebooks, the roles get much less clear. Authors can post their own books on websites and market them. Does that make them publishers? Publishers are putting up websites where customers can order books directly. Does that make them retailers? Printers, such as Donnelley, that also archive the print files for books, now say they can convert those files into ebooks, store them on servers, and distribute them for retailers when a customer places an order. Is that the eworld equivalent of printing, or does that make Donnelley a warehouse and distributor? Distributors, such as Ingram, are starting divisions that do high-speed printing on demand. Does this make Ingram a printer, or are they just supplying books that can be feed into their existing distribution system? Some analysts suggest that wealthy online book retailers are in a position to put everyone else in the supply chain out of business by working directly and exclusively with authors to post their works directly to the retailer's website. Could Amazon and Barnes & Noble become the world's biggest publishers, distributors, and book retailers? And what about Microsoft? Before they announced development of the Microsoft Reader, they had little to do with publishing other than their publication of a few technical and software books. Now they have an alliance with Donnelley to provide content for the MS Reader, an alliance with Barnes & Noble to create a major retail outlet for that content, and they say they'll announce arrangements with major publishers by early February. Does Microsoft hope to shut down all competing ebook reading systems? If they do, does that make them the behemoth of ebooks? And what role does that give them in the new world of epublishing that is unfolding?
Clearly, we live in interesting times. The changes in publishing will be huge. The players that will emerge are yet to be identified. Businesses that had a stable place in the traditional print-on-paper supply chain will undergo frenzied revolutions. Some won't survive. Others will reinvent themselves in a new hybrid role that has roots in their past expertise but also provides an entirely new set of services for an entirely reconfigured supply chain from author to reader. Indeed, there probably will be many chains, many models for getting content from an author's imagination to a reader's screen. What this new world will look like in all its richness and digital variety remains to be seen. But if I could get the rights to just one phenomenal manuscript, slap this Internet distribution thing into shape, leverage the monumental potency of ecommerce and emarketing .... This is looking better all the time. That personalized balloon trip over Venus I had been planning could be taking off any moment!
David Palmer is the senior vice president of publishing for MesaView, Inc. (http://mesaview.com), a leading provider of epublishing technology and services to authors, publishers, businesses, and other content owners. Prior to joining MesaView in November 1999, he was editor in chief of U.S. General Books at Reader's Digest. He lives in New York.
Everybook Inc. was founded in 1995 to create an ecommerce solution for the publishing world: providing digital content via the Web to the world's first true electronic book. The EB Dedicated Reader is the only two-screen, facing portrait-page electronic book system. The EB takes everything readers love about the traditional book and adds powerful electronic storage and instant access capabilities. The EB's touch-screen technology features 24-bit color and high resolution (300+ rendered dpi). Each of the removable PCMCIA storage cards holds up to 200 fully illustrated textbooks or up to 2,000 novels. EB users purchase digital publications from the online Everybook Store and download them in PDF format. They can also display their own PDF documents. Everybook is developing agreements with traditional publishers to offer digital content over the web via the Everybook Store and plans to include music and video as well.
Glassbook, Inc. develops and markets an ebook software system for the Internet. The firm is building a suite of open standards-based ecommerce products that integrate the entire ebook distribution and delivery process. The ecommerce software enables publishers to retarget their titles to ebooks and make them available via the Internet to distributors and booksellers. Distributors can distribute ebooks via the Internet to booksellers, who can then deliver those books via their web bookstores to consumers. Libraries can even lend ebooks through the Internet. Glassbook delivers a high-fidelity reading experience to consumers and is dedicated to creating solutions that uniquely provide a true evolution of the book-reading experience through ease of use and enhanced features.
Back in the 20th century, remember how much fun you'd have sitting in the bookstore, flipping through books for hours? In the new millennium, can buying books online ever be so enjoyable? Yes, of course ... with Novelon.com! Novelon.com enables you to flip through and preview books online for free, before you spend a dime at online bookstores (just like the good-old days). With our browser-based book previews, you can comfortably click through the epages of that new novel, or let auto-pilot flip through the pages for you — no hands required! You can enjoy freely discovering new books again, and feel more informed, confident, and satisfied with your book-shopping experience. So come, pull up a chair, and have fun previewing books online again, only at www.novelon.com.
On Moribund Metaphors
Robert Hartwell Fiske
Metaphors, like similes, should have the briefest of lives. Their vitality depends on their evanescence.
