Reluctance to engage

[alicebentley]

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) twittered this morning: E-readers Leave Graphic Novels Out In The Cold http://bit.ly/kXgtuu
The link takes you to an article on GoodReads (a fun website of its own!) that laments how ereaders don't handle graphics well enough to support graphic novels, and the resultant loss of creative effort in that field.

There are so many things wrong with that position that I'm not sure where to start - but that isn't the point of this post.

I realized as I tried to craft a response that I didn't want to do the work that a conversation of this topic, with someone who clearly doesn't share my background on it, would require. Building up the whole history of ereaders, and downloadable pdfs, market options for writers and how it's all changing fast enough that you have to be specific about your time frame when giving examples was just a lot more effort than I felt any resulting conversation would reward.

And I'm surprised at my reluctance. I would love to have this sort of exchange verbally, say at a convention or party, but this sort of essay-exchange just leaves me cold.

Perhaps this is the core of why I'm just not posting much here, or elsewhere. I gotta think about this.

Comments

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

It's hard to "educate" people, isn't it? Especially when you think "oh c'mon, whaddya mean you don't *already* know this? where have you been???" It happens to me, umm, regularly. Sometimes then I have a second thought about what a strange & wonderful trip it's been, and that the reason I know so many odd-ball things is because I have tons of cool friends and lots of "experiences" on which to draw, and so I forgive the person their ignorance. Yes, it's true, I've had folks call me arrogant. But I'll bet those same people can't do half of what I can do. Besides, that's not the point of this post!

Honestly, Alice, I think you're probably just a teensy-weensy bit down because of your job situation. Also, writing about this sort of thing would take a good bit of effort and not yield nearly the positive reinforcement that a face-to-face encounter might generate. So those are important points. It might be more fun to see if you could do some research on the person who wrote the PW post -- is this a young person who doesn't know any better, and therefore deserves to be enlightened? -- or is it an old fogey who can be either ignored, or marked to become a tasty green cracker in the next go-round?

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

It's a lot more work to have that conversation in text. Time delays, lost nuance, coding in hypertext, enduring flame wars if someone misinterprets something -- it's exhausting just to think about. That conversation in person is a stimulating evening in the consuite, after which everyone is glad to have been in it even if it it encountered speed bumps along the way.

podcast? Skype? I don't know the answer....

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Neil's first fallacy of the internet: The internet "is" what it was the day I got there.
e-readers/tablets are just a couple of years old. The notion that the screen quality of today will not improve is . . . I'm really not sure which insulting, dismissive word to use. They'll be fine for comics very soon (human time).