Are audiobooks or ebooks “reading?” Are they really “books?”

What does it mean to read a book?

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. It used to be, you sat down with a book and you read it, one page after another. Now you can experience a book through your earbuds while walking in the woods or sitting on a bus, on look at it on a tablet while sitting on an airplane or rocking in a hammock. Are those “reading” experiences?

I have an emotional reaction to this question. I certainly want to believe that if you listen to the audiobook that it took me 14 hours to narrate, you’re having an experience that’s just as valid as the person next to you that went to the local indie bookstore, bought the book, took it home, curled up in their reading nook, and read it page after page.

Conversely, I somehow know that watching a Harry Potter movie is not the same as reading the Harry Potter book.

I read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup — or more precisely, I listened to it — and was amazed not only at the shocking way that the startup Theranos was run, but at the incredible reporting and storytelling of author John Carreyrou. The words and the way there were assembled was amazing. The Hulu miniseries “The Dropout” was based on the same facts. But watching the miniseries is not the same experience as reading the book.

What happens when you read

In her amazing book Proust and the Squid, Maryann Wolf explains what happens when a person reads. The most interesting insight from that book is that there is no “reading center” in the brain. In retrospect, this makes sense, because writing is only about 5400 years old. That is too short a time for evolution to make changes in how the brain works. Instead, when we read, a collection of different centers are at work. One recognizes letter shapes; another connects those shapes with sounds, another connects the sounds to meaning, and yet another combines those meanings into ideas that make sense. Reading feels automatic, but it’s actually quite complex. (As Wolf explains, in dyslexic individuals, some of those brain regions don’t function the same way as they do in people who are fluid readers, and as a result, they must draft other brain centers to do the work — which is why dyslexic people not only read more slowly, but often have a very different way of understanding ideas from others.)

With this in mind, I can translate some of my intuitions about reading into a more concrete theory. What makes reading unique is some combination of the following:

• It’s made up of words and sentences strung together into stories. (Here, I interpret the word “stories” broadly, as it can includes a series of connected ideas, not just a traditional narrative.)
• Those words and sentences combine in the mind’s ear to tell the story in a linear fashion.
• Those stories create ideas in the mind’s eye that stimulate the brain.
• The reader has the opportunity to consume the content, varying the pace and stopping and starting at will.

The “mind’s ear” concept seems crucial. Unless it’s happening in the mind’s ear and being translated into images in the brain, it’s not reading. (I’d be really interested in how this might be different in people who were deaf since birth — what is their “mind’s ear”?)

Dramatic audiovisual presentations are different. Videogames are different. You can read a book with pictures, provided it also has text; I’m not sure you can “read” a book consisting only of pictures.

If you accept my definition, audiobooks and ebooks certainly qualify as reading.

What makes something a book?

My friend and reader Paul S. sent me an interesting multi-century dialogue about which books are really books.

(1380) 
“Non-parchment-paged books are real books.”

(1450)
Printing-pressed books aren’t real books.
“That’s what they said about non-parchment books.”
“This time is different.”

(1935) “Paperback books aren’t real books.”
“That’s what they said about non-parchment and printing-pressed books.”
“This time is different.”

(1950)
“Photo-typeset books aren’t real books.”
“That’s what they said about non-parchment books, printing-pressed books, and photo-typeset books.”
“This time is different.”

(1965)
“Books on tape aren’t real books.”
“That’s what they said about non-parchment and printing-pressed books.”
“This time is different.”

(1997)

“Self-published hardback books aren’t real books.”
“That’s what they said about non-parchment books, printing-pressed books, photo-typeset books, and books on tape.”
“This time is different.”

(2000) 
“Ebooks aren’t real books.”
“That’s what they said about non-parchment books, printing-pressed books, photo-typeset books, and self-published hardbacks.”
“This time is different.”

Is the existence of a publisher what makes something a “real” book? Not any more. We have bestselling books that are self-published or published by hybrid publishers — they’re just as “real” as books that say HarperCollins or Random House on the spine.

For something to be a book, you need to be able to acquire it as as discrete piece of content. And somehow, in my mind, its worth as a book is related to its influence. A book that no one reads isn’t a book. A book that a million people read in the form of an audiobook is definitely a book. And a book that one person reads, but it changes the life of that person, is also a book.

I’m unsatisfied with this ill-formed definition — it’s like Potter Stewart’s definition of “pornography”: “I know it when I see it.”

And yet, I know that crafting a block of content into a book — no matter how it is consumed — is a craft worth working on. Authoring a book is more than writing. Reading a book is somehow more than reading an article or a social media post. Books are blocks of content that, when consumed in the mind’s ear, have the potential to move the reader.

Imagine spending my life on something I can’t define. And yet, that is what I want more than anything else to do.