Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
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People will continue to read printed books for a long time, just as some people still watch movies on VHS. But the printed book will be “dead” in a few short years in the sense that the bulk of the adoption curve, the pragmatic majority, will have moved on.
–Arvind Narayanan, “The death of the printed book is closer than you think“
Narayanan’s post is the latest addition to the tiresome “print is dead” meme, and like the vast majority of digital evangelists, he presents a false dilemma, posits a zero-sum scenario, and evokes the tired and largely irrelevant example of Radiohead to make his point. By his “logic”, it could be argued that POD and podcasting should have already killed the publishing industry, and eBooks are simply dancing on its grave.
Ryan Chapman offered a much more pragmatic and realistic take on where the current eBook format fits in the big picture in his post for Digital Book World — A Brand, A Plan, A Channel: eBooks and Mass Market — noting: “After the digital transition, we’ll find that certain books fit an eBook audience, while others are meant for print.”
It really is THAT simple, and all else is linkbait blather and much punditry about nothing.
My two cents? Books are not LPs or CDs, and eReaders are not (and will never be) iPods. No one is ripping and sharing copies of Chapter 16 of The Lost Symbol, and the appeal of carrying more than 3 books around at once is limited to a niche audience of gadget freaks and heavy travelers.
If anything, eBooks are a great opportunity to expand the market, especially for novellas, short stories and anthologies of all kinds, as well as custom publishing of textbooks and how-to content, both of which several publishers are already experimenting with successfully, including Pearson and F+W Media (my employer). Plus, the same way TV evolved past televising radio broadcasts into its own unique format, there’s huge potential for digital books and mobile apps that incorporate audio, video, kinetic typography, geolocation, databases, etc. — formats that can no longer appropriately be referred to as “books”.
On a personal (and somewhat rambling) note, I bought my wife a Kindle last year for her birthday (thanks to Oprah’s $50 discount code!), and while she loves it, she’s frustrated by the lack of books she’s interested in reading. She’s an avid reader, but not a big popular fiction reader, and even when she’s found a good book (e.g. The Omnivore’s Dilemma) she’s been frustrated by the inefficiency of backtracking, bookmarking, and, of course, sharing.
For her birthday this year, I realized there was no gift-giving equivalent for eBooks that matched the personal touch of a physical book, so I bought her a print copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, as well as the Young Reader’s Edition, which is also available on the Kindle but would make reading it together with our nine-year-old son difficult, and sharing it with her students impossible. She loved both, and having finished reading The Lost Symbol on her Kindle, is now reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma with our son, and is halfway through My Appalachia: A Memoir, one of millions of books NOT available on the Kindle.
Over the past year, I’ve actually downloaded two books to her Kindle, and one sample:
1) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: Downloaded the sample last December, read it, enjoyed it, but didn’t buy the full version. Finally bought the paperback this weekend and added it to my (always visible) to-be-read pile.
2) I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams: Bought/downloaded it in March when it was released, read a couple of chapters, never finished. Plan to buy the paperback next March when it’s released.
3) Free by Chris Anderson: Downloaded it for free during its promotional blitz this summer, read the first chapter, haven’t looked at it since and have no plans to buy the print version.
Like the majority of readers, I’m neither a Luddite nor an early adopter; I love books and will likely always prefer the printed “artifact” over the “digital manifestation”, but with the right user experience– from discovery, to purchase, to formatting and shareability — I can see myself fully embracing eBooks for certain types of content.
The fact of the matter, though, hype aside, is that eBooks and eReaders simply aren’t ready for primetime.
Yet.
36 Responses to eBooks: The False Dilemma
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My fear is that print will suffer and then resurge, but that the period of ash will coincide directly with my efforts to make a career for myself. The value of individual stories is going to drop before it rebounds, and I fret that space between the fire and the phoenix. If all of this were to happen in one summer, and then it was just done and we lived in the post-print world, where print is not dead and e-readers were as ubiquitous as paper, that'd be one thing. It's this slow-mo spiral that's agonizing.
@KatMeyer: Some of us *are* forcing e over paper, that's a bit of an issue. I've written extensively about the elitism in the quibbling about electronic versus print, so I won't go there for now. (Also commented about the clunky technology which makes me not want to pay any attention to the e-reader argument until someone works it out.) But from another perspective, not the reader, but the writer, I can attest that releasing my works electronically is imperative, and that printing it is secondary and mainly a waste of time–according to my writer peers.
Personally, I disagree, but what do I know. I'm hawking my e-copies on my blog and on Smashwords for a requested donation (otherwise they're free) so that I can subsidize printing the books. I will sell the books, though most likely not even through indie bookstores which still follow archaic rules about what kinds of content they will carry. I'll be out there on Avenue A hawking my books on a card table for $10, o/b/o.
