Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

In The New York Times on Monday, Richard Sandomir had a story entitled “The Ludlum Conundrum: A Dead Novelist Provides New Thrills.” Sandomir reports on the fact that, even though venerable thriller writer Robert Ludlum died in 2001, new Ludlum books keep appearing at a rapid rate (many of them published by companies — such as St. Martin’s Press — owned by my employer, Holtzbrinck Publishing). Sandomir writes: “Twelve Ludlum books have been released since his death, with a 13th due out in September. The business is deployed now as a kind of film studio, presenting books completed by others or new ones written using his name.”

This brings up an interesting point: if consumers don’t seem to care that an author is dead, which proves that they only want the content — the characters, the stories, the experience — then they also won’t care how that content is delivered. After all, if they don’t mind the missing presence of the actual Robert Ludlum (a living, breathing person) then they certainly won’t miss the presence of the book itself (an inanimate object). In addition, a physical book has the potential to stand in between a reader and the content they desire. This is especially true in Ludlum’s case since his books are sometimes really large, and not nearly as portable as an electronic device. For instance, the other day on the train I saw a guy gingerly reading text on his iPhone, sitting next to a girl trying valiantly to keep the new doorstop-sized Harry Potter book balanced on her knee.

The fact that a lot of the continued interest in Ludlum is driven by the recent success of the Matt Damon Bourne movies further reinforces the notion that Ludlum’s audience isn’t reacting to words on a page. Instead, they want and crave adventure and stories. And those adventures and stories can be delivered a myriad of ways, so why not electronically?