Is the print book as a technology underrated? In this month's episode, Joanne McNeish, a professor who studies the resilience of incumbent technologies at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, discusses why readers prefer print books, the challenges ebooks will have to overcome to be more competitive, and why we shouldn't expect physical books to ever be replaced entirely.
This is part one of "Why the print book won't die." Part two can be found here and features David Sax, author of The Revenge of Analog.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Transcript
Dr. McNeish: There are benefits to the ebook, and to digital content, but they don't override, and they don't replace what the existing or incumbent technology, the paper book, already did.
Zalina: Welcome to the "BookNet Canada" podcast. I'm your host, Zalina Alvi. And this month, we're talking about the resilience of the print book. Over the last couple of years, our consumer surveys have shown that ebook sales among Canadian book buyers have plateaued at around 17% of the overall market share versus print and non-ebook formats.
So, at this point, despite the hand-wringing of many in the industry, ebooks have not made the printed book obsolete just yet. But why is that? You can carry hundreds of ebooks around with you in a single, lightweight e-reader. You can change the font size with the tap of a button. You can quickly download books from the comfort of your couch, and you can even read an ebook in the dark, or in the bathtub now.
So, why haven't we given up the print book for the immeasurable conveniences of the ebook? Over at Ryerson University in Toronto, Dr. Joanne McNeish has been studying this exact phenomenon. As an associate professor in the Ted Rogers School of Management, Joanne studies the resilience of incumbent technologies like printed books.
In other words, she studies why people continue to use an existing technology even when a shiny new one comes along. Thanks to her research with readers, she has some ideas about why the printed book will never die.
Dr. McNeish: My area of focus, sort of academically speaking, is actually multi-disciplinarian, and I'm really interested in consumer behaviour and innovation, but I actually explore it in a different way. So, I look at why do people resist giving up an existing technology or an older technology? And so, a really wonderful example of that is the paper book, in all its forms. So, a hard copy book or a paperback book. Why do readers love the paper book?
But by the way, those very same readers have also adopted the e-reader. So, it is one of the topic areas that I explore under an area that I have talked about as resilient technologies. So, those technologies that, in the face of the new innovation, people look at them again anew, and really start to say, "Why do I love this existing technology so much?"
So, that's the focus of my exploration, so I can help companies say, "Oh, is the technology or product I produce gonna continue for a long time? Or should I start to jump into the new territory, the new products, develop a new innovation, to be competitive in that market?"
Zalina: So, you've done quite a bit of research on this subject. Can you tell me a little bit in terms of details about what you've actually done, like, what was your approach and what have you found? How have you actually studied this?
Dr. McNeish: Oh, okay. So, what I've done is I've done it group by group. And so, the genesis of the paper textbook research that I've done actually came out of a conversation with a colleague who said, "You know what, Joanne, your research is interesting. The fact you explore paper and why people continue to use paper documents, it's fun. But, you know, you really have to find a new topic, because this generation of millennials, they don't want paper textbooks."
And I thought to myself, "Oh, she might be right." And then I realized, I didn't think she was right, or I didn't think I knew the answer. So, the first place I look to, because I work in a university, is I talked to my own students in sort of a informal way. And then I went and got a grant to explore in a more structured and systematic way. So, we did a set of town hall focus groups, where we invited a large group of students, 30 to 40 students, into a room, and we talked about paper textbooks and eTextbooks.
One of the unique approaches, though, I took was I gave students permission to tell me what they liked about paper textbooks, because mostly, the research in this area is done as if the older existing technology is bad, or incumbent technology is bad, and the new technology is good. And what was striking about these 19 and 20-year-olds is they had a lot of reasons why they loved paper textbooks.
So, as part of the second phase of the research, we took the reasons that they mentioned why they really thought paper books were useful, and I'll come back to those in a sec. And we then did a quantitative research, again, across the business school. And we got about 400 responses from students, using a structured questionnaire, so, with a scale, agree to disagree. And it was fascinating to see what emerged in terms of why students wanted to keep the paper textbook.
And so, just to continue the overview of my research. So, I went back to my colleague and said, "It's interesting. Hey, here are all the reasons why they still want paper textbooks." She said, "Well, yes. Okay. Well, this generation has grown up with paper textbooks. It'll be the next generation of students. Those in high school and primary school, they'll wanna have ebooks, no more paper textbooks."
