Should I Read This: Maybe
Book Seller Link (non-affiliate, but I do know the owner): Digital Inc. a book by Richard Curtis
Author’s Website: Richard Curtis – Literary Agent, Author, Playwright and Authors' Advocate
I do not give out negative reviews, as a rule. (I have in the past, so I am aware that this is not an entirely a hard and fast rule) I don’t feel there is any point. The world is full of books worth reading, and I prefer to point people to ones they would enjoy. As a result, there have been books that I have read, or tried to read, and not reviewed. And this book almost fit into that pattern. Almost, but not quite.
Digital Inc, by former publisher and still agent Richard Curtis, is a look at the transition the publishing industry made from the back end of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, with an emphasis on the development of ebooks. It is a well written book, but it lacks depth. The author spends a lot of time on the details of the transition, and patting his own back for forming one of the first e book publishers (to be fair, some pats are due. He did anticipate the new market), but hardly takes a position on almost any of the issues surrounding the transition. That history had plenty of controversy, and those controversies not only continue to affect publishing today but many of them are still live questions. Curtis takes almost no position on any of them.
Take the Amazon vs Apple book contracts. Publishers, pushed by Amazon’s market share to adopt pricing and policies for ebooks that were severely disadvantageous to them, conspired with Apple to have standard contracts that would have forced Amazon to raise their prices. A judge found this illegal, but there are questions of anti-trust around Amazon itself and whether it was manipulating the market. Curtis describes these controversies, but never takes a side. He goes so far as to claim that it was plausible Amazon was working on behalf of customers — a level of naivety that would get kindergartners calling you a sucker.
Curtis can take sides if he wants. He spends a lot pixels attacking people who pirate books. It is the most passionate portion of the book. But even there, he pulls punches. He discusses, for example, Corey Doctorow’s defense of destroying intellectual property laws. He doesn’t, however, try to counter those arguments — he merely lists them. He cannot, it seems, even take his own side in an argument he obviously feels passionate about. He also elides what happened to his employees when he sold his publishing firm — crediting them with his success, but hinting that they didn’t get any of the windfall he did when he sold out.
The book does have a lot of interesting information about the early days of ebooks. It does a good job of not only explaining the technology, ut also explaining the market forces and cultural norms that kept e-books a sideshow for so long. Being at the start, Curtis has a good understanding of the situation and storytellers skill in conveying it to us. If only he used some that skill to actually take sides.
Curtis remains an agent, and I wonder if that is the source of his hesitancy. The best books about subjects are often written by outsiders or people willing to burn every bridge they set their eyes upon on the way out. Curtis has remained an agent, and otherwise active in the publishing world. He, unlike many other insiders, still has plenty to lose. And thus, I think, wittingly or not, he pulls his punches. He has too may fscks to give, so to speak, to be a really interesting chronicler.
Having said that, the book is well written, it does cover an interesting and important time in the publishing industry, and Curtis does cover both the chronology and the technology clearly. It is a good, solid overview of an important, interesting time. But that is all it is. the lack of depth, the disinterest or inability to speak to the most interesting, controversial, or pressing questions make the book less than it could be. As an overview, it is very good. As a history, an examination of what made the time important, it is an inch deep.