3. Leiden University. The university to discover.
on Steve Jobs
- When asked what market research went into
the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: ‘None. It’s not the
consumers’ job to know what they want.’
(NYTimes, 6 okt. 2011)
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Slovenian survey
Numbers of
books bought
1998 2014
>20 Books 3% 1%
11–20 Books 7% 4%
4–10 Books 19% 22%
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Slovenian survey (cont’d)
Reasons for
not buying
books
1998 2014
Books are not
interesting
2% 29%
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Book sales in the Netherlands (in millions of units)
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Resolving the paradox
- People read differently in term of
- Price: free (gratis) online content such as
- News, fan fiction, ‘long reads’, classics and
public domain texts (and illegal e-books!)
- New text forms like texting, blogs, social
media, email
- Different distribution channels
- Outside the paid channels (book trade,
newspapers, magazines)
- Through ‘marginal’ channels of newcomers
• Amazon
• E-book ventures of all sorts
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Essay competition
organised by the Book
trade association of the
Netherlands in 1845:
‘Is the book trade
declining?’
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Similarities C19 and C21
- Price, content and channels
- For example:
- C21: Amazon
- C19: A. Eichler, syndicator over most of
Europe, with Nick Carter, Buffalo Bill, and
Raffles series
- Difficulty in identifying the needs of the new
audience
- Different mentalities of book trade and
customers
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Differences C19 and C21
- Nineteenth century more socially than
technologically driven
- Extension chiefly at the bottom of the market
- Role of education
- Hierarchical society: desire for upward mobility
- (As well as ‘secret’ interest in the ‘lower’ culture)
- Rotary presses: cheaper, larger print runs
- Twentieth century more technologically than
socially driven
- Extension at the bottom of the market +
changes in the existing market
- Primary driver: digitisation
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Who are the ‘new readers’?
- The ‘Online generation’
- [NB: additional!]
- Online 24/7
• Communication
• Media consumption
• Products and services
- Instantaneousness
- Democratic, two-way traffic
• Equality of producer and consumer
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How are expectations different?
- The ‘Online mentality’
- Instant gratification
- Content is free (or virtually so)
- Access to content is self-filtered:
• Setting preferences
• Creating profiles
• Listening to peers
- Access is more important than ownership
- ‘If something doesn’t reach me, it’s probably
not important to me’
- ‘What can be done online, must be done
online’
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Primary technological properties
- The computer is
1. A ‘Universal machine’
2. A digital–electronic device
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Salient technological properties
Paper Digital screen
Fixed / stable / permanent Fluid / unstable / impermanent
Offline Online (hyperlinking)
Material and tangible Immaterial and intangible
Text=substrate Substrate takes any text
Product (economic scarcity) ‘Service’ (inexhaustible)
One-way (author > reader)
Two-way networking (Web
2.0)
Duo-modal Multimodal
Machine readable (searchable)
Technological and
economic length limitations
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Example mentality shift 1
- News needs to be free
- Citizen journalism; User-Generated Content
- Consumers settle for ‘good enough’
- Enabled by two-way networking in Web 2.0
form
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Example mentality shift 2
- Digital text has less value
- Research by
• R. Ackerman and M. Goldsmith, ‘Metacognitive
regulation of text learning’ (2011)
• Ziming Liu, ‘Reading behavior in the digital
environment’ (2006)
• Jacob Nielsen, ‘F-shaped pattern for reading Web
content’ (2006)
- Price perception: lesser preparedness to pay
for texts than for games, films, music?
- NB: Role of Open Access
- Enabled by non-materiality and fluidity
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Example mentality shift 3
- Access is more important than ownership
- Cf. ideological ‘movement’ towards not owning
cars, tools, clothes
- The web is an access technology, it offers
services rather than products
- Subscription models for e-books
- Cf. ‘mass media’ and music
- Importance of the device (paid; relatively
expensive) vs. content (cheap or even free)
- Enabled by non-materiality and service
nature
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Sociotechnical development
Technological properties
and
affordances
➡
Actions/uses
➡
Social effects
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NB
- Intended vs unintended effects
- Technology has no agency, but inherent
characteristics
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Sociotechnical development
Technological properties
and
affordances
➡
Actions/uses
➡
Social effects
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Immateriality
- Salient technological property
- Immateriality
- Actions/uses (technological effects)
- E.g., favours access rather than ownership
models
- Social effects
- E.g., change in price perception
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Two-way networking
- Salient technological property
- Two-way networking
- Actions/uses (technological effects)
- E.g., availability of information about customer
behaviour
- Social effects
- E.g., change in (attitude to) privacy
34. Leiden University. The university to discover.
Sieghart Review Key Conclusions
The interests of publishers and booksellers must be
protected by building in frictions that set 21st-
century versions of the limits to supply which are
inherent in the physical loans market (and where
possible, opportunities for purchase should be
encouraged). These frictions include [1] lending of
each digital copy to one reader at a time, that [2]
digital books could be securely removed after
lending and that [3] digital books would deteriorate
after a number of loans. The exact nature of these
frictions should evolve over time to accommodate
changes in technology and the market.
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Limited control over technology
- No agency, but inherent characteristics
- Cf. seeds tended by human gardener (genetic
modification)
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Concentration of economic power
!
Ideologies like ‘openness’, ‘sharing’
are being appropriated by the
commercial web
!
The ‘long tail’ is a myth
39. Leiden University. The university to discover.
‘[T]his book will look at the role of IT
as a driver of [income] inequality’ (p. 3)