Well, the millennials, as you probably know, range in age...the earliest ones were born in 1982. A number of those are now parents. So, I went back out and said, "Well, I'll interview those parents, because surely that group above all will be teaching their children to read with ebooks." And remarkably, again, whoever you ask, in terms of that generation of parents, they are still using paper books to teach their children to read.
So, what's happening is viscerally, each generation is acquiring a bit of a reverence and a knowledge of paper books as something different than any other object, and something that is different than the computer. And just as an aside, one of the parents said, "It's also the one time when I truly focus, and then fully engage with my child." And she said, "Even I realize the advantage of a paper book, because it pushes away the rest of the world."
So, for me, when I saw all the predictions of books are going away, books are going away, I started to say, "No, I don't think so." The paper book is a different entity than the content in an ebook. And what I will say to everyone is that both have their place. And I think people should be optimistic, and publishers, for example, to say, not only can they sell the content in a paper book, but they can continue to sell it in ebook form, and both.
And if you think of the music industry, that is not at all the paradigm that happened. Oh, wait. Just a minute, vinyl records, but in a much smaller way. So, that was a second set of research. Then I went back to my colleague, and she's fabulous by the way. And she said to me, "Yeah, well that's Canada. We're probably a bit behind. What about other countries?"
And so, actually, I had a colleague in Israel, and as you know, Canada's considered quite innovative on the innovation scale, but in fact, Israel is one of the top countries for innovation, and they've brought us a number of technologies, which we'd all recognize. So, I said to my colleague, "Any chance I can talk you into doing a survey with your students?" And she actually came up with remarkably similar results.
And we tried to say, "What is it that people are seeing here in the paper book?" So, two kinds of books, those books that have what I call a consequence, and those books that we use for our own reading, so, leisure reading. And I also did a study in the territory of leisure reading. So, when books have a consequence, when information has a consequence, people automatically default to paper, because of some of the risks of e-technology. So, if you think of my young students, they said, "Well, the problem with ebooks is there's no standardization." That was their first remark.
So that if I have five courses, not only do I have to learn the course content, but I've got five variations on the technology. Then they said, "And by the way, unlike a paper book, when I mark up a paper book, when I put a sticky label on a book, I don't have to remember where the sticky label is, and, but, in contrast to most ebooks, they give you the ability to highlight and sticky label, but you've gotta go find that information, or you have to learn the mechanism to allow that ebook to deliver that information."
Now, you and I would actually say, and some of the listeners would say, "Well, wait a minute. Those are things that we could fix." And I agree. Certain of these things, if well-understood, could be fixed. I can't believe that there isn't a mechanism to allow the 10 sticky labels that I put on my ebook to pop up in a physical way, or a more visible way, as it does on the paper book, because I don't have to remember where I put those sticky labels. It still feels to my students that they have to remember where it is.
So, rather than wasting time trying to figure it out, they just default to paper. And then the third piece is the risk. Ryerson's a commuter school. So, a lot of our students travel up to two hours to come to school, on transit. So, they use that time for studying and learning, and the internet connection is not great. So, if it's not downloaded into the computer in the form of a PDF, and even then, they kind of worry, they don't always carry their laptops, the having, being able to carry the information on paper, the relevant information on paper, makes them feel secure. They could be ready for the exam. They've got their assignment. So, it's a real feeling of where there is risk with paper documents and books. So, the category of paper textbooks falls into that. People want the backup or reassurance of paper information.
And so, interestingly, if I were advising paper book publishers, I'd say start taking out all the pictures and the colour, and you can actually bring a paper textbook back to a much more affordable device. Because one of my students, not my idea, said, "Wonder why they put all these fancy pictures so I could go look that up. What I really need is the content in an easy-to-carry format."
And we can all remember the early textbooks, early textbooks from 20 years ago, were largely paper and text-based. They didn't have all the extra bells and whistles and pictures and websites and videos that the textbooks have today. Because students say, "Well, we don't really look at those." They should be. So, to me, my research is always about how do we take what people express as the concern, redundancy, and the need for a backup system, a need to be able to control the information, to not lose it?
