Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The Washington Post yesterday had a story entitled “For Bookstores, a Real Page-Turner,” which talked about how a small number of bookstores are trying to stay relevant in an increasingly digital world by participating in pilot programs with a non-profit organization known as the Caravan Project, a new company doing its best to stake its claim in terms of the future of the book. The Caravan Project offers bookstores the ability to deliver content to consumers in a myriad of ways, including on screens. In fact, the articles asks, “Want to see the future of the book? Pay attention to what’s on the screen.” This is especially interesting seeing as it comes just a few days after Cory Doctorow’s essay saying that books won’t be read on screens.

In terms of the current literary situation, the Post sums it up like this: “With books increasingly available in multiple formats — among them digital ‘e-books’ and audio versions downloadable to your iPod — what’s to prevent people from bypassing brick-and-mortar bookstores entirely, further undercutting enterprises already under pressure from online competitors?” This is where the Caravan Project comes in, offering to supply readers books in an array of formats, thus perfectly appealing to our increasingly on-demand everything/I want it now culture. For example, books will be available as regular print editions (either paperback or hardcover), digital books in several formats, audio books as either CDs or in digital form, and large-print paperbacks that would be printed on demand. This approach shows how consumer-oriented Publishing 2.0 is going to be, letting readers make their own decisions about how and when they consume their content. Tom Dwyer, director of merchandising at Borders, says of the Caravan Project, “This could be a pilot for what all publishers end up doing eventually.” Whether or not that’s the case, it’s a step in the right direction. It also shows that bookstores are beginning to realize that the “print is dead” argument — this time around — is, for better or worse, here to stay.

Washington Post: “For Bookstores, a Real Page-Turner”