erin!balser

While I fall somewhere in the middle of the “print is dead” and “print will never die” schools of thought, there is one book medium which completely confuses me and always will–the hardcover book.

Not necessarily the hardcover per se, but the hardcover with dust jackets. They are bulky, difficult to transport, difficult to store, and make for difficult upkeep. I successfully rip all my dust covers within minutes of purchase, then store them somewhere for “safekeeping” while I read the book, only to find it three months later, half-chewed by our resident mouse under the couch.

In today’s mobile, fast-paced, disposable, multi-tasking world, where do hardcovers fit? Reading is happening on subways, on airplanes, in small snippets while doing other things. Gen Y is the generation of multi-tasking and reading is no exception. This is not a bad thing, but books need to evolve with how people are reading them–digital or not.

Hardcovers are bulky and just annoying. I know not every publisher and every book follows the hardcover-paperback-mass market lifeline, but I think it’s a cycle worth reconsidering. How are you going to attract new readers and younger readers, readers who grew up in a culture of disposability, instant gratification and choice when the current buzzed about book is a $40.00 hardcover and they’ll need to wait six to eight months for the paperback version?

Hardcovers. I hate them. Except for a few niches–textbooks, large-print editions, some cook books and some children’s books–I don’t see their point.

I’m sure there a valuable reasons to print in hardcover. The current ones I get at school–”tradition” and “the media”–are whack. Why do publishers let media outlets dictate how and when they’ll publish books? With the rise of new media, media is bigger and more diverse than ever before. You just need some resilience and some creativity.

As for tradition, I’m not saying kill the hardcover completely. I’m just saying that readers deserve choice. Choice in where they read, what they read, how they read, and the format they read it in. Book publishers shouldn’t punish readers for wanting choice.

And I cant think of a single reason we should ever use dust jackets. Ever.

Image by betizuka. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Publisher and blogger Ted Savas recently wrote about the keys to building book success. His advice is so simple and true–and it works.

Savas writes:

The fundamentals for selling any book are essentially the same. Here is the secret: talk about your book as often as you can, with as many people as you can, for as long as you can, wherever you can, even if you don’t sell a single copy when you do. Oh, and there is a follow up: REPEAT–REPEAT–REPEAT.

Nothing about mediums, about budgets, about having a well-known author or a movie deal. Nothing about “doing what you know” or “doing what works” or “reinventing the wheel.”

It’s promising advice for the future of books. The more places you talk about it, the more places people will come across it.

It’s that simple.

PS. Ted Savas’s blog is absolutely great. I’m only sad I didn’t find it earlier!

Image by awrose. Licensed via Creative Commons.

I was excited and proud when I read this article in the Toronto Star that said that Canada is leading the book industry in terms of eco-friendliness.

Vit Wagner writes:

115 Canadian publishers, accounting for between 60 and 75 per cent of the market here, have implemented ecologically improved paper-purchasing policies, according to a 2008 report by Markets Initiative, a Canadian environmental non-governmental organization that lobbies the publishing and printing sectors to increase their use of recycled paper stock.

While this is excellent news, we still have a ways to go. I’m constantly hearing in school that recycled paper isn’t high quality enough and lots of things currently being published aren’t recyclable.

But it’s a start! Yay Canada! Read the full article here.

The following is an interesting interview with the editor-in-chief of Wired, Chris Anderson. In it he talks about the print/web dynamic and the role of choices for readers of magazines. It’s about twenty-two minutes long, but it’s worth it!

He does an excellent job differentiating between the two mediums and highlighting the value of print magazines (and books!). I can’t help but to agree with nearly everything he says.

I found this comment about book publishing particularly interesting:

“A book is a superior product to reading the same material as text on a screen…I think a book has a place in the 21st century…”

Even the biggest tech-heads see value in the traditional book. The book is here to stay. However, the book industry need to become less scared of new technologies and embrace them.

I was reading the latest issue of Elle magazine while on vacation. It told me, that smart consumers “buy 70% from preseasons and 30% from the runways.”