A few of my students go on to graduate school. Why they buy the paper book is they wanna be able to take certain textbooks forward into their other classes. Ebooks, you lose access. In a sense, you've rented them, and you have to give them back. But that's a small group. And the other piece for a paper textbook is a bit of a symbolic thing that actually, they feel kind of pleased to be able to signal to people they're in university, and a heavy knapsack, and carrying the books, is the positive side of the weight of all those paper textbooks.
So, the symbolic piece is something that's harder to deal with. And then, my research aside, but a number of key researchers have worked in the area, where they try to understand how do we learn better? And to today, the quality of the ebook content on the screen is not as good for long-term memory as information on paper. And so, a number of researchers have said that the optimal studying strategy is still handwriting notes on a piece of paper. Even typing notes is not as good, but that's better.
Highlighting on a paper textbook is still better than highlighting online, and at least reading the eTextbook is something, but it's the least effective for creating long-term knowledge. And in most disciplines, there's a body of knowledge that we have to learn and commit to memory. Then there's the things that change. And so, the conclusion I reached was for unimportant, not consequential information, that's beautiful information for digital. So, short reading, short articles, that's great for online or a little tiny eTextbook, but redesigned in a very sort of small, simple format, where it's not information for long-term retention or for the purpose of testing.
But if you're gonna require testing for the purpose of academic achievement, definitely the research is clearer and clearer to say that should be on paper, learned from paper. And as I said, most students don't do it, but physically write out the information, to get it into your long-term memory.
So, then we come to the other side, which is the leisure reading part. So, I got quite [inaudible 00:13:01] to say, "Well, I can understand from an academic success point of view, you don't wanna take a risk of not having a backup, of losing access to the information, of not having it committed to your memory." But gee, leisure reading, if I read a book, I'm happy to talk to a friend or two, or maybe I go to my book club, but do I really need to commit? Is it the same characteristics around those kinds of books?
And it's not the same reasons why people wanna have those books on paper, but rather, we get into people who are able to tell us about the symbolic and aesthetic characteristics of books.
So, digital information, or information in ebook, is visual information. And it goes inside a device that is standardized and is anonymous. So, a book that we read on an e-reader disappears from everyone's view. So, you can safely sit on the subway. No one knows what you're reading. And in fact, the group of people who've done very well, sort of the Harlequin romance-type books, those kind of books that were, used to be mailed to people regularly, that has gone smoothly into the e-world, because people read a lot of them, it's a very formulaic kind of reading, and for some reason, people are a little bit embarrassed that people see them reading it. I'm not quite sure why, but they feel a little uncomfortable. So, an ebook is a perfect device where you don't wanna tell anyone what you're actually reading.
But the opposite side of that sort of symbolic part is a book and a library, our home libraries, are a way that we show off what we read to people. And so, unlike the, what I call the not-book people, that group of people that really is that core user, the heavy user, the heavy reader, reading, to them, is part of their identity. So, they actually want to let the world know what they're reading so that the fact that they read that way, the symbolic aspect, is that they can show off what they're reading. They keep books, they keep them in their library.
And what it allows them to do is when someone's at their home, often, that's a discussion over what's being read, and the ability to share that book, in that moment, between two people. So, once again, ebook publishers said, "Oh, well, we can create those abilities. We can create the ability for you to share books, in a limited sort of way." But what's lost is the tangible aspect, the feeling that I just gave you a gift by loaning you that book, or actually giving you that book, but the reason we got talking about it is that you saw it on my shelf, and we engaged in a bit of a conversation.
So, it's a way to reveal a part of ourself that might not come up in normal conversation. That's not to say, though, if it's in an e-reader, you can't have that conversation, but it's most facilitated by being able to present it to the world. "Here's what I'm reading. You can see the cover."
Once again, though, my research is always on simultaneous users. So, while people who are paper book-only people, and among students, it's very hard to find someone with that experience, so I call them simultaneous users. Most heavy readers have purchased either a standalone e-reading device, or have acquired a piece of software to read ebooks. And what they will say is, "Oh, it's not one or the other. I love my paper books for its symbolic aspect. When I'm sitting at home with a cup of coffee and I'm cozy on my sofa, I love that whole experience of my paper book, and I'm immersed, and I'm lost in that book. And that's just a wonderful experience. But my god, when I travel, when I'm on the subway to the office, when I'm standing in line, it's such a luxury to be able to have the e-version of another book that I'm reading." Because heavy readers tend to be, as most of your listeners would go, they tend to have a couple of books on the go.
