In the roughly two decades the Web has existed, we’ve all been participating in an experiment to see what happens with post-scarcity goods: things that can be reproduced infinitely, at effectively zero cost for reproduction, distribution, or consumption. The most obvious result is that printed newspapers are dying, because they try to be as temporarily-relevant and discardable as email. To be sure, it’s hard for an kid in a bedroom to make a product as high-quality as the New York Times, and even harder to get good reporting from around the world. Journalism is difficult.
But the existence of newspapers is founded in the fact that, for a span of several hundreds of years, they were the most efficient way to deliver information. Much like the record business, though, they’ve suddenly discovered that more efficient delivery mechanisms are possible. Not only possible, but far simpler and more desirable for everybody involved.
This realization isn’t limited to news and music, though. What of the book?
While not an especially efficient information carrier, books can provide an experience that is — for the moment, anyhow — impossible to match. They’re dense, they’re easily transported, they have a high visual resolution, they’re coherent.
But just like newspapers and records, their existence is predicated on the idea of scarcity.
‘MEME 1.06’, David Bennahum, 01995
When a library becomes a digital library, a lot of things change. In a nutshell, it starts to look just like a publisher. It actually becomes a competitor to the likes of HarperCollins and Random House. First of all, you no longer have to physically go to the library to get the information. You can read it on-screen. Second, there is no theoretical limit of the number of people who can “borrow” the same book once the book is in bit form. In such a world, a publisher has good reason to rescind the bond between publisher, library and reader. In the old days that bond meant publishers tolerated libraries on one condition — that the library not charge for reading books. This guaranteed that the library’s commercial impact on publishers remained negligible. But with a digital library, if the choice is
publisher.comorlibrary.net— what are you going to choose? Atlibrary.netyou can read the same book for free. Atpublisher.comthey’ll bill you. Both are a mouse click away, both have the same content you want. But one is free and the other isn’t. So, it is no surprise that publishers are simply refusing to give libraries electronic rights; or, if the library is fortunate, it gets to lease the electronic rights on a renewable basis — thereby gutting the library of another precious asset: its ability to build a collection.
So what can you do when scarcity ceases to be a factor? One possibility I’ve noticed recently is shifting these analog goods into being desirable as objects, rather than just serving as an information medium — not unlike signed copies of a painting.
I first picked up this thread in an op. ed. piece by James Gleick:
One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines: the Web pages, the blogs, the organs of printed and broadcast news, the general chatter. (Thanks for everything, Johannes Gutenberg, and now goodbye.)
But I don’t see it that way. I think, on the contrary, we’ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology. Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms.
…
In bookstores, the trend for a decade or more has been toward shorter shelf life. Books have had to sell fast or move aside. Now even modest titles have been granted a gift of unlimited longevity.
What should an old-fashioned book publisher do with this gift? Forget about cost-cutting and the mass market. Don’t aim for instant blockbuster successes. You won’t win on quick distribution, and you won’t win on price. Cyberspace has that covered.
Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.
But what about libraries?
I think this is a place that the curated approach would work well. It’s impossible to compete on quantity when your opponent has, say, 85% of everything ever printed. But you can compete on selection. Anybody who can consistently share good products — in this case, shelf choices — will develop an audience.
Is there a business model in it? I don’t know, but it can’t be much worse than the current approach of endowments and government funding. Maybe they could run book clubs based around rediscovering classic or forgotten titles and charge a membership fee.
Books aren’t dead unless publishers refuse to keep them alive.
