Penguin Books Rethinks Digital Strategy in Favor of Paper Publishing

 

Publishers have begun backtracking on their commitments to digital. At the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week, Penguin General Books managing director Joana Prior said the company has started looking more critically at its investments in electronic publishing.

"There was a definite moment when we all went shooting out after the shiny app thing and spent money on that and invested probably unwisely in products that we thought could in some way enhance the book," she said. "We somehow lost confidence in the power of the word on the page, which was a bad moment."

Others have been touting the death of digital since last fall, when it became clear that e-book sales had fallen earlier in 2015. The author of the article described it by saying there is a constant tug of war in publishing between print and digital, with the champions of each side relishing in the declining sales of the other.

With a string of months in the recent past showing that e-book sales were suddenly in what seemed like consistent decline, it became a testament to the staying power of the "book," as if the word has only one true meaning. This would be great news for the paper industry retaining relevance in the future and now to investors looking for a return in that future. It would be bad for startups relying on e-books, however. If this is true, the superiority of paper printed book reading, It’s a result of the pleasant sensory experience that accompanies the act of flipping paper pages. It’s because our brains process words better when they’re not back-lit, explained the article.

What is interesting, and may signal the more critical long-term trend, is a major publisher’s decision to focus on print despite the now suddenly and surprising new increase popularity of digital replacements for paper products such as books on Amazon. A few days before the festival, One Click Retail announced that, based on its research, Amazon had seen a 73% increase in e-book sales over August. There is still risk and conflict that generally will favor the print industry, slightly. But it will not stop electronic text reading from becoming more common and popular in the future if that is what's possibly to happen with future generations.

It’s likely that Prior wasn’t talking about e-books, the digital versions of print equivalents. Her reference to apps makes it seem like the casualty will be the supplementary products like apps and interactive websites that offer bonus material to passionate readers. This is important to note in the report it stays that while people may be reading books digitally (regardless of whether they’re doing so more or less often than they did a couple of years ago), they may not be engaging digitally outside of the original content. This means paper publishing may carry more "weight" in some regard.

 

Both the recent downfall of e-text popularity regardless of the current anomaly at Amazon noting a 73% increase and the risk and volatility in the market in general should provide paper production sales managers some key information they need to have the next generation of businesses continue paper text use instead of going digitally exclusive - which has been highlighted in OTW previously in an article by the Daily Mail (London, U.K.) as a trend that may have gone too far and with little logic. The feeling of embracing technology wore off, and now paper is the logical choice.

As Prior said herself, publishers are likely shifting back to print-centrism, having seen many expensive projects fail to produce positive returns. The strategic attempts to balance print and digital products will continue to evolve over the coming year, however, if Amazon sees more monthly digital gains.