Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Apple announced this week that it has sold 100 million iPods, its MP3 player that came on the market back in 2001. What’s amazing about this is that, at the time the iPod was launched, there were already numerous MP3 players in existence, none of which managed to capture either the share of the market nor the collective imagination of consumers. But Apple’s ingenious design, as well as its iTunes software interface, have made it a must-own item for more than half a decade. And what’s also amazing is that something that started within a very select group (early adopting Mac owners, once only a tiny community) is now nearly ubiquitous (both the president of the United States and the Pope own iPods). But this is much more than just a great gadget; the iPod has also shuffled the music business — directly leading to the death of the CD and, to a lesser degree, the format of the long-playing album — and the iPod’s success means both big trouble and tremendous opportunity for other entertainment industries.

As reported by MSNBC, the success of the iPod and iTunes will have far-reaching consequences, not only in music but for almost every entertainment medium: “‘It’s pretty clear to me, as to most people who have watched it, that the record label business is just the canary in the coal mine,’ said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media who has followed the digital music business for years. ‘The Hollywood studios and the TV production companies — they need to pay attention because their businesses are going to change just as rapidly, and they need to adapt.’” And so what has happened in terms of the death of the CD could also lead to the end of various other entertainment formats and business models. “As downloading television and movies becomes more popular, Leigh expects those industries to have to grapple with the same major changes,” according to MSNBC. “That could mean job cuts, changes in product lineups or any number of other moves.” The success of the iPod will also have an impact on publishing and the “print is dead” debate. Of course, whether publishing will have its own iPod moment, with a singular, killer device drastically changing the playing field, remains to be seen. But there’s no longer any doubt that these changes are coming.

An Apple milestone: 100 million iPods sold

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”

The New York Times last Thursday reported that the magazine The Week is getting ready to launch an online experiment which will consist of them posting, to the Internet, a special Web-only issue of their magazine. This issue will not replace a physical edition of any issue, but is instead intended to be an extra, supplemental publication consisting of exclusive online material. “The project represents the first time The Week has produced a themed issue as well as its first online-only issue,” writes The Times. “The bonus issue will also serve as a kind of Web-based sampling program for The Week, because nonsubscribers will be able to read it on the Web site.”

Why is The Week doing this? Well, probably because they know that while they produce a physical magazine for people to read offline, a large number of their readers and subscribers (not to metion future or potential readers and subscribers) are consuming reading material online. So they’re simply going to where the readers (increasingly) are. And The Week is not alone in this. According to The New York Times, “the project offers another example of efforts by the print media to expand their digital presence in response to changing habits of both readers and advertisers. … For example, morning newspapers like The Chicago Sun-Times and The Toronto Star have started publishing online-only afternoon editions, which can also be downloaded.”

The Times also touches upon the recent trend of magazines that have stopped printing physical editions so that their brands can continue to live online. All of this is part of an increasing trend of digital delivery and consumption of reading material, starting in journalism and which will eventually extend to both fiction and non-fiction. Not to mention that this shows that, in the “print is dead” debate, there is room for various experiments in terms of marketing, using special or supplemental materials the same way the film studios now pack DVDs with documentaries, deleted scenes, commentaries and other extra features. Traditional publishers, as newspapers and magazines are now realizing, will one day follow suit.

The New York Times: Online Experiment for Print Magazine

Tony Wilson, former Factory Records boss and all around Manchester music fixture, has an essay on the website Trip Wire entitled “Oh Lord, Leave Me Record Shops.” Unlike former Creation boss Alan McGee’s recent blog posting where he seemed just fine with the fading away of record stores and the physical embodiment of music in the form of vinyl records and plastic CDs, Wilson is not going gentle into that (digital) good night. Instead, he laments the loss of these real-life objects which answer “the deep desire to purchase a physical connection to our heroes/idols.” In particular, he talks about buying one of Bob Dylan’s recent releases on CD, and how disappointed he was in the packaging. “Where one might have expected at least a little illegible booklet which got buckled when you managed to drag it past the annoying little plastic lip thing,” writes Wilson, “instead you got a single piece of thin paper with the cover image on the front and an advert for four back catalogue Bob items on the reverse.” Wilson believes that music lovers deserve more: “We deserved an object to treasure; like that 12″ double sleeve whose depth of colour and image went some way to mirror the depths of the beloved ‘Blonde on Blonde.’” True, back in the day, Factory Records produced physical artifacts which were just as beautiful and haunting (if not sometimes more so) than the music on the records/label itself. But now that digital downloads, and the death of the CD, have reduced packaging to a point where it’s almost non-existent, Wilson is asking the question, “How do we bring back physical objects, and bring back record shops for that matter?” But, since it doesn’t look like vinyl or recorded artifacts are going to make a comeback any time soon, Wilson’s not going to like the answer. True, vinyl will never die (the same way that books will never become extinct), but they have already exited — for a new generation — the general consciousness and idea of what music is. Instead, vinyl records, CDs, and other physical embodiments of music will be increasingly seen as boutique items, the same way that books will one day be seen as antiquated whether or not they’re new or old or first editions; simply any book in a digital society is bound to feel rare.