Books matter, they always will. Whether the e-revolution will bring down print publishing as we know it remains my favorite spectator sport. Ok not really, but still…
~jenn
Mainstream print publishers have been around for, arguably, 500 years or so? I don't think that model will come crashing down like Enron. They'll figure it out soon enough how to adapt to the marketplace. That is capitalism, and it's a strong foundation. What we can't expect them to do (and what they're struggling with now) is to *replace* their print model with a digital one and expect the same results.
I wish I could remember the post I read just yesterday about a small, local newspaper that switched its model from free to all content behind a paywall. Readership plummeted. It was a success. <–What, you ask?
Yes, it was a success even though readership plummeted. It was able to subsist now on increased advertising dollars because the eyeballs reading the content were more valuable.
As readers and writers ourselves and big proponents of independent everything, we aren't seeing the business model objective: revenue.
I expect readership will plummet in digital formats, but revenue will have to soar in order for them to claim success. Their metrics for success are much different than ours. Hence the inherent conflict between capitalism and morality.
~jenn
@revolucion0
Hey, Colleen! Adams' books are a perfect example of where “e” isn't ready for primetime, especially when it comes to gift-giving and impulse buys. Too many people seem to think there's an easy button for eBooks, and usually only think of straight narratives.
The “slow-mo spiral” is a weird combination of daunting and empowering. One minute it feels like a car crash, and the next, you're like Neo, dodging bullets and walking up walls!
Quality over quantity is why many smaller circ magazines and niche book publishers are weathering the economic storm better than their mass-appeal counterparts. It's the foundation of the 1,000 True Fans theory, and while not literally applicable to every situation, it is fundamentally sound.
Mass scale is dead; the conglomerates will consolidate further or crumble; but publishing as an industry and an avocation will live on, in print and in digital form.
We (at O'Reilly) talk quite a bit about the importance of mobile. It played a major role in the keynotes at the TOC conference in Frankfurt. Also:
http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/10/hard-numbers-beh…
Yes, at O'Reilly you definitely have your fingers on the mobile pulse; I've always referred to you as the canaries in the coal mine because you have the hardcore early adopters and see the trends before most others do.
Sometimes a bit too early, it could be argued.
I think it's telling that gaming is the common denominator in that hardware user growth chart. Reading a print book competes with many other activities, but it does so on its own terms, as an individual experience. eBooks, OTOH, will have to compete for both time and mindshare as small fish in the huge digital pond, and how long before expectations change and replicating the print experience isn't enough?
not a lot to add to this for once Guy, other than I'm sorry I was so busy with Free-e-day it took a while to get here. Yeah, Chapman's right. And Mike, whilst it IS true that I think there'll be a surge in special edition and “souvenir” books – I see that as a very cool add-on to ebooks that aren't out on regular print – basically, there are genres that suit print and those that suit digital and although we can speculate from demographics of readership the answer is we don't really know yet (after all, five years ago I'd have put romance in the print market, but it flourishes electronically, largely because romance readers are SO voracious). All we can do, as I keep trying to get across, is stop being set in our ways and keep trying things and see what works.
[...] eBooks: The False Dilemma: “After the digital transition, we’ll find that certain books fit an eBook audience, while others are meant for print.” Ryan Chapman. [...]
If it's money you're interested in, professional storytelling was a silly career choice.
Good post, Guy. I especially liked this point:
…its own unique format, there’s huge potential for digital books and mobile apps that incorporate audio, video, kinetic typography, geolocation, databases, etc. — formats that can no longer appropriately be referred to as “books”…
You see a lot of cool ways of sharing information on youtube. They're not quite films, they're not quite written stories, they're something new, something in between.
“Value” can mean a lot of things.
I agree. It just seemed like you were talking about money when you said the value of individual stories is dropping. What did you mean by that?
yeah, the whole “certain books fit an eBook audience, while others are meant for print” thing just sounds like my old Enlightenment to Revolution lit prof who has a weird obsession with old school title pages of 18th century lit and a huge collection of prints of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. In my opinion the only people allowed to be against digitalization of literature are phD's…but even they need to embrace it to a degree…its what's next.
[...] We listened, and we learned, but the one thing that did strike a lot of us was the sense of entitlement out there among ebook aficionados. While on the one hand, as an ebook fan myself, I understand (and more often than not, sympathize with) the gripes being aired, I was really put off by how some people’s concerns were being expressed: there’s a lack of understanding of how the publishing industry works (or doesn’t work, but that’s another conversation), and an unwillingness to take anything that the big six publishers say at face-value. I suppose that it’s understandable, given previous experiences with the music industry, but it really led to a toxic atmosphere, in which we felt put on the defensive very quickly. This was actually my first exposure to this kind of entitled, evangelical, all-or-nothing thinking with regards to ebooks, and it’s something which I, along with others, have addressed elsewhere. [...]