INTERVISTE | Perchè gli e-books non fanno paura

Pochi giorni fa scrivendo il post "King & Kindle" dove davo il mio punto di vista sulle nuove tecnologie in campo editoriale ho fatto riferimento ad un'intervista a King, pubblicata sul Wall Street Journal,  nel lontano 2010 e che mi ricordavo di aver letto perchè rimasta appiccicata nella mia mente poichè era uno dei primi articoli sull'argomento che mi capitava di leggere.

Navigando sulla rete sono riuscito a rintracciarla e ve la propongo (ovviamente in lingua originale, non ci sarebbe gusto altrimenti).

Buona lettura.

" 

Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories.

His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars."

In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991.

He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."

Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an "early adopter." Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

More recently, Mr. King's novella "Ur" was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In the interview below, Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing: 

•  Do we get the same reading experience with e-books?

I don't know. I think it changes the reading experience, that it's a little more ephemeral. And it's tougher if you misplace a character. But I downloaded one 700-page book onto my Kindle that I was using for research. It didn't have an index, but I was able to search by key words. And that's something no physical book can do.

• What about people who love physical books?

I'm one of them. I have thousands of books in my house. In a weird way, it's embarrassing. I recently downloaded Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants," but I also bought a copy to put on the shelf. I want books as objects. It's crazy, but there are people who collect stamps, too.

• Is the future of publishing all digital?

It's a hard subject to get a handle on. People like myself who grew up with books have a prejudice towards them. I think a lot of critics would argue that the Kindle is the right place for a lot of books that are disposable, books that are read on the plane. That might include my own books, if not all, then some.

• Any drawbacks?

I wonder if one or two atom bombs went off, would electromagnetic pulses erase the world's reading material from the servers where they are stored?

•  How much time do you spend reading digitally?

It's approaching half of what I read. I recently bought a print edition of Henning Mankell's "Faceless Killers" and the type was too small. A paper book is an object with a nice cover. You can swat flies with it, you can put it on the shelf. Do you remember the days when people got up to manually turn the channels on their TVs? Nobody does that any more, and nobody would want to go back. This is just something that is going to happen.

• What's going to happen to bookstores?

The bookstores are empty. It's sad. I remember a time when Fifth Avenue was lousy with bookstores. They're all gone.

• Would you consider publishing one of your big books yourself online?

I've considered it, but not seriously. The thought has crossed my mind. I didn't do "Ur" for money. I did it because it was interesting. I'm fairly prolific. It took three days, and I've made about $80,000. You can't get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It's ridiculous.

" 

Enrico