Yet must we ever endure the dimwitted (it's) a jungle (out there), an emotional roller coaster, a stroll (walk) in the park, (like) being run over (getting hit) by a (Mack) truck, (as) cool as a cucumber, everything but the kitchen sink, (as) hungry as a horse, leak like a sieve, light at the end of the tunnel, out to lunch, over the hill, pass like ships in the night, (as) phony as a three-dollar bill, (a) piece of cake, rule the roost, window of opportunity, (every parent's) worst nightmare, and countless other metaphors that characterize people as dull, everyday speakers and writers, indeed, as platitudinarians? Nothing new do they tell us. Nothing more do they show us.
Moreover, if it weren't for our plethora of metaphors, especially, sports images — above par, a new ballgame, batting a thousand, do (make) an end run around, down for the count, hit a home run, off base, pull no punches, stand on the sidelines, step up to the plate, took the ball and ran with it — and war images — a call to arms, an uphill battle, battle lines are drawn, draw fire, earn his stripes, first line of defense, in the trenches, on the firing line, take by storm — men and, even, women would be far less able to articulate their thoughts. We would speak and write more haltingly than we already do; our thoughts and feelings more misshapen than they already are.
Metaphors hamper our understanding as often as they may help it. They interfere with our understanding not only when we use them singly but also, and especially, when we use them simultaneously, that is, when we use them together, metaphor on metaphor. Frequently incongruous, these metaphors disfigure any sentence in which they are found: • And by last Christmas, for any defense contractor, the dwindling Soviet threat had evolved from meal ticket into writing on the wall. • Our restaurant cost me and my wife an arm and a leg, but we didn't build it without planning and we certainly wouldn't let it go down the drain. • Right now, USAir's problem is trying to determine whether this is a soft landing for the economy or a recession, and the jury is still out. • For 20 years she was a rising star in the business, but by last year her success had gone to the dogs. • In the face of mounting pressure to gut or eliminate the IRS, it continues to shoot itself in the foot by biting the hands that feed them. • Looking at those things, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see there was something rotten in Denmark. • Thanks to Clinton, Lewinsky, & Co., I'm off the hook and it's on the table.
We rely on metaphors not because we feel they make our speech and writing more vivid and inviting but because we fail to learn how to express ourselves otherwise; we know not the words.
In truth, the more of these metaphors that we use, the less effective is our speech and writing. Neither interesting nor persuasive, their expression fatigues us where we thought it would inform us, annoys us where we believed it would amuse us, and benumbs us where we hoped it would inspire us.
Robert Hartwell Fiske is the editor of The Vocabula Review and the owner of Vocabula Communications Company, a writing and editing service. He is also the author of The Dictionary of Concise Writing and The Dimwit's Dictionary.
Letters to the Editor
1. Thank you, thank you, for an interesting, excellent publication that hits many spots of interest for people who love language. You are so good!
Judy Vorfeld
oss@powerplusinc.com
2. The first issue I received of The Vocabula Review is very good and important due to the reference to the Geoffrey Nunberg article. Alan Pagliere has written an excellent article, but the URL in the article is incorrect; the article was published in The Atlantic Monthly in March 1997, not 1998. The correct site is:
3. The diatribe against prescriptive grammar would take a book to answer, but I'll just toss out two thoughts. First, not all of us accept that there is no objective reality, independent of human thought and perception. On the contrary, we hold that human well-being requires us to acknowledge a reality that can only be molded and shaped by those who first accept it, and their own limitations. This conviction is probably not something that anyone can prove, one way or the other, but as G. K. Chesterton once had a character say, "You cannot argue with a choice of the soul." Second, even if we grant all his contentions about language's "growing naturally," we may say, "So do plants, but does that mean we cannot have gardens?" Descriptive grammarians treat language as botanists do plants; and to a botanist, crabgrass, kudzu, and dandelions are as "good" as roses, lilies, and tuberous begonias. Prescriptive grammarians approach languages as gardeners do plants. As the gardeners allow the dandelions in the kitchen garden, but don't want the crabgrass and the rest anyplace, so we maintain that some constructions are to a passage what crabgrass is to a lawn.
Patricia M Godfrey
pmgodfrey@juno.com
4. I spent this evening reading The Vocabula Review. I was inspired after reading the segment on linguistic self-righteousness. These past few years, the more rules I gathered about "proper" writing, the more I lost my voice in my writing. I could rant on forever about the linguistic police, how they quench that flame. There are many of those in my small island community. They are primarily other writers who thought it was highly improper for the local candyman "shopkeeper" to suddenly step-out from his common station and play the part of a novelist.
