Despite the gloomy talk about the death of the book it’s pretty clear that printed books serve an essential function in our culture and will always be with us. For those who greet this statement with skepticism, we reiterate that there is nothing wrong with printed books – just the way they are distributed.

The big difference between the past and the present is that for the first time in history, printed books are optional. The implications of this fact are profound.

Until very recently the only mode for publishers to introduce content was print.  Printed books defined publishers. With the advent of digital technology, however, a new breed of publisher arose that can if it chooses publish a book originally in digital format and postpone the print edition or skip it altogether.  Well into the present decade traditional publishers like Random House and Simon & Schuster and Macmillan clung to the imperative to issue print volumes before releasing them as e-books.  Eventually they yielded to the exigency of releasing the e-book simultaneously with their print edition.  Issuing e-books without having to do print editions at all, however, is not a measure to be taken lightly.

One reason is commercial. Original e-books put traditional publishers at a serious competitive disadvantage. Whereas those houses currently pay 25% net royalty to authors, most independent e-book publishers pay at least twice that much, and self-published authors can get as much as 70% royalty by direct uploading of their content. The Hachettes and Harpers and Penguins can reason that they are adding value and brand-name prestige, but that argument doesn’t hold water for many authors who are simply in the game for money.

More significantly, by electing not to print a book at all, these so-called legacy publishers put themselves in danger of losing the very thing that defines them. What profiteth a publisher to gain the world and lose its soul? Today Random House is a completely different species from independent e-book publishers like Open Road.  But by becoming a pure e-book publisher, the playing field is leveled, and the difference between Random House and Open Road becomes simply one of scale.

When we talk about the death of printed books we are really talking about the death of printed books distributed in bookstores.  With the death of a Borders and the announced reduction of Barnes & Noble’s  bookstore floor space by 25%, print on demand, a business model that does not depend on store sales or the returnability of books the way traditional bookstores do, increasingly becomes an option. If publishers elect POD for all their books they will not only continue to make money from printed books but could potentially rescue their identities, and maybe their souls as well.

Richard Curtis

The latest statistics tell us more kids are reading e-books.  But the progress bar has not advanced nearly as far as prognosticators expected or manufacturers hoped.  A Bowker executive, addressing a recent Digital Book World conference, reported on findings culled from a survey of about 1,000 teens and some 2,000 parents and caregivers of young children.  Among older kids, 19% have tried e-books but only 6% read them witn any regularity. As for younger ones, only 25% of parents even own an e-book reader.  Among children 7 to 12 only 13% read on e-readers and 11% on tablets.

Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  Though more and more adults are adopting digital reading habits, they are encouraging their kids to read print books and in fact promoting something akin to Luddism, such as sending them to schools where no digital devices are to be found (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  At bedtime they will put their Nook or Kindle down and go into their child’s bedroom to read a print-book bedtime story. So  when it comes to e-books it’s a matter of Do as I say, not as I do. And though picture book apps, including stories that “tell” themselves without parents present, are great fun, they just don’t seem to have the same appeal as the warm body and familiar voice of mommy or daddy.

Schools and libraries do not seem to be tripping over themselves to promote e-reading either. One good reason is that the children’s print business is one of the few sectors of the publishing industry that are thriving, so there is a strong financial incentive for publishers to maintain the p-book status quo.

But children form their own opinions about e-books and many reject them for very practical reasons. Because mobile phones are the device of choice for teens, the small screen size and short battery life are deterrents to e-reading.  The price of e-readers is prohibitive for many kids, who get along fine with borrowing books from the library or from each other.  And speaking of borrowing, DRM restrictions on sharing e-books is another dampening factor for teens, just as it is for adults.

For years we have expressed skepticism that, due to their high distraction quotient, screens are the best medium for young readers (see The Medium is the Screen, the Message is Distraction), and (with the exception of autistic children), there has been little recent evidence to the contrary.   In a recent New York Times article, K, J. Dell’Antonia reported an observation by Lisa Guernsey of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative that “when we read with a child on an e-reader, we may actually impede our child’s ability to learn.”

“Children sitting with a parent while an e-reader reads to them, Dell’Antonia writes, “understand significantly less of what’s read than those hearing a parent read. Researchers at Temple University, where the study was done, noted that parents reading books aloud regularly asked children questions about the book: ‘What do you think will happen next?’ Parents sitting with the child while a device read to them (like a LeapPad or some iPad apps) didn’t ask these questions, or relate images or incidents in the book to the child’s real life. Instead, their conversation was focused on how to use the device: ‘Careful! Push here. Hold it this way.’” (Details in Why Books Are Better than e-Books for Children)

Does that mean that the next generation will reject e-books?  Not likely.  But as research develops about the reading habits and learning and retention of children using e-books, we may see a greater balance between electronic and printed books than the e-fatuation that has us in its grips today. If we don’t – well, see Digital Distractions Producing a Nation of Morons?