The Trip Wire: “Oh Lord, Leave Me Record Shops”

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Joan Acocella has an article entitled “The Typing Life,” which is a review of Darren Wershler-Henry’s new book The Iron Whim, a history of the typewriter. The review is interesting in terms of the fact that typewriters (and keyboards themselves) — now nearly ubiquitous — were once seen as an alien and unwelcome intrusion in the history of literature. Or, as Acocella puts it, “Why would ordinary writers need a writing machine? They had pens.” The same is now being heard in the “print is dead” debate, except here is goes more like, “Why would ordinary readers need reading machines? They have books.” And while the truth of that statement seems self-evident (to booklovers, anyway) — the same way it did with typerwriters versus a pencil and a pad of paper a hundred years ago — what finally proved the tipping point in favor of the typewriter was the fact that it offered a better and more efficient way of working for writers. Because of this, it was finally adopted. True, many people at the time felt it was too difficult to break with tradition and their old habits, and shunned the typewriter (not to mention a small number of writers today feel the same way; both John Updike and J.K. Rowling still compose their books in longhand on notepads), but for the most part the introduction of the keyboard, along with the typewriter, revolutionized the way people write, think and communicate.

In the review, corrolaries to eBooks abound. For instance, Acocella writes that “there was no single moment of discovery, no lone inventor crying ‘Eureka!’ in a darkened laboratory. On the contrary, historians estimate that the typewriter was invented at least fifty-two times, as one tinkerer after another groped toward a usable design.” The same goes for eBooks, which have — even in their less-than-a-decade of existence — seen multiple formats, devices and business models. Acocella also touches upon the nature of technology, and how it can seem to import virtue in inanimate objects: “There was a mythology that what was typewritten was true, that the machine somehow caused writers to bare their souls.” There is the same notion today of printed books; that they’re sacred and divine, both untouchable and unimpeachable. (Which of course implies that the same text delivered any other way, i.e. on a computer screen, is somehow not true). And while the review is long-winded in the typical New Yorker kind of way (“The screen, a kind of indeterminate space, does not seem violable in the same way as the page”), Acocella gets at something at the heart of the “print is dead” debate through her look at the typerwriter’s past, and how it became our future.

The New Yorker: “The Typing Life”

Edward Tenner has an interesting essay entitled “The Prestigious Inconvenience of Print,” which appeared in the March issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Tenner’s thesis is that even though digital media provides an interactive experience, and is (mostly) all-around more efficient, the physical medium of print still contains within it a “prestigious inconvenience” which people are willing to put up with. Tenner’s real point is basically the chant of the pigs at the end of Animal Farm, which I’d paraphrase as “Digital good, print better!” For instance, he mentions that while most businessmen send and receive voluminous amounts of e-mail, “their most important sentiments are likely to be expressed as handwritten notes — one of the reasons for the luxury fountain-pen industry’s niche in the digital age.” In this Tenner is completely correct, especially in his use of the word “niche.” Fountain pens are a rarity these days since they have been technologically replaced by the computer, Blackberry, and handheld devices with keyboards such as cellphones and UMPCs. In fact, that’s the exact argument of the “print is dead” debate; not that print will become extinct, but that it will instead become a niche product and interest.

