Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The Economist’s June 5th edition has an article entitled “Unbound,” which sounds fairly benign until you read the sub-headline: “Publishers worry as new technologies transform their industry.” Oh, and there’s also a grinning picture of Jeff Bezos with the caption “You’re all doomed!,” as if Bezos is attacking the publishing industry Jack Torrance-style, with his goofy grin about to break out into a fiendish sounding “Here’s Johnny!”

The article was spurred by Bezos’s recent appearance at Book Expo America. Having been in the audience for the Bezos speech, I can confirm firsthand that his appearance was indeed lukewarmly received. In fact, when he told the booksellers in the room that Scott McClellan’s new book, the Bush-bashing memoir What Happened, was sold out everywhere except as a Kindle eBook, it seemed like he was gloating rather than trying to relate to publishers that they need not have warehouses and physical stock in order to make money. The point that Bezos should have made was that people just wanted McClellan’s story, not the paper.

Anyway, after setting the stage (“Books have changed very little in half a millennium, but they may now be on the verge of going digital”), the Economist article touches upon the usual topics surrounding electronic books and print on demand technology, listing the effects they could have on the industry. And while most of it is standard stuff, I find the final couple of lines to be a bit disingenuous:

Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them.

The fact that I’m reading this article, on the Economist’s website, rather than the millions or so other stories that appear on the Web everyday is because the Economist is a brand that I trust. I simply don’t have time to chase down and read every scrap of content that’s out there, so I pick and choose from reputable sources. So if the Economist’s thesis were true (and it’s nothing we haven’t already heard over and over; remember when Stephen King tried to sell The Plant for a buck a branch?), and the only major parts of the publishing process were indeed “authors and readers,” then publishing would have been put out of business a long time ago. eBooks have existed for over ten years, and vanity presses have been willing to print a book by anyone who will pay them for much longer than that.

What I find most interesting about the Economist article is that, in the same issue, there’s an article entitled “Who needs paper?” But this one’s not about publishing or books. Instead, it’s about the travel industry. The full headline reads, “Airlines do away with paper tickets,” which is something I actually wrote about last September. Here’s the first few lines of the Economist article:

IT WILL not be long before paper tickets for a plane, train or bus seem as quaint as propellers, steam and conductors do today. Electronic travel passes are already widespread in many cities.

And, of course, with the headline “Who needs paper?” you could imagine that the article would be about books, probably reading something like:

IT WILL not be long before paper novels for fiction, non-fiction or reference material seem as quaint as propellers, steam and conductors do today. Electronic content devices are already widespread in many cities.

And yet, in either one of those stories — whether you’re writing about traveling or reading — the fact that paper is going away isn’t having an adverse effect on the thing itself: people are still traveling, despite not having paper tickets. And people will continue to read, even when paper formats begin to go away.