Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Last week on Wowio’s blog The Reader, there was a post entitled “iPhone Reader: The Long Sessions.” The post had some great photos from their recent efforts to test-drive reading on Apple’s iPhone (which is not easy since the iPhone is pretty much a closed device when it comes to third-party applications).

Wowio itself is a company that offers free downloads of PDF eBooks from its website. They feel that “by making ebooks available for free — including copyrighted works from major publishers — we ultimately hope to make sure that every person who wants to read a book will be able to get it.” Wowio’s business model is based on the assumption that print is not dead, and that the reading of free electronic books can and does lead to the sale of printed books.

The company has only been in existence since 2006, so it’s a little early to tell if any of this is working, but they’re certainly a passionate voice in the “future of the book” debate, and they’re doing an awful lot to meet the demands of an “attention economy” society where people want to interact with content wherever and however they want. However, the selection of material on their site, at this point, is not eclectic or widespread enough to attract more than a specialized interest.

However, the Wowio blog consistently writes intelligently about eBooks and related issues, not to mention that reading on the iPhone is a bit of an obsession; they also recently wrote up a post about supposedly an even newer iPod model named the iSlate, and what that could mean to reading. There’s also a great video of the experience of reading on an iPhone. This is obviously the blog to subscribe to if this is an interest of yours.

In terms of the experience itself, a Wowio staffer pretty much gushes about the experience of reading on an iPhone:

I’ve now had several multi-hour reading sessions on the iPhone, and I’m finding that it affirms my earlier impressions that its display and touch interface are quite well suited to the purpose of reading long, text-oriented PDFs. The ultra-sharp screen and flexible zooming — combined with easy rotation to landscape orientation — allow fixed-page (non-reflowable) PDFs to display at a comfortable reading size. While I’ve generally hated reading on small devices like PDAs in the past, the iPhone’s excellent display makes it not just viable but actually quite enjoyable. I read in a variety of lighting conditions, including bright outdoor sunlight, artificial light and total darkness, and in all cases, the display performed brilliantly.

Not only that, but the new, more interactive and intuitive touch-screen surface actually delivers some of the physical feeling that is missing in most eBook experiences when “turning a page” really means pressing a tiny button the size of a Tic Tac:

Touching the slippery-smooth glass to scroll through the book made the experience pleasantly tactile, somehow better echoing the positive visceral experience of turning pages of a paper book than the mechanical, button-pushing motion used on most other reading devices. Since the touch interface permits for simultaneous scrolling in both horizontal and vertical directions, I expected to have some trouble with unintentionally moving diagonally instead of straight down, but the system seems to have built-in smarts to ignore such spurious motion off the main axis of movement.

So while Steve Jobs and Apple are just getting started, it seems, with the new touch-surface interface for Apple products (I’m loving my new iTouch, but wish it had more memory), then it would seem that Wowio’s dreams on reading on an iPhone or some next-generation iPhone-like device will some day be a reality. Whether or not that means a text-based iTunes bookstore interface remains to be seen, but technology this good will have to be harnessed for reading at some point.

Richard Perez-Pena, writing this week in The New York Times, had an article entitled “Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation.” The story, as you can probably tell by the headline, is about how some large newspapers actually don’t mind that their circulation is dropping; indeed, they’re cheering about it.

“As the newspaper industry bemoans falling circulation, major papers around the country have a surprising attitude toward a lot of potential readers: Don’t bother,” writes Perez-Pena. “The big American newspapers sell about 10 percent fewer copies than they did in 2000, and while the migration of readers to the Web is usually blamed for that decline, much of it has been intentional. Driven by marketing and delivery costs and pressure from advertisers, many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them.”

Perez-Pena documents a number of big city newpapers that have cut down on marketing costs because the kind of reader (or even subscriber) that they get via the traditional marketing methods either won’t renew their subscription, or else the swollen circulation numbers won’t be attractive to advertisers who — in a Google world — want more targeted advertising. In this respect, the newspapers are trying to beat the Internet at its own game.

In terms of other aspects of online competition, the papers are just plain giving up. Since most people get their news online, and since the Internet obviously shatters geographic boundaries, newspapers have chosen to raise the drawbridge and cater to only a hyper-local clientele. Writes Perez-Pena: “Some large papers have made conscious decisions to limit their geographic range. The most striking recent example is The Dallas Morning News. Last year, it stopped distribution outside a 200-mile radius, and weekday circulation tumbled 15 percent to a little over 400,000.”

All of which is fascinating since, in most cases print does not go gentle into that good night, but here print is willingly running itself off a cliff. And why? Because they know there’s an inflatable mattress down below named the Internet, and that any readers of the print edition they might lose they stand a pretty good chance of winning back via their websites. As said Jim Moroney, the publisher and chief executive of The Dallas Morning News puts it, “I have no regrets. The people who really want to read The Dallas Morning News can still get it online.” Of course, this is risky; on the way to the Dallas Morning News website the user may stop by YouTube or MySpace, and never make it to the newspaper’s site. After a couple of days of this, they’re getting their news from Digg and the Dallas Morning News, to them, is yesterday’s news.

