Ligotti kindle editions

[Gray House]

My rambling thoughts on the subject: Quality hardcovers are very nice, but I usually cannot afford them. To me, the text is the important thing, and the form of the book very secondary, though I do like books with illustrations. I don't know how e-book prices usually compare with paperback prices, but I see there isn't much difference between e-book and paperback prices of the Virgin TG and MWINYD. Of course, no shipping with the e-versions. I prefer cheap paperbacks over e-books because I dislike reading anything very long on a screen. But some of the posts in this thread do make e-books seem appealing. I could probably adjust if I tried. I do have a fear of my bookshelf going up in flames!

[DoktorH]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

I have often talked here about 'fiction as religion'. The same *text* arguably changes actual meaning when in a book or when shown electronically. If I were a Christian (or religious in the normal sense), I wouldn't want the Bible or any other 'sacred' book to be handed to me in Court for my hand to be placed on it in oath if it were my hand upon a Kindle or any other ebook simply with the texts of those books uploadable within those devices (unless I intended to lie! But I don't see fiction as lies!).

There are books i consider sacred, holy, special, etc, largely due to the cost/difficulty in getting ahold of them, which does some weird psychological thing I forgot the technical term for and biases me in favor of the contents before I've even read them simply due to the hassle/expense of getting that far. Had I read Agonizing Resurrection as an ebook, I wouldn't have liked it all that much. the stories are nice little spoofs of classic horror, but nothing special. the delivery system of the text, the pretty Centipede Press edition with the pictures and the fancy cover and whatnot, was what impressed me the most.

There are also books that I hold as sacred because of the content. cheap paperbacks from a big-box bookstore and even ebooks I downloaded on a whim for some quick-fix amusement, but the words inside did things to my brain that I classify as religious experience. infinitely replaceable, always available via download or visit to the nearest chain bookstore.

There are also books that form an overlap between the two categories - the content makes them sacred, and the difficulty of replacing them makes them doubly so. There's a lot of Ligotti in that overlap.

[Gray House]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

I have often talked here about 'fiction as religion'. The same *text* arguably changes actual meaning when in a book or when shown electronically. If I were a Christian (or religious in the normal sense), I wouldn't want the Bible or any other 'sacred' book to be handed to me in Court for my hand to be placed on it in oath if it were my hand upon a Kindle or any other ebook simply with the texts of those books uploadable within those devices (unless I intended to lie! But I don't see fiction as lies!).

Ligotti fans have many times said Ligotti will still be read far into the future. I think he will be, or at least he should be, if there is anyone to read anything. No authors of the past stand the test of time due to the physical qualities of their books as originally published. If lasting merit is important, I think judgement of a work's merit should be based on the text alone. Independently of the text, I do find physically well-crafted books appealing, but I think I like or dislike a piece of writing based on the text alone.

[FredH]

All I know is, I want to read Agonizing Resurrection, but can't afford to spend $160 on it--so I very much wish there were a Kindle edition.

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Gray House

... but I think I like or dislike a piece of writing based on the text alone.

Yes, but we are in a new world. The audit-trail of published text on paper (of several centuries) has now come to a halt - about to jump some hurdle or missing link into the nothingness of electronica. You may be right in what you say above. But at least we need to pause and think about it before making the final leap...

Is text just text? If yes, no problem.

[Piranesi]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

Is text just text? If yes, no problem.

According to D. F. McKenzie, the bibliographer, texts cannot be reduced to their semantic content. In the essay, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, he argued that the material form in which texts (all forms of texts) are transmitted influences their meaning. As a bibliographer, his main concern was the author’s and printer’s role in forming the work, the historical setting of the work, and the reader’s reception of the text, etc.

One example is the hand-marbled pages in Tristram Shandy which ”is necessarily different and yet integral with the text. (...) Most modern editions, if they do attempt to include them, and do not settle merely for a note of their original presence, will print a black-and-white image of them which is uniform in every copy of the edition. By doing that, of course, they subvert Sterne’s intention to embody an emblem of non-specific intention, of difference, of undetermined meaning, of the very instability of text from copy to copy.”

Sterne, I believe, would have loved e-readers or e-books or whatever these modern gadgets are called. In contrast to the printed book, digital files are an extremely instable medium for preservation, and the gadgets themselves become fast obsolete.

Milton wrote: ”Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life.” (Areopagitica)

To a bibliophile, or one who as Nemonymous considers ”fiction as religion”, the book itself becomes an object of art and devotion – a fetish – because it is an embodiment of text. The form effect meaning. The love of printed books is a sensual love, and the book-lover is, as Anatole France observed, just as mad as courting couples.

[Draugen]

My opinion is that it's a good thing if more people will read an author if their work is available in a format they prefer, and a good thing to offer choice. For many people though, it seems the preference is for something more affordable, rather than something electronic.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in 'e-books'. Im not particularly rich, and at times made a few sacrifices in order to own some of the more expensive books.

Glancing at my moderately sized library, I'm struck by how evocative it can be - memories of era's and places, and connections that have been built over my lifetime. For the most part, not even expensive books - for example I own most of the Clark Ashton Smith panther series of old, cheap, mass produced paperbacks found from various 2nd hand bookshops and charity shops. Many of them wonderfully tatty - they were a couple of decades old even when I got my hands on them in my early 20s.

The text is of course whats important. But it seems to me that the mode of delivery can enhance the experiance - a physical object can have memories, aesthetics, nostalgia and other ephemeral associations that a download on a kindle will simply never have.

[mongoose]

"In contrast to the printed book, digital files are an extremely instable medium for preservation, and the gadgets themselves become fast obsolete."

While digital files certainly do have a degree of fragility (increasingly mitigated by cloud-based storage - or not?), one wonders how many books were permanently and definitively lost to human civilization (never to be seen/read again by anyone ever) when the physical library at Alexandria ceased to exist. Medieval scholars state that some books we do know of today survived in only a single physical copy in a single remote monestary during the "Dark Ages." Further, how far are we away from that potential today when certain books (some of Mr. Ligotti's?) have only the most limited of physical print runs?

[EemeliJ]

The case of e-books seems, in a way, similar to that in Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" — though Mr. Akeley's cylinder-friend is not all text. Nor, in contrast, does the electronical book seem as hideous. Or at least, to me it does not.

This thread is excellent.

[slayn666]

Quote Originally Posted by Piranesi

In contrast to the printed book, digital files are an extremely instable medium for preservation, and the gadgets themselves become fast obsolete.

The first half of this statement is simply not true. Data proliferates too quickly, is backed up too much, and is too easy to transmit to new storage media for anything to ever be truly lost. Meanwhile, everyone on this forum has at least one book where only a few hundred physical copies exist, so there is a very real cap on how many accidents can happen before that book no longer exists.

Except not really, because chances are excellent that the publisher has a digital copy of that book, with numerous backups, and could just print more if circumstances call for it.