Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Now that Print is Dead is out, I have a number of friends and relatives sending me their best wishes for my efforts. But what’s interesting about all of these kind words is that almost all of them add that they hope my predictions for the demise of books doesn’t come true. I guess they think I’m predicting that print’s going to die, but what I’m really saying is that print’s already dead.

Indeed, print is dead in the sense that it’s no longer as vital or relevant as it once was. It used to be that print was a broadcast medium, a way to convey knowledge and information across long distances and to all ranges of social and economic groups. But that’s all been replaced by the Internet. (If Jerry Maguire wanted to distribute his manifesto today, he wouldn’t go to a Kinko’s and have copies made; he’d start a blog, which of course means he’d end up get Dooced in addition to being fired.) So the point isn’t to debate whether or not print is going to die, but rather the question is, What do we do with its corpse?

In hundreds of small ways print is already giving up the ghost. Yet more proof of this is the fact that Picador UK is going to stop publishing hardback books, except in special limited editions. Instead, books will be published directly in paperback format. As Nicholas Clee wrote in the Guardian Book Blog a few weeks ago:

Until now, a small market has just about upheld the other arguments for literary fiction in hardback. But that market has almost reached vanishing point. The paucity of sales of novels even by acclaimed authors was an awkward book industry secret until this summer, when it was broadcast that eight of the novels on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize had sold fewer than 1,000 copies.

So it seems that the invisible hand of the consumer has been quietly brushing books aside for years, to the point where even the most feted novels in the UK won’t escape print’s ultimate fate. In fact, Clee’s blog entry is titled “Cover story: hardbacks have their uses,” to which I would reply, “Yes, of course hardbacks have uses; so do horses, even though we’ve stopped riding them around for transportation.” Books will always exist, but they will be produced in much smaller numbers than we may have been used to in the past. And it won’t be technology companies that do either the pruning or the killing; indeed, the fact the Booker Prize nominees have sold in such small quantities shows that the public has been silently — with its very apathy — killing books for years. So with Print is Dead I’m not predicting that print will die; instead I’m drawing chalk around its edges.

Last week I was invited to the BBC News offices in midtown New York to record an interview for a BBC 4 radio show entitled “Open Book.” According to the BBC website, “Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.” For the show, I was interviewed by the host Mariella Frostrup, as was Richard Charkin (former head of Macmillan UK, current head of Bloomsbury UK, and all-around good guy). We had a really great discussion on the future of the book, and seeing as how this is the closest I’ll ever get to recording a Peel Session, it was a great honor. The program aired this past Sunday, but you can also listen to it on the BBC website; my interview with Mariella and Richard starts at about 11:30 into the overall 28 minute program; for the direct episode link, click here.

This week I have the honor of being the author of the Soapbox column in this week’s edition of Publisher’s Weekly, which is a regular feature that appears on the last page of each issue. My column is entitled “Shock and Yawn,” and is about the reaction I often receive when I tell people I’ve written a book entitled Print is Dead.

Here’s a snippet:

Of all the ways to win a popularity contest, working in publishing and writing a book called Print Is Dead has to be at the bottom of the list. While the subtitle—Books in Our Digital Age—hopefully puts the argument in a bit more perspective, the title by itself always seems to set people off. In fact, it has earned me many a chilly reception (think Benedict Arnold, not Paul Revere).

You can read the rest of the column here.

Last week, I was very flattered to be asked by Richard Charkin, the head of Macmillan in the UK, to write up some thoughts for his Charkinblog on what it’s been like to be a person who works in the publishing industry who has just gone through the process of writing and publishing a book. Charkin is a very smart and nice guy, so I was only too happy to oblige. After spending a couple of hours thinking about this, I sent him my thoughts in a short essay entitled “Some Experience Necessary: Looking at publishing from both sides.” Here’s a portion of the essay:

One of publishing’s dirty little secrets is that, increasingly, it’s not about the books. Or maybe, it’s too much about the books (meaning books as objects, or even books as a number on a balance sheet). In the publishing process we find ourselves sometimes getting removed from the ideas and stories found in our books; the words that provide the power to deliver amazing and transformative experiences to readers (and are therefore the kinds of books we read growing up that made us want to get into this business in the first place).

One of the reasons this happens is because people who work in publishing, for the most part, have not had the experience of writing and publishing a book.

The rest of the essay has been posted on Richard’s blog, which you can view here.

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.