“My own research shows that people are continually distracted when working with digital information. They switch simple activities an average of every three minutes (e.g. reading email or IM) and switch projects about every 10 and a half minutes. It’s just not possible to engage in deep thought about a topic when we’re switching so rapidly.”

That observation was made by Gloria Mark, a University of California professor who studies human-computer interaction. But it is also the collective verdict of five experts invited by the New York Times to participate in a debate entitled Does the Brain Like E-Books?. We briefly posted about it the other day but after examining the transcript we feel the contents of the “debate” deserve closer attention. The reason we put “debate” in quotation marks is that there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement about the conclusion that “watching books“, as we call it, compromises our ability to immerse ourselves in books. This is particularly true for children.

Sandra Aamodt, former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, writes that “people read more slowly on screen, by as much as 20-30 percent... Distractions abound online — costing time and interfering with the concentration needed to think about what you read.”

Concentrating on serious reading and avoiding distraction “depends on the user’s strength of character,” she says. Her comment reflects the theme of Distraction by Mark Curtis (no relation), the book pictured here, namely, that “a new sense of discipline is required to prevent us drowning in distraction.”

Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, points out that “No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain.” But “my greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now, perhaps, videos (in the new vooks).”

“The child’s imagination and children’s nascent sense of probity and introspection are no match for a medium that creates a sense of urgency to get to the next piece of stimulating information. The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.“

Finally, David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, writes that

The most important ongoing change to reading itself in today’s online environment is the cheapening of the word. In teaching college students to write, I tell them (as teachers always have) to make every word count, to linger on each phrase until it is right, to listen to the sound of each sentence.

But these ideas seem increasingly bizarre in a world where (in any decent-sized gathering of students) you can practically see the text messages buzz around the room and bounce off the walls, each as memorable as a housefly; where the narrowing time between writing for and publishing on the Web is helping to kill the art of editing by crushing it to death. The Internet makes words as cheap and as significant as Cheese Doodles

As e-books move out of their infancy and into a dominant role in the reading life of our society, it is imperative that we recognize the significant psychological differences between reading on screen and reading on paper.

Professor Gloria Mark, deeply concerned about the distractions engendered by screen media, expresses her own preference: “I’d much rather curl up in an easy chair with a paper book. It’s not only an escape into a world of literature but it’s an escape from my digital devices.”

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Every year for the past three years two publishers, one French and one German, have jointly issued a report prepared by publishing consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart ranking publishers on a worldwide basis. To belong to this exclusive club your publishing company must have revenues over $250 million in 2008. Most of the companies listed combine trade, educational and professional publishing programs.

Among the interesting revelations is that the top six publishers are foreign – five European and one Canadian. The biggest US house? It’s McGraw-Hill Education, ranked #7 overall with revenues of more than $2.6 billion.

Can you guess who’s Number 1 worldwide?

It’s Pearson, owner of Penguin Books among other holdings, with revenues of more than $7.4 billion.

For Wischenbart’s analysis of the rankings, read Analysing the Global Ranking of Publishers.

RC

Long-suffering movie – and Leonard Maltin – fans, your patience is about to be rewarded. Maltin’s annual film guide is now live on the Apple iTunes store, for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Produced by LandWare, Inc., which had previously adapted the Penguin Books annual bestseller for smart phones, the application will bring in lots of new fans, satisfy old ones who have longed for the interactivity of a digital version, settle a million bets and launch a million friendly arguments.

If you’re still a paper person, you can pick up the paperback at a bookstore or Amazon.com.

But if you want to enjoy the full functionality, the Landware app is for you. Check out the video.

RC

Are books worth fighting over? Wal-Mart thinks so and has put its money where its mouth is by cutting to the bone the list price of more than 200 hardcover books by such bestselling author-stars as John Grisham and Dan Brown. And whether you think of Sarah Palin as either an author or a star, her forthcoming memoir Going Rogue will go off at the same retail price as Stephen King. Amazon promptly matched Wal-Mart’s $10.00 price, whereupon Wal-Mart dropped theirs to $9.00.

What’s behind these dramatic moves? Who benefits? And can anyone make money retailing books at half- or two-thirds-off?