Richard Curtis

Recent sighting of Garamond

Planning to visit New York in January?  Forget Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and Broadway musicals.  Here’s your chance to see a limited run of The Matrix.

But this one doesn’t star Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. No, it features Claude Garamond, John Baskerville, Giambattista Bodoni, William Caslon and Eric Gill. You’ve heard those names before, but you can’t look them up on IMDB.

You can find them in a book, though.  Just take an old volume off your shelf and turn to the end papers. There you may well see one of those names.  Don’t have books any more? Okay, go to the Fonts dropdown list on your word processor.  You’ll find many of those names there.  Give up?

They were  type designers. They created metal forms called punches, shaped like the  elegant letters to which the designers gave their names. By pressing the form into a copper slab, the punch – a reverse image of each letter – produced a mold.  Into that mold lead was poured, creating one letter of Garamond or Bodoni or Baskerville type.

That copper slab was known as – a matrix.

Now for that visit to New York.  From today through February 4th you can see an amazing exhibit of punches, matrices (plural of matrix), and related typographical exhibits at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street in Manhattan. Check here for information and read details in this New York Times feature by David W. Dunlap, Types With Plenty of Character.

These exquisite artifacts, writes Dunlap, “offer a reminder, in the ethereal era of bitmapping, that type was once the tangible province of engravers and metal casters who labored in unforgiving but enduring media.”

Richard Curtis

“If I were a betting man,” writes John Biggs in techcrunch.com, “I’d wager quite a bit” that books “are not going to make it past this decade.”

Good thing you’re not a betting man, Mr. Biggs, because I have $1000 on the table that says you’re wrong. Game on?

Biggs’ confidence is based on current hot trends in e-book sales, and we can’t blame him for projecting the doom of paper, publishers and bookstores based on those soaring charts.  Here’s his reasoning:

As we well know, ebook sales are now outpacing hardback sales and publishers are now crowing ebook numbers alongside their traditional in-store sales numbers. Soon those in-store sales numbers will dwindle and disappear simply because there will be no stores – heavy readers, the folks who buy genre fiction by the basket-full will be happy to head over to Nooks and Kindles, especially when they drop below $99 (as they will this year).

As a literary agent and e-book publisher I foresee a different picture, one that points to a continuing attachment to paper books, the publishers that produce them and the shops that sell them. Some of the evidence is statistical, some anecdotal and some gut instinct, but more than sufficient to challenge Biggs’ timeline that has independent bookstores gone by 2015 and major publishers by 2019.

“I will miss ,” says Biggs, “the creak of the Village Bookshop’s old church floor, the calm of Crescent City books, and the crankiness of the Provincetown Bookshop.”

He’ll also miss $1000.00.  Make your check payable to Doctors Without Borders, Mr. Biggs.

See if you agree with Biggs’ timetable: The Future Of Books: A Dystopian Timeline

Richard Curtis

Assuming that Book Expo America is not called on account of Apocalypse, the annual bookfest will launch next week.  The first day, sponsored by the International Digital Publishing Forum, is devoted to all things digital, and though the rest of the week will ostensibly be dedicated to book-books, the specter of e-books will haunt every exhibit and transaction.

You would think that the only respite from the inexorable march of digitization is for book lovers to seek refuge in the great bookstores of a bygone day. But in fact many beautiful book stores still exist if you know where to look for them.  And Megan Cytron writing on Salon has listed fourteen of them accompanied by mouth-watering photographs.

Here’s their paean:

What makes a bookstore beautiful? As their numbers dwindle in so many places, just having the doors open may qualify. Many of the shops in this slide show took over repurposed buildings whose previous tenants were once important local institutions like glove factories, theaters, friaries and grist mills. All of them are brimming over with beauty of one kind or another — opulent architecture, quirky one-of-a-kind collections, unique ways of encouraging exploration, teetering stacks of mystery and chaos that reflect a community’s reading habits. It’s terrifying to consider that the generations alive today may be the last to experience the serendipity of scouring shelves of books side by side with other bibliophiles.

For passionate bibliophiles these shops are not merely places to go before you die. They are places you go to die, happily suffocated by beloved books and buried beneath the stacks.

For a slide show see The World’s Most Inspiring Bookstores

Richard Curtis

“I’ll publish my book with Amazon as long as I can retain the print rights.”

“Original e-book publication is fine, but I don’t consider my book legitimate unless it’s printed on paper and sold in bookstores.”

“I don’t care if Amazon pays 70% royalty, I’m not interested in straight royalty, no advance deals.”

