Darren and the encyclopedia: Why print books still have a place

While at my permaculture course, Darren Doherty, our instructor, told a little bit of his own story now and then. At one point, he mentioned that he had learned to read when he was about three years old. And when he was five or six years old, he received a World Book Encyclopedia for his birthday.

"I read the entire set four times through."

--Now, before I say anything else, I should note that he is the second person I have met who has confessed to reading an entire encyclopedia.

But four times through? And why? What would motivate a child to read an entire encyclopedia?

Well, besides the basic thirst for knowledge--which both of the people I have met who have done this have obviously exhibited, Darren replied, "Because it was mine. They were my books."

The encyclopedia was a unique gift and it was his.

Thought: I can't imagine an electronic encyclopedia--an e-book encyclopedia--generating anywhere near the same feelings or motivations in any child.

And that thought led to this: That print books still have a real place in today's and tomorrow's society.

More about book publishing, libraries, and the future of books . . .

Jamie LaRue graciously replied to my post yesterday and invited me to visit his blog.

If you didn't read his comment, I want to point out what he said about how libraries operate:

[F]irst, we treat commercial eBooks exactly like a paper book. That is, if we bought one copy, only one copy can be checked out at a time. If we buy two, two at a time. Technologically, of course, a file can be shared simultaneously. But libraries follow copyright, and pay for what we use.

That encouraged me greatly. It means there really is a potential for a long-term market in and to and through libraries. As long as they stick to that kind of high integrity model.

He made another comment, too, about my lack of understanding concerning what has happened in the music industry:

[T]he past two years saw a 55% decline of music publisher profits. People go directly to music sites, or iTunes, for individual songs. Musicians make their money performing these days, not selling CDs through publishers. Obviously, that's different from authors, many of whom just want to write, not give speeches. But the lesson is plain: start making it expensive and inconvenient for people to read, and they seek alternative sources for content.

With those comments, and his implicit invitation to visit his blog, I found his latest post: Your right to read is at risk and realized he is onto something big.

In that post, if you put two and two together, you realize that HarperCollins' policy is mild compared to many of its competitors:

Many publishers in the rapidly consolidating world of commercial publishing - among them giants Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster - won't sell eBooks to libraries at all. Why? Because they believe, falsely, that there's an opportunity to greatly boost their profits while reducing the availability of the product. Sell direct to the consumer, bypass the cooperative purchasing power of the library, and eliminate this whole business of people not paying for every single access.

Under this emerging model, the right of ownership disappears. You simply won't be able to own a book anymore. You will have to have the device, the communications plan, and the money to pay per view. It's like replacing home ownership with a rental -- where the owner has the ability to raise the rent whenever he feels like it. It replaces the DVD with an on-demand subscription. It eliminates booksales and heirloom gifts with corporate lockboxes.

And then he goes on to point out the huge role libraries play (or, certainly, have played until very recently) within the total marketing matrix:

All by itself, Douglas County Libraries has 2 million visitors a year, and another 2 million to our website. Almost all of those people are looking for books. We're just about to roll out exciting new ways to display e-Content, and make it more findable. Cut us out of that eco-system, and all you really accomplish is to make it more difficult for readers to find authors, and for authors to find an audience.

As I alluded to last week, the move from LP album to CD was a similar savings for music publishers, and resulted in a similar grab for money. The result? Consumers rejected the whole system, and went direct, eliminating the middle man, and finding new distribution channels.

Public libraries in the 21st century are busy community hubs. Librarians are active and passionate lovers of literature, of music, of movies. We're even crazy about technology. Librarians will remain relevant and engaged in the acquisition, organization, and provision of public access to creative content. We're good at it. We will survive.

Will the big publishers? When they're reluctant to sell to some of their best customers, to the detriment of their own content creators?

As Lorin commented in reply to LaRue's post:

The giant [publisher]s will [soon, very soon!] simply become irrelevant.

They are shooting themselves in the foot by destroying their biggest (free; no; in fact, paying!) marketers.

It's as if the music publishers were to start viewing radio stations as the "enemy": after all, they are playing songs not just "once," nor, even, 26 times (HarperCollins' new limit for how often a single e-book may be checked out of a library), but they are playing songs tens and hundreds of thousands and even millions of times with every broadcast.

But it was that very radio play that made the modern commercial recording industry possible. It was through radio that most of us (of my generation, anyway!) ever learned that certain songs existed . . . so we could fall in love with them, buy them, and make them hits.

