Prediction: Hard Bound Books will be Finished by 2016
My dinner companions objected strenuously, deriding my proposition as unfounded, but I stand by it. Here’s why:
First of all, it’s no secret that the print business is in terrible shape overall. increasing costs, margin pressure, and a lousy economy have all conspired to weaken the print publishers.
Second, nowadays, readers have abundant options to substitute for books: free magazines and newspapers, web sites, mobile applications. We are awash in print media. And we’re constantly bathed in electronic media presented on innumerable glowing screens that surround us in homes, offices, airports, airplanes, cars, taxis, buses, elevators, stadiums, subways, shopping malls, and so on. We have too many other options.
Third, the base of consumers who actually purchase books must be shrinking. I don’t have the data to back this assertion up, but it seems evident that fewer people purchase hardback books now that they have so many other media options.
Fourth, and most important, the publishing model is changing fast. The introduction of the Kindle, the iPad and dozens of other newfangled e-book readers will transform the market for book publishing in a very short time. If just one third of readers switch from purchasing hard bound books to purchasing digital editions, it could undermine the publishing model entirely because the costs of setting, printing, binding and shipping hard bound editions will still be necessary, but they will be amortized across far fewer books. The business model won’t hold up. Publishers will cease to create hardbound books, except in special editions (akin to DVD box sets and commemorative edition CD collections).
As a book lover, this is a dismal scenario. But I believe it is inevitable, and coming much sooner than we expect.
Think back to 2002. If someone told you then that 2/3s of music shops would be closed within five years, you would have laughed with derision. If someone predicted that 80% of a label’s income would be from non-CD digital downloads by the end of the decade, you would have howled. But now, it has come to pass. And the music industry has been transformed forever.
We’re about to go through that cycle again, but this time it will be the book publishers going through the meatgrinder. Who knows what will emerge on the other side?
Check out this piece in the New York Times that breaks out the financials for book publishing and contrasts them with eBook pubishing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?em
March 11th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Robert: Stay in touch with those dinner companions — I have a feeling they’ll be paying up in six years! Your prediction makes sense and the comparison to the recent music industry shake-up makes it real.
Another thought — what will happen to linear storytelling? A printed book takes you through the story in the sequence the author intended. A digital book/vook can offer various storytelling paths and media to enhance the experience. It’s the architecture of website content vs. a printed magazine. No matter what the medium, it’s all about great content. But I will miss hardcover books. Regards, Vivien
March 21st, 2010 at 1:04 am
It’s true that we don’t know what book publishing will look like on the other side, but it’s amazing that the lessons of the music industry—the canary in the mine—have not been scrutinized enough to produce a 2.0 model that will make the print transition less cataclysmic.
April 27th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Robert, I think your examples show why you are wrong. The CD industry is not dead. Heck, people are still pressing vinyl LPs. Sure, there will be a shift to digital content, as with every other kind of information, but people will still want to buy books for at least another 60 years if for no other reason than familiarity.
You also overlook the fact that (except for a few audiophiles who insist otherwise), there is zero benefit to the old physical media distributions of music and video compared to the current digital versions. This is not true of books. All music and video formats required expensive players, so shifting from turntables to CD players, for example, was not a big deal. Books (unlike e-books) do not require ancillary technology. Books, while not searchable, are more easily skimmed and flipped through than e-books on a Kindle or iPad. Books can be read on a plane. Books don’t have to worry about battery life. Books survive water and crushing and being dropped off of tall buildings. I want my first aid and disaster survival handbooks on paper, not on my iPad. I’m not taking my Kindle sailing with me.
I think, too, you overestimate the cost to the publisher of converting a digital book to a printed copy. Current print-on-demand technology makes it little more difficult than printing out the PDF of the content on a laser printer. There’s no magic collapse if print runs get cut in half or even 2/3s, just perhaps a small loss of quality and differentiation (though not as much difference as switching to digital in the first place).
July 5th, 2010 at 2:01 am
1. Books are going to be around a lot longer than that, perhaps forever.
2. Dinner plates were invented before books but there are many place in the world today where people eat on banana leaf. In fact it is not fashionable in Singapore or Malaysia if some of your dishes are not served on Banana leaf held inside a plate to hold food! So much for dinner plates replacing banana leaf!
3. Books like Bible and Koran will be printed and sold and bought and read for millions of years unless the concept of religion dies first. Cost has nothing to do with their printing, selling, buying or reading.
4. Any bold claim that any technology will kill any other should be made with great care. For example: Planes have not killed trains yet. Even long distance ones.
And in cities like Sydney, CBD roads are being constrained for cars to allow bicycles, with the result that often a long caravan of cars has to travel at 5 KMPH in peak hours – at the speed of the bicyclist in the front, leading and occupying main lanes of the CBD where there are no lanes, and sometimes ever where there are lanes (because it is not illegal for a bike to be on any lane). So much for cars killing bicycles.
5. Internet, working from home and broadband has yet not killed office in cities (they may more likely die though due to rising rents and real estate prices).
6. There are more things killed by the economy and economics than technology will ever kill. But nothing will kill a printing press.