Seth Godin: An end of books, and a new golden age

[Alexander Turcic]

Are books dead yet? After all the recent news we've heard about the slow down in e-book sales, you'd think the answer is a definite NO. Meet Seth Godin, who not only sees a quick end to the paper book, but also a renaissance in how we're going to communicate ideas in the future.

Books, those bound paper documents, are part of an ecosystem, one that was perfect, and one that is dying, quickly.

Ideas aren’t going away soon, and neither are words. But, as the ecosystem dies, not only will the prevailing corporate systems around the paper book whither, but many of the treasured elements of its consumption will disappear as well.

What are the disappearing treasured elements? Seth has a list: the bookstore, the library, the "traditional" publisher, single tasking, reading for pleasure, the bookshelf, and, what he calls, the Pavlovian response.

Yet, despite what appears to be the end of the world for every book loving person, Seth isn't all that pessimistic:

Yes, we're entering a new golden age for books, one with more books and ebooks being written and read today than ever before. No, books won’t be completely eliminated, just as vinyl records are still around (a new vinyl store is opening in my little town). But please don’t hold your breath for any element of the treasured ecosystem to return in force. [...]

I called this post, "An end" as opposed to "the end." As always, we'll reinvent. We still need ideas, and ideas need containers. We've developed more and more ways for those ideas to travel and to have impact, and now it's up to us to figure out how to build an ecosystem around them.

Link: An end of books

Related: Poll: 3 out of 4 Americans prefer paper books, Trend Watch: Paper books back in vogue

[elcreative]

Usual related comment - "Out-of-touch with reality geek..."

[supermighty]

I love ebooks and think they have done so much to move forward the amount and quality of writing available. Paper books were a means to and end. They were never intended to be the object of attention themselves. When people tell me the prefer paper books I wonder if they even care about what they are reading.

The passing of paper books does sadden me in one way. The loss of public space. Libraries and bookstores were public spaces to go and explore. And now they are going away. My hope is that coffee shops pickup the mantle of public space.

[QuantumIguana]

The usual article blinded by zealotry. There are advantages to both paper books and e-books. The days of the Big Box bookstore might be numbered, but the bookstore isn't going to be gone any time soon. The demand for paper books may decrease, but there will still be enough of a market for independent bookstores to thrive. It's unlikely that the paper book market will decrease to the size of the vinyl market: we'd be hard-pressed to actually tell the difference in sound between CD and vinyl, but the difference between a paper book and an e-book is obvious.

[Mivo]

The comparison to vinyl records shows how irrelevant the squirming is. Music is still around. The medium changed, so what?

To me, it doesn't matter what form or shape a book comes in. Paper, e-ink, pixels on a LCD screen, it's all the same. I read books for the content: the stories, the characters, the imaginary worlds.

And storytelling isn't going anywhere.

[Katsunami]

Sometimes, I have a feeling that there are too many books, too many music albums, and too many movies. 50 years ago, people had... say... 100 records, and 200 books. Every one of them was special. If you had a very big collection, you may have had 250 records and 500 books, but it would still be manageable. You could *know* each and every item in the collection to the extend of knowing what track was on which album and being able to tell from what book (and chapter) a quote came.

Nowadays, I've got a collection of over 700 albums (ripped to FLAC) and as many if not more ebooks, free ones as well as bought ones. Even if reading one book a day and listening to one album a day (some of which have 10+ CD's in them) it would take me over 2 years to read and hear everything *once*. To be honest, they're not really special anymore, apart from some very few. (Edit: I left out my 250 DVD movies.)

Apart from very few, I wouldn't be able to tell you from which CD a track came, and in which book a quote would be.

I'm not talking about even bigger collections. Compared to some collections I know other people have, these are just... uh... mediocre in size. One of my neighbors has over 2500 albums on CD, and over 2000 movies, but he doesn't read books so has none.

Most of the time, all of that stuff just sits there.

[tubemonkey]

Related: Poll: 3 out of 4 Americans prefer paper books

Eventually, those 3 out of 4 Americans will be dead and people will one day wonder why others hung so tenaciously onto a dying format.

What frequently gets lost in this ebook vs pbook battle, is that books aren't going anywhere. What will change is the delivery mechanism.

In other words, it's the content that matters; not the shell it's wrapped in.

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sometimes, I have a feeling that there are too many books, too many music albums, and too many movies. 50 years ago, people had... say... 100 records, and 200 books. Every one of them was special.

On average, people today work much less (families are also smaller, and more people are single) and have more recreation time. They also have more money (on average) and easier access to everything. Society is far more consumption-oriented.

As a young teenager, I listened to the same Boy George and Nena albums over and over because those were the only ones I had and could afford. If I had been able to download music and store it on a computer, I would have happily listened to a much wider variety of artists. (And would have been introduced to a bigger spectrum of them too, and not only what the local pop radio station played.)

There is probably the element of preference too. Some people enjoy watching movies multiple times or re-read books. I rarely do either and would rather watch/read something new.

[JAcheson]

My opinion is that ebooks have reached the end of their initial period of explosive growth. They haven't replaced printed books, though they certainly have carved out a place alongside them.