So, they will say, "I love the benefits of e-readers, but I'm not gonna give up all the wonderful aspects, that experience that I create, the connection to memories that I have." That experience of the paper book will not... Oh, well, hasn't yet disappeared. And given, now, the sort of flowing of growth of ebooks, my thought, a few years ago, and I think it's going to be consistent, is that the market will stabilize, as it did with audiobooks, which is it's a part of a repertoire of ways that we read and listen to the content, but the preferred vessel, the perfected vessel, or container, for that is still the paper book. And when I say paper, it's largely paperback.
Although there's a weird thing that people say is that they will say, "I'll read something in an ebook format, and then I might go and buy the hard copy, because certain books are really important to me that I wanna keep it." Or, "I suddenly realize I haven't read it as deeply." Or, "I haven't understood as much as I wanted to understand, so I'll go and buy the hard copy book." And they'll sort of either reread or reuse or highlight parts in the hard copy form.
And so, I think that dual usage, or triple usage, because, again, heavy readers also tended to want to... When I mentioned ebooks, wanted to talk about audiobooks as well. Then they'll talk about being in their car, and listening to a book in the car while they're driving. So, the most important segment to leisure reading is all about whatever way the content is available to me, that allows me to live my life and have books as part of that, that's what I love.
And so, the digital form is convenient for those occasions when the paper book isn't, but the paper book is still the device for reading. So, it's a most extraordinary thing, where book people already knew what they were going to do. Whereas people in technology tend to drive through "technology is always better." There are benefits to the ebook and to digital content, but they don't override and they don't replace what the existing or incumbent technology, the paper book, already did.
Zalina: [inaudible 00:19:08] people kind of forget that printed, like, the modern printed bound book is itself a really ingenious technology, that has been around for a long time for a reason. The fact that it's such a great delivery mechanism for information and that it's worked for so long, for reasons that we tend to forget about, I guess, because it's been so long and because there are a lot of flashy new things around, but it's still a really great delivery device.
Dr. McNeish: And in fact, that's a beautiful way to express it, that, with ebooks, it's easy to separate the device from the content. With the paper book, it's content and device as one. And so, advantage right now to paper book, because it's had decades, well, not decades, centuries to perfect itself, to find the right fonts, to find the fact that black text on white paper. And when people produce books, they're really able to control the quality of the book and the quality of the reading experience.
For ebook developers, and you have to have some sympathy, they have to create a reading experience, but they have no idea what people are gonna read it on. And so, they're faced with maybe screens that aren't as bright as they should be, or contrasts that are not adjusted, because most of us, well, at least me anyway, is not very good at fixing all the technology, so I tend to use the default presentations.
And by the way, the content, which, in a book, is already structured, in a paper book, structured for appropriate amount of words on a page, and a certain reading speed, on an ebook, if it's in an iPhone, it comes in as a very small size. You can adjust it a little bit. And then if you're on a mini iPad, if you're on your laptop, depending on the device you're using, that content looks completely different.
So, the signals that the author can talk to you with the paper book, in other words, that they, with the editors and publishers, lay out the pages in a particular way. They have chapters, or not. They have really big font. They can shout at you with the text, and they know you'll see it as they presented it. The content in an ebook is presented in a particular way, but then it's altered by the device the person is using.
And there's no way a software developer can develop the presentation that'll work as they intended on every device. And so, what's happening is the intercession of the device, the e-device, interferes with the... And readers are almost intuitively, it's a different communication. It's a different conversation. Here's how the author and editor intended it. Here's how I'm seeing it. So, you're absolutely right. This is a beautiful piece of technology.
But it's interesting, really old technologies, they disappear from our view, and the conversation about paper and ebooks has caused us to look at the paper book again. So, in my research, I always ask people, and again, I only talk to simultaneous users, people who use both, so not paper book only and ebook only, but rather people who use both, and that's most heavy readers use both, or even audio readers as well.
And so they're able to speak, "Why have I not given up the paper book? Oh, let me tell you all about the fabulous features." "Wait a minute. And so, why do you keep using the ebook?" "Well, because it's got these new benefits, but it lacks these other things." And so, by understanding that, you see that these people have thought, have been encouraged to think more deeply, because the new ebook, this new device came along, this new way of presenting the content came along.
