Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Over the weekend, I saw a video on Youtube entitled “15th Century Email” (which kind of reminded me of the medieval helpdesk video that made the rounds last Spring). With its premise that someone in the 15th century would use a computer to compose a message, but then hand over the entire laptop in order to have it delivered by a messenger on horseback, seems to me as silly (and anachronistic) as our modern day eBooks — formats and/or devices — that do everything they can to retain the print-book model of turning pages. Because why, in a virtual world, would you mimic the constraints of the physical one? (After all, what makes flying so much fun in Second Life is that you can’t do that in real life.)

In the “15th Century Email” video, the guy understands the technology enough to use it (when he makes a mistake, he knows to use the DELETE key to correct his mistake), but instead of just correcting the one mistake he then erases the entire letter and starts from scratch, the way you would crumble up a piece of paper and start all over again. And when eBook programs try to keep the experience of “turning” virtual pages, it shows they’re reacting the same as the man in the video; they understand (and want to exploit) the idea of electronic reading and digitization, but the fact that they retain the idea of turning “pages” means they’re missing out on the bigger experience. Once eBooks and digital reading can get beyond this thinking, the book will then be truly redefined, and the idea of reading will be finally revolutionized. Until then, like “15th Century Email,” we’re just using new technology in an ancient way.

There were two articles this past week about eBooks, Business Week’s “Making Digital Books Into Page Turners,” and Brad Stone’s “Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books” that appeared in The New York Times. Each of the articles showed that, while the sale of electronic books may still be only a drop in publishing’s bucket, the idea still proves alluring for a dedicated group of enthusiasts (not to mention journalists and researchers). In terms of the stories themselves, the Times article begins with the usual dose of print-based hubris and Schadenfreude: “Technology evangelists have predicted the emergence of electronic books for as long as they have envisioned flying cars and video phones. It is an idea that has never caught on with mainstream book buyers.” This is a little silly since, while eBook sales are still relatively small, people are indeed spending huge amounts of time online, consuming text in the form of websites and blogs (not to mention e-mail). So to say that eBooks are a failure in the face of this changing behavior is like lampooning the idea of air travel because flying cars haven’t caught on (meanwhile, millions of people are flying around in planes).

The Business Week article is mostly about Sony’s eReader, which debuted last year, while the Times piece focuses more on some upcoming big developments, namely Amazon’s introduction of its own eBook reading device, the Kindle, and Google’s ability to allow users to read the entire texts of online books for a fee. In terms of the Amazon device, while some have quibbled over certain features, the Times paints this as a make-or-break event in the eBooks timeline: “Nevertheless, many publishing executives see Amazon’s entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device.” While I agree that we’re approaching a kind of “digital tipping point” when it comes to large-scale adoption of electronic reading, I think that pinning all these hopes on either Amazon or Google is unrealistic. Instead, these will each be seen as steps forward in an ongoing process, and while one or both may hit iPod-like gold, if they don’t it won’t be the end of the world, nor the end of eBooks.

New York Times art director Steven Heller, on the design blog A Brief Message, had a posting on Tuesday entitled “An Inconvenient Truth?” The question that Heller’s asking is whether or not the “inconvenient truth” that print may be dead is actually true. As he skeptically states in his opening sentence, “I keep hearing from designers that print is dying.” (Note that Heller himself doesn’t necessarily think it’s dying; it’s just something he’s heard on the grapevine.) Heller then relates a recent incident that pertains to the subject: a young student has come to show him his thesis “printed out on clean, white paper.” The student had just come from a meeting with another well-known designer who had told him to forget about print; that it was dead and that “he should find an alternate means to reach the largest number of people.”

The confused young student then asks Heller for his thoughts. Heller responds Socratically, asking a question instead of giving an answer. “I asked how he reads the newspaper,” writes Heller. “The answer: ‘On the Internet.’” Heller, at first, chalks up the youth’s ditching of print to his age, thinking, “Okay, he’s under 30.” But then Heller remembers that “the other night I asked two friends, both over 60, the same question. The answer was the same.” Which makes me think that, if even designers, many of whom — as Cory Doctorow says — are “pervy” for paper, are eschewing printed products for the Internet, then I’d say that Heller can probably remove his question mark and declare that it’s true that print is dead. And what’s more important, there doesn’t need to be anything “inconvenient” about this truth.

