Over at HTMLGiant, Nick Antosca posted this about the ethics of printing book length documents in a digital age: “It’s obnoxiously wasteful to print manuscripts. You have no excuse.”
But in the comments section, Gigantic editor and Rumpus contributor Lincoln Michel rushed to the defense of paper. “Bottom line is millions and millions of people find [reading manuscripts on computer screens] really annoying, kind of like vuvuzlas, whether you individually do or not.”
What say you, Rumpus readers? Would you rather read a novel in print, or do environmental concerns affect your decision?
5 responses
1. Print copies do not disappear. You do not need batteries, electricity, etc. to read them, unless it is after dark. 2. They look nice on a shelf. 3. It is far easier to look up a single fact in a print book. 4. You can loan a print book to someone else. 5. Print copies are not made obsolete by a new software program or a new hardware device. 6. I like to read lying down, which is easy to do with a print book. 7. It is often easier to carry around one print book and read it in any situation, unobtrusively. 8. You can recycle printed paper much more easily than recycling an electronic device.
If my options are printing out a novel on 8.5*11 inch paper (even assuming I do it double-sided) versus reading it on my laptop, then the paper wins, even though both options are full of suck, and the chances that I’ll read neither copy are pretty high. If it’s a document type that I can read on a portable e-reader, even if it’s my phone, then the e-copy is without a doubt preferable. I don’t see a book as part of the discussion here–it’s a separate category. Manuscript, to me, means currently unpublished.
I have to quit on the computer screen reading until I find some vision insurance. I could see myself going to a Kindle or iPad or something (again, once I stop being a graduate student). But that would be for mss. reading. I love actual books too much to give up on them.
While I don’t recommend shredding entire forests for the sake of publishing, I’m with Marilyn on this one. Folks who think digital is all green and dandy have their head in the sand (um, toxic e-waste and electricity consumption anyone?). Even a simple Google search puts CO2 into the environment: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
Just to reiterate here–the post this piece is referring to is not comparing published books with e-copies of the same. It’s talking about printing out a hard copy of a submission or a manuscript versus reading an electronic version of the same. In that comparison, I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that reading an e-version is not greener than one printed out on the office computer.
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