A tale of two mediums

When the first newspaper went online, there were gasps of horror from the print-puritans. There was a fear that the page would die and the screen would take over. That was over 10 years ago, yet newspapers and magazines are still around.

In comes the revolutionary e-book reader and there goes the neighbourhood. Again.

iPad, Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader. Yes, these devices have revolutionised reading and we can already see the impact e-books and e-book readers have made on sales of so-called 'timeless' tomes.

There are no statistics for e-books sales in SA; however, according to the Cape Town Book Fair, in the US alone, the revenue from e-book sales has soared from about $3 million to over $90 million in the past five years. Internationally, between 500 000 and one million Kindles, the most popular brand of e-reader, have been sold.

This may just go hand-in-hand with the fact that book sales have declined. Amazon noted 43% more digital books sold than hardback books from April to June this year, and is selling 180 e-books for every 100 hardback books.

In terms of consumption of print media, newspaper and magazine sales have dipped, with ABC reporting losses across the board. There was a 0.7% drop for daily newspapers, up to 13% drops for weeklies, 29% for weekend newspapers such as the Saturday Star, and 11% decline for entertainment magazines by the end of 2009.

The Wall Street Journal, one of the first dailies to go e-book, claims users can "touch the stories that matter to [them] most, get latest news updates and market data throughout the day, and save [their] favourite articles and sections for later", which could make picking up the newspaper or sitting at a PC or with a laptop obsolete for readers. It must be said, the temptation is high to download everything to your iPad and save stories instead of searching a URL that may not even be correct.

Even with monthly reading, Wired Magazine may have made page-flipping a thing of the past with its iPad app, which went live in May this year. Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, says: "The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics."

A Wired fan in CNA chuckles as he says: "I think the medium is now part of the message,” as he puts his hard copy of the magazine back on the shelf.

Now, the entire electronic world has flipped over social magazine Flipboard. The new app for iPad enables users to "see all the things that people are sharing with you like you would see things in a magazine," according to Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. The only drawbacks that have been pointed out by Twitter users are the lack of RSS feeds, the inability to update statuses and the lack of access to LinkedIn.

These features, news, magazines and social networking all converging onto a sleek tablet makes this a remarkable product that could change the way in which people use media. In fact, it already has.

But is this really going to change the way in which consumers use newspapers, magazines, and even online publications?

The American Publishers' Association announced a 22% increase in hardback book sales, year-on-year. Obviously the whole issue is very complex, but at present it does not appear that, internationally, e-book sales are having a detrimental effect on physical book sales.

Exclusive Books' digital strategist, Evan Morris, says “in some cases they may actually be encouraging more reading, leading to better physical book sales over time”.

Even techno-junkies still prefer to snuggle up under the covers with the pages in between their fingers rather than read off a screen.

Nikita Ramkissoon, Journalist, ITWeb

In SA, the hardback is still very much alive. Morris says: “E-books are still very new in SA. Amazon's Kindle only became available here in October 2009, and Kalahari.net has started selling e-books as of March. Obviously there is a market, and that market will grow. At present, e-books are having no effect whatsoever on book sales.”

There is also the human factor to take into consideration. A lot of people, even techno-junkies, still prefer to snuggle up under the covers with the pages in between their fingers rather than read off a screen.

One twitter user says: "I shudder to think about spilling coffee on my books... Imagine what I'd do if coffee spilled on my e-book reader! I can't afford to replace that kind of spillage!" Student Adheema Davis says she would choose "a book, newspaper or magazine any day. An iPad doesn't give you the same sensory pleasure of printed paper."

Then there is the possibility the reader can get outdated very quickly, like most fads. Software sales manager Stuart Hobbs says he would reject the iPad. "If I'm going to go digital I need the ability to multi-task and use Adobe Acrobat."

Journalist Sudhir Matai from Car Magazine doesn't think it will radically change media consumption. "I think that it will take some time yet for that to happen. We all thought that print media will die with the spread of the Internet, and that was over a decade ago."

There is also a question of affordability and accessibility. Matai says: "iPad may be the flavour of the month, but it's an expensive toy and I can't see it spreading as people are 'hoping'." However, this argument may be turned on its head, with Sharp releasing a cheaper reader and India having developed a tablet for just $35.

Online magazine editor, Lin Tan, of Trespass Magazine, says she does not think readers will kill the print magazine business, “but I suppose we may see an even greater decline in print mag sales... instead, what we see is an obvious increase in competition”. She also adds that Trespass will not move in that direction until it presents a stable longevity and succeeds in becoming a norm.

According to writer Clay Shirky, quoted in The Daily Maverick, the survival of print news is irrelevant. What everybody should be in a stew about is sustaining the civic function of journalism and the future of hard-news reportage. “What we should really care about is the civic function of the reporters. If we worried about that, the landscape would look very different,” he says.

It is unclear whether e-books mean the end of print.

Morris asserts this: “E-books allow different kinds of content to come into being, and that content creates new audiences. Physical book-buying audiences will erode over time, and some categories of physical book may disappear altogether in the long-term. Other categories will not disappear. Certainly the overall market for physical books will probably decrease, probably dramatically. But not tomorrow.”

The question as to whether the page is mightier than the LCD is yet to be answered. For now, all we can do is choose our medium and enjoy reading.