The History of Print (Though Our Book Group's Eyes)

My wife and I belong to a book group composed of five very likeable, very smart, very busy couples. We launched in May 2001 and are now reading our 68^th book, Tinkers. The hosting couple chooses the book and will often serve food (or drinks, as the case may be) that match the story.

(Needless to say, we have not yet read Hunter Thompson or Timothy Leary, but I suppose we should put them on the list, just to see what kind of refreshments turn up.)

In light of the radical changes in publishing, I was pondering the other day the various ways our group has “accessed” the books we have “read” over the years. A quick list would include:

Borrow book from library
Buy new book from store
Buy used book from store/yard sale
Buy new book on-line
Buy used book on-line
Listen to book on tape
Listen to book on CD
Listen to digitally downloaded book (or creepy voice on Kindle)
Read book on PC (especially with helpful links, like Faulkner’s otherwise incomprehensible “The Sound and the Fury”)
Read book on Kindle
Read book on iPhone
Read book on iPad (two at our last get-together)
Watch movie adaptation
Watch heartwarming Hallmark adaptation
Watch inscrutable YouTube version
Read book on Sparknotes (oops)
Don’t read book (at all, but fake it by saying "the use of color and texture throughout was appealing")

I probably missed one or two, but if you count just “platforms,” that’s a paper book, tape, CD, epaper, digital audio, and digital print. So, for a bunch of 50-somethings who grew up with nothing but the printed word, and were read real books in bed by our parents, that’s pretty good technological adaptation and flexibility, no?

In fact, my theory is that we’ve probably seen the greatest divergence of “book delivery” in history, just in the last few years. And our book group has been its own test market of early adopters, mainstream adopters and cranky traditionalists. As I said in my last post, it’s possible now to see the entire lifecycle of a technology product—birth to death—before our very eyes, in the blink of an eye.

And now, I think—and thanks primarily to the iPad—we are about to see the greatest convergence since the original printed book.

The WSJ reported that one of the hottest new entries on the iPad is children’s book apps, which take the conventional book and make it move, sing, entertain and basically occupy a hybrid space with elements of the conventional book, video game, television and street carnival.

[“Finally something to save ‘Good Night Moon,’ at least,” he said).]

Now, imagine a current three-year-old, nurtured on the iPad, at a book group 50 years from now. He or she no doubt would have tracked the iPad (in all its future manifestations) which will, I would guess, migrate into preschool, elementary, secondary, college and eventually our book group.

Who would diverge from a platform that takes a book and turns it into a street carnival? Right. That’s why I think we’re converging rapidly and decisively on a new book “form factor” that’s going to be with us a long, long time.

The book as multimedia event. Imagine just the sale of Bibles alone. And people might actually read it this time, or at least the good parts.

I might add, at the end of every book group the hardest thing we five couples do is try to pick a new date when nobody is traveling, nobody has family commitments, everyone has time to read the book, etc. At this point in the festivities in 2001, most of us would have taken out our Daytimers, or looked at the big paper calendar in the kitchen.

You’re not going to believe what we do now to schedule a common date. Where technology has taken us. But that’s a different blog post for a different day.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations