I had the weirdest dream, wherein my family moved into a multi-room apartment. Along came a man and his wife who claimed they had the legal right to occupy a room in any one of a multitude of properties in the city. We had no choice except to allow his presence. But when he began to redecorate, I got angry. He replaced my pictures on the walls, changed the furniture around, and put out his own knickknacks. But what fueled my fury the most was when he covered up my bookshelves. I could no longer see my collection of books—in particular, the hardcover mystery novels I’d written.
The man had no idea I was a writer, so he didn’t understand when I desperately began moving his belongings out of the way to search the shelves. I became frantic to find the books with my name on them.
When I awoke, I realized how much those shelves of books meant to me. These are my legacy, more so than anything I can leave my children. The books I’ve written will hopefully stay around in libraries and used bookstores and people’s minds long after I’m gone. Perhaps I am arrogant in this belief, and I will be forgotten after my demise. But unless there’s a big bonfire like in the science fiction tales or folks stop reading altogether, the books will still be around somewhere.
So where does that leave e-pubbed only authors? With a digital file? And why does hardcover seem more durable than mass market paperbacks? Will trade editions stand the test of time?
When you see pictures of those big manor houses in England, they all have the most sumptuous libraries. Is this tradition to be lost forever in the digital age? Will no one care to have home libraries anymore, regarding books as dust collectors rather than cherished tomes of knowledge, adventure and imagination?
This legacy is something to think about when you make your choice about where and how to publish your work. Holding a print book with my name on it still means a lot to me.
This post does not address other parts of leaving a creative legacy, such as donating your literary materials to a library collection. Those provisions should be included in your will along with instructions for ongoing management of your creative literary estate.
Here are some more shelves with some writing references plus more of my books in different formats.
How do you feel about leaving your books in print formats versus digital for posterity?
It’s like pictures. No one seems to have albums anymore, and I miss that. Getting out the albums and looking through the events that shaped our lives. Instead, they boot up the laptop or hook the laptop up to the 80 inch television set and yes, the clarity is amazing but…
The photo album (or the hardcover book) never needs to be charged. It’s always there, ready to be appreciated with a flipping of pages that the very young, the very old and anybody in between can easily handle. And that’s crucial to maintaining a legacy.
Sure they take up room. Or…they enhance the room. I have a bookcase in every room of our home. I think I’ll go put pictures up on my blog…thanks for the idea!
We recently held my brother’s memorial service and I agreed to become the keeper of the family photos and his geneaology files. We shipped 60 pounds home with me. This winter I will start sorting and cataloguing it. I will also be scanning it and possibly creating some print editions via Createspace for the family. But I also plan to de-volume it so it may only be 30 pounds when I am done and the next “keeper of the keys” is chosen.
I agree on photos 1000% Holding a physical photo that has been held by countless others is a tangible link to the past.
I do love my books. I lost about 5 big boxes in the recent flooding and it was very hurtful. I felt like I had let the books down. Doesn’t mean I do not love my Kindle to infinity squared, there is something magic about the physical books. However, my Kindle is a lot easier to grab and run in case of flooding.
Terri
What I did with the photos I acquired from my mother was to throw out the scenery pix without people in them. Then I made a scrapbook/album of her life up until the time she got married. Doing that seemed to honor her and preserve her life to hand down to the next generations. Maybe you could work on something similar for your brother’s pictures. I’ve also been sorting them into categories; i.e. family, friends, etc.
Yes, photo albums are another item that has gone digital. It’s definitely not the same to view pictures online or on your cell phone. We have numerous photo albums and they track our early family lives. But it is a good idea to scan some of those photos into the cloud for backup just in case natural disaster strikes. It’ll be up to our kids to decide what to do with these albums someday.
For me, the books that have the most powerful impact, even if I first got them as e-books, I would buy a paper copy. While yes, some folks publish e-book only, I would assume that if a book had so great an impact on me, it most likely did with many others & is also in print.
And if for some reason they didn’t, if an author found out how much a book touched someone & the touched was willing to pay, I’m sure the author would make a way for a print version.
BK Jackson
It’s so easy to make Createspace versions available that everyone who self-pubs might think about offering a print edition. The authors who go with digital first publishers in ebook only won’t have that choice.
Nancy, I’ll always be grateful that I got into this business when books were made of paper, ink, and glue. I love having my earlier books in hard copy. But as an ebook publisher, I have been able to reach many more readers than I ever was able to before. I’m married to a man who has always loved to read and has used rare book services many times to try to find out-of-print books. Those days, thankfully, are over, as so many of those books are now readily available in ebook format. It’s the words that matter, not what you hold in your hands. This new age of digital information is preserving the written word and making it accessible in ways we never could have imagined. I guess my point is that long after our paper based books have fallen to ruin, our words may still remain. I love that people enjoy my books. My goal in writing has always been simply to entertain and hopefully offer a little insight along the way. How lucky we are to be able to do just that.
Yes, we can reach many more readers than before in the digital world, but I am still glad I have physical copies of my books to pass on to my kids. And I probably still have some of yours on my shelf!
I agree! The only copies of books I keep now, besides my own, are copies of my friends’ works and books of authors I truly admire. I love seeing their names and adding new ones to the shelves as their careers grow. Definitely more satisfying than just having a list on my Kindle.
At my bagel store this morning, there I am with my New York Times (paper!) and this guy next to me felt compelled to tell me that he didn’t need a “paper paper.”
The condescension in his voice was enough to make me want to punch his ugly face. But he was older than me and it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.
I love my REAL newspapers, photo albums, books. If that makes ME the old fart so be it. Besides, who the hell wants to do a crossword on line?
Grrr.
I buy the Sunday newspaper so I can pore through the ads and look for articles of interest to clip out that may provide inspiration for a story down the road. And maybe I’m old fashioned, but I still like to thumb through magazines rather than have to turn on my iPad.
It would be pretty cool if people were still reading them. Some stories and situations are dated and would lose their appeal–like stories centered on Nixon or waiting in long lines to buy gas. Others never seem to lose their appeal–The Maltese Falcon, Last of the Mohicans. I like hunting down the old songs on youtube and downloading them. I feel like I’m saving them, so I don’t forget. I just found some great tunes by the Commodores. Amazing.
Cheers!
What is nice, as Judy mentioned, is that these old songs and stories are now available in the cloud whereas before you had to research the rare bookstores. It’s cool to be able to access out of print works in a new digital format. The ideal would be to have a choice and have access to them either way. Sure, old stories may be dated but others stand the test of time.
Jim,
I am right there with you on finding old music gems via internet. That’s how I found Dick Dale and the Del Tone’s “Misirlu.” AKA the theme from “Pulp Fiction.” Here’s the original from 1963:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU0RMV_II8
Thanks for that one, Kris. While listening to that, I bumped into Santo & Johnny and then I discovered this one here, by Jeff Beck called Pork Pie Hat. It’s one of those 3 AM / old lava lamp kinda slow-moving tunes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxM4Rj5pOQ
Ha! Thanks for the link Jim. Never heard that one before…good stuff! That REALLY takes me back to college, listening to Beck Ola. I really wanted to be “The Girl From Mill Valley.”
Hi, Nancy,
As usual, you’ve written a very meaningful blog. I now have a digital camera but I still take photos as well with my old camera and get the film developed to share with relatives. I think of myself as old-fashioned, but the fact remains I like print copy both in photos and books. Novels that are published as digital or ebooks just don’t seem “real” to me. My first ebook, BEYOND THE BO TREE, a collection of romantic short stories, has just been published on Amazon Kindle. I’m not certain it was a good decision because I would rather have the collection in print first. But it does seem to be a sign of the times.
If you’ve self-pubbed the book, you can put out a print version via Createspace. Then you’ll have a physical copy. Are you planning to do so?
Books in digital format are very real to me, as I can access them on my Kindle or iPad, but for books with my name on them…I still like holding a paper book in my hand. These are tough decisions we have to make as writers in this changing time.
Two nights ago, I too had a vivid dream. I was a boy again, maybe thirteen. My parents had gone shopping and left me tied up in the laundry room as usual.
A moth sat down on my chest. He showed me mental images of my father being run over in a grocery store parking lot. I knew the moth would come back and I would kill people at his behest.
I awoke and made an appointment with a psychiatrist.
I’m glad I don’t have your kind of dreams! LOL 🙂
No munchkin Kukla clown’s though? This dream may not be all bad then.
I like my physical books and I like my ebooks. (When my husband started to complain about the number of books lying around, it was helpful to start accumulating some in ebook.)
I don’t mind fiction in ebook, and even some nonfiction, but the art books that I have I couldn’t stand to have in ebook only. Also, it’s hard to use reference books when they’re ebooks. I find it necessary to have both, and honestly would like copies for both so I have my easily portable library I can carry with me everywhere as well as my nice physical copies.
I agree about reference books and art books. Although I look most stuff up on the Internet today, I do have some reference books with diagrams that would not be the same online.
For me, if one person got that great escape and liked it. I have a legacy…
One of the reasons I like Createspace. While my books are primarily digital, every one of my novels is in paperback via Createspace as well so that I have a physical copy in case the world goes dark and no one believes I was once a novelist.
As far as pictures, my wife used to be really into scrap-booking. But once things like pinterest and other image sites came to life that interest faded. We still have boxes full of old pictures, but we also have cds full of gigs of digital pics that I’d love to get onto paper and into albums or scrapbooks.
Sites like Snapfish will take your digital photos and print them in an album. It’s just time consuming to sort through them. All of my photos are digital now. As for Createspace, it’s a viable format for putting books into print.
After seeing friends lose homes in forest fires the last two years in Colorado, I recommend scanning those family photos and maintaining e-copies in cyberspace in some manner. When people lost everything, the treasures they missed most were photos and hardcopy books. That being said, leaving hardcopy novels to my grandchildren feels more like a legacy than leaving a link to an electronic copy.
Catherine Dilts
No doubt for backup, cyberspace copies are essential. Some of my more important photos I’ll keep in a Dropbox folder, along with all of my book files. That said, I still have a hardcover mystery written by a deceased aunt. It means a lot to me to have that book, like a piece of generational history.
When I was a technical writer, I would pester the president of one company to take the backup disks for my software manuals home in case the building burned to the ground. He never did. Then a forest fire burned his house to the ground. He and his wife escaped with the clothes on their backs and their cars. Everything else became toast.
On another subject: Where’s the Thursday posting???? I feel abandoned here. And it raining–RAINING!!