Those are typical explanations given by authors reluctant to see their books released as Amazon originals.  But thanks to a shrewd partnership between Amazon and Houghton Harcourt, a traditional print publisher, authors and their agents may no longer have reason to say no when Amazon offers a contract.  According to Publishers Lunch, Houghton Harcourt will distribute selected Amazon titles in bookstores.

This arrangement could be win-win-win for Amazon, Houghton and of course for authors. By teaming up with Amazon Houghton gets titles that have been pre-selected, pre-edited, pre-formatted and pre-promoted. They just have to add water to make money.  And does Houghton ever need money. For years its parent company has flirted with ruin thanks to ill-conceived fiscal maneuvers that left it up to the chin in debt.  (See Parent Company Leveraged up the Giggy)

Amazon benefits from having a big foot inside bookstores. And it can now bid for properties against conventional publishers like Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan because the bookstore playing field is now level.

And of course authors benefit from having their e-book cake and print cake and eating both.

We don’t know the details, but speculation is that Amazon would license the print rights to Houghton the same way a traditional publisher would license book club or paperback reprint rights to a third party.  Houghton would underwrite or at least contribute toward the advance.

One concern is how comprehensive Houghton’s acquisitions will be. If they pick and choose, as the report seems to confirm, authors and agents could hold out for guaranteed print publication.

Says book industry consultant Mike Shatzkin:

“From one standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. Amazon can sell the hell out of a book online, and they have long made print available through their CreateSpace program. But they can’t merchandise books in stores. Even paying extremely high print and ebook royalties, as they do, they can’t maximize an author’s revenues if they can’t deliver store sales of print in today’s world.”

What’s that you say? Does this mean that Amazon is now going into competition with its own suppliers, bidding against the very houses that supply Amazon with books?  Short answer is yes.  But that should come as no surprise, as Amazon has never been shy about competing with publishers. The chance to get its titles into bookstores may simply be too tempting to let a little thing like scruples get in the way.

Read It’s official: putting books in stores is a subsidiary right

Richard Curtis

E-book sales jumped 266% in 2010, from $165.8 million in 2009 to $441.3 million. December hit $49.5 million compared to $19.1 million the year before, according to the Association of American Publishers. If you add professional and other non-trade e-book sales, we are probably on the cusp of a billion dollar industry. Remember, only fourteen trade publishers report e-sales information to AAP.

Meanwhile, hardcover sales took a 5.1% hit, trade paper fell by 2% and mass market by 6.3%. Even children’s books, a traditional fortress, declined a scary 9.5% in hardcover 5.7% in paper.

And that’s before Borders.

Gratified as we are about record-breaking e-book sales, it’s hard to rejoice when the prospects for print are so grim. In this rich and complex ecosystem called publishing, a tree that grows tall kills the saplings that struggle under its canopy. So – a moment of silence for Borders, the employees turned out of their jobs, the books that will die and the authors who will suffer.

Richard Curtis

Okay, it’s time to play Institutional Investor. Here’s today’s quiz:

Net sales of Amazon leaped by 39% in the third quarter of the year,  exceeding predictions of $7.35 billion. Fourth quarter revenues are estimated to be over $12 billion.  What happened to its stock on the day that news was announced?

1. It went up by 5%
2. It went up by 10%
3. It went up by 20%
4. It went down by 4%

If you guessed 1, 2 or 3 you don’t know jack about investing.  In fact it dropped 4.01% to $158.35, because investors were disappointed. Why?

According to Publishers Weekly‘s Jim Milliott it wasn’t the earnings. It was the spending. “Investors were disappointed,” he wrote, “with the company’s higher spending on new distribution centers. Analysts said they were concerned about the cost of the 10 giant warehouses that opened in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, and a handful more that are to open before the end of the year.”

In a publishing environment that has shifted to digital delivery – and who knows more about that than Amazon? – the construction of brick and mortar depots to contain printed books feels not just counterintuitive but downright perverse.  This is especially true because Amazon has the wherewithal to do away with warehouses altogether. It’s called print on demand, and Amazon has a division called CreateSpace devoted to printing books on demand.  Sometime back we speculated that Amazon’s POD operation could make warehousing a thing of the past. (See The Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla Bares Its Fangs.)

Though Milliott points out other reasons that investors were not enchanted by a growth surge that would be the envy of any other company in the world, Amazon’s heavy bet on a fading world of tangible goods could continue to drag the stock down.