Well, finally, there is this, just posted this morning:

[A]t the Douglas County Libraries [for which LaRue is head librarian], over a third of our checkouts are children’s books. It isn’t uncommon to see mothers and a gaggle of giggling preschoolers tumble out the door with as many as 40 books at a time. Often, that's the haul from a visit that happens every week.
It’s hard not to feel good about that. Families that come to the library together not only spend quality time in each other’s company, they also establish a habit of literacy. Students in Douglas County schools tend to do very well academically. Surely part of the explanation is that many Douglas County children are ready to read long before they get to kindergarten. Libraries help make communities smarter.

What about those families who bring their children to the library? Are they really going to have an eBook reader for each child? Are they really willing to buy 40 books a week, 52 weeks a year?

If our goal is literate kids, the library – and its role as a cost-effective distributor of literature, music, and movies - will have a role for a long time.

Amen! It is many years since our kids were of that age when we would make the family trip to the library and check out dozens of books at a time. But LaRue's description is apt. And his logic impeccable. At least from all that I can see.

I think he is convincing me. And I am deeply grieved at the thoughtless path the major publishers are following.

How soon, do you think, before they will begin to see their revenues fall--and they will blame it all on "pirates" and the "digital revolution," but never realize how they have done much of the damage to themselves?

The future of publishing for libraries

Jamie LaRue, the head librarian for our county library system writes a regular column in our local paper. His latest captured Sarita's and my attention:

You own nothing

Publishing company HarperCollins announced Feb. 25 that its already restrictive "license" for library "purchases" of ebooks had become even more onerous. Henceforth, an ebook sold by them to libraries can only be checked out 26 times. Then libraries have to "buy" it again.

To be honest, I saw the newly instated policy and thought, "Makes sense to me." I mean, how often can a regular library book be checked out before it is falling apart and needs to be replaced? Print books don't last forever.

Moreover--and I don't know how this works for libraries--it strikes me that printed books can't be loaned out multiple times at once. Are libraries able to lend their "one" copy of an ebook multiple times at once? If so, that will kill book sales.

But then I read on:

It might be useful to step back and talk about how things work now. Douglas County Libraries now spends more than $3.3 million a year to buy a sample of the intellectual content of our culture. That's books, movies, and music.

For most books, we get close to a 50 percent discount. Why a discount? Because we are volume purchasers. Across the United States, libraries account for about 10 percent of all book sales. For children's books, it's more than 40 percent of sales.

Libraries also have another effect: we help authors find readers. A handful of authors will sell all their copies. But for most writers, the problem is getting passed around often enough to start to make a name for themselves.

Then people are more likely to buy one book, and watch for the next one.

What do we do with the books we buy? We talk them up, for one thing. Then we make them available to the public, regardless of age, income, or education.

Libraries make it possible for everyone, for anyone, to find out what's going on the world.

As I discussed in a previous column, physical books take up space, and library space is limited, so we also have to get rid of a lot of books. That process, called weeding, shoves even more books into people's homes. Books often have a second, third, and fourth life, moving through church and thrift stores at heavily discounted prices.

So is this system of library purchase and resale good for authors? Yes. It increases the likelihood that someone will discover them.

Is that good for society? Absolutely. Literacy is better than illiteracy.

Is it good for libraries? You bet. Literacy is our primary product.

Is it good for publishers? Guaranteed multi-million dollar purchases, year after year, coupled with a free marketing force to grow audiences for their books?

HarperCollins doesn't think so.

Here's how the ebook market is shaping up for libraries.

1. We can't buy an ebook at all. We rent it, and the file doesn't even live on our own servers. It remains in the cloud, usually very poorly integrated into our catalogs. That means that people have to look in multiple places for content, which is less convenient.

2. The library price for ebooks, rather than being half retail cost because we are volume purchasers, is often twice the retail cost. Publishers say, but libraries let lots of people read them! We let lots of people read paper books, too, and you can't tell me that hosting a file is anywhere near as expensive as printing and distributing a physical item. Publishers want a much higher price (a 100 percent increase) for a product that is much cheaper to produce.

3. When a book is no longer popular, libraries can't resell or give away things they don't own. That means no more booksale income for the library, and no more cheap copies of reasonably current ideas for the public.

4. Under the HarperCollins scheme some books may disappear altogether. Each title will have a metered use. Want it again? Well, publishers often take books off the market for a while. And publishers may not survive.

5. Some ebooks, such as those from Amazon, are device-dependent. If you, as a consumer, buy one from Amazon, the license says you can only read it on a Kindle. What happens when your Kindle dies? Well, you either buy another Kindle, if there is one, or start building your library all over again. It's like having to buy another copy of a CD for every player you own. . . .

Hmmm!

