Why the Digital Revolution is Missing the Big Picture

I should have a Kindle. Or a Sony e-reader. Or a Cooler, an iRex, or some sort of tablet that plugs directly into my brain, then downloads whatever book I'm thinking of in .005 nanoseconds. I'm a book addict, and as Milton might say (not the "Paradise Lost" guy, the one from "Office Space"), "The ratio of books to space is too big."

To my surprise, I have not purchased an e-reader of any kind, despite incredible temptation. E-reader companies keep trying to lure me in with new versions of their machines, with lavish press conferences that trumpet huge sales figures that are so big they just can't be made public. And all that, that's the problem.

You see, for years we've all been pelted with articles about the oncoming digital book revolution, with columnists and press release regurgitaters telling us how ebooks are going to change the face of publishing and reading all while damning those old printed dinosaurs, with their antiquated dust jackets and unit costs that terrorize P&L sheets, to the same landfills that currently house millions of cassette tapes, CD boxes and copies of that old "E.T." game for the Atari system that was about as much fun as having being repeatedly poked in the eye with a sharp stick. Though all of this, they want me to buy an e-reader. Me. And that there is the problem.

You see, I'm not the audience e-readers should be aimed at. By marketing the Kindle to people like me -- i.e. adults who already read regularly and don't need to be sold on how great books are-- publishing is merely doubling down on the biggest problem facing the industry: not enough people read books. Right now, e-readers are being touted as an alternative to paper. The print killer. Big mistake. E-readers should be promoted as a cool option for non readers or hesitant readers. Instead, those readers are stunningly being ignored. I'm the one being sold...but I was sold a long, long time ago.

When the digital revolution hit music, it hit with the force of a sledgehammer. Napster was the snowball at the top of the hill, and once that bell had been rung it was over. We'd all been in those interminable car trips and plane rides, lugging around CD cases as thick as your luggage, changing discs mid-turbulence because, really, Chumbawumba only had one catchy song and once "Tubthumping" ended you had no more use for it. The first generation of MP3 players froze every other song and stored barely enough music to last through takeoff. Then the iPod entered the market -- I'm on my third one of those -- and everything just changed.

Why should we continue to buy CDs? They weren't attractive or decorative and held no emotional value. And did we really need liner notes filled with pictures of the band looking like they'd spent the entire recording session getting high?

I remember buying my first CDs in the early 90's, using all my bar-mitzvah money at HMV to stock up on the new Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam CDs. (Guns N' Roses and HMV: both are dead in the U.S., only one didn't seem to get the memo) Music is built to be sampled, skipped around. So when a device came out that allowed you to drop those traveling CD suitcases and create a mix with all your favorite songs - regardless of band, one after another! - even download them straight to your computer so you didn't have to worry about taking out an entire storage unit for the cases, it was a no-brainer. We were sold.

But when you talk about books...it's not quite that simple.

Books are not meant to be chopped up and consumed in pieces. You don't read one chapter of the new James Ellroy and then flip to Margaret Atwood's latest and back again. Books, to many, are fixtures: permanent and tangible and meaningful beyond the words themselves. Records have only been around since 1948, when the first vinyl album was produced. We outgrew it in just over 60 years. The printed word has been around for thousands. Something tells me it's a little more durable than your old Snow "Informer" single.

Now, I can sit in front of my computer for hours and read blogs, websites and multi-thousand word articles. But when it comes to reading books, I just can't. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with me, or it's just that books themselves have an appeal that goes beyond the skeleton of words and paper. I don't mind lugging five paperbacks with me on a two-day trip, and there's something oddly enjoyable about scouring your shelf for the right five books, because heaven forbid you run out of reading material during those 48 hours. My shelves are lined with books -- read and unread -- and I have hundreds more in creased storage boxes. I pine for the day when I have enough shelves to house every one of them. I love physical books, love the weight, love the texture, love the feel. Yes, I am that guy in the bookstore picking up every new hardcover, who finds that books with a rough front make him feel fancy.

I've downloaded numerous free e-reader apps for my iPhone (and even bought a few books for them), but other than killing a little time on the subway I haven't read more than fifty pages in total. As a publishing obsessive, worried to death about the state of reading given the onslaught of entertainment that embraces exploitation and ignorance over any sort of wit or intellect, my grandest hope is that e-readers bring in that coveted demographic which currently seems to embrace the printed word only to the extent that they skim the captions beneath a photo of a bikini-clad Kim Kardashian.