To answer the last question first, it’s hard to see how either Wal-Mart, Amazon or any other retailer can earn a profit at those prices. Retailers buy books from publishers for a wholesale price of approximately 50% off the list price. If the buy is big – five or ten thousand copies or more – the publisher will give the retailer a better discount. But when that discount crosses the 60% line, the publisher’s profit margin becomes dangerously thin and at some point the publisher will have to say No Can Do. The retailer then has to decide if it wants to sell the books at a loss. From where I sit, that’s just what Wal-Mart has decided to do.

Why? There are two reasons a retailer will sell at a loss: short term and long. In the short term, loss leaders (as they’re called) are created to attract business. In this case, Wal-Mart wants to call attention to a new service it calls “America’s Reading List.” That’s fair, and it answers the question of who benefits: the customer does. But usually, once customers start patronizing the store, prices go up again.

But what if Wal-Mart’s discount extends for a longer period of time? Then you have to wonder whom they’re trying to knock out of the tournament. The obvious competitors are retailers like Barnes & Noble (Publishers Lunch reports that B&N’s stock fell more than 5% in morning trading), Borders, Books-a-Million, big-box stores like Costco, and above all, Amazon.com. I don’t think anybody – Amazon, B&N, or Wal-Mart itself – can sustain break-even or losses for an appreciable period of time. And independent bookstores? As if they didn’t have enough trouble, an extended price war could drive remaining indies out of business completely.

There’s someone else who stands to get hurt in a discount war. It’s called the author. Typically, publishing contracts reduce author royalties when the discount offered to retailers reaches a certain threshhold. I’m looking at some contracts with big houses that state that when the discount reaches 56%, the author’s royalty is cut from one based on list price to one based on net receipts. For example, on a $25 book that means your 10% royalty drops from $2.50 (10% of the list price) to $1.10 (10% of the $11.00 your publisher actually collects from the retailer).

So, authors, this is not merely a spectator sport. Some of you are gonna get killed.

Why Wal-Mart embark on this suicide mission is unclear, but we’ll be watching the fireworks attentively – and anxiously.

Read details here: Wal-Mart offers new books for $10.

Richard Curtis

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

We’re not sure if publishing superstar Jane Friedman chose Whitman’s hymn for the name of her company but we greet her on the launch of her e-book venture Open Road and hope the long path before her leads to fame and fortune.

Friedman announced her venture at Frankfurt Book Fair in mid-October. Backed by a $3 million investment by James A. Kohlberg, the company’s goal is to reissue in downloadable format major authors such as William Styron, Iris Murdoch and Pat Conroy.

As reported by Motoko Rich of the New York Times, “Ms. Friedman said Open Road would use a new proprietary online marketing platform to promote backlist titles on blogs, Twitter and social networking sites…
Open Road will also produce video content, including documentaries about the authors and scene setting about the books, which it will push to fan sites and other relevant Web sites.”

We welcome this latest wedding of literature and digital technology. As Whitman put it, “Allons! be not detain’d!”

Richard Curtis

A year ago in a posting called Watching Books I wrote,

Reading text on a screen without sound, color, or movement, one develops the uneasy feeling that something is missing. We wonder, Is that all there is? I’m not a psychologist but it seems more than likely that we are bringing to text viewed on screens the same expectations we bring to television, movie and computer screens. Indeed, something is missing! How can we not be disappointed – even, God help us, bored – when these blocks of words fail to stimulate the same intense response as a YouTube video? We are trying to extract a linear experience out of a nonlinear medium

Today the New York Times, in an online feature called “Room for Debate”, began exploring the psychological issues arising out of reading e-books, touching in depth on many of the issues I explored in that first stab at understanding the new medium in which we have all been immersed.

“Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper?” the Times‘s editors ask. “Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?”

Participating in the discussion/debate are:

* Alan Liu, English professor
* Sandra Aamodt, author, “Welcome to Your Brain”
* Maryanne Wolf, professor of child development
* David Gelernter, computer scientist
* Gloria Mark, professor of informatics

Does the Brain Like E-Books? is a significant must-read debate that may well affect the way we read in the 21st century.

