A chilly evening last week became warmer as publishers, writers and book lovers gathered in the Shanghai bookstore Garden Books. Though they were there to talk about literary love and romance, it was the subject of e-books that buzzed through the evening. Just as e-books made their presence felt at another very different literary occasion at a yoga studio in the same week.

 

Book stores, literary gatherings, cultural hot spots like the Glamour Bar, are all experiencing the same phenomenon - the debate about e-books being better than paper books?

 

At the Darshana Healing Yogic Studio, author Shamash Alidina, on his first visit to China, was talking to people about his book Mindfulness for Dummies. But he was happy to discuss the new era of publishing.

 

"It's not important if it's electronic or if it's on paper. What's important is the content," he said of books. His Dummies book is available both on Kindle and in paper form.

 

And while he said that the form of the book was irrelevant, he was very excited about the electronic version. For not only is it lighter than the paper version, it also provides quick and easy feedback for an author.

 

For instance, as people read the digital book, they highlight certain sections. He can discover which sections are being highlighted and learn where the interests are being focused. His next work can include more of these topics.

 

Alidina enjoys having this connection with his readers just as he likes being able to create books that integrate audio and video. This is an amazing age for authors and readers, he said.

 

He can write something, another person can read it, then contact him with a question and he can respond. All of this happens very quickly and Alidina has not only helped people understand his works more but he has made some close new friends.

 

He thinks that people who are strongly attached to print should not worry. Paper books will not disappear although we should not fear change.

"If you go back a few thousand years, people didn't write on paper. Information was handed down from a teacher and students had to memorize," he said.

 

A love of print

 

Over at the talk at Garden Books last Thursday, people from a wide range of backgrounds were chiming in with their feelings about paper and electronic books.

"A lot of people love books and they don't want to see them disappear. Some are attached to regular books because they worry that if they buy a piece of technology they will need to replace it in a year," said bookshop employee Leigh Atwood.

 

He said that he often talks to people who love print books. His own shop contains thousands of English-language books and a comfortable lounge area to sit and read.

 

Shop owner Chen Weiye said that inviting authors to the shop had always been important. It added a cultural and social component to the place that could not be duplicated online.

 

Likewise, and understandably as Chen was in the paper book business and did not sell electronic books, he preferred paper books. A paper book, to him, was more than a simple object - rather it was something that a person gave with love to another person.

 

It was also something that could be passed down for generations and had extra meaning because the book was once owned by a relative. Or, as an item on a shelf, a book was excellent decoration. A visitor could discover your character by the books on your bookshelf. "I don't like e-books," Chen said.

 

His feelings were echoed by Professor David L-Loiselle who went to Garden Books to purchase Paul French's latest book Midnight in Peking.

 

"I don't even have a device," he said, discussing electronic books. For him there was romance about paper books. He loved the feel of paper and the weight of a book. He liked flipping open a book after looking at the artwork on the cover. After a lifetime of reading, these things were familiar.

 

Duncan Hewitt, a professional journalist, had also never read an electronic book. "There's nothing like owning a book. The cover, the size and the weight of it - it has a character of its own. I personally find that much more appealing," he said.

 

Hewitt is almost constantly reading books, usually before going to sleep at night. His love for paper books is like his love for printed newspaper and magazines and he describes reading any paper publication as a "much more satisfying experience" than reading things in an electronic format.

 

Though he understands the advantages of electronic books - their environmental impact and their convenience, he chooses to only read paper books.

 

Less enthusiastic

 

Book lover Amy Goldman was also at Garden Books on the night and is less than enthused about the direction of book publishing which is heading towards more electronic downloads.

 

"I'm beginning to feel as though I don't have any other option. I started getting them on iPad because I realized there would soon be no other way being that I'm in China. I'm downloading books now so I'm taking the digital trip. But I'm hating it every pixel of the way," she said.

 

The problem with living in China is that an English-language reader cannot find all the books that he or she might want. Bookshops are extensive, but they do not contain everything.

