[Wōdnes-dæg] Books with Amazing Argentinian Fading Ink

Introduction
The Article Summed Up
The Power of Mystical Emptiness
New Bounds for an old Medium
Closing

{A book like this made today might be blank before two sheets are flipped to the back of a desktop calendar. Image from stock.xchng.}

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Introduction

Last week's editorial was all about the mainstream acknowledgement of ebooks and indie authors.

This week, we take two steps back from the fore of technology and then one toward it.

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The Article Summed Up

According to Tecca over at Y! Tech (a division of Yahoo News), an Argentine publishing house called Eterna Cadencia is creating books that will not outlast their authors or readers.

It’s not that these books are poorly constructed - quite the opposite in fact.

Using a new ink technology, developed by the ad agency Draftfcb, the Argentine publisher is going to be printing books with short-lived ink. Apparently, these books will fade into illegibility two months after they’ve been opened and exposed to light and air.

However, the publisher isn’t going to be doing this with all of their books, only with collections of new authors’ work. A move that might just help to give them the captive audience that all new writers need.

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The Power of Mystical Emptiness

Although the article closes with a point about the fading ink gimmick only working if people can be convinced to buy “books that'll end up as fancy bound paper within just a couple of months[,]” this might also be the gimmick’s greatest strength.

Many people are reluctant to write in books that they cherish or thoroughly enjoy reading. And rightly so, there’s something special about a book - an inanimate object populated with ink splotches shaped into an old alphabet - that can make you feel or think things that you might otherwise not feel or think.

But what if that book went blank?

Would the book still hold the significance that it did for you while the story was still within? And, if it did, mightn’t that inspire some people to try their hand at writing using their since faded book?

The cost of these fading books, assuming that they’ll be priced at just a little bit more than a standard paperback or hardcover, might be a barrier to their success. But, if Moleskine notebooks can be sold for an exorbitant price based on a link to Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, and Vincent Van Gogh, then why wouldn’t these eventually blank books have the same level of mystique?

In a way, they might even have more because they will have actually held what a revered and enjoyed author wrote rather than just having been used by him or her when he or she was alive.

Printing books with fading ink might not be a practice that will catch on for the classics, but it definitely could lead to some interesting stuff down the line for new authors.

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New Bounds for an old Medium

Perhaps this gimmick will become something more than a response to ebooks and will lead to a cross between the two, possibly leading to something like the journey book from Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.

Or, getting more specific, maybe the idea of disappearing ink will seep into the digital world and lead to some kind of technology that lets fans write directly to the author via their faded out tomes.

That gimmicks are needed, or at least believed to be needed, to sell paper and ink books might be one of the death knells sounded over the coffin of traditional publishing, but bringing the book into the digital age like this, without any computerization to speak of, is quite a feat, and points to better things ahead for traditional paper and ink publishing.

The question shouldn’t be will people buy books that will essentially become fancy notebooks in two months time, but rather: What will the use of this disappearing ink lead to?

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Closing

Be sure to check back here on Friday for the search for the good in Deadfall, part one of Nicolas Cage month. Plus, don't miss tomorrow's annotated links!

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