When you stop to think about it, Street Sense is one of the only remaining physical newspapers in town that people still buy. Our sales people represent the face of publications past; the newspaper vendors who died out with the rise of those nifty unmanned boxes on the street corners. Then those boxes died out too, once the news services started giving away what they once sold, on the Internet.
So aside from what you are currently holding, many of you probably do not read news from a physical paper unless it’s forced into your hands when walking onto the Metro by the free competitors, The Washington Post’s Express, or The Washington Examiner.
Street Sense is unique in its success-not only in its message and service, but also in its acceptance in the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for many other print publications, booksellers and news vendors, not only in this city, but in the country as well.
The e-book has taken the nation by storm, replacing the wild inconvenience of having to actually walk into a store and browse books, or the more convenient inconvenience of having to go to a website to browse books. You can order your favorite books now from your e-book with almost no effort at all.
Similar to the flip cell phone, the e-book itself was a concept stolen from Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the late ‘80s through early ‘90s television show, crew members would read books from a Personal Access Display Device (PADD for short). And similar to the cell phone, since breaking onto the scene just a few years ago, this “space aged” concept has begun to eliminate the need for land lined or paper-based competitors.
The New York Times, which I read online for free the other day, reported that the e-book is quickly becoming a major contributor to the downfall of bookseller Barnes & Noble. The company, which 20 years ago was the premier seller of all things literary, was last to catch on to the e-book trend; Amazon, Sony and now Apple lead the way. Barnes & Noble’s response may very well be too little too late.
E-books, which pride themselves on mimicking the old school paper books in text and color of display, find themselves falling behind the curve of technology with the sudden upswing in sales of magazines and comic books, which have been re-popularized by the iPad. So now even the e-book needs to evolve with ever-increasing rapidity in order to stay competitive. Sports Illustrated became one of the first hybrid multimedia publications when it released an electronic ‘test version’ of its “Man of the Year” issue last year that involved video and highlights alongside its articles. Current e-books cannot handle that presentation.
What does all of this mean for the future of print? Only time will tell, but I have a feeling that if it isn’t extraordinarily flashy and convenient, it won’t make a lot of money. I guess we should be happy though, because regardless the form, America is reading.