David Hilliard
CircuitAve@aol.com
5. On this, my first day of Christmas vacation, I finally started reading your latest Vocabula Review — and I read the whole thing during breakfast. All the long essays were excellent, and I must admire your willingness to air dissenting views! I know you have back issues of the Review at your website, but you should consider offering the best essays by category, too. More people should be exposed to these excellent essays!
Gregg Willams
greggw@pubspace.com
6. Speaking editorially, I have to disagree with [your "Grumbling About Grammar" comments in the December issue of The Vocabula Review about "an" being misused for "a"]. This is not at all a clear-cut matter. Who is the "we" who "have been pronouncing the 'h'"? It depends greatly on where one (the reader or the writer) grew up and learned pronunciation. I'm in my mid-50s and I learned to pronounce "history" with a silent "h," and I still pronounce it that way, as do many of my educated colleagues here in the South. And I use "an" with it, orally and in print. On the other hand, the word "herb" (meaning aromatic plants) is pronounced with an "h" and should not take "an"!
Michael K. Smith
mksmith1@bellsouth.net
7. Qualified pilots, and others who use radio-telephony, are aware that the words "no" and "yes," never used in R-T exchanges, are replaced by "affirm" and "negative." During many hundreds of flights on commercial passenger aircraft with U.S. cabin crews, I have noticed that the word "now" appears to be similarly banned. In my experience, it is always replaced by "at this time": "All portable electronic equipment should be switched off at this time," etc. Can anyone offer a reason for this curious circumlocution?
Clive Hart
cliveh@essex.ac.uk
The Vocabula Review welcomes letters to the editor. Send email to letters@vocabula.com.
Grumbling About Grammar
Although few people can complain of another's grammatical mistakes with impunity, that is, without revealing their own, I am hopeful that "Grumbling About Grammar" will encourage us all to pay more heed to how the language is used — by ourselves as well as by others — while bettering our ability to speak and write it. The grammatical errors that I have assembled here come from publications like The New York Times, Wired, Business Week, Los Angeles Times, Time, TV Guide, and Martha Stewart Living. Others come from TV newscasters, politicians, and businesspeople. These are the people we so often read and listen to — whether or not we care to. Woefully, it is not Edith Wharton or Henry James from whom we learn to speak and write the language; rather, it is these sometime purveyors of confused, misused, and abused language.
This month, we focus on verbose English. Here are ten wordy phrases that careful writers and speakers might strive to avoid.
1. considering the fact that Verbose for because, considering, for, given that, in that, or since. • Considering the fact that some 6,400 hospitals endured a lengthy and intensive evaluation, analyzing everything from new technology to nurse-to-bed ratio, our ranking is something to be proud of. USE Since. [Newspaper advertisement] • Considering the fact that McCain bests Gore in the latest hypothetical match-ups, the beleaguered veep might do better to ignore the feminist and take a lesson from Naura Hayden, the scholar behind How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time ... And Have Her Beg for More! USE Given that. [Suck.com]
Because of the fact that, given the fact that, in light of the fact that, in view of the fact that, and owing to the fact that are also verbose for because, considering, for, given that, in that, or since. • Colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. for both men and women, so in view of the fact that packaged breakfast cereals are so convenient, this is very good news. USE since. [Eating Well] • It began in the trenches of World War I, and ended eight years ago in Phoenix, Arizona, shortly after Nana Boutelle — always punctual in life — didn't even make it to her own funeral, owing to the fact that the car carrying her ashes got stolen and mixed up in the Phoenix underworld. USE because. [Boston Magazine]
2. despite the fact that Verbose for although, even though, or though. • Despite the fact that the partnership didn't meet the original expectations of the cable companies, analysts said Sprint PCS has proved to be very successful for the phone company. USE Although. [The Wall Street Journal] • Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., offered a resolution calling for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors despite the fact that the law already allows the executive branch to remove Starr. USE even though. [Investor's Business Daily] • But, despite the fact that we've been designing and photographing holiday trappings for months, we'll be as ready as anyone to deck the halls when the time comes. USE though. [Better Homes and Gardens] • The product is still selling quite nicely, thank you, despite the fact that Crawford is 32, an age at which most models have faded from view. USE even though. [Self] • Despite the fact that Poneman has continued to dump his own money into Sub Pop, its future looks bleak. USE Even though. [Rolling Stone]
