Cory Doctorow on Traditional Publishing vs. Conversational Media
Yesterday at Boing Boing (perhaps the most popular blog on the net), Cory Doctorow published a brilliant essay on the backward mindset of traditional book publishers -- which also succinctly expressed the core value of conversational media.
It's a thoughtful analysis of the Google Book Search service and the boneheaded way that traditional publishers have been fighting it. Cory's right: Instead of "letting slip their dogs of law" to nip incessantly at Google's heels in the hope of securing a slice of Book Search ad revenue, book publishers should embrace the T-Bone steaks that Book Search could regularly toss them in the form of increased sales and expanded markets.
Further down in this essay, Cory explores one of the underlying reasons traditional book publishing is in trouble: the ascent of conversational media. That is, the human mind is more attuned -- and attracted -- to conversation or interaction than monologues. Reading a book (even a novel that includes lots of action and dialogue) is fundamentally a passive experience. It can't compete well with more engaging media.
As the core audience of print books ages and generations weaned on conversational media come to the economic forefront, and as the tools of conversational media get better and easier, traditional book publishers may well find themselves sinking fast. As they slip beneath the quicksand, I bet they'll regret how they've behaved toward Google Book Search -- and how drastically they misjudged their shifting audiences...
Don't get me wrong: I adore print books. I am an unabashed bookaholic. I will probably always be reading four or five print books at a time. If you could see the crammed bookcases throughout my house, and hear my husband whining about how we're going to have to reinforce our foundation to handle their weight, you'd probably be amazed to hear me criticizing book publishers so strongly.
However, I know enough book authors to understand how totally screwy and backwards that industry has become. This is why I almost never purchase a new book from a major retailer -- it's a rip-off. I buy most of my books used or significantly discounted from venues I find via BestBookBuys. The few new books I do buy I get mainly from my favorite local independent bookseller, the Boulder Bookstore (which, incidentally, shelves many great used books in nearly every section of the store).
I will probably always be addicted to print books. However, I've noticed that in the past decade or so the vast majority of my book-buying choices were inspired directly or indirectly by conversations -- ones I've participated in or observed, either in person or via conversational media. Most of the books I purchased were either self-published, used, or out of print -- which many traditional publishers probably would find dismaying.
I suspect I may represent the cusp between the book buyers that once predominated and the next generation that's taking over.
Anyway, I'm offering my perspective as context for this excerpt from Cory Doctorow's article:
"It was once true that reading was a good way to get some light entertainment -- whether you were stuck on a train or in your living-room, a lightweight novel was just the thing to tick the hours away. But here again, the Internet, video-games and the mobile phone are hugely disruptive. Any overland commuter train has is dominated by phone-conversations, with readers in an ever-dwindling minority.
"It's easy to see why: content isn't king; conversation is. If you had the choice of bringing your friends or your books to a desert island, we'd call you a sociopath if you took the books over the breathing humans.
"Between vegetative media like TV that leaves your hands free to eat and IM and knit and cook dinner and conversational media like IM and multiplayer games and phones, books are a big loser in the field of providing empty entertainment in the dull moments.
"This pincer movement is gradually squeezing books out of the lives of much of the traditional audience for books: people don't need books to meet each other anymore, and books aren't the best way to kill time anymore.
"...This is the single biggest threat facing publishing and writers today. Social media and increased entertainment choices compete for our readers' attention.
"But this is also publishers' and writers' biggest opportunity. The Internet makes it possible for the social factors that sell books -- the sense of community engendered by shared cultural referents, the conversation that books enable -- to flourish. It may be that books aren't outcompeted by the Internet at all -- it may be that Internet media are the lifeline that books need to survive in a world where the retail ecosystem of booksales has been denuded to stubble and mud.
"That's where Google Book Search comes in. GBS puts books on a near-equal footing with other information resources, the ones that are currently kicking the hell out of us. When a customer performs a Google search, she can get results, right there on her screen, from real, actual books, books that can often be purchased with a single click.
"This is our single best hope for extending [the book publishing] industry's lifespan for a decade or two."
...Wow, he really nailed it, didn't he?
Even though I named my first online endeavor, Contentious, as a pun on the term "content," I've gotta admit -- that word always bugged me a bit. It's jargon. "Content" sounds like a boxy commodity that gets shipped on a pallet, not a basic human activity.
Whenever I'd talk to people about content issues, I'd always find myself getting excited when it came down to, "But what are you saying? And who are you trying to talk to?" Those questions are more about conversation, not "content."
It finally dawned on me: All along, content wasn't really the point -- at least not the main point.
It's about conversation.
Conversation is what engages and connects us. And now we finally have better tools that make conversation work for most of us on a scale formerly accessible only to mass media.
This is why conversational media is such a huge deal, and why it (and its conjoined twin, search media) will keep growing. This is why traditional one-way types of media (such as book publishing, newspapers, and broadcast media) are becoming mere adjuncts to the conversation and the search.
Both types of media will always continue to exist, since they are profoundly complementary. (At least, I dearly hope so. I do love my books.) Done well, and connected well, conversational/search media and traditional publishing/broadcast media can vastly multiply each other's value.
We all benefit from that, I think. Even traditional book publishers.
So thanks for clarifying this point for me, Cory. Much appreciated.
Cory is right but I am not surprised. The reality is that history repeats and progresses. The RIAA is ranting over MP3's, conventional media is about the web. (A good read on that one is The Lizard on America's Shoulder.) The first similar type of thing I know of is the fact that the sheet music industry tried litigation with the player piano manufacturers. Even earlier in history, the scribes were rather livid about a certain modified grape press (printing press).
Historically, this has always been the response of an established, perhaps entrenched is a better word, industry when a new force emerges.
The good news is that newer technology and the will of the people generally prevail. The manner in which people share information has been evolving since the first drum beat communicated with another tribe. I am sure that the drummers kept beating long after they were obsolete. It is hard to give up being top dog and human nature to try and find a way to continue with what is comfortable. All things must give way to the future, I think (and hope) books are here forever but even Western Union had to give up the ghost.
It is not that we do not want the books. We want the information and we want it NOW. If the information is good enough, we will buy the book. We want to browse the book in our living room as if we were at a bookstore. We also want to have feedback and dialog. Maybe they should sell the book and create a blog on the book. Give readers a place to discuss the book.
Posted by: Lumpy | February 15, 2006 at 10:19 AM