Ebook sales among 12-15 major publishers has increased from $4 million in the second quarter of 2006 to over $37 million in the second quarter of 2009. Right now, ebook sales appear to capture about 1.5-2% of the market, a very small slice but one that has been growing appreciably over the past few years. Even The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's mega religi-opus, has only sold 5% of its copies in electronic format, despite the e-edition being priced a whopping $20 below the hardcover. Now here's the thing: I want that percentage to grow. I want it to grow to 10%, 20%, hell, 50% of the market. Ebooks don't need to cannibalize their printed brethren, but right now they're being marketed to do just that. People shouldn't be buying ebooks just to save money. Advertisements for e-readers seem like they're aimed at the same people who subscribe to the New York Times Weekender.

Ebooks should expand the book buying market, not be used as an alternative for the print edition. Look at the ads for the iPod: they're fun, they're cool, they feature all sorts of (pastel-colored) people who are far funkier than anyone you or I know grooving to the licensed beat. Then consider the ads for the Kindle: the music is straight out of your local elevator. Hesitant readers aren't going to rush out to spend $299 for the reading equivalent of John Tesh. iPods sell the experience. E-readers are selling the gadget. And that's bass-ackwards.

Where are the ebook skins? Ads of Edward drooling over Bella like she was a stack of cheddar-flavored potato chips? Percy Jackson and Grover sitting next to a kid on the school bus? Jack Reacher looking like he's about to bust some skulls and break the heart of every woman in town? David McCullough waxing historical eloquence on the subway? The gizmos are merely the gateway to the reading experience. And I don't buy that e-readers are price prohibitive; the original iPod was $400, and you have to sell a kidney for Jonas Brothers ticket since you won't find an empty seat in the arena.

I don't want to feel like e-readers are targeting me. I'm not the one who needs to be sold on the joys of reading. So here's the challenge: with this new technology, publishing has a small, slowly closing window to do what they've struggled to for so long: show people in doubt just how cool reading is. More readers -- that's how we save publishing.

 

 

 

Follow Jason Pinter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jasonpinter

Comments

[Michael Pastore]

11:19 PM on 11/12/2009

Wonderful essay: thank you, Jason.

We need both technologi­es: paper books and ebooks. Both have strengths and shortcomin­gs. It's nice to read the paper book and then give it away, and to use the ebook edition for searching, annotating and storing notes.

How to convert people who do not read into people who read is one of the great challenges of our time. Everyone involved in publishing -- authors, editors, publishers­, bookseller­s, librarians -- will be needed to encourage America's young persons to turn off the screens -- at least for a little while -- and appreciate good books.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

[jesusangelgarcia]

12:02 PM on 11/05/2009

Agreed... 100,000%. I see eReaders and eBooks tapping the music/vide­o-obsessed youthful audience. If a novel is lightning-­paced and thematical­ly relevant to the lives of this demographi­c, there's no way it won't catch on. My bets are on the multimedia novel as the "book" of the future. I'm all in: badbadbad.­net

[Geoffreys]

03:37 PM on 10/07/2009

I completely get the tactile sensation thing around reading books and I used to do the same thing before trips by scouring my library for just the perfect books to take with me. Now I travel for 2 to 4 weeks at a time and often to places like Guangzhou, China. With airlines getting butcher about weight restrictio­ns, a kindle made perfect sense in my case. Now, a year later, I do about 80% of my reading on my ereader.

The best thing about having an ereader, though, is I get to keep all my pbooks even though I'm buying more ebooks - sometimes I still like to curl up with a nice book or I want to read something that isn't in ebook format yet - so I do. And, I know you're not saying it's an either/or thing, but I've read comments from all sorts that make is sound like one of the requiremen­ts to buy a Kindle is that you first burn all your pbooks.

As for increasing the pool of readers - I'm all for that. However, it will be difficult as many non-reader­s find the entire idea boring. How does one jazz up sitting quietly and staring at paper? Except for Harry Potter and Oprah, I can't really think of much that's excited the general population in the past few decades ....

[Jason Pinter]

04:50 PM on 10/07/2009

It's strange, I've heard the same thing, many ebook-o-ph­iles who consider anyone who still reads paper books a complete philistine (and perhaps even a pagan). There is absolutely room for both (hell, a lot of people still buy vinyl records).

Funny but perhaps true, the new weight restrictio­ns on airplanes might have as much to do with increasing the popularity of ereaders as anything.