Because the same way that previous generations played with different physical media — from Calder’s mobiles to Matisse’s cut-outs and Rauschenberg’s combines — new generations of artists and designers are using computers and programs like Flash in order to express themselves. In fact, what used to take a myriad of raw materials and a printing press or a silk screen, not to mention an artist’s spacious studio, now can take place within the microchips of a laptop. While select artists and artisans will continue to work with paper and other printed media, more and more artists and designers will choose electronic creation as well as consumption. And today’s thesis “printed out on clean, white paper” is tomorrow’s networked website, full of hyperlinks and comments, easy to share and to access.

Brad Stone, writing in today’s New York Times, reports that the monthly magazine Business 2.0 will be shut down by parent corporation Time Inc.; the October issue will be its last. Business 2.0 debuted in 1998, during the ballooning of the Internet bubble that would ultimately burst two years later. But for a brief period Business 2.0, along with The Industry Standard, Fast Company and Red Herring, were the magazines to read in terms of keeping track of changing paradigms and “new economy” business models. In fact, for a while there these magazines got so fat with advertising that they looked like Silicon Valley versions of Vogue, often exceeding 400 pages. But when the Internet bubble began finally to burst, a lot of the publications that had been started in order to document (or, some would say, profit from) the bubble also shattered and disappeared.

But recently, as we’ve started to enter Bubble 2.0 (i.e. Google buying Youtube — then less than two years old — for $1.65 billion dollars) these magazines, or at least interest in stories about new ventures on the Web, made a comeback. But instead of there being much of a market for print magazines surrounding the New New Economy (Portfolio, anyone?), people are flocking to websites and blogs (because who needs a newsstand when you have an RSS reader?). And so what’s really interesting is that we seem to be witnessing yet another bubble about to burst, with a number of companies going out of business because their business models are no longer sustainable. But instead of it being Internet companies that are doomed, what we’re seeing is a number of print publications — everything from Jane to Life — going out of business because they can’t compete in an increasingly digital marketplace.

Over the weekend, the New York Times Magazine had a cover story by Lynn Hirschberg on music mogul Rick Rubin, the brilliant maverick producer who has been behind projects as diverse as the debut of the Beastie Boys and the comeback of Johnny Cash. His latest endeavor is the heading up Columbia Records, one of the most traditional record companies out there (and therefore — in this digital age — most in need of Rubin’s rehabilitation). The article has lots of great quotes about how the music industry has changed, and is still changing (as Rubin says, “Well, the world has changed. And the [recording] industry has not”) and I think that parallels abound when thinking about publishing being yet another industry going through immense changes. As I’ve written before, I think we can learn a lot from witnessing what music’s going through, as well as learning from its mistakes.

When putting Columbia in perspective alongside the other labels, Rubin is predictably blunt. “Columbia is stuck in the dark ages,” he says. “I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today’s world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it’s going to be a declining business. This model is done.”

I think many publishers have a similar view, and instead of trying to transform themselves into something new — and instead of realizing that the current model may be “done” — they’re trying to be the “best dinosaur” out there by eluding evolution and sticking it out the longest. In fact, the worst thing for some of these companies is that they will indeed survive by doing what they’re doing, because by that point they’ll be so inoculated against change that they’ll forever stay the same.

In terms of the music industry’s broken business model, Rubin thinks he has the answer: paid subscription. “You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like,” says Rubin. “In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You’ll say, ‘Today I want to listen to … Simon and Garfunkel,’ and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now.” In thinking of that idea, imagine if that were a library of books instead of songs; any book in the world could be instantly available on a variety of screens and devices, at any time. This would lead to more reading, and not less, the same way the iPod has been tremendous for music (but not so much for the music industry).

Of course, whether or not this will work for music (let alone publishing) remains to be seen, but I think it’s great that Rubin and others (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal are also reportedly behind the paid subscription plan) are trying to come up with ways to save their industry. If not, the record labels will follow the record retailers, like Tower, right off the edge of the cliff. And if publishers don’t similarly start trying to think of new business models and strategies, it could one day face a cliff of its own.