 

Goldman downloads electronic books and she likes the fact that this is not as wasteful as buying a paper book, but she is disappointed with electronic books. One problem she finds is that she does not remember information as well as when she reads something on paper.

 

As a publisher, Harvey Tomlinson has frequently heard such complaints about electronic books. The founder and CEO of Make-Do Publishing, Tomlinson makes his books available in both formats, paper and electronic. He said that paper books still have a place in the market, but they need to change.

 

"I think that the rise of e-books is a challenge for publishers. I know that people have an attachment to printed books, but I think that in the age of e-books, in order for print books to have an existence, they need to be very special. They need to be desirable objects from a design point of view," Tomlinson said.

 

He paged through a copy of Make-Do's Shanghai Girls and pointed out the graphics and illustrations used. Like this book with its bold and attractive designs, publishers are trying to make their books more interesting. He does not see paper books disappearing - not soon anyway.

 

"I hope not. Maybe it's because, like a lot of people in the book industry, I have a sentimental attachment to books. I grew up knowing the touch of a book and the weight of a book. I think that a lot of people are like me," Tomlinson said.

 

He said that not all books fit an electronic format. Some writers, like Samuel Beckett, are so complex that a reader often has to flick back to earlier pages to understand the writing.

 

But there are undeniable advantages to electronic books. When Shanghai Girls was featured on American television, Americans could buy the electronic version immediately. There was no distribution of the paper version in the US, so people there could only buy the e-version.

 

Tomlinson is looking forward to publishing other electronic books including a book on Tang poetry that will combine video and music with text.

 

Different feelings

 

Make-Do writers Chen Xiwo and Mina Hanbury-Tenison are conflicted over e-books.

 

"There is not a great deal of difference in principal," said Chen. As a reader he enjoys both types of books and he has become used to the electronic form. However, as a writer, his feelings are quite different.

 

"I remember the first book I had published. I paid for the publication myself and as soon as I saw it, I treasured it. There's no question - an e-book is not the same," he said.

 

Chen likes to travel and visit bookstores to meet readers where he signs his books for them - this is fun.

 

Hanbury-Tenison, author of Shanghai Girls: Uncensored and Unsentimental, is also in two minds.

 

"I have a Kindle and hundreds of books on my many shelves and I have to say that I'm kind of torn between them. But I think that you need both," she said.

Her venture into the digital world came about in a strange way. Her book was first released as a paper publication. She wanted the book to be special so Shanghai Girls was published with a decorative cover, as something that would be read by women and perhaps even given at bridal showers.

 

Then she received a forlorn message from a man who said that he had been embarrassed reading the book on the subway because it had such a feminine cover. She then contacted the publisher and asked for it to be published electronically.

 

Following the success of the electronic version, she said that she will start having more of her work published like this. She has plans to write with the electronic format in mind. In the future, she will start writing in serial form, publishing her work bit by bit, as she writes it. Hanbury-Tenison said that this is the likely path for many writers and it continued an old tradition.

 

"I think that in a funny way, e-books prime people for what is basically a 19th century kind of serial when people would get novels in a serial format and they would have to wait," she said. Writers like Charles Dickens wrote installments to novels and published them in newspapers and magazines.

 

She said electronic books had a further advantage in helping second-language learners. As a student of Chinese, she appreciates that she can read an electronic Chinese book and very easily, with a quick click of a mouse, look up a word.

 

That is an advantage that perhaps Amay Wang would appreciate. Owner of the Bell Café and Bar, Wang stocks around 150 books for people to read and trade. She said that up to 20 people visit the café on a normal day. She sees them having fun with the books and she gets a bit jealous.

 

For herself, however, reading English books is a chore. Currently she is reading China Road, the story of a motorcyclist's trip across China. For her reading the paper book involves frequent visits to a dictionary to look up difficult words. This has turned her off reading. "I don't have much time to read. It's a lot of hard work."