Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

There was an op-ed piece in The New York Times last week entitled “Spinning Into Oblivion,” which was yet another essay talking about the death of CDs and the long-playing record as a format. Written by Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato, two guys who used to run a record store on the Upper West Side (until it closed in 2005, partly because of competition from digital downloads), they spend most of the article pinning the blame on the music industry — and not the fans — for slowly killing their business. “The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably,” write Sachs and Nunziato. “The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.”

In terms of the “print is dead” debate and things like eBook formats and DRM, what’s clear from Sachs and Nunziato’s essay is that publishers need to try and learn from the mistakes made by the music industry. And what’s most important to realize is that it won’t be the software that gets us into trouble, but rather it’s going to be our reaction to the software. For instance, in terms of music, Sachs and Nunziato contend that Napster didn’t kill the music industry directly; instead it was the industry’s ham-fisted and misguided reaction to Napster that led to its downfall: “The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.” Trade publishers, not to mention newspapers and magazines — already on the front lines in terms of facing competition from the Internet — need to watch closely what’s happening with CDs and ideas such as the “album,” as well as the reaction of consumers and music lovers, because it’s going to be these decisions (and what we learn from them) that ultimately will guide the future of printed material in a digital age.

The New York Times: “Spinning into Oblivion”