But you're absolutely right that the paper book is that beautiful... And by the way, people in technology get crazy when we talk like that. But absolutely we can see its particular strengths in this territory, where ebooks took off very quickly, and now they've stabilized, and likely, they'll continue to exist, ebook readers love them, but they will not, as they were supposed to have done, paper books were supposed to have gone away by now. And that is, I think they're gonna be around for quite a long time, in a number of categories, which then represents lots of opportunities, I think, for people in the book business.
And my favourite one, of course, is Amazon, who's now opened up a paper... Has opened up a bookstore. And so, you even see the very person that became someone who came into the industry to say, you only want your paper books and now ebooks delivered remotely, has realized that the bookstore is part of, you know, the heavy user's experience about reading and buying books.
Zalina: Yeah. It's interesting what you said about the challenge for ebook developers as well. The trying to compete with a technology that's been perfected after, over so many years. I guess their strategy has mostly been to try to make it as adaptable as possible, which sounds really difficult. I mean, they're trying to anticipate what each device requires, and what it's gonna look like, and that technology allows you to have things adapt and be flexible and kind of respond to the environment that it's gonna be presented in, but that's incredibly difficult, and it probably has quite a bit to go to really figure out the best way to do that.
Dr. McNeish: Yes. And I think the ebook users saw, and sort of metaphorically, "Oh, I'm just gonna take this content, scrape it off the page, and pour it into the device." And I think this is where the symbolic and aesthetic aspects come in, [inaudible 00:24:41] symbolism, that readers are engaged, in a sense, that this book... And it's why an author is always so thrilled to see their book in the bookstores, is that it's a conversation and an understanding. Someone framed the information in a particular way, on a page in this way, with a cover design this way.
And so, that other aspect of aesthetics and presentation, which is a conversation from the author to the reader, "Here's how I was hoping you'd see it," based on, say, font size and number of words on the page and size of the page and size of the font. Because when we go in a bookstore, there's all kinds of different sizes and shapes of books, fonts that yell at you, fonts that are really tiny, combinations of fonts and books.
So, that piece of the conversation got completely lost in its transference online, because a developer isn't interested or thoughtful about that piece of a conversation when people are doing leisure reading or an art book. They're thinking, "Oh, people just want the content." And so, they overlooked that aspect, and they can't replicate it yet, anyway. In other words, as I said, because they can't control the device the reader's reading on.
They can never replicate the one-to-one conversation between the author and the reader, as you can when you have the control from an author side. And then the opposite is also true, that the reader can then react and say, you know, "Maybe that's the way they intended it, but that's not the way I'm understanding it." But that's now compounded online because they're seeing...I have a conversation with a friend about a book, or two readers are having a conversation, depending the device, someone on a smaller screen... And again, there's research to support. On a smaller screen, you're missing some of the nuances and information and presentation. On a bigger screen, the other reader may have noticed something different. So, now we have a conversation about content, but then it's also the way the information was presented. Now, that makes the dialogue richer for someone who's a heavy reader.
Zalina: And how do you define a heavy reader?
Dr. McNeish: Oh, heavy reader. So, I have seen various definitions published, and what I've typically seen is around 15 to 20 books purchased per year. So, reading is a different thing, but roughly 15 to 20 books purchased a year. So, that's another nuance to the conversation, which is why they say, "Oh, I'll have both, please, because it enriches my reading experience." The fun story, I always have... I went to a movie with a friend, and there's a bookstore across from the movie theatre. I said, "Oh, I've gotta go buy the book now because I'm really intrigued to learn more."
And my friend was sort of startled. Like, "Why would you be needing to read the book? You saw the movie." I said, "Oh, well, no, no, but the movie's one experience of the content, but I wanna go and get the book to understand it more deeply." And depending on the inputs we've had, or we've listened to the radio about a book, and then we've decided to download it from the library. So, book people are intrigued by the way information is presented and what's happening, and so the dialogue is dependent on situation, and what they're gonna do with the information, how deeply they wanna remember and understand.