That is, fashion is moving from a two-season industry to a 4,5,6 season industry–spreading out the products over the year. This ensures that the consumer is purchasing more steadily and more frequently and that the designers are receiving a more reliable and regular income.

This lead me to think about the book industry. Book publishers produce two lists–spring and fall. All titles must correspond to a single list season. Titles are then ranked on this list according to the title’s expectations and titles are selected to be showcased in the traditional media outlets. Quill & Quire even produces issues around the release of these lists.

This results in very few books getting lots dollars behind it and lots of media attention, and lots of books getting ignored and supplied with shoddy marketing tactics.

What if the publishers’ seasons were scratched? Why can’t publishers have four seasons? Or release books monthly? Or–even better–line up with other cultural (comic books, DVDs, video games, CDs) products and release products every Tuesday? (I need to point out that it was Matt who told me about this Tuesday thing. I’m not that pop culture savvy.)

The only argument against this that I can see is that catalogues are expensive to produce and this will make the catalogue production more complicated. I don’t see the downside of having two big catalogues a year and a weekly e-newsletter or blog update citing this week’s latest titles. This way, more books can get more attention from more people will have greater access to a publisher’s titles. Why should a book be number 37 on a spring list when it can be number 2 on the March list?

Open up this newsletter to consumers directly–as opposed to booksellers only–and readers will not only be more aware of what is happening in the publishing world, they’ll be more engaged. Publishers would have more time-and, more importantly, more space–to sell books.

Digital media essentially creates limitless space through which books can be marketed and sold. We no longer have to be bound by time constraints and marketing budgets. All we need is some innovation. Putting lists and catalgoues online isn’t enough. More than the medium needs to change–the entire approach to marketing and selling books needs to change.

And isn’t this what it all comes down to? Selling books?

Are there any reasons to stick to the old two-season model?

Image by Joe Gratz. Licenced via Creative Commons.

As you can probably tell already, I’m a big advocate for the digital world. I get all my news online, I can happily read a computer screen for eight hours and take my laptop to bed with me.

Other advocates use the “virtual is greener” argument when calling for a change from print to screen.

However, the true environmental impacts of a digital world are emerging. Wired editor Chris Anderson argued that “dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media.” Yet, Brendan Koernor of Slate argues that Anderson “underestimates the long-term consequences and carbon emissions of logging in old-growth forests, as well as the nasty pollution created by the wood pulping industry.”

Either way, it’s hard to assess the environmental impact of an industry that’s not only rapidly adopting green standards, it’s also facing a digital revolution.

As it is, environmental issues can be easily adapted for both the pro-print and pro-screen camps. This is without any real benefit to those who it matters most–the environment and the consumer.

In the end, it’s about adopting a medium between print and screen wherein the user is happy and where they can make informed environmental decisions.

Image by monettenriquez. Licensed via Creative Commons.

Matt and I were talking the other day about Generation Y (we do that a lot!) and literature. You see, Canadian literature has a distinctive identity on the international market: it’s very literary, it’s very multicultural and it’s very much tied into the Canadian landscape.

There hasn’t been a voice on the Canadian scene that represents me and my generation. Wait, let me rephrase that. There hasn’t been a voice on the Canadian scene people are paying attention to that represents me and my generation.

In the late nineties, something happened in American literature. Dave Eggers, Chuck Klosterman, and others–tech-savvy, slacker-types who remember Puck from MTV and when NKTOB were cool–started to get attention. Chick lit exploded and hip girls like Marisha Pessl and Lauren Weisenberger got six figure advances. Graphic novels are becoming mainstream. Youth, for once, was dictating the direction of publishing. These writers had impressive print-runs, vast fan-bases and a voice people listen(ed) to.

Canada doesn’t have that yet. The closest writer I can think of is Douglas Coupland, but he’s been around for over twenty years.

This is why it bothered me when I opened Quill & Quire’s latest issue–the one celebrating “the most influential, innovative and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing”–and found that not only were there very few writers, the writers chosen were tried-and-true power players.

