I’ve been thinking about this in the last week.

Firstly, printed books… I think we need to inject a little reality into the situation – they are portable, and cheap, and feel lovely, and come in all different colours, and can be enormously tactile, and can be taken to bed.

I don’t see them going anywhere soon – economically or socially… Reading on the train/bus/tube, in bed/armchair, in a cafe/restaurant – none of these things will disappear.

However, I firmly believe that publishers need to think further about how they are making content accessible. Recently, I was doing some research on Bob Dylan, and his
impact on the civil rigts movement in the US, in order to help my cousin with his study.

I’m a Dylan fan, I guess it goes with being a Guardian reader, and a jazz/blues/rock fan – he has stolen/has his impact on them all. I’ve bought his CDs, but never his books. After reading a bit on the topic, started with Wikipedia, (would have gone to OUP online ifI still had free access, damn this change of career on occasion) trawled Google for interesting articles, in order to pull together a bibliography for myself.

So, there you go. Had the start of some interesting reading out there, ready to go. Had three books I wanted to browse through (and if I were in a bookshop, I well and truly could have – checked the chapter titles, and looked up the index), as well as about six articles or chapters in books/journals that I definitely wanted to read.

But, I didn’t want to wait for the four days-six weeks to go to a book shop, check the stuff, make some purchases, followed by going online to order some books that it would take an impressively crap amount of time to get to me. [See recent attempts to get a book on Amazon, only to discover that it would take up to two months - print on demand my backside.]

Where is the content?

Where is the content in a way that you can have a peek online; check the chapter titles; have a look at page 69 [or any other page that doesn't seem quite so suggestive]; read the first page of the chapter? Where? I’m willing to pay – hear me, publishers – I’m willing to pay.

I won’t apologise for being one of the folks who would instant access to some information, so you don’t have to apologise for asking for some money… I would like the document as a PDF, or as an e-reader file, or a Word file (though that makes me nervous, as everyone understands).

Where is the publisher who is thinking of me?

You have content laden sites, like the reference ones that OUP run – ODNB particularly used to almost move me to tears with the information therein. They are few and far between. You have smart publishers like The Friday Project, whose creative commons idea works so that people like me (book addicts) sneak on their site, have a quick (or lengthy, depending on how good it is) look and then purchase anyway, for my self and possible multiple others. You have smart authors like Dave Eggers and Marie Phillips who have clever content that engages me and makes me sell them my soul as a reader – forever.

But, in this instance, I have no publisher to help. I want to browse a title, find it contains nuggets of gold, download them (to read in print sometimes, I’ll even work out myself for the printer paper). I may or may not want the full title.

But, here’s the crunch – I’m not going to buy any of these books (well, maybe one) because I can’t wait, and I’m a gratuitous person, I’m like it instant. I would buy more than one right now, if I could have it right now, and I would buy bits of others.

Which means, at the end of the day – revenue stream for publishers – diminished due to not being able to work this out.

In short (which, to be fair, I rarely am), get it sorted.

Marketing is so nearly everything it is unreal!

Book Reader,

I see that case made a lot (about the short snippets) but I wonder if it is true. I find myself reading a considerable amount of long form articles on the web. Maybe I’m a freak who is in a crossover generation used to paper and so happy to read long pieces but I do wonder.

Cass,

What a comment, making me think even more about a subject. I think you are right, print will probably never dissappear. After all the paperless office has become the even more heavily papered office.

I suspect the bookstore chains will dwindle but the independents will thrive. Better locked into their market, better able to hand sell and with a clientele that is more used to the higher prices that will increasingly become associated with quality printed books (Fiction and Non-Fiction), they will have the advantage over the chains. I also think books will be prettier than they are now a trend that is slowly advancing (more on this later).

Alongside that the supermarkets will sell the high volume books at throwaway prices. The middle will not hold against that kind of change!

Áine,

As you say it is the middle people (as above) who are going to be marginalized by the process. Especially if we don’t make ourselves relevant in the changed market!

Thanks for all the comments.
Eoin

Great site, great article… thanks for being there!

I agree that it is unlikely that we are witnessing a single-generational mutation in human consciousness – but like you am fascinated by the changes that delivery methods are likely to make to the content of “books” & “literature”. There is no doubt that writing as we know it is already mutating as a result of the Internet, just as the 19th century novel grew out of technological advances in printing and distribution at that time.