[Jason Pinter]

03:34 PM on 10/06/2009

Hey all -

Thanks for stopping by, apologies for the delay in commenting­.

Alafair - Right on, that's what we should all hope for. New technologi­es are a way to introduce hesitant people to things they might not normally try (i.e. mother buying an iPod).

Boku - That's a real shame, and I hope there are a lot more readers than you think. Part of it might be that it can be hard to find time to read for pleasure in college--o­f course there is plenty of time to be found for video games, etc... (I know my freshman year I spent the equivalent of an entire semester hooked up to Super Mario Kart via IV).

I Am Mouse - I don't want anyone to think I'm "anti-erea­der", when in fact it's the opposite. I embrace them and the world they might open up. There should not be an us-versus-­them, print-vers­us-electro­nic battle. Like you, I love my books, but I want more people to read,

smerkinb - So glad to hear it, and your sister is a perfect example of the good ereaders can do. Like it or not, some people are likely turned off or even intimidate­d by print and paper. But with an ereader, a good book might become much more accessible­. In my opinion the companies just aren't doing a good enough job of showing people like her just how much fun reading can be.

[Steve E Cohen]

07:20 PM on 10/06/2009

Hey Jason,
Apple's bringing out a full color e-reader shortly. Once these devices become useful for school kids, instead of lugging around half a dozen out dated text books, then books will slowly go the way of b&w film, still used by some, but impractica­l for mass users. For the dwindling numbers of book junkies, there will be print-on demand. Do you really think book publishing can survive in its present form? And of course, authors will need to do more to stand out, just like you, building an audience for their books through blogs, videos, audio, etc..

[Jason Pinter]

07:51 PM on 10/06/2009

I've heard rumors--li­ke everyone--­about Apple working on some sort of 'tablet' device, but I don't believe they're working on a specific e-reader. I do think eventually there will need to be a full color e-reader capable of holding Graphic Novels and Manga, and I think some people are probably waiting until one comes out before they purchase one.

As for publishing surviving.­..I'd like to think print books will never die, but in the end it's the content that matters most. Publishing has been tightening it's belt to a huge degree over the last year, and that's probably a good thing. I do think as long as publishers are owned by parent companies that expect double digit profits, the current model is unsustaina­ble. That's why the biggest problem is, pure and simply, a lack of readers. According to the most recent US Education department study, there are 32 million Americans who 'cannot read'. That's over 10% of the entire population­, which is just a ludicrous number, and any industry trying to survive against those kind of odds without figuring out how to alleviate the problem is in trouble.

That said, stories are timeless and books are the vehicle to get them to people. So I have no doubt that stories will survive, whether in this format or in electronic remains to be seen.

[smerkinb]

09:59 AM on 10/06/2009

Great take on this issue! This article made me think about the whole situation in a different light. I don't want a Kindle, but it's great to think that my (non-readi­ng) little sister might actually read something if it didn't come with pages. I mean she already dabbles in the audio book world. So maybe the format is the problem for some people. The format is what I love and my ideal "happy place" is a room with bookshelve­s for wallpaper. But it's not for everyone. Thanks for putting things in a different perspectiv­e.

[i-am-mouse]

11:30 PM on 10/05/2009

Great article! Even though I manage computer networks for a living, I have no interest in buying an e-reader. Give me a paper book any day!

[boku]

10:58 PM on 10/05/2009

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only college student who can't put a great book down...
I used to ask "What are you reading?" as an icebreaker but now most of the time all I get are stares and awkward silence.
I think it would be nice if the Kindle turned more people on to reading books. Reading on the Kindle is better than not reading although, I'd like it if after discoverin­g what it's like to read they'd start reading regular books as well.

[Alafair Burke]

06:19 PM on 10/05/2009

Hi Jason. Good to see you here. I hope your view of a "change the market" model catches on. I have friends who never used to read much but wound up getting e-readers to download newspapers for travel, etc., and now they find themselves impulsivel­y buying all kinds of books and reading 3 or 4 at a time. Bring new readers to the e-versions­, but let the traditiona­l book lovers continue to buy our books (available online or at your local bookseller­, thank you very much).

[AwShucks]

06:08 PM on 10/05/2009

I so agree with this article.

I love the way books smell even.

Can't imagine not being able to hold the book that I am reading.

I don't even like audio books.

Give me a big thick book .Put me in a corner and I'm just fine.