We've been following the misfortunes of Borders Books in my class for the last six weeks, and the recent Chapter 11 filing and store closure announcements seem like a pause on the path to a complete disappearance.
The press has cited two strategic failures on Border's part -- outsourcing their eCommerce strategy to Amazon for many years, and completely missing the rise of the eBook.
While they are certainly significant errors, in reality Borders is just a channel for publishers. Publishers share some (most?) of the blame.
I read a lot of books, and most of them share two characteristics. They're in black and white, and they're static.
Authors write; editors edit; printers print; distributors distribute; and bookstores hold inventory until customers come in and buy.
But what in this whole value chain is really important to the paying customers? How are customer wants and needs changing?
I've recently been reading a few books on my Kindle (well, the Kindle app on my iPad, to be honest), and also subscribing to the first few issues of the online only "newspaper", The Daily. The comparisons are stark.
"Jet Age" is a good book. But I'd like the electronic version of it to have hyperlinks, color photographs, and video. The links would enable the reader to drill down deeper into topics; learn more background; read alternative points of view that might otherwise distract from the story the author is telling. Videos could illustrate things that would either be tedious to describe, or go completely unsaid.
Bill Bryson's book "At Home" would be enhanced (in my opinion) with more pictures, floor plans, and video and audio files of the things that he so eloquently describes. Let me be clear -- there is no way that I would want him to not write. His style is to engaging, entertaining, informative, and just plain fun to do without. It is the book format itself that confines him.
Cookbooks, heck, any "how to" or "DIY" book could offer how-to videos instead of step-by-step instructions.
Instruction manuals can become interactive. Nature guides can present video and audio to supplement descriptions. All this would be searchable, perhaps by voice command.
In short, books are behind the times. I value well crafted words, but I want more. I want to have the ability to take excerpts from a book and bring them into PowerPoint, or this blog, to use in teaching or in commentary. I'd like to be able to instantly share excepts from books with clients or colleagues. In Adrian Slywotsky's "Value Migration" model, books and their publishers are in the Value Outflow stage, and eBooks (and eNewspapers, like The Daily) are in the Value Inflow.
Does this create potential copyright issues? Perhaps. But it also creates new opportunities for content creators to use new media with new methods. It upends the traditional business model and enables new ones to come into being.
Perhaps the books of the future are more like "apps" -- there is no reason to keep the same structure of sequential chapters if the medium is more flexible. Games, apps, books, magazines -- all are transforming in real-time.
Borders is but the canary in the coal mine for traditional publishers and authors -- it will be interesting to see what the "information transfer" industry (aka publishing) brings next.
Books nowadays are just placed on shelves and no one reads it anymore. In this age of computers, a lot are using it infact there are sites that sell content of a book and you can read it online.
Posted by: Brad Fallon | February 17, 2011 at 06:59 PM