Looking forward, I predict continued shakeups in the ereader market as new technologies become available. Clearly there is demand for color e-ink, and I think that once a good technology for that is worked out, it will eliminate the black and white ereaders in short order. Color e-ink will probably also expand the ranks of ereader users quite a bit, as it will pull dedicated comic book and magazine readers into the fold.

I don't see printed books going away completely in the foreseeable future. For someone who buys one or two books a year, an ereader just doesn't make much sense. Ereaders make sense for dedicated readers, but the occasional readers outnumber us by 100 to 1 or more, and the publishing industry knows it.

[Katsunami]

Printed books will be around until at least the year 2400. Star Trek proves it

Some guy even thinks that reading paper books while digital versions are available is an affliction, and he calls it "Picard's Syndrome" (as Picard still reads paper books in a high-technology environment).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2003/11/g...ards-syndrome/

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sometimes, I have a feeling that there are too many books, too many music albums, and too many movies. 50 years ago, people had... say... 100 records, and 200 books. Every one of them was special. If you had a very big collection, you may have had 250 records and 500 books, but it would still be manageable. You could *know* each and every item in the collection to the extend of knowing what track was on which album and being able to tell from what book (and chapter) a quote came.

Nowadays, I've got a collection of over 700 albums (ripped to FLAC) and as many if not more ebooks, free ones as well as bought ones. Even if reading one book a day and listening to one album a day (some of which have 10+ CD's in them) it would take me over 2 years to read and hear everything *once*. To be honest, they're not really special anymore, apart from some very few. (Edit: I left out my 250 DVD movies.)

Apart from very few, I wouldn't be able to tell you from which CD a track came, and in which book a quote would be.

I'm not talking about even bigger collections. Compared to some collections I know other people have, these are just... uh... mediocre in size. One of my neighbors has over 2500 albums on CD, and over 2000 movies, but he doesn't read books so has none.

Most of the time, all of that stuff just sits there.

And sometimes it's all in your point of view as to what is big and small. I remember reading how one king of France had a big library (back during the days before Gutenberg). He had 24 books in his library at the time. From our viewpoint that's a meager amount of books, but for his time that was a big library.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Printed books will be around until at least the year 2400. Star Trek proves it

Some guy even thinks that reading paper books while digital versions are available is an affliction, and he calls it "Picard's Syndrome" (as Picard still reads paper books in a high-technology environment).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2003/11/g...ards-syndrome/

And Spock gave Kirk a hard cover book for his birthday at the start of one movie (Star Trek II). I believe it was Dicken's "A tale of Two Cities."

[crich70]

Originally Posted by JAcheson

My opinion is that ebooks have reached the end of their initial period of explosive growth. They haven't replaced printed books, though they certainly have carved out a place alongside them.

Looking forward, I predict continued shakeups in the ereader market as new technologies become available. Clearly there is demand for color e-ink, and I think that once a good technology for that is worked out, it will eliminate the black and white ereaders in short order. Color e-ink will probably also expand the ranks of ereader users quite a bit, as it will pull dedicated comic book and magazine readers into the fold.

I don't see printed books going away completely in the foreseeable future. For someone who buys one or two books a year, an ereader just doesn't make much sense. Ereaders make sense for dedicated readers, but the occasional readers outnumber us by 100 to 1 or more, and the publishing industry knows it.

I agree. I mean some people still collect vinyl records even though both CD's and Mp3 copies of those same records are available.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

What frequently gets lost in this ebook vs pbook battle, is that books aren't going anywhere. What will change is the delivery mechanism.

How true! A lot of people seem to miss out on the essence of the debate being contained in the very name of what is being discussed, ebooks. Not only does that tell us that the basic difference lies in the delivery mechanism, but you can support that assertion by examining the nature of the product: books are frequently published in both print and electronically, and those that aren't can be. This isn't about books being replaced by websites, or some other radically different form of expression, it is about print books being replaced by electronic books.

That said, I also believe that the death of print books is going to be a long one. We have already witnessed the virtual death of certain classes of books, such as indicies and directories, and are witnessing the virtual death of other classes of books, such as novels. Others types of books will follow when both the technology and consumer are ready, but not until then.

Also notice that I said virtual death. Books aren't going to die off in the way that records, 8-tracks, and audio cassettes did. It will probably tail off in a manner much more similar to live performance: they will become secondary, but they won't disappear. Books have been a part of our culture for far too long to simply vanish, unlike various audio recording media which are here one decade and gone the next. How we regard print books and how we treat them is often more important than the inherent advantages of ebooks. That print book with a hand written inscription is going to be a more valuable gift to most people than an ebook with a long lost email. The memories that you contained in that well worn volume are going to be more meaningful than those provided by an electronic file that you kept from a long discarded ereader, tablet, or computer. I suspect that people will always feel more comfortable with friends or strangers browsing their bookshelves than files on their ereader. The point isn't that people will want to have print versions of every book that touched their life in some manner. The point is that many people will want to keep the books that touched their life in a significant manner, and that will keep print alive for many decades if not centuries.

[piperclassique]

Uh huh. Anyone still got a typewriter? Carbon paper?