Richard Curtis

Maybe B&N and Plastic Logic really should call it “Teasle” as we have been urging for months. Gizmodo’s reviewer, having gotten a sneak peek including photos, says the e-book reader’s name is “freaking terrible,” adding “I hope they change it before it ships.” But he or she wouldn’t reveal it. We’ll have to wait ’til 4:15 PM next Tuesday to learn, and we’ll post a bulletin. Until then, as far as we’re concerned it’s a Teasle.

On a brighter note there is some color (a kind of hybrid of color for cover images and b&w for text, to conserve energy), and a wireless link. The price will allegedly be cheaper than the Kindle.

The photos may be protected and confidential, so we’re just posting whatever image comes to hand to call attention to what is essentially a non-story.

RC

We recently gushed over exciting advances in touchscreen technology, particularly one developed by N-trig, which is providing Microsoft with the interface for next year’s release of Windows 7. You’ll be able to perform the same gestures on it that made the iPhone famous, such as fingertip scrolling and pinching, only you’ll be able to do them with both hands. Certainly sounds like the summit of screen engineering. Unless your name is R. Clayton Miller and you’ve developed a screen interface that will make Windows 7 look like Etch-a-Sketch.

Miller has analyzed such bedrock assumptions of computers as the mouse and the windowed desktop and found them seriously wanting. Utilizing the latest technological advances, he has created an approach so radically and refreshingly new that every time you place your hands on a screen from now on you’ll think about Miller’s 10/GUI. The “10″ is for ten fingers. The “GUI” is for Graphical User Interface – the place where the user meets the road.

In Miller’s words:

“Over a quarter-century ago, Xerox introduced the modern graphical user interface paradigm we today take for granted.That it has endured is a testament to the genius of its design. But the industry is now at a crossroads: New technologies promise higher-bandwidth interaction, but have yet to find a truly viable implementation.

10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way.

The mouse and the windowed desktop are perhaps the two greatest innovations in the history of human-computer interaction. But like all innovations, they are best seen as part of a continuum rather than a terminus.

The mouse and the window led us out of the confines of the keyboard and the text prompt to the world of graphical and spatial possibility we enjoy today. But there’s no reason to stop there.”

Not only does Miller not stop there, he hurtles past today’s screen technology like a stoned teenager running a stop sign.

View the video demo below, then visit the 10/GUI website.

Richard Curtis

Lynn Andriani of Publishers Weekly reports that “Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is writing a new crowd-sourced short story on Twitter. Starting tomorrow at noon EDT, the author—and well-known Twitter fan (@neilhimself)—will Tweet the first line of a new story, and fans can continue it with their own 140-character contributions. BBC Audiobooks America will then compile the contributions—they expect about 1,000—into a short story that will be recorded by a professional narrator. The audiobook will be available for free download at BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com/trade and at iTunes and other audiobook retailers before the end of the year. There are no plans to release the story in print.”

I have a capacious 10 gallon hat that I am prepared to eat if no more than 1,000 fans contribute. I won’t be surprised if the number goes deep into the tens of thousands or even exceeds 100k. This is Neil Gaiman, people!

To participate, fans should follow @BBCAA and Tweet with the hashtag #bbcawdio. Official participation rules and a legal waiver are posted on the BBCAA blog. We suggest you read the legal waiver.

Logical next step – a vook? (Would-be vookster Gaiman pictured at left).

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.

We knew print was good for something, and Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair and now publisher of The Daily Beast, figured out what that is: it’s called making money.

Her website has launched a joint venture with mainstream publisher/distributor Perseus Books Group to spin paperback books off the online versions. The idea is to maximize the benefits of both formats: e-books to move quickly on fast-breaking stories, p-books to get them into the hands of those who prefer to hold a paper volume in their hands.

Creating the content first as e-books will also accelerate release of the paperbacks, cutting out a number of editorial and production steps that slow down traditional book-making procedures. Mokoto Rich, writing in the New York Times, says that “On a typical publishing schedule, a writer may take a year or more to deliver a manuscript, after which the publisher takes another nine months to a year to put finished books in stores. At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition.” The print edition would be ready to go as soon as feasible.

Tina Brown understands that speed is the name of the game: “There is a real window of interest when people want to know something, and that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle.” Read details in Daily Beast Seeks to Publish Faster, and for some insights into the way that publishers customarily handle fast-breaking stories, check out How’s About a Quickie?

RC