3. is composed of Verbose for comprises, consists of, contains, or includes. • The new team is composed of 20 holdovers from D'Alema's first, 14-month-old government and five newcomers. USE comprises. [San Francisco Chronicle] • The delegation was composed of eight officials of the North's Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, 38 male and female basketball players, 14 circus acrobats and two TV engineers. USE included. [International Herald Tribune] • The average perfume is composed of approximately 75 percent synthetics. USE consists of. [Garden Design]
4. on a regular basis Verbose for consistently, frequently, often, or regularly. • Check back on a regular basis — how long does a broken link to a page or graphic remain broken? USE regularly. [Writer's Digest] • Imagine what would have happened if the Starzz actually got her the ball on a regular basis. USE frequently. [CBS Sportsline] • For seniors who want to stay in their homes as long as they can, there is home care for the masses — agencies everywhere that provide nurses and aides who either come by your place on a regular basis or live in. USE weekly. [Time]
On a daily basis, on an hourly basis, on a monthly basis, on a continuing basis, and so on are also needlessly wordy. • Unlike traditional magazines, where you might have an assignment every month, sites like Digital City's look for fresh material on a daily basis. USE every day. [Writer's Digest] • Someone generates content of a volatile nature; someone else is interested in that content on a continuing basis. USE continually. [Byte]
5. on the part of Verbose for among, by, for, from, of, or -'s. • I am assuming a knowledge of c programming on the part of the reader. USE the reader has a knowledge of c programming. [Linux Gazette] • It will take a lot of inspection on the part of Congress to determine what needs to be done. USE by. [U.S. congressional spokesperson] • This is a complete abdication of responsibility on the part of the governor. USE by. [U.S. state senator]
6. regardless of whether ... (or) Verbose for despite whether, no matter whether, or whether ... or (not). • This was true regardless of whether the keyed application executable resided on the server or the client. USE whether. [PC Week] • One thing you realize is that you're going to get hit regardless of whether you catch it or you drop it, so you might as well make the best of it. USE whether. [Football player quoted in NFL Insider] • This latter provision applies to all law enforcement entities, regardless of whether or not they receive funds from the Federal government and regardless of whether there is a racial or other discriminatory motive. USE whether or not; whether. [Civil Rights Forum] • Freedom of expression and inquiry for all faculty members, regardless of whether they have a "T" after their name and regardless of whether they are part-time, adjunct, or in some limbo called "non-tenure track," is fundamental to colleges' and universities' mission of serving society. USE whether or not; whether. [The Chronicle of Higher Education] • Taxpayers should hope that our education schools would be well attended regardless of whether or not the state had a certification requirement. USE whether or not. [The Detroit News]
7. relatively ... compared to (with) Verbose for compared to (with). • In fact, Mathers and Bank still stay in close contact with other cast members, and their lives are relatively stable compared with those of other former child stars. DELETE relatively. [TV Guide] • Because the protocol is relatively new compared to more mature services such as FTP, Telnet and HTTP, many proxy servers don't support it. DELETE relatively. [Winmag.com] • It is centrally located and has excellent road and rail connections with the metropolis of Tel Aviv, real estate prices are relatively low compared to Tel Aviv, and there are many job and business opportunities. DELETE relatively. [The Jerusalem Post]
8. (in) the process of -ing Verbose for in or -ing. • Arizona, Connecticut, Utah, Delaware, Iowa, and Minnesota have mandatory programs, while several others are in the process of creating them. DELETE in the process of. [Self] • Family-oriented Disney owns 43 percent of Infoseek and is in the process of acquiring the rest of the company. DELETE in the process of. [Wired] • In the process of examining his roles as son, brother, father, and husband, Blount weaves in spicy limericks, laugh-out-loud anecdotes, and sharp observations on literary and political culture. DELETE the process of. [Atlantic Monthly]
9. the reason (why) is because Verbose for because or the reason is (that). • The reason I'm going to Russia is because we have learned the hard way that problems that develop beyond our borders sooner or later find their way to our doorstep. USE The reason ... is that. [Elected U.S. government official] • The reason I needed state protection was because I was threatened by a state. DELETE The reason ... was. [Author quoted in Los Angeles Times] • The reason these questions are fair to ask is because President Clinton's attorney in the Paula Jones case, Robert Bennett, admitted that inquiring about "sex for jobs" was "fair game" in the lawsuit. DELETE The reason is. [Investor's Business Daily] • Relationship counselors say it can be attributed to many factors, but perhaps the overriding reason men are cheating at an alarming rate is because it's easier than ever before. DELETE because. [Ebony] • The reason, she supposes, is because the holiday is centered around food and things she adores — cooking and entertaining. USE reason is that. [Martha Stewart Living]
