“So it’s possible,” Rockmore was saying, “to make the thing about the size of a paperback book. Its screen would be the size of a book page, and it could display a page of printed text or full-color illustrations. . .”
“Do you realize how much color separations cost?” Upton snapped. Instantly he regretted his harshness. He started to reach for the Kleenex box on the shelf behind his chair.
But Rockmore did not burst into tears, as he usually did. Instead he smirked. “No color separations, Papa. It’s all done electronically.”
“No color separations?” Lipton found that hard to believe. “No color separations. No printing at all. No paper. It’s like having a hand-sized TV set in your. . . er, hand. But the screen can be any page of any book we publish.”
“No printing?” Lipton heard his voice echoing, weakly. “No paper?”
“It’s all done by electronics. Computers.”
Lipton’s mind was in a whirl. He conjured up last month’s cost figures. The exact numbers were a blur in his memory, but they were huge—and most of them came from the need to transport vast tonnages of paper from the pulp mills to the printing plants, and then from the printing plants to the warehouses, and then from the warehouses to the wholesalers, and then. . .
He sat up straighter in his chair. “No paper? Are you certain?”
Mitsui bowed low to the president of Kanagawa. The doughty old man, his silver hair still thick, his dark eyes still alert, sat on the matted floor, dressed in a magnificent midnight-blue kimono. He barely nodded his head at the young engineer and the vice president for innovation, both of whom wore Western business suits.
With a curt gesture, he commanded them to sit. For long moments, nothing was said, as the servants brought the tea. The old man let his favorite, a young woman of heartbreakingly fragile beauty, set out the graceful little cups and pour the steaming tea.
Mitsui held his breath until the v.p. nodded to him. Then, from the inside pocket of his jacket, Mitsui pulled out a slim package, exquisitely wrapped in expensive golden gift paper and tied with a silk bow the same color as the president’s kimono. He held the gift in outstretched arms, presenting it to the old man.
The president allowed a crooked grin to cross his stern visage. As the v.p. knew, he took a childish pleasure in receiving gifts. Very carefully, the old man untied the bow and peeled away the heavy paper. He opened the box and took out an object the size of a paperback book. Most of its front surface was taken up by a video screen. There were three pressure pads at the screen’s bottom, nothing more.
The old man raised his shaggy brows questioningly. The v.p. indicated that he should press the first button, which was a bright green.
The president did, and the little screen instantly showed a listing of titles. Among them were the best selling novels of the month. By pressing the buttons as indicated, the old man got the screen to display the opening pages of half a dozen books within less than a minute.
He smiled broadly, turned to Mitsui and extended his right hand. He clasped the young engineer’s shoulder the way a proud father would grasp his bright young son.
The Evaluation
Lipton sat at the head of the conference table and studied the vice presidents arrayed about him: Editorial, Marketing, Production, Advertising, Promotion, Subsidiary Rights, Legal, Accounting, Personnel, and son-in-law. For the first time in the ten years since Rockmore had married his daughter, Lipton gazed fondly at his son-in-law.
“Gentlemen,” said the president of Hubris Books, then, with his usual smarmy nod to the Editor-in-Chief and the head of Subsidiary Rights, “and ladies. . .”
They were shocked when he invited Rockmore to take the floor, and even more startled when the former chorus boy made a fifteen-minute presentation of the electronic book idea without falling over himself. It was the first time Lipton had asked his son-in-law to speak at the monthly executive board conference, and certainly the first time Rockmore had anything to say that was worth listening to.
Or was it? The assembled vice presidents eyed each other nervously as Rockmore sat down after his presentation. No one wanted to be the first to speak. No one knew which way the wind was blowing. Rockmore sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but maybe this was a trap. Maybe Lipton was finally trying to get his son-in-law bounced out of the company, or at least off the executive board.
They all fidgeted in their chairs, waiting for Lipton to give them some clue as to what they were supposed to think. The president merely sat up at the head of the table, fingers steepled, smiling like a chubby, inscrutable Buddha.
The silence stretched out to an embarrassing length. Finally, Editorial could stand it no longer.
“Another invasion by technology,” she said, her fingers fussing absently with the bow of her blouse. “It was bad enough when we computerized the office. It took my people weeks to make the adjustment. Some of them are still at sea.”
“Then get rid of them,” Lipton snapped. “We can’t stand in the way of progress. Technology is the future. I’m sure of it.”
An almost audible sigh of relief went around the table. Now they knew where the boss stood; they knew what they were supposed to say.
“Well, of course technology is important,” Editorial backtracked, “but I just don’t see how an electronic thingamajig can replace a book. I mean, it’s cold. . . metallic. It’s a machine. A book is. . . well, it’s comforting, it’s warm and friendly, it’s the feel of paper. . .”
“Which costs too damned much,” Lipton said. Accounting took up the theme with the speed of an electronic calculator. “Do you have any idea of what paper costs this company each month?”
“Well, I. . .” Editorial saw that she was going to be the sacrificial lamb. She blushed and lapsed into silence.
“How much would an electronic book sell for?” Marketing asked.
Lipton shrugged. “One dollar? Two?”
Rockmore, from the far end of the table, spoke up. “According to the technical people I’ve spoken to, the price of a book could be less than one dollar.”
“Instead of fifteen to twenty,” Lipton said, “which is what our hardcovers are priced at now.”
“One dollar?” Marketing looked stunned. “We could sell zillions of books at a dollar apiece!”
“We could wipe out the paperback market,” Lipton agreed, happily.
“But that would cut off a major source of income for us,” cried Sub Rights.
“There would still be foreign sales,” said Lipton. “And film and TV rights.”
“I don’t know about TV,” Legal chimed in. “After all, by displaying a book on what is essentially a television screen, we may be construed as utilizing the broadcast TV rights. . .”
The discussion continued right through the morning. Lipton had sandwiches and coffee brought in, and the executive board stayed in conference well past quitting time.
In the port city of Numazu, not far from the blissful snow-covered cone of divine Fujiyama, Kanagawa Industries began the urgent task of converting one of its electronics plants to building the first production run of Mitsui Minimata’s electronic book. Mitsui was given the position of advisor to the chief production engineer, who ran the plant with rigid military discipline. His staff of six hundred (five hundred eighty-eight of them robots) worked happily and efficiently, converting the plant from building navigation computers to the new product.
The Resistance
Editorial sipped her Bloody Mary while Sub Rights stared out the restaurant window at the snarling Manhattan midtown traffic. The restaurant was only half-filled, even though this was the height of the lunch hour rush; the publishing business had been in the doldrums for some time. Suave waiters with slicked-back hair and European accents hovered over each table, anxious to generate tips through quality of service, when it was obvious that quantity of customers was lacking.
Sub Rights was a pale, ash-blonde woman in her late thirties. She had worked for Hubris Books since graduating from Barnard with stars in her eyes and dreams of a romantic career in the world of literature. Her most romantic moment had come when a French publisher’s representative had seduced her, at the height of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and thus obtained a very favorable deal on Hubris’s entire line of “How To” books for that year.
“I think you’ve hit it on the head,” Sub Rights said, idly stirring her Campari-and-soda with its plastic straw. “Books should be made of paper, not this electric machine thing.”
Editorial had worked for six publishers in the twelve years since she had arrived in New York from Kansas. Somehow, whenever the final sales figures for the books she had bought became known to management, she was invited to look for work elsewhere. Still, there were plenty of publishing houses in midtown Manhattan which operated on the same principle: fire the editor when sales don’t pan out, and then hire an editor fired by one of your competitors for the same reason.