And then that's that funny crossover between paper textbooks, need the information to pass the test, to get my degree, to get out and get a job. That's what the student would be thinking. And then a leisure reader might buy a trade book, or might buy a more dense reading book. They want it on paper, to understand, to be able to activate different parts of their memory and brain, versus if a reader's doing a Harlequin romance, that's a relatively straightforward, simple, and less of a dialogue or conversation or need to remember the information. And therefore, that's a perfect kind of reading material to be on any device.
So, there's this idea of the content definitely is an aspect. And you can do that in a device, but certainly, that doesn't help us with all the other things we often wanna do when we're reading, and when we're trying to understand material.
Zalina: So, what changes do you think would need to happen in the future, in terms of resources, societal changes, technology, behavioural things, trees running out, I don't know [crosstalk 00:28:59] Canada, or elsewhere, to go entirely digital? Like, do you think that's possible? Can you ever see it happening in any scenario?
Dr. McNeish: Well, first, what I'll do is I'll dissuade you about a myth. In fact, if we had no more paper, we would have no more trees, because the very people that produce the paper and produce the raw ingredients for paper are the people who are replacing the forests. So, that's part of their mandate as a corporately responsible industry. So, there's some great resources in an organization called Two Sides, which talks about the importance, the increase in the number of trees, tree farming.
So, let me disabuse anyone of the notion that information on paper is a bad thing. In fact, that doesn't mean we use paper indiscriminately. I think we should be conscious of all things that we use, but in fact, the day there's no more paper used for information is the day that we'll begin to lose our forests again. So, most of the forest destruction now comes from farming and from, and carefully said, mining, but I don't wanna upset the people in... Sorry, agriculture and mining. But don't wanna upset them.
But the print and production people have really taken on this as a cause, and do some really wonderful things. So, that's the first thing. I think there's ways we can definitely make ebooks better. But the question I would ask is does the conversation have to be just one, as opposed to let's have them all? And I always think of an industry and about the industry that serves us to produce cooking devices.
And I don't know about your house, but I have a microwave, I have an oven, and I have a toaster oven. If we use the same analogy for reading, it would be, "Well, that's just silly. Why do you have those three devices?" And all of us will easily say, "Oh, we have them because they do different things. And sometimes I need a big oven for one thing. Sometimes the microwaves is used for this. I'm making popcorn. And the toaster oven is, I need a piece of toast. I don't wanna have to put that in the oven. And it doesn't cook very well in the microwave."
So, my encouragement would be a discussion about first, doing much more designing content for online. So, I think of things like haiku poetry. I can't even imagine a more beautiful device than a phone. And in Japan, they do some really cool things around very short novels, serial novels, where you deliver a chapter or a few pages every day. So, Japan's very cool in this area of light reading literature that works beautifully on the e-device.
So, it's rather, I don't mind a conversation that says, "What content is unique to each of the devices?" rather than, "Why do we need to have one or the other?" Because we think of audiobooks, which now feels really kind of old-fashioned, but that, audiobooks transition very nicely from one mechanism of delivery to another, because oral traditions are all about listening. And so, the listening experience is what device do I play it on? But the content moves from, say, a cassette tape to a DVD.
Streaming is a possibility, but, again, because of the vagaries of the internet. So, anything that's streamed requires 100%, 24-hour, it always works, ubiquitous, it's everywhere. So, that's gonna be a long, long time before we get there. But the other aspect is, think of the opportunities in what kind of content do we put into an audiobook? Today, and I understand the reasons financially, it has to be things that are the most popular. Things that have sold the most, that's what we put in an audio form.
But what if we inversed it and said, "Is there content that would really be interesting? Is there new kinds of exciting content that would work beautifully in ebook form, and having done really well in an audiobook, or having done well in an ebook, we then bring back into paper form?" So, it's the focus on what's the content? What would be interesting? What works brilliantly in the device format? And which formats could jump from one to the other?
And I mentioned the examples of movies, and I see publishers doing very interesting things, where the book was issued, published, say, 2, 3, 6, 10 years ago, they instantly bring out the version once the movie comes out, because they've made this connection between someone's seen the movie, or the movie's coming out, and suddenly people are interested in reading the book. And so they often bring it across multiple formats.
But in my mind, it would be fun to brainstorm, are there new forms of content that we've only put in E, but might work in audio or paper? Artbooks are one that typically stay in paper format. Is there a way to bring them into an E-format, and how would that look different? Because, again, this issue of simultaneous users, not only will they use multiple formats...
