The other day I ran across the "Print is Dead" book and web site. That prompted me to Twitter this:
I’m sorry, but print is SO not dead. There. I said it. Quote me if you dare.
To which there were a number of replies and retweets. Clearly I had hit a vein of disastisfaction with the "print is dead" mantra. Then, my colleague Merrilee Proffitt pointed out this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It says, in part:
The University of Michigan Library will now offer on-demand copies of thousands of books no longer under copyright, through an agreement with BookSurge, an “inventory-free” publishing company owned by Amazon.
The library will initially offer 400,000 titles in more than 200 languages, all from the university’s library, for as little as a few dollars on Amazon.com. After an order is placed, BookSurge will print a soft-cover version of the text. BookSurge and the library will split revenue from the sales.
Let me break it down for you. The University of Michigan is selling print copies of books that are online in full-text for free — and quite successfully. Maria Bonn notes that they have sold 70 copies of one title (going for about $22 a pop on Amazon) in one quarter.
Print is SO not dead. You can’t even kill it off with freely available digital copies. Heck, those freely available digital copies are even adding to the number of print books you can buy. And buying them we clearly are.
So let’s just stop saying "print is dead" and start talking about what we will increasingly have — a mixed environment of print and digital, and an increased ability to pick the format that you want for a given need. That’s the world I want to see, and that leaders like the University of Michigan are making real right now. Print is not dead. Saying that print is dead is dead.
About Roy Tennant
Roy, I think you are totally correct here. And there is evidence abounding – not just at the Univ. of Michigan but in associations (such as ALA and ACRL) and in commercial bookstores. The tipping point on print has not been reached. Though some herald the Kindle (and competitors) to be the end of print, not everyone can afford the Kindle nor desires to read in that fashion. I think the key point here is “desire” – how do most people desire to read longer items? It would appear to continue to be print.
ACRL has experimented with several books and published them open access as well as in print and the print versions have done quite well. We have evidence that people look at the digital version and then usually buy the print version. So while it is an expensive proposition to support both I believe that is going to be the best MO for the next year or so for many organizations.
Roy, Roy, Roy. Saying that “print is dead” is certainly boring, old hat, provably wrong and tiresome–but the statement will no more die than some people will stop making absurd generalizations and assuming that new media always wipe out old media. You’re right on the facts, to be sure.
The people that grew up with print will not be dying any time soon. Many are still in love the tactile experience of paper. Let’s wait 30 years and then reassess the situation.
Is there anyone who really believes that Print is already dead? I notice that the big news on the Print is Dead website is that the paperback copy of the book has just been published .. oh, the irony!
Chris, Too funny.
Roy, Some folks might enjoy a hammock in your treehouse with laptop or kindle in hand, but give me paper every time for lying-down reading.
i like print. i like digital. if i want to lie on the sofa and read, i want print. if i want to stay up till 2:00 a.m. reading and tweaking, copying and pasting, i want digital.
for books, our students mostly want print (though some will only use digital). for articles, they almost all want digital. i think, as someone above suggested, that when a generation of print readers finally kicks off, things MIGHT look different. in the meantime i want both print and digital. (but i don’t want to pay for them.)
[i have to say, though, that this looks pretty fun: bit.ly/R4WdO ]
Art, architecture, and design publications may be the last to go, so ask your local art librarian to let you know when print is dead.
These subjects’ publications (and readers) are distinctly sensitive to size and image quality. Design firms and art galleries love to use them to decorate their offices, and aesthetes of all professions keep buying them for their coffee tables. (Nothing says “I am hip and sophisticated” like a beautiful 40-pound book sitting next to a 3-pound MacBook Air…)
The scholarly landscape is similarly still print leaning–full-text databases often lack the images scholars require, or present them in inadequate quality. Art publishers seem aware of these challenges, as evidenced by far less digital content being produced than in other fields.
The key question is print _for what_? For what purpose? For what kind of content? If you want to look something up or need a nugget of information (and especially if you want to DO something with that information, like cite it, use it in another work, send it to somebody), you want digital; if you want to read a narrative or an extended argument, you generally want print (or print-like: see below re Kindle/Sony). Studies of e-book usage in academic libraries typically show each book is used for 10-20 minutes. That’s look-up, not reading. And just to avoid perpetuating another false dichotomy, I should point out that the Kindle and the Sony Reader straddle this issue: they’re really all about providing a print-like experience in an electronic device. (They’re actually not used much by students or young people, by the way, who see them as aimed at their parents. . . .) Roy’s most important point wasn’t “Print is dead is dead”; it was that we will increasingly have a mixed environment of print and digital content. And it’s not an either/or: in many (but not all!) cases, the same content is needed both ways, by different people, for different purposes.
Bill Kasdorf said: “Roy’s most important point wasn’t “Print is [not] dead”; it was that we will increasingly have a mixed environment of print and digital content. And it’s not an either/or: in many (but not all!) cases, the same content is needed both ways, by different people, for different purposes.” Exactly so. I’ve pretty much always said this, and I have yet to see a reason to change my position — it will be a mixed environment of print and digital. Our challenge is to perceive where which formats will rule and how.