There were plenty of bright spots–Chris Olivero, Nicole Rycroft, and Brian Lam are just a few inspiring people–but the list felt overwhelming business-oriented and old.

Maybe the Canadian landscape isn’t encouraging and facilitating young, outspoken, original Canadian writers. While I seriously doubt this (Ellen Page, Sarah Polley and Jason Reitman are all examples of young innovation in Canadian creative industries), I cannot help but think that it’s not the lack of innovation Canadians, but the lack of innovation in an industry that celebrates the tried-and-true, the giants and the dinosaurs.

These people are important. They are shaping the industry. I respect them greatly. I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate the past. But in an industry struggling as much as publishing, we should be looking to the future with just as much enthusiasm.

I’m sure they are out there. Why aren’t they getting heard?

Image via Quill and Quire

Tonight, I will be pajama-clad early, snacks on hand, watching starlets sashaying up the red carpet, and wondering who will win the coveted Oscar statuette. It’s the most exciting night in the film industry and one of the most watched telecasts in the world.

I’ll be paying paticular attention to the select Canadians nominated: Jason Reitman for Best Director, Ellen Page for Best Actress and Sarah Polley for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Which brings me to the subject of note: film adaptations of books. As I was browsing the blogs of my friends, Patricia had this to say about the movie The Kite Runner:

In spite of all it’s good qualities, the book was still way better than the movie. I’m a print snob, shoot me.

Being from a pseudo-academic, pseudo-publishing background, I hear this all the time. It’s not always meant to be pretentious, but it always bothers me. A book is not a film and a film is not a book. A film is a single artist’s interpretation of a particular story through a different medium.

The screen is inherently different from the page. Literature is not bound by the visual elements of film beyond words on a page. Literature is not bound by a two-hour time frame. Literature allows you to move through the story at your own spatial and temporal pace, whereas films do not.

Yes, some films are better adapted at others. Some adaptations leave out crucial plot-points or misinterpret characters. But at the core, a film adaptation is not like a cover song. It’s a creative interpretation, the transition of a story from one medium to the other, which may or may not correspond to how you interpreted the book.

Image by melodrama.ca. Licensed through Creative Commons.

A few days ago Timothy Egan of the NY Times responded to Steve Jobs’ statement about Amazon’s Kindle:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” Jobs told the Times. “the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

I’m one of the people who found this statement really disappointing. I believe Apple is a company that could make an e-book reader work, make it compatible with several other programs on the market and make it sexy. Hell, it could be as easy as giving the iPhone book-reading capabilities.

Anyways, back to Egan. In his refute of Jobs and his declaration of his love of books, he had the following to say:

The Mac, Pixar, the iPhone, the iPod, iTunes. This stuff is cool. Lighter than air. iGetit. But it’s just product, dude.

Just product? Maybe so. But these products revolutionized the way we consume things. Apple has changed how we interact with technology, with creative industries, and, to some extent, with each other. How can it be “just product” if it’s doing that?

Egan’s statement comes from a desire to demonstrate that reading is above being “just product.” “Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience,” he writes. “It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.”

Egan is confusing “reading” with “books”. iTunes and iPods are products, listening is not. The Mac is a product, everything we use it for is not. iPhone is a product, interacting with friends and surfing the internet is not.

If we had a device that had inter-active cross-references and indices, that let us immediately hook up to others reading the same book, that gave us access to secondary and outside resources through the very book we were reading, that gave us the ability to instantly store and save passages we found moving or thought-provoking, wouldn’t that change how we read?

Yes, reading is more than product.

But, just as with those other products, the right e-reader will be more than “just product.”

We just need to get Steve Jobs on board.

Image by Dave & Bry. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Chip Kidd, the renowned book designer, created the YouTube video below to promote his latest book, The Learners.

While the comments the video received so far are mixed, you have to give the guy credit for being truly unique when it comes to book marketing and promotion!

Do you think YouTube views will translate into book sales?

And does this video even appropriately reflect the book’s content? Guess I’ll have to read it to find out!