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Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com Inc, shows a Kindle, its wireless electronic reader - Source: Reuters -
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Before I exchanged the United States of snow, ice, and increased security for this green and pleasant land, I did something that will soon be viewed as the equivalent of packing starch for one's collars. I packed three books. Actual books, you know, with covers and pages, and - this being the most important aspect to the international traveller - heft.
They were, by the way, (1) The Curse of the Mogul, a study of how the celebrated media barons of the past decade or so are, in fact, twits; something that anyone working for them might have long surmised; (2) The Life You Save May be Your Own which catalogues the pilgrimage to faith of four Catholic writers, and (3) New Bats In Old Belfries, a collection of C.M. Bowra's verse. Bowra was one of the leading classical scholars of his generation. It was said his academic writing was unreadable, and his verse unprintable.
In several years though, should current trends continue, I'll pack one item alone: my Kindle, or Sony ebook, or somesuch device. This year Amazon announced that ebooks, or books on software that can be read on portable, lightweight electronic screens, outsold actual books on Christmas Day. Those who had been given a Kindle (that's the Amazon reader, if you'll forgive the neologism) for Chrissy, rushed to buy something to try it out on.
If you're Amazon, this is great news, and shareholders responded appropriately. If you're a publisher, it should give hope, and pause. Hope because books are being bought; pause because the means of distribution (which is really what publishing is about) are clearly changing.
Speaking a little more widely, we assume the media business is about content: breaking news, an unprintable poem, a journey to God: ripping yarns. To some extent it is, but in purely business terms, money is made by how that content gets to consumers.
The means of distribution, in other words.
I look around Manhattan, and all I see are screens. The screens of the leering billboards in Times Square, of the ubiquitous BlackBerries that illuminate the sallow faces of the young at 2 am, as they crisscross the city in the back of taxis, searching for I don't know what; the books that reactionaries like myself read on the subway.
As someone who fills those screens, The Curse of the Mogul is clarifying and frightening. Again and again the message comes through, content doesn't count, distribution does.
Which brings us to where you are right now, on the net (sorry, those of you who are reading on handhelds, but you take the point). Problem is that no one has yet really figured out how to monetarise the web. Okay, Google has, with its ads, but media companies? The Wall Street Journal operates a subscription model that makes money; the New York Times has one of the best websites in the world, and it loses revenue.
I have a strong emotional attachment to books, especially old hardbacks. I like them almost as much as I like clever girls. But as distribution changes, surely the substance of what is distributed will change also.
Shorter will be better; portable will be preferable. The average length of a news piece on a US regional station is now just over 60 seconds. Despite what windy critics of TVNZ may aver, ours remains an almost Biblical 90 seconds. So goodbye then to complicated thoughts? Put it bookishly, does this mean that the allusive lengthy narratives of last century, will become extinct? Au revoir Robert Musil, ta-ta Thomas Mann?
One thing is certain. Should they survive, they'll weigh a lot less.
Read more of Tim Wilson's blogs.
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