We need both sides of the story. I can see LaRue's points. But I think there are some things to be said on the publishers' side, too.

Again, I need to know a bit more about the way the licenses work, BUT, it strikes me that, right now, with printed books . . .

• Books with library bindings don't cost 100% more, but they do regularly cost at least 25% more than "regular" books. (Now, most books that libraries purchase are "regularly" bound. Paperbacks, for instance. But, still.)
   
• Most books libraries purchase are checked out only very infrequently. (Therefore, to charge libraries extra, because they are libraries, means they will pay a premium for a whole lot of books that will be used only slightly (if at all) more frequently than their privately-owned peers.) However,
   
• Bestsellers may be checked out hundreds of times.
   
• To meet the demand of patrons for bestsellers, libraries will purchase multiple copies, sometimes many dozens of copies (depending on the books' popularity). However,
   
• Even with multiple copies in a library system, patrons may have to wait weeks or months before a copy is available for their use. --Is there any such limitation on how many "copies" of a single "rented" version of an ebook may be checked out at one time? --Obviously from a technological perspective, there is no reason for a limit. But if a publisher is not permitted to put some kinds of limits in place, they and their authors will destroy a major source of purchase pressure. . . .

I must say that I am deeply disturbed by the concept of rented-only copies of intellectual property being stored solely on servers owned by the publishers. The concerns LaRue raises in his first point are rather scary, to say the least! It is nice to have libraries where long out-of-print books are held deep within their bowels. I have done a fair bit of inter-library borrowing in order to find such ancient volumes.

In a digital-only, publisher-sponsored-only environment, that kind of research may definitely disappear!

Hmmmm.

LaRue concludes:

The way things are shaping up, publishers will try to make it impossible to own a book. They want to monetize the transmission of ideas, to the detriment of author and reader alike.

It's the same strategy championed by music publishers. And we know how well that worked out.

Actually, no, I don't know how well that turned out.

Your thoughts?

iPad as the Kindle (and print books)-killer

Sarita, the reader par excellence, was introduced, firsthand, to the iPad two weeks ago today. Two weeks ago tomorrow, she asked me to get her an iPad from the local Apple store. "I need to keep up with where the market is going," she said. "Robert [a Sonlight curriculum developer] told us about a book he owned in print . . . and that is available also as an app on the iPad. No contest, the iPad version wins over the print version. Robert said the print version might have held his son's attention for 10 minutes, tops. But as an app, he was mesmerized for hours."

Well, when I went to the Apple store, they were all out of iPads. Completely. Not a single one available at any price in any configuration. So I ordered one (a basic model; $499). On Saturday, the 17th, I picked it up.

Sarita had fallen in love with it by Sunday. And I will confess, I, too, have a certain interest, though I have told Sarita I want to wait for the HP Slate. (See also this for more on the Slate.)

One of the things Sarita is concerned about--and I am, too--is how a company like Sonlight is to keep up with what we perceive as a societal move toward electronic books. How should Sonlight Curriculum be reconfigured to meet the needs of the coming technological shift?

Well, last week, just before Gracie Lou took the turn for the worse, I was doing some reading online and was struck by a few sobering articles.

This one, in particular, grabbed my attention: "The fanboys were right. The iPad is a Kindle killer, but for all the wrong reasons."

Why?

The author says it is not because of the iPad screen. As far as that's concerned, the iPad is lousy; "your eyes get tired after a few pages. You find yourself wishing you could print out the rest of the book and read it properly, away from the screen."

The problem with the iPad as a Kindle-killer, and, indeed, as a print book killer, has to do with the fact that

the way that Apple displays books . . . suggests that they consider books to be just another kind of app. Something to fire up, play with for a couple of minutes and then swap out for the next five minutes of Flight Control. . . .
Even for those who love books enough to persevere with reading without e-ink will soon face another problem with the awesomeness of the iPad. The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already wondering whether you’ve got new mail, or whether anyone has atted you on Twitter.

One of the joys of reading is to be able to shut yourself away from distractions and lose yourself in a book. When the book itself is packed with distractions, the whole experience is compromised.

That explains why it will kill book reading. But/and why will it kill the Kindle? Because,

If you have to carry around one device – for your commute to work, for an hour in a coffee shop, or on a long-haul flight – then the iPad is the one to carry. . . .

For a few months, the Kindle – or the Sony Reader, or whatever e-reader floated your (Three Men In A) boat – was the perfect take-anywhere device. Sales of ebooks soared as first early adopters, then everyone else, left their paper books at home and started carrying around something smaller and lighter that still gave them access to their reading material.