10. while simultaneously Verbose for simultaneously or while. • Almost instantly she managed to condemn most of my checkers to the bar while simultaneously bearing hers off. DELETE simultaneously. [Martha Stewart Living] • As the story opens, she's whipping up canapes while simultaneously baby-sitting her grandchild; fielding panicked phone calls from her mother, Anna; welcoming her teenage daughter, Shimmer (nee Sara), home from school and chatting with her younger sister, May, a lesbian artist. DELETE simultaneously. [Salon.com] • The challenge before us at the federal level is to craft legislation that will alleviate the suffering of our children while simultaneously giving States flexibility with standards, decreasing the tax burden by spending money wisely, eradicating the culture of dependency, and stimulating volunteerism and community involvement. DELETE simultaneously. [U.S. member of Congress]
Similarly, while at the same time is verbose for at the same time or while. • In recent weeks, individuals have been pouring more of their new cash into the safe haven of money market funds than into any other investment category, while at the same time many of them have been pulling money out of stocks. DELETE at the same time. [The New York Times]
The Grumbling About Grammar Awards (GAGAs)
1. A quick, easy customer experience garnered Yahoo the success it enjoys today — and the new prominence of Yahoo Shopping complexifies the experience and could threaten Yahoo's core experience. — Creative Good Inc. (http://www.goodexperience.com/)
Complexifies? The author either is unfamiliar with the word complicates or does not know the difference between neologism and nonsense.
2. Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning? — U.S. presidential candidate George W. Bush
I don't mean to vilify this man month after month, but his English-language skills are startling.
3. Last summer, my wife Chardel began hunting for a piano; both she and our daughter wanted to learn to play. — Charley Blaine, Editor, Family Money
Goodness, so are we to understand that Chardel is just one of many?
The Grumbling About Grammar Award (GAGA) is a new feature of The Vocabula Review. To see the previous GAGA winners, click here.
Elegant English vs. Everyday English
We all know far too well how to write everyday English, but few of us know how to write elegant English — English that is expressed with music as well as meaning, style as well as substance. The point of this feature is not to suggest that people should try to emulate these examples of elegant English but to show that the language can be written with grace and polish — qualities that much contemporary writing is bereft of and could benefit from.
1. Everyday English: I can't think of what I want to say.
Elegant English: Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say. [C. S. Lewis, The Death of Words]
2. Everyday English: He's vain, selfish, and unscrupulous — and not necessarily in that order; he thinks only of himself.
Elegant English: And as his lordship, for want of principle, often sacrificed his character to his interest, so by these means he as often, for want of prudence, sacrificed his interest to his vanity. [John Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second]
3. Everyday English: It would've been nice if you had paid attention to me before, but I really don't care anymore; I don't need you.
Elegant English: The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. [Samuel Johnson, Letter to the Right Honourable The Earl of Chesterfield]
4. Everyday English: He was a remarkable man in life and in death, and he will be sorely missed.
Elegant English: Thus variable, thus virtuous was the life; thus excellent, thus exemplary was the death of this memorable man. [Izaak Walton, Life of Dr. John Donne]
5. Everyday English: I don't see how anyone who has read his works or heard the stories about his life and the way he lived it could possibly not be moved; we should all try to be like him.
Elegant English: Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. [Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Milton]
Scarcely Used Words
Inadequate though they may be, words distinguish us from all other living things. Indeed, our worth is partly in our words. Effective use of language — clear writing and speaking — is a measure of our humanness. What's more, the more words we know and can correctly use, the broader will be our understanding of self, the keener our acquaintance with humankind.
1. acedia (ah-SEE-dee-ah) n. 1. an onset of distaste for and boredom with all religious practices. 2. spiritual sloth or indifference; ennui.
2. bootless (BOOT-less) adj. fruitless; futile; useless; without benefit; unprofitable.
3. muliebrity (myoo-lee-EB-ri-tee) n. 1. the condition of being a woman; womanhood. 2. the qualities characteristic of being a woman; womanliness.
4. steatopygia (stee-at-uh-PIJ-ee-uh) n. an excessive accumulation of fat on the buttocks.
5. tatterdemalion (tat-er-di-MAL-yen) n. a person who wears tattered clothing; a ragamuffin.
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