For most normal printed books the effort would be prohibitive. On the other hand, ebooks don’t have similar problems. It’s easy to both publish the ebook in old spelling and in the new spelling. The same goes for websites where you can automatically parse between the spellings.
When it comes to actual physical books it would be possible to print a special edition of the book in the new spelling with a limited print run and sell it for more money as a collector’s item.
Yup, true, you could pretty easily do ebook editions in pairs. But my prediction for that is that the only people who would buy the new-cpelling edition are the ones who are already on board with cpeling riform, and you can’t change a language just by selling reformed-spelling books to people who already think spelling should be reformed: you need to change the minds of the people as a whole.
Maaaybe you could bring them in by spreading the idea that New Spelling Is High Status, but to me that feels unlikely to work. I think that if you want to do that you need some body like the Académie Française officially pushing the new spelling, and even then it’s going to be difficult: I think everyone in France ignores the AF when it says unpopular things like “don’t use le weekend”. It’s just really difficult to change a language from the top down.
For most normal printed books the effort would be prohibitive. On the other hand, ebooks don’t have similar problems. It’s easy to both publish the ebook in old spelling and in the new spelling. The same goes for websites where you can automatically parse between the spellings.
When it comes to actual physical books it would be possible to print a special edition of the book in the new spelling with a limited print run and sell it for more money as a collector’s item.
Yup, true, you could pretty easily do ebook editions in pairs. But my prediction for that is that the only people who would buy the new-cpelling edition are the ones who are already on board with cpeling riform, and you can’t change a language just by selling reformed-spelling books to people who already think spelling should be reformed: you need to change the minds of the people as a whole.
Maaaybe you could bring them in by spreading the idea that New Spelling Is High Status, but to me that feels unlikely to work. I think that if you want to do that you need some body like the Académie Française officially pushing the new spelling, and even then it’s going to be difficult: I think everyone in France ignores the AF when it says unpopular things like “don’t use le weekend”. It’s just really difficult to change a language from the top down.