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| Goodbye, Mr. Gutenberg |
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"Most current media formats will die and be replaced with an integrated medium in five to ten years" — that's according to Jakob Nielsen, Web guru and author of Designing Web Usability.
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| "I would urge that we not fall all over ourselves in our haste to filter all of our experience through circuitries."
Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age |
He's not alone in his conviction that traditional media are doomed to become relics of the past — in a Newsweek article entitled "It's Time to Turn the Last Page," Stephen Levy wrote that
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| | as a common item of communication, artistic expression and celebrity anecdote, the physical object consisting of bound dead trees in shiny wrapper is headed for the antique heap. Its replacement will be a lightning-quick injection of digital bits into a handheld device with an ultrasharp display. Culture vultures and bookworms might cringe at the prospect, but it's as inevitable as page two's following page one. Books are goners, at least as far as being the dominant form of reading.
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This may well be the case. But before you relinquish your hard copy for a virtual version, take a long, hard look at what's happening out there in media land — particularly when it comes to "crossover marketing."
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| The Best of Both Worlds |
 "The bricks-and-mortar advertisers have used direct mail successfully for many years. Dot-coms and e-ecommerce firms are starting to see the advantage of using those channels to get people to come to their sites. In the last few months, this traditional concept has become a new marketing strategy for Web-based companies," Mario Lupia, a sales manager for The SpeciaList's alternative media, quoted in Directmag.com
Coupled with direct marketing, dot-coms are utilizing other traditional media to achieve top-of-mind awareness with their target publics: "Dot-com businesses are hoping that a new spin on an old medium will help them reach consumers: self-titled magazines, states a CNET News Report. Self-titled magazines give e-commerce companies a chance to get their brands in front of consumers before they go on line." Dot-coms currently published magazines include Pets.com, Garden.com, eBay and Yahoo. The magazines give consumers something to touch and feel, giving the dot-coms a tangible presence. Self-titled magazines also represent a new potential revenue stream for online companies.
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| "Books will persist because they're beautiful and useful. They're like horses after the automobile — not gone, but transformed into recreational beasts."
Dick Brass, Microsoft
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And while online catalogs will account for 68 percent of consumer ecommerce spending in 2000, a recent report by Insight Research concludes that print-based catalogs are not about to disappear. "Web sites are actually increasing the number of print catalog companies like L.L. Bean are shipping," says Bob Rosenberg, president of Insight Research, quoted in the Telecom Web. Having the e-catalog actually helps these companies firnd their customers. The number of catalogs being printed is increasing."
The grand total for dot-com ad spending in 1999 is estimated to be more than $1 billion dollars — and roughly 85 percent of the total was estimated to have been spent on conventional media buys, leaving only 14 percent for the purchase of Internet advertising. "Right now, many dot-com retailers are either considering or are in the process of launching traditional catalogs. This dot-com media channel will be a landmark in the history of catalog marketing, and also curiously sensible," notes Sheldon Zaslansky in D M News. "Unexpectedly finding a catalog in the mail or at a friend's house builds and stimulates a consumer's need and desire to purposefully visit an e-retail site in much the same way that same consumer used to pick up a phone and call, especially if the site offers even richer, deeper information."
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| There's Nothing Like Paper |
While the sophistication of digital media is eroding many of paper's uses, it's appeal will be hard to dispel, notes Geoffrey Nairn in Future of Paper: Internet Threatens Printed Word. "Technology advances have given people more ways to create, produce and read information than ever before. Nevertheless, paper continues to offer advantages over electronic media and predictions of a paperless society today seem far fetched. By the end of this decade, however, paper's dominance could be seriously threatened by the growing sophistication of digital media and, most importantly, greater cultural acceptance as today's children — the first "Internet-ready" generation — grow into tomorrow's consumers."
Hardware technology is the constraining factor, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. He believes that we will have to wait for approximately the year 2007 for books to go away and be fully replaced with online information. There are key criteria that must be met before this happens however: computer screens must improve to the point where reading from screens is as fast and pleasant as reading from paper; Web browsing user interfaces must improve enough so that it is as easy to navigate the Web as it is to leaf through the pages of a book; readers and writers must both adjust to non-linear information spaces, that is, how to write in ways that utilize hypertext and how to read without the safety of mind that comes from making no decisions beyond turning the page.
"Only two things, really, hold us back from having reading devices that are just as felicitous as the dust-jacketed packages we know and love," says Levy. "One is high-speed wireless bandwidth, so that the devices can be quickly loaded ... the second is a screen whose output is as sumptuous as the current books, which engage not only our minds but our sense of touch," adding that the devices should cost so little that they should be "cheap enough to lose."
It's clear that the world of books, as we know and love it, is set to change. "In the long term," says Levy, "the e-book's most startling effect will involve what goes between the virtual covers." E-books' Internet connectivity will trigger profound changes. Changes in the way we read, changes in the types of books being published.
| | Not So Fast |
But while industry predictions relegate the book to a much-loved relic of bygone days, over 90 percent of users participating in an About.com poll voted "No" to the question: "Will online books replace print publishing?" Evidently, these users aren't of the younger e-generation who are being weaned on interactivity. Like many bibliophiles, they relish the joy of crossword puzzles, bedtime stories, weekend newspapers — the activities that have woven the fabric of our lives with a richer hue. Virtual libraries cannot replace the rich ambience of a reading room filled from top to bottom with all kinds of literary treasures. As convenient, informative and useful as Amazon.com might be, e-browsing through Amazon simply can't compare with whiling away the hours in a bricks and mortar bookshop, nor can it provide the cappuccino or the conversation.
And then there's traditional fish and chips. Without the newspaper, it's simply not the same, is it?
Trendlines' prediction: Books — in all shapes and forms — will continue to be around for much longer than we might expect as we hurtle into the digital dimension. And if you want to debate the issue, you'll find us in the library.
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