Nixon President, on the radio Marvin Gaye with What’s Going On launches his cry against the War in Vietnam, for 41 weeks Love Story by Erich Segal is a New York Times bestseller. It is 1971. Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, decides to use the computer made available by the University and connected to the Arpanet network, the forerunner of the Internet, to do something extraordinary. Not everyone at the time was able to handle a powerful computer and Hart was not interested in using it to process data: he wanted to exploit the potential of the network that depended on that electronic brain, a Xerox Sigma V. In those summer days, flyers were distributed in the streets in view of the national holiday of the 4th of July and so he decided to transcribe the Declaration of Independence into electronic format, gradually making more and more texts, classics, not covered by copyright, available for download. He founded Project Gutenberg, involving volunteers, to extend this virtual library. The motto of this initiative? “Breaking down the barriers of ignorance and illiteracy and bringing reading to as many people as possible.”
Between dream and reality
E-books have also been a great dream of spreading knowledge. However, at present they are not synonymous with equality and democratic access to culture. Researchers Faverio and Perrin estimated that 30% of people have read an e-book in 2021 in the United States and digital books are more likely to be read by the richest and most educated.
The e-book has certainly paved the way for self-publishing. Fifty years after Hart’s invention, 2.3 million books were self-published in the United States in 2021, according to Bowker data. “We must consider, however, that the quality of reading devices is important and devices have their cost and this can naturally slow down widespread access to this type of tools, which are technologies with costs that are not very high but not indifferent. I wouldn’t say that digital has democratized in itself, but that it has contributed to expanding the publishing market”, explains Gino Roncaglia, philosopher at the University of Roma Tre and expert in digital publishing.
The environmental impact
We cannot ignore the environmental impact. E-books have some advantages: they do not require paper. Consider that the fifth chapter of the Harry Potter saga, “The Order of the Phoenix”, with its 766 pages in the first edition, is equivalent to 5 million trees cut down, according to the experts at SaveOnEnergy.
Not to mention energy costs. E-books do not need to be shipped, because they are downloaded directly. This also reduces the carbon footprint. Among the cons, the internet connection required by the device, the need to charge it and then dispose of it. The University of Tokyo has tried to solve the problem, reaching a conclusion: it all depends on the amount of books read. E-books are more eco-friendly if over the three years of life of the device, you read 15 or more books, 25 if we are talking about tablets. Reading one or two books a year on Kindle or using both paper and digital would not be enough to save on emissions. In short, if you are a strong reader, to pollute less, it is better to switch to electronic, rather than buying new books.
The cognitive front
On the cognitive front, researchers at the University of Valencia have recently shown that text comprehension is six to eight times better when we read physical books than when we read digital ones. Reading a paper book is a more immersive experience, without distractions.
As we flip through pages we create a sort of “index” in the brain, mapping and ordering information. The experience of digital reading is flatter, immaterial, and therefore leaves less. “Probably this lower memorization is linked to the fact that the Layout is poorer,” Roncaglia explains.
What Italians think
Italians still mostly prefer paper, but in 2023, e-book sales in our country grew by 2.5%. A trend that is also observed in the rest of the world. Statista predicts that the global number of users in the “e-book” segment of the market will steadily increase over the next 3 years and that we will reach 1.1 billion users in 2027.
But to take off, e-books must overcome the limitations of the devices. On the one hand, paper and electronic ink devices that do not allow animation and remain in black and white (for now); and on the other, the limitations of tablets and smartphones, whose colors are perfect but which emit light, making them difficult to read outdoors. It is not enough to solve these technical inconveniences. “Overcoming the ergonomic validity and perfection of the paper book is not easy,” admits Roncaglia. But it must also be said that e-books have not yet expressed their full potential. “Electronic books become interesting if we imagine a book form that is different from the traditional one, with greater multimedia and multicodiality and then we will be able to exploit the potential of the digital ecosystem much more. These editions, however, are complex and have higher costs, a significant investment must be made and there must be a vision for the future of the book,” concludes Roncaglia.