As someone who has solely worked in the digital side of the publishing industry, I’ll freely admit that familiarity bias has tainted my perspective at times.
It becomes easy to discount the future of print publishing without experience in the space. There are numerous stats and studies out there that speak to the continued rise of digital content consumption, driven by widespread mobile phone adoption and the ongoing rollout of 5G internet speeds.
And yet, when I geared up to talk about a book I’d started rereading after more than 20 years on my Kindle, I found that I was quite considerably in the minority when it came to ebook adoption. Let me explain.
After watching the recent trailer for Dune 2 (the first film was great and I’d highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in sci-fi), I had a hankering to reread Frank Herbert’s Dune. While there might have been a time I would have bought the book (I used to be a hardcore advocate for physical books — the tactile experience of leafing through pages and all that) the Kindle Paperwhite converted me.
No screen refresh? Check. No bluelight? Check. Ease of transport/storage? Check. Backlit to avoid bedtime arguments over the lamp? Check! No matter how much I love physical books, it’s hard to argue against these advantages.
And then you have Dune’s publisher forward, which talked about how the “realities of commercial publishing” meant that “vast troves” of classic science fiction and fantasy would never be physically reprinted. The advent of digital publishing has mitigated this, according to Orion Publishing Group, enabling the distribution of classic and modern sci-fi backlists.
And yet, given all these advantages, print books are still far more popular than ebooks.
The book publishing game may be outside my area of expertise, as I’ve mentioned before, but it’s easy to understand why print continues to succeed in this space. There is still a significant number of people around the world that don’t have reliable internet access or can’t afford the digital devices necessary to enjoy reading ebooks. There are also those who still simply enjoy picking up a book more.
When it comes to magazines and newspapers, however, the rapid turnover of short-form content means mobile devices are a fantastic medium through which to consume this content. With that being said, it’s important not to become blinkered when it comes to the potential for new print publications.
Take Full Pour, for example, which focuses on a premium experience at a premium price. The publisher is charging $20 per issue, released on a quarterly basis. The number of advertisers is being limited to provide a more coherent reading experience. It’s a different mindset to that within digital publishing, where the commoditization of content has made it more challenging for publishers to charge premium prices.
While the benefits of digital are unquestionably many, print still has a place in the wider media landscape.