Those same people are now the ones who will buy iPads, or presumably any one of the myriad alternatives that will soon be flooding the market. But those people don’t want to carry around two tablet-shaped devices to help pass their commute, so they’ll make the sensible choice and leave their Kindles at home. Sure, the Kindle is unarguably the better reader device, but what many booklovers (myself included) have arrogantly overlooked is that it’s not competing on a level playing field with other e-readers. It’s competing against the whole universe of portable entertainment. “This ebook hurts my eyes – I’ll just surf the web instead.”

Y'know what scares me? I think he is correct!

While you're mulling this issue, consider Cody Brown's response. He says, Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook.

And for books like Gray's Elements, I think he is correct. What a brilliant idea. But for other works where the thought. the ideas, the concepts are essential, and physical realities are less so? I agree with Ned Resnikoff: Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should Be a Book:

Imagine if someone wrote, “Dear Filmmakers, Your Next Movie Should be a Video Game.” Or, “Dear Playwrights, Your Next Play Should Be a Movie.” Cody’s right to point out that we’re going to see some really interesting innovations in how to read from the iPad and similar devices, but I don’t see how those innovations can displace books entirely. What about the tactile sensation of reading? The physical artifact of a book? The way you can chart your progress through it by the movement of the bookmark?

But there is something more fundamental at work, here, I am afraid. It has to do with the potential difficulty of getting published. As Tariq Kamal comments on Cody Brown's post:

Here’s the thing, though: books — media in the written word, really — are really easy to make. What you’re asking for is a multimedia production, and you know what? Those are hard to make by single authors.

Not impossible, true! But harder to make. And that barrier to entry might mean the difference between millions of diverse, raw voices or merely dozens of slick, pre-productioned and marketed consumerist pap for the proles.

And yes, you’re right! That’s exactly what’s happening right now with publishing! And you know what? That’s the exact same future the iPad is selling to me, right now. No change to the status quo, except making it harder for individual voices to get their stories heard.

And that brings us back, potentially, to a glimmer of hope, according to EvilDave:

The truth is . . . while all of these “books as apps” things sound great, most of them will be poorly done and a hindrance to finding information.

Writing a decent book is hard. Writing a decent book while writing a software app to put that book in is triply hard. . . .

[Therefore, n]ormal text-based books aren’t dead and probably won’t be in our lifetimes.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this discussion leaves us as we contemplate what ought to be done for curriculum. As many people have observed, the advent of new technologies like these rarely destroys the old.

Certainly, the printing press put scriptoriums out of business. But radio didn't replace newspapers or books. And TV didn't replace books, newspapers or radio.

The internet, however, is gravely endangering the newspaper industry. . . .
*******
Well. One last comment. While we're on the subject of print v. electronic media, I thought this article (from September 2009), too, had a lot of good to say. I especially appreciated the author's conclusion:

True, a long-overdue culling process is certainly taking place in publishing. But critics should be careful about using too broad of a brush when painting a grave for print. Last Wednesday, TNS Media Intelligence released its U.S. Advertising and Expenditures Report. Granted, some of the numbers were bleak. Yet several of this country’s largest advertisers, including Wal-Mart, Campbell Soup, Time Warner, and Clorox, all increased their print advertising dollars from 2008 to 2009. And these are certainly companies with the resources to do their homework on ROI.

In the winter issue of Angling Trade magazine, Kirk Deeter ran a letter from Joe Healy, of Fly Rod and Reel, that was a response to an article that I had written in the previous issue, on why I think companies in the flyfishing industry should support independent filmmakers. Joe’s letter was basically telling advertisers that I was pretty off base, and that they should stick to putting their money in print (which I thought was pretty funny, since I publish a magazine for a living. But whatever.) At any rate, Joe made some good points, and ended his letter with this sentence: “When flyfishing industry folks want to target truly large numbers of new fly fishers and impassioned long-time anglers with their marketing messages, magazines remain the top choice.”

I would agree wholeheartedly with Joe, except that he forgot one word: good. As in, good magazines remain the top choice. What makes a good magazine? Who knows? Ultimately, the market will determine that. But I can give one surprising example that flies in the face of almost everything the print critics are saying: The Economist.

This is the news magazine category we’re talking about. Time and Newsweek these days look like leaflets that should be dropped from airplanes. But earlier this month, when the Audit Bureau of Circulation released its first half report, The Economist announced that its North American circulation had grown 8.5 percent from a year earlier, and that its global circ was now 1,418,013—more than twice what it was ten years ago. Even more impressive, the Economist Group reported that its profits, in large part due to an increase in advertising, grew 26 percent year-over-year, to nearly $100 million.