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Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Paperback WriterDecember 2

Print is Dead will be coming out early next year in a paperback edition. The new cover is pictured above. While there won’t be any new material included, I will be writing a new introduction that I’ll post to this blog when the paperback appears. I will also make this material available for download.

Thanks.

–Jeff

Relying on the Kindles of Strangers: Pics of new modelOctober 6

The website Boy Genius Report has shots of the new version of Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader. And while the device continues to look sleek and cool (though it’s still not quite in iPod territory), the screen is remains black and white; or rather, slate-grey and dirty-ivory. It also doesn’t seem to be a touch-screen, which — if they couldn’t do color, they should have offered — the newly announced Sony device will indeed have.

I find it a little strange that the Kindle seems to have gotten bigger, rather than smaller. I guess Amazon’s trying not to compete with the smaller form-factor of things like iPhones and Android phones. Instead, with its magazine and newspaper subscriptions (not to mention the ability to read blogs), Amazon’s going more for a tablet experience than the stick-it-in-your-pocket convenience of a paperback.

More photos here.

That’s Not the Doors Song I Would Have ChosenSeptember 16

There’s a long cover story this week in New York Magazine about publishing. Rather than leave any doubt as to the future of the book industry, the article is called “The End.” And while movies in the thirties and forties were never complete without those two words appearing in the final reel — those six letters giving cathartic closure and making us eager for yet more stories — what writer Boris Kachka seems to be saying with his piece is that not only is our movie over, but there won’t be a sequel. Time to leave the theater. Go home. Stick a fork in publishing; it’s done. Don’t believe me? Here’s the subheadline:

The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world.

And yet, even though I wrote a book called Print is Dead, even I don’t think that publishing is over. Rather, it just needs to change and be willing to embrace new ideas and busin

Headlines Go Online: Google now scanning newspapersSeptember 9

The New York Times reported today on Google’s newspaper scanning efforts:

Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites…

Google will then serve up scans of newspapers either via Google, or on the site of the originating newspapers, which provides income for Google (in the first example) and/or traffic and visitors (and potentially income from advertising) for the original newspapers (in the second example).

And while Google got in hot water with its book-scanning program a few years ago, touching on raw nerves and igniting a debate about copyright, the newspaper initiative seems like a better idea. Because a July 21st issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1969 is a different kind of content from the novel The Godfather (which was published that same year). The novel is available from retailers, and is making money for its publisher and author. Whereas the newspaper is a quietly fading artifact, an orphaned antique not likely to find a foster h

You Say It’s Your Birthday (It’s my birthday two)September 1

Two years ago I posted the first entry to the Print is Dead blog; I’m not sure if that makes today a birthday or an anniversary (it’s probably neither and a bit of both). But as you can see from the above I went with candles as a graphic, so let’s call it a birthday.

I created the blog in the summer of 2006, just as I was finalizing a deal to write the book Print is Dead (which was itself an expansion of a 50 page essay I’d written and distributed privately to a few friends and colleagues that winter and spring). Initially I just wanted the blog to be a place where I could post, and thus have record of, articles that I’d read or come across concerning the future of the book debate. Because, at that point, I was still just sort of getting my head around the subject: compiling books to read, printing out articles for research, trying to learn everything I could.

It also seemed that every other day I was coming across something that was relevant to the topic and my argument, items and ideas that I was going to want to include somehow in the text. So rather than just printing out Web pages and sticking them in a folder, or even bookmarking the sites so I could visit them later, I wanted to post them as blog e