Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The MarketWatch website has a story from this past Friday which quotes UK EMI Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy as telling an audience at the London Business School that “the CD is dead.” He says that some people will still buy normal, off-the-shelf CDs, but that in order to capture younger buyers and listeners, EMI is going to have to offer added incentives and additional material. This is the first time I’ve heard an executive bravely say that their product is “dead”; I don’t know who will be the first person to say this in publishing, but it will be interesting to see. And of course this also gets to the heart of what major media businesses need to understand, which is that they’re not in the CD, DVD, or book selling business, but rather they’re in the entertainment and storytelling business. The only ones who are in the CD, DVD and book selling business are places like Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

EMI Music CEO says the CD is “dead”

Came across a CD by a band named YOURCODENAMEIS:MILO; the CD is entitled “Print is Dead”; here’s what the cover looks like. According to the blog where I saw the cover (since I don’t know this band), “each song on the album was written and recorded in a day in the band’s studio space…” Sounds pretty cool; I’ll have to check it out. However, if I had to judge the CD by it’s cover, I’d say it’s gear.
Band website

The founder of Wallpaper magazine, Tyler Brule, is launching a new publication next year named Monocle. Talking about the magazine, and the wisdom of launching something print-based during these increasingly digital times, he said, “I’m so tired of hearing from all corners of the media that print is dead. Well, it’s not. It’s a time when magazines should be pulling up their socks and turning out more fabulous, more confident, more robust products.”

Of course, the “print is dead” argument is meant more for the basic conveyance of information, and Wallpaper and magazines like it — large, colorful, status-oriented and filled with ads — are meant more to be thumbed-through or put on a coffee table than read. So a magazine like Vogue doesn’t have as much to worry about in terms of print being dead, but magazines like Newsweek and Time —which have very much felt the pinch of rising digital reading — indeed have a lot to fear. So I’d say that Brule is half-right; print is not dead for his kind of magazines, but for all the ones already put out of business by the Internet and online reading (not to mention those ones, like Slate, that have never physically existed in the first place), it’s a much different story.

Wallpaper Founder to Launch New Magazine

Newsweek this week has an interesting story which touches upon the idea of the “attention economy,” with more and more people getting used to enjoying their entertainment when they want it, instead of watching it when the networks put it on the air. (Of course, the next step after “when” is “how” they want it, something publishers have not yet really had to grapple with).

Excerpt: “Broadcast television’s prime time as we know it is fading. Since the industry’s formative years in the 1950s, the powerful medium has revolved around initially four but now three nocturnal hours, from 8 to 11 o’clock. Mass audiences would settle in for appointment entertainment.”

Newsweek: Why Prime Time’s Now Your Time

The Christian Science Monitor posted a story on Friday entitled “The online book: team authors, and it’s never finished,” which talks about how — in this Web 2.0 world — writers are getting instant feedback on their work, as well as the growing trend of multiple writers collaborating online on books. I think this shows an interesting glimpse of what being a writer is going to be like in the coming decades: more wiki, less café.

Excerpt: “A cutting-edge online author in New York, Mr. Wark invites perfect strangers to interrupt his ideas with their own scribbling in the digital margins. If they make a good point, Wark amends his book. In the spring, the evolving text will be published on paper, weaving in the Web comments.”

The online book: team authors, and it’s never finished

CNET has an article entitled “iPod at 5: The little gadget that could,” which talks about the rise of the iPod and how it almost single-handedly saved Apple. In view of the “Print is Dead” debate, I think the iPod was critical because it showed how much people could—and were willing to—change their entertainment purchasing, delivery and consumption habits (in this case, towards music, although the iPod now is changing the way people are watching TV shows and movies), and that the change could be spurred because of either a device or a business model that made sense. If you would have told someone in the recording industry, twenty years ago, that this would have happened, they would have scoffed at the notion. Kind of like how people in the publishing industry are now scoffing at the idea of digital reading ever being successful…

Excerpt: “It’s hard to overstate the impact of the iPod on the computer, consumer electronics and music industries since it was introduced in 2001. The iPod, arguably, is the first “crossover” product from a computer company that genuinely caught on with music and video buffs.”

iPod at 5: The little gadget that could

While I’ve recently seen a number teen magazine closing down their print versions (mostly due to competition from the Internet), choosing instead to concentrate on their online presence, the newest casualty in the declining magazine market seems to be a bunch of how-to magazines about the home (they’re called “shelter mags”).

From a Media Post article: “As magazines struggle with the rise of the Internet and shifting consumer preferences, traditional mainstays are under siege. One notable example is “shelter” mags, including some of America’s most venerable purveyors of homemaking advice. Like lad mags on the other side of the gender divide, shelter and craft mags are caught between a rock and hard place: on one side they face competition from the Internet, and on the other, a market that may be over-saturated.”

Run for Shelter, Home Mags Take a Beating

The New York Times yesterday had an article on Sony’s new eBook rader. The review is mostly positive, and also talks about eBooks in general, including why they bombed when first introduced in the late ’90s, and why they’re still a good idea.

Excerpt: “E-books may have flopped the first time around, but you can’t deny that they offer some intriguing advantages. You can add dozens of them to your luggage without adding any more weight or bulk. You can adjust the type size. You can search the whole book in seconds, or insert an infinite number of bookmarks. No trees are destroyed to make e-books. And you can read during lunch without having to prop open your novel with a dangerously full can of soda.”

Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete

Speaking of “digital natives,” USA Today (and believe me, I read plenty of websites other than USA Today’s) had a story today entitled “Google VP says youth determine Internet future” in which a VP at Google said that it’s today’s kids who will determine the future of the internet. This made me think of electronic reading and digital delivery, and how people like Updike say that “books traditionally have edges,” but for a whole new generation, who are completely raised on the internet, nothing will have edges. To them, digital delivery and reading of content will be like second nature (if not Second Life).

Excerpt: “‘If you really want to know what will happen with the Internet, ask a 13-year-old,’ said [Vinton] Cerf, the vice president of Google. He was a keynote speaker Monday at the Upper Great Plains Technology Conference.”

Google VP says youth determine Internet future

There’s an article from today’s USA Today entitled “Totally Wireless on Campus,” which talks about a new generation of “digital natives” for whom a digital life is the only life they know. In the “Print is Dead” book I’m so far referring to them as Generation Download or Generation Upload, but I think I’ll now throw Digital Natives into the mix as well (because Generation Next is lame).

Excerpt: “Technology is so second-nature, ‘I can’t even think of when I use it and when I don’t. It’s such a part of life,’ [Hunter, a college student] says.

Hunter isn’t a techno-geek. He’s just a ‘digital native’ — a term that has been used to describe millennials, the first generation who grew up in a world filled with computers, cellphones and cable TV.”
USA Today: Totally Wireless on Campus