The 1830′s Version of “The Book is Dieing”

I’m reading Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the early mornings on the elliptical machine. The novel, which is set in 1482, centers around the Notre Dame Cathedral. In fact, the church could be considered the principal character in the book. The cathedral building marks the passing of time and the tumultuous changes facing Paris. The building is timeless and unchanging, the perfect foil to the unrest that gives rise to words like:

“I tell you, sir, this is the end of the world. The students were never so riotous before; it’s the cursed artillery, bombards, serpentines, and particularly printing, that other German pestilence, No more manuscripts, no more books! Printing is the death to bookselling. The end of the world is at hand.” (p. 50)

Hugo assigned these words to a university “licensed copyrighter,” who was certain that the advent of the Gutenberg printing press would destroy the book industry. Had the copyrighter  been more honest, he would have said that the printing press threatened to strip him of his value as a university employee. The printing press was democratizing access to books and making him obsolete.

Elsewhere in The Hunchback a priest laments that “The book will kill the building.” These are more honest words. The sculpture and stained glass were a curriculum for the illiterate masses of the Middle Ages. Clergy used their ornate cathedral to teach the basic tenets of faith to their congregation. But soon the Bible would become accessible to the common person. Less than a century later, Luther translated the Bible into German and made it readily available to the masses. Reformation decentralized Biblical knowledge and weakened the people’s dependency on the buildings.

One-hundred-and-eighty years after the publication of The Hunchback, we’re still fretting the death of the book. Amazon.com regularly reveals outlandish numbers that suggest ebooks are outpacing traditional book sales. E-reader prices keep falling. And again, there’s collective anxiety over the future of the book.

The truth is, the book isn’t “dieing,” it’s simply diversifying into print and digital forms. What is changing is power. Hugo’s copyrighter and clergyman felt anxiety over an impending loss of power. Today’s publishers face the same anxieties as they struggle to find the correct balance between print and digital offerings. Booksellers, with hundreds of expensive books in the store, and owners of coffeehouses wonder if their “third places” will go the way of the record store. Small platformed authors, like myself, wonder if all this democratization is code for “There’s an infinitely larger pool of authors in which to enjoy obscurity.”

The book is alive and well. It’s the power that is shifting again.

I’m working to sell my latest manuscript and Victor Hugo provides me with comfort. I cannot control any of these rapid changes. I can, however, remained disciplined and write and promote and speak. The key to an author’s success has not changed: write a compelling work that commands the attention of the gatekeepers, whether they be the copyrighters and clergy of Hugo’s day, or the editors and blog readers of ours.