Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The other day on the design website A Brief Message, designer Chip Kidd had a short essay entitled “Notify the Next of Kindle.” In the essay, Kidd disparages Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader by bestowing upon it the usual kind of narrow-minded bibliophile dismissal that culminates with the rather Proulxian declaration that “PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO READ BOOKS ON A SCREEN.” This is, of course, news to all of those people out there who DO ACTUALLY WANT TO READ BOOKS ON A SCREEN. (Not to mention that Kidd doesn’t really seem to comment on the fact that both his words and my words are BEING READ ON A SCREEN RIGHT NOW.)

Anyway, Kidd is obviously a brilliant and talented guy, but he’s coming at this from the point of view of a designer and, dare I say it, he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to discussing the topic. First of all, here’s how he explains away the success of the iPod: “The reason the iPod took off is that music was never meant to be a ‘thing’ in the first place. It was born as pure sound, and pure sound is what it has returned to.” This is pretty ridiculous. Kidd is failing to realize that, yes, music used to also be objects. In fact, when you think of the elaborate packaging of something like The Beatles White Album, with its embossed gatefold sleeve, fold-out poster and full-size color portraits, it was very much a “physical object,” a “thing.” And yet, after being downgraded to flimsy CD packaging a dozen years ago, it will soon be available as a completely digital download, meaning all you’ll get for your $20 is the music and an invisible package. And it will still be a great record.

So why won’t it be different for books? As Kidd sees it, “Books were always physical objects, and the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon.” I completely disagree with this. Books were always physical objects, yes, but that’s because they were, well, books. What Kidd fails to realize is that books have a marrow and a DNA that go far beyond the paper they’re printed on. In fact, as I’ve said many times, the “book” aspect of a book, meaning its physical structure (pages, ink and binding) is always the least interesting thing about a it. (Unless, I guess, you’re a designer.) I mean, the reason Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers is because he’s an amazing storyteller who takes me — through his words — to different and wonderful worlds. And while Kidd’s jackets (on Murakami’s books and others) are nice, they’re just part of the package (think of them as icing on the cake; nice, but not essential). I could read Murakami’s novels with different covers, or plain covers or no covers, or as a series of cocktail napkins, and they would still be chilling and amazing stories. So while Kidd can insist that the Kindle changes nothing, I think he’s dead wrong. And I also think the time for the snobbishness of saying no one wants to read books on a screen, when we live in a digital world and plenty of people do, has got to end.

Here’s a YouTube video of Benjamin Higginbotham, from the blog Technology Evangelist, taking Amazon’s new eBook reader, the Kindle, for a test drive (not to mention comparing it to other eBook readers out there). This is informative and really well done.

Long discussed and eagerly anticipated by those in the eBook community, Amazon today launched its Kindle eBook reading device, which is now available for $399. Considering that this is Amazon’s first bit of major merchandise it has produced and sold under its own name, I think it’s a pretty big development. After all, it was years before Microsoft starting producing consumer electronic goods with the Xbox and now the Zune. And yet, even though Amazon’s road (or should we say river?) has been a little longer and winding than Microsoft’s, this decision makes perfect sense. Because even though today Amazon can sell you everything from a humidifier to plate stands (two recent purchases of mine, actually), where it all began — back in 1995 —- was with books. Books were the item that Jeff Bezos finally decided upon after driving to Washington with the idea to start an online business. And now, after the huge and explosive growth of the Internet, it’s to books that Bezos is once again looking in terms of Amazon’s next big development.

And while this will no doubt cause the usual hand-wringing amongst the literati and bibliophiles, it really shouldn’t. That Amazon is making available electronic books is not much different than when they made books available online over a decade ago. Back then the idea was selection and customer service. The same is true today, except instead of the convenience of overnight shipping, Amazon will be offering instantaneous download and delivery. Works of great literature will now never be more than a mouseclick away.

In terms of the device itself, I’ve seen it and think it’s pretty nice. In terms of layout and feel, the closest thing to compare it to (mainly because its screen uses the same eInk technology) is the line of Sony eReaders. However, the big (and, I think, crucial) difference is that the Kindle is wireless and has a web browser along with a small keyboard. So while most other eBook devices insist on you being at home, and online, with your device hooked up to your desktop or laptop computer before you can buy and download a book, with the Kindle you can be just about anywhere in the world and have access to a great bookstore. For instance, if you’re in the middle of Central Park and a friend says you just have to read The Kite Runner, you can pull out the Kindle and access the Amazon eBook store, and seconds later it’s yours. You can then start reading it on the subway ride home. And so while I won’t at all declare that the Kindle represents the “iPod moment” for eBooks, with its web integration it is indeed a step in the right direction. It is also yet another evolution in the dissemination of ideas, continuing in the long line that began with the written word, passed through the era of Gutenberg, and continues today with advances (like this) in digital delivery and consumption.

