23 - 07 Why do paper books still exist in this digital age ?

 So why have eBooks not destroyed the market for paper books? The development of eBooks was a digital disrupter technology. But as a disrupter technology eBooks have only managed to run in parallel with the centuries old technology of printed paper books and not replace it. They have failed to sweep away the paper books. In fact eBooks have been losing ground to the older technology which has managed, through the increased use of digital technologies to make a come back on both pricing and distribution costs. You can now buy paperbacks at low new prices or pay 10p in a charity shop for many a hard bounded masterpiece. Even the internet services, offered by second hand book shops, is booming guaranteeing a future market for pre-used paper based books. Think of them being like vinyl records. The nostalgic feelings that can derived from using older technologies like paper books will never be lost.

The handling of a wedge of paper the size of two hands with some weight to it creates certain emotions of touch and feel that cannot be replicated in the use of an eBook or Smartphone or Tablet. The book allows you to feel the weight of knowledge, experiences and emotions covering all matter of things right in your hands. The weight and the number of pages all laid out in front of you gives you that feeling of expectation that no electronic device can emulate. You can flick through the pages in expectation of the future content be it textural or visual.

But in many ways it’s the fact that paper books can be stored on a bookshelf allowing you to have the ability to easily visually peruse these portals of frictional stories or factual works of genius. Although it is accepted that the dictionary and encyclopaedia genres are much better delivered as digital solutions. In terms of books you read rather than reference it is difficult to emulate the feeling created by handling such books compared with those inert feelings associated with holding an electronic device.

Now the best books are the creation of one person. The writer who commits their individual consciousness to words. The fact that writers can work on their own without being dependent on others gives you the chance to exclusively share their minds. But the essence of books is that although they trigger and guide your own thought processes the final setting of the visual scenes is a function of your imagination not theirs. They can use words to paint the picture in terms of characters and settings deciding how much detail to share with you but the real skill in writing is to allow the reader to complete the job with their own vivid imagination. It is a fact that mentally created characters or settings will be different from that perceived by another reader and no doubt different to what the writer originally intended you as the reader to visualise.

As Hilary Mantel, sadly now deceased, has proved with her trilogy on Oliver Cromwell even an historical factual book can link documented facts into undocumented but realistic life like character settings. The skills of a brilliant historical writer making an often very dry genre into best seller material. It is an accurate fictional representation of a well-researched historical character or setting. In my historical writings I have often tried to convey the scene through the eyes of someone living in the relevant time period and this needs to take into account the available technologies that person is likely to have available to them to use.

Now the work of long dead writers across the centuries can be another source of a unique experience. Both fiction and fact books can offer you the chance to experience the world at the time of the author’s writing. Fact books, particularly covering the sciences, show how intellectually things were understood at the time of writing. Reading these older books often shows how things have or have not moved on with the passage of time. My particular interest has been identifying and understanding some objects or entities that have not changed over time. The book is a classic example of being a type of document that although the medium of delivery has changed from cave walls, to pottery, to paper to digital the fundamental writer’s thoughts are often the same. The thought processes of the human brain have not changed significantly over the last 2000 years but the technologies in which these thoughts can be expressed and communicated have radically changed.

But getting stories and messages from human to human has now extended into what could be termed competing media types. Sound alone being broadcast radio and now the segmented easily selected podcasts. Pictures being artwork and photographs moving from paper to digital images. Moving pictures moving from films and video using cinemas and television to digital streaming on smartphones and tablets. All these are competing with the book for your time and attention. It is strange how many people in describing the things they want to do on holiday list reading a book as one of their priorities. Just you and the writer spending valuable time together.

So although I consider myself a technologist I have not been drawn away from paper books. Searching Amazon for a book I will often avoid the Kindle digital options, although cheaper, choosing to go for paper versions. Under the economics of retirement living often a printed paper second hand book is the preferred purchase option. In my case because I like annotating using notes written in pencil onto the books pages this concerns me less on a second hand book.

There is only one area in which I have moved completely away from the paper based product. Experiencing and preferring a true digital disrupter technology. Yes newspapers. In particular the Times Newspapers. Both the daily Times and the Sunday Times. But they have to be read on an Apple iPad. Their implementation particularly when commencing from a PDF facsimile of the actual printed paper copy whilst seamlessly linking into a textual copy of a selected article in a reasonable size font makes for a perfect reading experience. Then the extra capability to share the link to this article with friends or for my own use by creating a linked message format suitable for a Smartphone screen size by just undertaking a few clicks whilst reading the newspaper. Perfect.

Significantly the Times publishers have retained their newspapers original paper based brand appearance. There was a danger they would when they went digital just emulate the design style adopted on the internet by the TV Broadcasters.(eg BBC, Sky etc). The Times have covered this territory by offering a second format that is purely HTML5 based emulating the style adopted by the TV Broadcasters. Essentially the TV Broadcasters are looking to lower the textual content and look at replacing it with video outputs in many cases captured directly from the public. This both suits the increasing video expectations of readers particularly the younger generation (eg TikTok) but it can be much cheaper to produce requiring reduced human work input. But this at the same time it will lower its intellectual offering to the reader. The Times, rightly, are looking to retain this intellectual capability provided by its excellent journalists.

So at some point this digital disrupter will completely replace the use of the paper medium for the distribution of knowledge and entertainment. But I would not predict this as being too soon based upon how slow my reading behaviours change.