Tenner even hovers around idea of print being dead, writing that, “just as luxury watches remain in demand while most people carry cellphones that give the time with virtually observatory-standard accuracy, the Web will never destroy older media because their technical difficulties and risks help create glamour and interest. At the same time, however, the Web does nibble at their base, creating new challenges for writers, musicians, and other members of the media.” First of all, I would say that, given the online world in which we now live, the Web is doing a lot more than just “nibbling” at older media. In fact, the thousands of people who have recently lost their jobs because they worked at magazines or newspapers that went out of business because of lack of interest and online competition would probably say they feel swallowed whole, and not just nibbled. And here Tenner makes a point he probably doesn’t want to make, pointing out that one day (perhaps soon) a printed book in a digital world will seem as quaint and as antiquated as a watch or a fountain pen feels today.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Prestigious Inconvenience of Print

Yesterday the world’s third largest record company, EMI, announced that it would begin selling music from its artists as digital downloads without any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) or copy restrictions. The songs will have a higher sound quality than your typical iTunes download, but will cost $1.29 instead of the usual $.99. The company made the decision after hearing numerous complaints from its consumers that they preferred having format-less music that could be listened to on any computer or any device, using a multitude of programs. Eric Nicoli, EMI’s chief executive, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “It was clear what we had to do because we hold the consumer at the center of our focus.”

This is an amazing move, and is exactly what big media companies should be doing. EMI has taken the exact opposite approach to Viacom, who recently sued YouTube for copyright infringement. EMI wants their music to reach as many ears as possible, while Viacom would rather sue people who try to do their marketing for them. It seems to me that EMI fully understands the “attention economy,” while Viacom clearly doesn’t get it, and would rather create plaintiffs instead of an audience.

In terms of the “print is dead” debate, the decisions about DRM that are now being made in the music world could mean a lot for trade publishers and eBooks in the years to come. After all, one of the big problems which has restricted eBook adoption is the restrictions of DRM. True, publishers are only reacting to authors and agents who are very leery of digital delivery (and the devilry they fear it will bring: copyright theft, loss of revenue, mass piracy). But compared to the alternative — no one wanting to read their books — it’s apparent that the time has come to experiment and put the power in the hands of the consumers. After all, as Tim O’Reilly says (and which I repeat all of the time), “The enemy isn’t piracy, the enemy is obscurity.”

What’s also amazing about the EMI situation is that the price-per-song is higher, proving that people will (hopefully) be willing to pay for the convenience that digital delivery provides. $.99 locks you to your iPod, but $1.29 lets you take it anywhere you want. This could one day be the same for books. So instead of electronic books being priced ridiculously low (as some people have called for, wanting eBook prices to be somewhere in the $1-$2 range), consumers will instead pay comparable if not premium prices for digital downloads of books. Why? Because — if the files are not straitjacketed with DRM — then the users can read the files on any device or on any computer, at any time or in any place that they want. This could prove liberating, and would finally be one in the win column in the “books vs eBooks debate,” since a digital file is a virtual item that can live in many places at once, while a printed book is a physical thing that has to be dragged in hand from place to place.

In terms of music, it remains to be seen how many of the other major record labels — if any — step forward and make a step similar to EMI’s, but at least it’s a start.

EMI Dropping Copy Limits on Online Music

InfoWorld, a magazine about information and technology that has existed for nearly thirty years, today published its last ever physical copy. As Editor in Chief Steve Fox put it last week, “No more printing on dead trees, no more glossy covers, no more supporting the US Post Office in its rush to get thousands of inky copies on subscribers’ desks by Monday morning (or thereabouts).” But InfoWorld is not going out of business; instead, it’s just going online. “We’re not going anywhere,” says Fox. “We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism — the Web — at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You’ll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) — something more than a million of you already do every month.”

I think this move makes a lot of sense, and not just for InfoWorld’s audience, but in general. The Web has created expectations in users concerning delivery, interaction and utility, and all of this — in a Web 2.0 world — makes the need for print magazines increasingly obsolete (or, if nothing else, a souvenir-like afterthought). As Fox notes, he and his staff have been producing for years more material than a magazine can handle: “In addition to the articles we had prepared for print, our staff and contributors create and post the equivalent of a full magazine online every day, featuring 25 blogs, bundles of daily online-only news stories, columns, articles, regular videos, slideshows, and podcasts. The limited confines of a print magazine, with 32 pages of editorial content each week, simply couldn’t begin to address the needs of an information-hungry IT audience.” Freed from the confines of ink and paper, InfoWorld can now exist as purely itself, stretching or contracting to fill any virtual space it wants.

InfoWorld folds print mag to focus on online and events