Over the weekend British band Radiohead announced via a new website (after posting a number of cryptic clues on their regular site) that they will soon be releasing a new record entitled In Rainbows. While this sounds, on the surface, like generally run-of-the-mill news (arty band records new record, big deal), what makes the news of Radiohead’s latest release interesting are the details.

First of all, the record comes out on October 10th. Meaning, like, in a week and a half. That’s pretty interesting by itself considering no one really was sure they were recording anything, let alone were about to release a brand new record. So in an age where Britney’s every move is captured by the paparazzi, and songs from her “new” album are leaked every other day, that Radiohead could keep this secret is pretty cool. Plus, when record releases — like book releases — are as hotly anticipated as blockbuster films (witness 50 Cent and Kanye West’s recent showdown which people had been looking forward to for months), for Radiohead to just sneak onto the calendar is pretty subversive. Another minor thing about this which is fun: October 10th is a Wednesday; in the UK the record industry releases new CDs on Mondays. It the US, they come out on Tuesdays.

But what’s most amazing is that, as the music blog Idolator wrote, “the words ‘Capitol’ and ‘EMI’ appear nowhere on the Radiohead site.” Which means that the band, free from their major label contract, are choosing to release this record on their own, at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. Remember the days when bands were sent back to the studio because clueless A&R guys didn’t hear a “single”? Well, those days might just be nearing to a close, because why would a band like Radiohead need EMI or Capitol? Why not just do what Radiohead’s doing and release the record themselves?

And Radiohead is taking advantage of their newfound freedom by releasing In Rainbows in a variety formats, including as a digital download as well as a special “discbox” that contains “THE NEW ALBUM, IN RAINBOWS, ON CD AND ON 2 X 12 INCH HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL RECORDS. A SECOND, ENHANCED CD CONTAINS MORE NEW SONGS, ALONG WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK. THE DISCBOX ALSO INCLUDES ARTWORK AND LYRIC BOOKLETS. ALL ARE ENCASED IN A HARDBACK BOOK AND SLIPCASE. THE ALBUM DOWNLOAD AUTOMATICALLY COMES WITH THIS PACK.” The discbox is a bit expensive at about $80, but Radiohead is selling the download for whatever fans wish to pay (meaning, I could pay the usual $10 for the download, or $1, or nothing).

So with one fell swoop Radiohead shatters half-a-dozen rock-star rituals, and further makes the existence of record labels a questionable thing in a digital age. About all of this, Pitchfork gleefully wrote, “Haha, the entire record industry is so f*cked!” While I wouldn’t go as far as that, I think the business is certainly (and finally) changing in a way that might be more beneficial to the fans and musicians instead of the labels.

Matt Richtel, writing this morning in the New York Times, has a story entitled “At Starbucks, Songs of Instant Gratification,” which is about a new Starbucks feature starting today that will allow anyone with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iTunes on a laptop to instantly download any song that Starbucks is currently playing. The songs will cost the $.99 that they always cost on iTunes. For right now, though, this is only being introduced in New York and Seattle.

Starbucks has previously waded into non-coffee items, selling things like music compilation CDs and even the occasional book. But they took a huge leap a few months ago when they put out Paul McCartney’s new record. With the McCartney CD, Starbucks essentially turned itself into a music label. With this new service, it has now transformed itself into a digital music store.

“And it’s just the tip of the iced latte,” writes Richtel. “Businesses are using new technologies to enhance the impulse buy so consumers can purchase their temptations whenever they want, wherever they are, before the urge passes.”

This kind of on-demand business model goes beyond even the flexibility of something like Tivo or the one-click shopping of Amazon. By being able to instantly download a song that’s playing in the background while you either order or sip your morning coffee, suddenly even tunes floating invisibly through the air can be bought and sold. “The idea is no waiting, cashier or other buying barrier,” writes Richtel, “aside from the charges that show up on a credit card or cellphone bill.”

This is not only amazing from a technical point of view, but it’s also just pretty damn cool. And I think it will work. Even if people don’t buy or download the songs from Starbucks, right then and there, being able to know what the song is will probably lead to a purchase at a later date or time,

Of course, as soon as we have wireless and portable devices that offer a good reading experience, books will similarly be as instantly available as songs. For instance, imagine being in a coffee house (like, a real one; not a Starbucks) and you meet a friend and they’re telling how great Master and Margarita is, that you just have to read it. Well, you could pull out your laptop or device (or iPhone), and buy it right then and there, having it download to your device in a matter of seconds. At that point, The Portable Faulkner turns into the instant Faulkner. And when that happens, it’ll be yet another bad sign not only for books, but for bookstores.