Last week Joe Wikert, Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., interviewed me for his Publishing 2020 blog. Joe’s blog is really great, so I was honored to be asked. He’s also a very nice guy, and he asked some great questions.

Here’s a sample question and answer:

JW: Which of the various monetization models do you feel will work best with e-content in the future (advertising, subscription, price per unit, etc.)?

JG: All of the above. I also love that you called it “electronic content,” since that’s what it really is. And that content will vary widely, from things that we would consider today to be either a magazine or a newspaper or a book, but in the future that will all come under the heading of “content”; it will consist of words on a screen. And some material will be better suited to advertising than others, while some material will work on a subscription basis. There won’t be just one monetary model; there will be lots of them.

To read the entire interview, click here.

The third installment of the Print is Dead podcast, as part of the book excerpt site, has just been delivered. The podcast features me reading the chapter “eBooks and the Revolution That Didn’t Happen” from the second section of the book, “Totally Wired.”

Here’s a snippet of the chapter:

From the very beginning eBooks faced a steep battle in terms of generating and sustaining consumer interest. They were, after all, a whole new way of doing something that people had been doing fine for five centuries. Everyone learns how to read with physical books, and books have been a constant in society ever since. eBooks in the late 1990s were then the answer to a question no one was yet asking.

You can read the complete chapter here.

Subsribe to the podcast via iTunes, or use the XML feed.

Also, you can listen to the excerpt directly below:

Or else, download the MP3 here.

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.

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.

From the video blog I Hate Young People, I found the above clip that consists of people talking about cell phones and their hatred/fear of technology (epitomized by the woman who says “Just because it’s new doesn’t make it better”). While being pretty funny, I also think it goes to show just how wary people are of new things and change in general, and I bet that — a hundred years ago — you would have received the same reactions in terms of people talking about horseless carriages and the telephone. And, of course, you hear people talk like this in the “future of the book” debate, decrying things like electronic reading devices or portable gadgets, saying no one will want to “curl up” with computers. The subtext in both discussions is a general fear of the new, and a desire to always have things remain the same. However, as we all know, the only thing that remains the same is the fact that things will indeed always change. So, like it or not, technology is here to stay.

Last week Apple introduced three new iPod models, including a redesign of their ultra-successful Nano model, along with a Classic version and the new iPod Touch (which is basically the iPhone minus the phone and the AT&T contract; I instantly pre-ordered one). What I think is remarkable about this is whenever Apple introduces new products, it instantly phases out its old ones. For example, it’s now impossible to buy any of the former Nano models (you know, the ones that were cutting-edge up until last Wednesday). The same way that the Nano itself replaced the mega-popular iPod Mini just a few years ago, the Nano itself has now been replaced with an even newer model. While some view this with cynicism, as if Steve Jobs is out to wring every nickel he can from enthusiasts/obsessives who’ll purchase anything with the Apple logo on it, I instead look at this with awe and admiration, the sign of a man and a company who demand nothing but the very best.

After all, neither Apple or Jobs are cluttering the marketplace; at any one time, there are only three to five iPod models to choose from. So instead of the Mini standing next to both versions of the Nano (not to mention the Shuffle, which itself has gone through a few transformations), the older models disappear — a la Logan’s Run — and make way for the new ones. But instead of this being about Jobs and money, this is about Apple and its addiction to change, along with its relentless quest to always have on hand the best possible product.

In thinking about this in terms of the publishing industry, I thought it would make an interesting comparison (mainly because, while Apple changes all the time, publishing tries to change as little as possible). True, Apple is a technology company whose bread and butter is innovation, while publishing is supplying a good rather than an experience (after all, no one expects much innovation to come from such basic products as, well, bread and butter). And yet, in the “print is dead” debate, the fact that books are indeed a technology is brought up all the time. Indeed, many pro-book pundits feel that printed books are the “perfect” technology, and that computers — no matter how advanced — can never best a book when it comes to delivering a satisfying reading experience. So I think that the comparison between Apple and publishing is somewhat apt (or rather, not as outlandish as it sounds).

So then what I find so shocking is that no one in publishing is really trying to push the boundaries the way Apple always is. In fact, it’s almost the reverse; instead of charging ever forward, publishing seems content to always look back. At this point, we’ve gone from viewing Gutenberg as the man who printed bibles to looking at him like a biblical figure himself: a saint not to argued with, the inventor of a religion instead of a technology. So instead of, in the past 500 years, pushing for the evolution of books, we have instead grown warm with the idea that they won’t evolve at all. Not only that, but we reject as a heretic anyone who suggests that books, “the perfect invention,” have any need for improvement. If Steve Jobs felt this way, Apple computers would still be made out of blocks of wood and the world wouldn’t have any iPods to be updated in the first place.

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.