So, a one version of the book on paper, one version of a different book in E, and a third version of another book in audio, but they may buy the same book across multiple formats. So, that idea of bundling. And I noticed Kindle/Amazon tried a little bit of, if you love the E version, would you like to order the paper version? If you love the paper version, are you interested in the E version?
And my feeling would be, these would not be huge opportunities, but it's that idea of brainstorming that if all these devices and the new devices that'll come along are places to put our content, which content can we move around most easily, and which content really only resides in a particular device? So, that, to me, is a different kind of brainstorming session than, "Oh, what's the device we need to create?"
And then, the other piece, again, a little bit has happened on this, but that conversation between author and reader, and these are kind of the heavy reader people, so that authors will get a cult following. And so, whatever book that they loved, publishers have done some nice things, authors have created websites, those that don't mind a public following. But how else can we encourage the ongoing dialogue?
And ebooks are such a wonderful device for, "Oh, if you love this book, by the way, here's another book by the author. Here's a link. Do you wanna sign up for regular information?" And so, that category of using the ebook as also a communication conduit to the reader. But I'm not saying things I don't think that publishers haven't started to think about, but it's saying, "Boy, that's really worthy". Not the device of let's get people out of paper books, because, really, you know, the profitability around content is devilish.
I know that it's difficult to make money whatever format you're producing the information on. But could we maybe come up with some really interesting ideas if we focus on the content and the varieties of different content, and then make the...not make the device the driver, but make the content the driver.
Zalina: I'm curious what you, or how you see the accessibility issue fitting into all of this? Because there's a big argument for ebooks in the sense that they are more inclusive, that there are more opportunities for someone to buy one e-reader and then be able to increase font size, if they have trouble seeing... To be able to have it read aloud to them because they weren't able to find the audiobook version of a print book, for example. So, where do you see the accessibility issue fitting into everything?
Dr. McNeish: See, that's so important, because, you know, as somebody passionate about books, and I'm sure you are too, it is the ability for an author to speak to a reader in whatever form. So, we have one professor here who's been doing some really interesting work on accessible technologies. And in fact, in some of the research I did, people talked about the fact that physically, their hands, that they could no longer hold a book as long as they used to, and so, the ebook reader was wonderful in terms of its touch technology, and the ability to hold a much lighter device, and to be able to flip the pages. And then, the reading book, for someone who's blind, but the other aspect is, is there more work we can do around... So, the braille was the technology for a very long time, plus books that read, but are there ways to enhance the touch technology, for even more physically disabled people?
And then the other aspect of delivery of content in a way that requires less machinations. I still find...touchscreens is still an early technology, but I think there's a lot of interesting things that'll happen. But opposite to that is also not overlooking the utility of buttons and physical devices as part of the experience, because there's certain groups for whom a touch screen is somewhat random. So, I think of tiny children. So, they take an e-reader, and their instant reaction is to bite it, chew it, drop it, feel it.
And so, things like locking mechanisms, for people who are more clumsy with books, either just regular people or tiny children, but people with physical disabilities. So, making the devices somewhat more robust. And then the other piece is considering how the e-reader as device, like, hard device, versus e-reader as apps. And so, the libraries have conventional technology. They use, the iPhone has a particular version of a software, and then there's other versions of software.
So, we talk about the device, and then we talk about the software apps. And again, the ability to identify, because I can think of an older person reading with their ebook, suddenly having a physical ailment would be amazing, that if the ebook device, if it's a standalone device, became a bit of an emergency tool, it had some more features. Then someone says, "Well, that becomes an iPad, so why do you need to do that?"
But again, it's looking across devices, and considering all kinds of readers, whether it's young with a particular point of view. For older readers, again, I did interviews with a church group, and all of the older readers had...book club members, all had an e-reader. And they said from a physical point of view for having it in their purse, lighter... And one had arthritis in her hands. And she said, "I was thrilled, because now I can read again."
But it's actually looking across different groups of people and saying, "What would be the physical limitation in using a paper book?" and then allowing either the audiobook or the sort of visual ebook, how does it help compensate and allow people to continue to access the wonderful material?
Zalina: A big thank-you to Joanne for joining me on this month's podcast. If you're interested in more research and analysis of the book market in Canada, you can find free reports, infographics, and more at booknetcanada.ca. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
