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April 1, 2009
Bye-Bye Books
In several years books will be radically different. I don’t know what form they will take, but one thing for sure is that they won’t be ink on paper.
The same thing is happening to the book publishing business that has happened to newspapers – executives, managers, and editors are stuck with their heads in a wad of paper, with ink running through their veins, and rigidly believing that publishing is inextricably linked to printing. They are stuck in a Gutenberg rut.
People in the publishing business communicate via email, buy stuff online, and read the news on websites, so they know that the Internet exists. But they haven’t yet made the connection between what they do (acquire manuscripts, edit them, print them on paper, and distribute them) and what the Internet does (distributes information instantaneously).
In the early 1980s I did an analysis of newspaper management textbooks. All of them dealt with newspapers as though they were a manufacturing business. There were lots of pictures of huge printing presses and rolls of paper and there were chapters on printing (manufacturing papers), circulation, and dealing with labor unions. There were few pictures of newsrooms and no chapters on how to deal with recalcitrant reporters. Managing was about managing capital assets, not human assets, certainly not human beings that covered and wrote about news.
Last week I received an advanced copy of my book (printed on paper), Media Selling, Fourth Edition, and I was thrilled to finally hold it and turn its pages. I used the book last fall in a graduate course I reach at The New School. I put drafts of a couple of revised chapters of the book online for them to read, and I received no complaints from the students. No one said, “I don’t like reading books online; I prefer carrying around a 600-page book in my back pack and having the tactile feeling of paper and turning pages.” Of course not, they do virtually all of their reading online today.
As required reading for the course I listed no books printed on paper but, in addition to the online chapters, I included four blogs, the Business section of The New York Times which could be read online, and three podcasts. I also assigned several videos to watch. After one class toward the end of the year, I asked several students if they would like to be able to listen to Media Selling on their iPods (every student had one, of course), and their responses were unanimously and enthusiastically, “Of course.”
I sent an email to my editor at Wiley-Blackwell, the publisher of Media Selling, Fourth Edition asking if they’d like to have an audio version of the book, which I would read and record. Here, in part, is the response I got: “I’ve queried my marketing team on the audio question and fear I have less encouraging news. We currently aren’t set up to sell books through these kinds of channels in the academic division and have very little (or no) request for this kind of format with textbooks historically.”
In 1976, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak took their first Apple computer kit to retail stores on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, I’m sure several, except the one that finally took their new machine, said, “We’ve had no requests for a small, personal computer, so we’re not interested.” Remember, that in 1977 Ken Olsen CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation said “That there no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”
Gutenberg’s press was a disruptive technology, as defined by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma, as was the Internet, the personal computer, the iPhone, the Kindle, and Twitter. Disruptive technologies are no longer appearing every century, or every decade, or every year; they are appearing every month. Soon they will be whizzing at us every week.
So, to think that books, which are based on a technology that is five-and-a-half centuries old, will be around much longer is the ultimate Luddite delusion. Within a few years when students matriculate for their first semester in college, they will be given a devise, perhaps something similar to a Kindle or an iPhone that connects to the Internet, and a password. Included in their tuition and fees will be a charges for up-to-date synonyms for “books” and “library” and “personal computer.”
Current libraries will be turned into museums that will display old printed manuscripts and books that are representative of the past – collections in glass cases that you can look at but cannot touch. Historical relics in a reliquary. All books, including textbooks, will be available online – no need for libraries – and students won’t buy them, they will subscribe to them.
As an author of a textbook, I will write Media Selling, have it copy edited by smart software, and publish it online to Amazon.com with whom I negotiated a deal directly. Amazon.com will have an educational division that will have an up-to-date database that includes all the people who teach a course that is related to my book and all media company managers who might be prospects for the book, and through an automated process Amazon.com will promote the book via email and AdWords on Google.
Students and professionals will subscribe to
Bye-bye 600-page heavy books, bye-bye libraries, bye-bye book publishers. Hello convenience, hello being current, and hello revenue that goes directly to authors instead of to Gutenberg’s descendants and people who kill trees.