Read about it in detail in Print, Digital Book Sales Accelerated in Third Quarter, Amazon Says

Richard Curtis

Two lions of the publishing industry – McGraw-Hill chairman and CEO  Harold McGraw III, and president of MH’s professional book division Philip Ruppel – have posted a heartening piece in USA Today’s Opinion feature. It will buck up your flagging spirits to spend a few minutes reading Will technology kill book publishing? Not even close

In their statement they attempt to puncture five myths, and in our opinion they accomplish their mission. Despite all those Death of Publishing headlines, “the industry itself is anything but washed out,” they write.” In fact, many parts of the industry are thriving in the digital age. ”

“Why,” they ask, “is there such a gap between the perception of a dying industry and the reality of a rapidly adapting one? It begins with five common myths about publishing:

Myth No. 1.Publishers are merely printers. That would be news to companies like ours, which don’t even operate their own printing presses. Publishers today are in the content business. We develop it; we design it; and we deliver it however our readers want it….

Myth No. 2.Authors don’t need publishers in the digital age. Anyone who has ever written a book knows this to be false. Many great authors would never have found their audience without a great publisher willing to take a risk on their talents and market their works…These relationships are even more critical to a book’s success in the digital age. With the ascent of e-books, authors will need publishers to serve as digital artists who can bring words to life by pairing text with multimedia features such as audio, video and search….

Myth No. 3.E-books should essentially be free books. This would be true only if paper and binding represented the bulk of publishing expenses, and that is simply not the case. In bookmaking, manufacturing costs typically account for less than 10%-15% of the total. In short, the price of printing pales in comparison with the cost of creating content….

Myth No. 4.Consumers won’t pay for digital content. Tell that to the millions of customers who have already purchased e-books. In cyberspace, just as in the local marketplace, people will always be willing to pay for quality….

Myth No. 5.The last word on publishing has been written. Not in our book. Around the world, innovative publishers are pushing the boundaries of technology to meet the demands of a new generation of readers. These publishers understand that the e-book is not a threat to their survival but rather an extraordinary opportunity to connect authors and readers in ways never before possible. That’s the real future of the industry, and that’s a story worth publishing.

We think so too, and we thank USA for publishing it.

Richard Curtis

She does it on her back, he on his  stomach. He’s an E, she’s a P.  Can this marriage be saved?

To marital tensions over sleeping with the window open vs. closed, watching a ball game vs. a political program, and going out to dinner vs. ordering in, you can now add who prefers to read a print book vs. who likes an e-book. You may not think it’s a big deal but some couples do, and marriages have broken up over far less.

In the New York Times Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller have reported P vs. E as a domestic issue fraught with potential conflict. One husband spoke of his wife’s reverence for paper with some disdain. “She talks about the smell of the paper and the feeling of holding it in your hands. She uses the word ‘real.’ ”

Real? Before the digital era we never questioned the reality of books, but e-books have introduced an element of doubt as we examine the philosophical question of What is real, the medium or the message, the vessel (print on paper bound between covers) or the intellectual content contained in it?

Regardless of the fact that the argument is at least as old as Plato (and Mrs. Plato), the smug certainty that your paper reading device is superior to your partner’s electronic one or vice-versa could lead to hard feelings.  They say you’re not supposed to go to sleep mad at your spouse, but it’s hard not to when one turns out the lamp and puts her book down on the night table while he continues reading by the glow of a backlit screen.  I know of at least one wife who banished her husband from the bedroom because the CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click of his page-turn feature was driving her mad.

For couples whose idea of togetherness is lying side by side reading old-fashioned book-books, a switch by one to e-book can feel like a betrayal, the literary equivalent of cheating on your spouse. Richtel and Miller cite one wife whose rude awakening came after the honeymoon. “We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, but he had an iPad, and it was almost distracting because it didn’t feel like he was reading with me.”

Clearly the key to marital concord is to include reading device preferences in the prenuptial agreement.  And don’t forget a provision for how you’re going to bring up your children. “The battle over reading tastes has skipped to a new generation,” the Times reporters tell us. “He reads Winnie the Pooh to the child on a screen. She reads it in old-fashioned paperback form.”

We’re not sure if it’s pre-nup-worthy but added to device preferences is reading positions. Are you a tummier, a sitter, a backer or a sider? An AbeBooks blog raised the question in a posting called Positions in Bed.  When reading in bed, the blogger lies “stretched out flat on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, with the book in front of me, between my hands.” A survey of co-workers disclosed several who read on their side, head propped up on one hand. Sitters pile pillows up against the headboard, while backers use them to prop up pinkie-bending hardcovers. Nobody surveyed said they read standing up, but it might be good to find that weird fact out before you tie the marital knot. Discovering your spouse likes to read standing up might be like finding a stash of porn under the bed.

If marital strains become overwhelming, contact a counselor, but when you make the appointment it might be a good idea to ask the therapist whether she reads paper or digital, and in what position.

Richard Curtis

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