My interest is primarily as a novelist (so far, of big traditional novels) and literary agent, who is just beginning to blog. As a writer, I love the potential of the Internet to deliver content to readers without the gatekeepers & middle(wo)men and I believe that already how-to nonfiction is more effectively delivered by downloads than the traditional book.

The most interesting questions – and mutations – will be around storytelling. Already what is written, & how it is written & read, is changing — while traditional bookselling shoots itself in the foot with ludicrous discounting, blandifcation & commodifiction, a world of literary creativity explodes on the Internet. You don’t have to buy the idea of a change in human conscousness to realise that it means big changes for us all.

But I believe these changes are mostly positive for the real players in the literary world — writers & readers, if not for publishers (and literary agents!).

Bring it on!

Áine (Orna Ross)

I really enjoy popping over here and reading yours and others thoughts on the future of books and publishing, very interesting indeed. Whilst I don’t work in publishing, I was a bookseller for a number of years, and still find all this ‘shop talk’ really interesting.

This post was especially thought provoking. As a booklover, I must admit that I find it really difficult to remain positive and optimistic in the face of all this emerging e-book and e-publishing technology. Not because I am in any way a technophobe, or because I object the ever-increasing role the internet is playing in our cultural lives. I don’t, in fact I love that I can get information at a keystroke, or that I can be having this discussion with someone on the other side of the globe to me.

I do however, worry that this tilt towards everything ‘e’, is steadily eroding the many small pleasues I associate with books and reading. I love finding new bookstores, I love the feeling of walking into a store and being surrounded by aroma of the printed word. I love being up to physically pick up, put down, apply my p70 test, and generally lose myself for hours in a multitude of ‘potential’ friends.

Sites like amazon, booktopia or barnes & noble are great for those titles you can’t get from your local bookie, but I for one have no intention, of trawling these sites, waiting for multiple pages to load just so that I can ‘take a look inside’ books, and no amount of discount or free shipping will change that. Nor do I have any intention of subscribing to a publishers site to download the work of a beloved author on an ‘e-book’, that I will then have to either read on a computer screen or print. I suspect on this point however, that in the not so distant future my views on this will be regard as quaint and antiquarian!

Whilst I have no doubt that the technology will in time become extremely sophisticated in delivering e-book products, will they ever be able to replicate the feel of a book, the joy of seeing it on your shelf, or the marvel one feels when admiring the craftsmanship of a well made book?

Whilst I don’t believe that e-book technologies, will entirely spell the demise of printed books and bookstores, the fact remains that as these technologies increase in popularity, the book/selling markets will have to respond accordingly, and I do wonder were that will leave books and booksellers?

I also wonder about the impact this technology will have on the local writing industry. Most booksellers I know are keenly aware that in this day and age their businesses are held afloat by shifting large units of ‘bestseller’, ‘blockbuster’ and ‘entertainment’ fiction. Whilst many will continue until their dying day to support in this instance Australian fiction, they will all freely admit that they don’t make any money out of it, and some often run at a loss in order to do it.

Subsequently, I wonder in the future will it be only titles that shift the large units that will actually make it into print? What wil happen to the local fiction industry, which already suffers from blink and you’ll miss print runs. Will these be the titles that are accessable via download only? Or if they do make it to print, what am I as a supporter and consumer of homegrown literature going to be slugged for the privilege?

I guess that really, only time will provide the answer to my questions. But in the meantime I’d love to hear your thoughts, musings or predictions!

Thanks for the heads up on the links. They are all gone wonky! Must be my bad!

Regular service will resume shortly!

I love books too and don’t think they will be going anyway soon either.

Eoin

The one thing I’ve learned with my own version of online publishing is that marketing is still nearly everything.

I was a bit confused by the above for a moment as I thought the Mark no.1 you were quoting was me — and I was disagreeing with me!

But it isn’t me, so that’s all right then!

Your links don’t seem to be working I’m afraid, so I can’t refer to the original article that you are having your beef with, but I do agree with your “Publishers should be platform neutral and content orientated.”

Well, I *mostly* agree with it!

I still think that the wonderful technology of the codex book is hard to beat. An ordinary book is just about perfect at being a book.

And increasingly I think that ebook technology will be fed back into laptop technology, so that we’ll soon have e-ink, super-readable, fold-up laptops that have wonderful capacity to hold books — and you can choose to download them (by contract?) from a provider like Amazon or a particular publisher or you can download them from lots of other places too. This digital content will, for a good while yet, go hand in hand with the continued production of the codex…

But, doubtless, this future-gazing of ours is vital for everyone in the Book Industry, and indeed for many readers: we need to keep our eyes open.