Print and the Digital Gutenberg
July 7, 2009
The premise of my new study Google: The Digital Gutenberg is that a new medium has supplanted traditional media. I don’t mean print. I mean video, images, and constructs. The Google Wave is a bundle of Google components that eliminate the need for separate types of communication modes. Wave may or may not work, but whoever pulls it off will be rolling in money and opportunity. Hamilton Nolan, writing in Gawker, reprinted David Eggers email, which is germane to my thesis. You can find the Eggers’ email here. Mr. Eggers wrote:
Anyway. I would like to say to you good print-loving people that for every dire bit of news there is out there, there is also some good news, too. The main gist of my (rambling) speech at the Author?s Guild was that because I work with kids in San Francisco, I see every day that their enthusiasm for the printed word is no different from that of kids from any other era. Reports that no one reads anymore, especially young people, are greatly overstated and almost always factually lacking. I’ve written about youth readership elsewhere, but to reiterate: sales of young adult books are actually up. Total volume of all book sales is actually up. Kids get the same things out of books that they have before. Reading in elementary schools and middle schools is no different than any other time. We have work to do with keeping high schoolers reading, but then again, I meet every week with 15 high schoolers in San Francisco, and all we do is read (literary magazines, books, journals, websites, everything) in the process of putting together the Best American Nonrequired Reading. And I have to say these students, 14 to 18 years old, are far better read and more astute than I was at their age, and there are a million other kids around the country just like them.
I agree. I just think that a new medium will supplant ink-on-paper and to a certain extent other media that are expensive to distribute via traditional means. I have three or four publishers selling my books, and I know that a downturn is underway. My newest publication “Mysteries of Online” will be made available without charge on my Web site. One of my publishers expressed interest in the material, but I am shifting my approach. Call it a test.
Information is not at risk. Certain approaches and business models are at risk. Innovation and experimentation are needed.
Mr. Eggers wrote:
As long as newspapers offer less each day— less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos— then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It’s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page. Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they’ll pay for it.
My view is that the medium of innovations like Wave may offer an opportunity. The paper “thing” is expensive and becoming an issue for some concerned with the environment. Information is thriving.
Stephen Arnold, June 6, 2009
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