Posted by Charles Warner at April 1, 2009 6:28 PM
Comments
Bruce Braun ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 2, 2009 8:43 PM writes:
Sharon and I bought our Kindles last month and we could not be happier. We both travel and love to read. We hate lugging books around due to weight and bulk. I remember the countless times I put a book in my briefcase only to not read it because my interest waned for some reason or another. With the Kindle, we can take a hundred books with us with a total weight of 10 oz. and very little physical mass to crowd a bag. How cool is that? Best of all, rather than forking over $20-30 for a book, we can now buy it for $10.00. All hail the new order!
Media Curmudgeon at April 2, 2009 10:11 AM writes:
Steve Silberberg writes:
"I received a Kindle for my birthday this year. The first key thing is I actually can read again. I've tried prescription reading glasses to no avail. The Kindle solves my middle age eye sight issues. The other well publicized advantages of the Kindle are:
1. The almost instant wireless delivery of the book.
2. The ability to carry 1,500 books in a light form factor. Think of all the shelf space you free up, or space in your travel bags for vacation or a business trip.
3. Best Sellers cost less than their hard cover versions.
4. There's a dictionary built in that keys into the word you highlight with the cursor.
5. If you own and iPhone or Ipod touch you can read switch off and read the books on your Kindle or iPhone device. Extremely useful on the subway.
Bits once again beat matter. Books have been a long hold out."
Media Curmudgeon at April 2, 2009 10:07 AM writes:
Joe Witte writes:
"You are right... bye bye big books... and bye bye huge budgets for college books. My professor at George Mason puts the readings on the web, which I then send to Kindle and Kindle returns it to my kindle 2 for easy reading and portability... and if I want it even reads to me! How cool is that?"
Media Curmudgeon at April 2, 2009 8:52 AM writes:
Chris Warner writes:
"Not so fast on bye bye libraries. My daughters, 7 & 4 love books. My wife comes home with our 4 year old after an hour of delightful tactile perusal and selection with 35 to 50 books, tapes and music CDs. The girls cherish their library cards, which they earned by learning to write their names. Our fabulous library system offers more and better content all the time. People are abandoning Netflix, because most any movie you might want is free at the library. They offer free passes to museums, etc. There is no better value in our town than the library for entertainment, education or to just relax and read the free newspapers, magazines or internet access. Our library rocks."
Media Curmudgeon at April 1, 2009 8:20 PM writes:
Thom Hiatt writes:
"Five years. Maybe. But I think a little longer to completely get rid of books. Perhaps the students and universities will jump on that train first, as long as the books are available electronically. What you say, of course, is correct. It should also be noted that an electronic experience lends itself much more easily to hyperlinks and embedded media, which allow for a much more in-depth educational experience. Personally, I'd rather NOT see libraries go by the wayside, but I would like to see them transformed with the times to become a more up-to-date learning environment for municipalities. There is something to be said for the educational ambiance of the library -- much like the "value" in buying a $2 cup of coffee at Starbucks.
As an author, if your chapter is about "old fashioned printing presses" then you may as well be able to see a quick YouTube video of a press in action, linked from the text. If your Econ chapter is about small business accounting, then you should be able to just type in some numbers, see if they balance, and therefor see if you understand the topic at hand. While we're at it, let's add a chat function that allows you to use Google Talk and chat with fellow classmates who are reading the same chapter, at that moment. Group learning... while each student is at his respective girlfriend's house.
The whole thing is stored in the cloud, and downloadable to your device via gears. Better yet, twenty years after college I can log in, and use a time-travel tool to "slide" back in time and see how the book has changed over the years through each of your quarterly updates... allowing me to reminisce and learn, all at one time.
My last point -- the latest version of Adobe InDesign and Acrobat are allowing anybody with six ounces of talent to write a book, make it look great, embed media, and save as an interactive PDF file, Flash File, XML, etc. None of which is on paper. Thanks to Google, Adobe, and Apple, more trees are alive today.
Your publisher's response is classic: "Sorry, we cannot do anything that we believe will jeopardize our current business model, which we know has its days numbered, yet we'll never admit it."
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