How Does Technology Affect Publishing?

Technology is an indispensable phenomenon in every aspect of our lives. Today, we live in a world that our grandparents couldn't even imagine, thanks to the ever-increasing pace of technological developments. Not only do we carry the phone, which was invented only 140 years ago, in our pockets today, but we can also make hotel and flight reservations, do banking, monitor our health, and receive news instantly from all over the world. In today's world, where it has become standard for business correspondence to be conducted via WhatsApp rather than email, all sectors are affected by this rapid technological development, albeit at different rates.

Undoubtedly, publishing is one of the sectors most affected by digital transformation. It is inevitable that, in an era when ebooks have swept the world, and free content rivals best-selling novels, some book genres cannot compete with online content and disappear altogether. But should these developments scare professionals in the publishing industry? I don't think so. When we consider humanity's long history, we can see that this is not the first major shift in written content. Consider the transition from murals to clay tablets, and from clay tablets to parchment. It is clear that the transition from typewriters to the bright screens of computers has been an equally challenging yet rewarding process. Undoubtedly, the transition from printed books to digital content will be difficult at first, but it will pay off over time with its advantages.

The digitalization of books actually offers us many advantages. By publishing digital content and gaining a large following on social media, more writers are getting the chance to spread their content around the world. Since ebooks do not require processes such as printing, paper, and logistics, the resulting work reaches readers at a more accessible price, presenting a great opportunity to increase reading rates, especially in developing countries.

Another point where ebooks excel over printed books is the opportunity to create interactive content. These possibilities, which we encounter especially in children's books, create opportunities for us to enrich the books with interactive content, such as reading aloud, photo galleries, puzzles, tests, coloring pages, and jigsaws, embedded in the text. In modern times, when both parents work, the importance of features such as reading aloud increases as the time allocated to children decreases.

So we have nothing to lose in this change? Unfortunately, some areas of publishing are more susceptible to technology than others. While cooking and technology books are at risk of disappearing altogether, difficult times await drawing and art books.

Cookbooks

Undoubtedly, cookbooks are the most affected category by digital transformation. Today, recipes, food blogs, and videos across social media and video sites have made these books completely unnecessary. The cookbooks category, once found in every bookstore, is now almost a thing of the past. It's no surprise that people prefer to cook by choosing what they want from thousands of videos and following the instructions, rather than cooking by reading the text. The instructions in the videos are more detailed than those in books, and the visual presentation of the resulting dish is much more enlightening. To give the simplest example, when you type "Tomato soup recipe" into Google, 95,900 video results appear. The first YouTube video to appear in search results has had 2,260,000 views since its publication in 2014. This means over 1,500 views per day. This is a performance we will certainly never get to see with the books.

Technology Books

We all remember the tech books that once filled bookstore shelves. These books, which taught Windows, coding, and programs like Microsoft Word and Excel, were an integral part of an era and sold quite well over a long period. However, nowadays you can easily find all this content for free on websites that offer online courses or videos. In addition to the training sites created by the companies that produce the programs, articles, and videos, content edited by individual users has reached a quality level that helps you address any questions or problems you may encounter. For example, there are 412,000 results on Google for Excel formulas, and 42,800 of them are videos. Another reason for the disappearance of technology books is the speed of development today. The book you write on a program may become out of date before it reaches the public. The life of such publications is quite short. As the pace of technological development increases, books on this subject are now being replaced by digital publications and videos.

Books on Travel

Books covering topics such as the best hostels on the Aegean coast or the most beautiful hotels in the Tuscan valley have now given way to applications and sites such as booking.com. It is not surprising that applications with technological features, such as comparing the experiences of many visitors rather than the comments of a single person, viewing photos uploaded by visitors, and making reservations at the best prices, have rendered books in this field redundant. Travel memories, on the other hand, left their places to sites that offer video content. Today, free spirits who travel the world not only show us the places they have been but also bring their experiences to audiences that they would never reach if they published a book.

General Information Books

Books that offer you basic knowledge in many different fields, from basketball to teaching children to read, from home repairs to gardening, were common contents of an era. In particular, the For Dummies book series, which had very strong sales, offered readers simple information across 2,432titles, including baby names, atheism, acne, divorce, dating, happiness, and weather. Today, these books have lost their former popularity due to the internet. For example, searching the internet for baby names yields over 64 million results. A topic such as an acne solution yields 898,000 results, and 66 thousand of them are videos.

Drawing and Art Books

One area that is still resisting digital transformation is drawing and art books, but the internet has started to take the lead in this regard as well. A search for “charcoal human figure” in Turkish yields 402,000 results, and there are over four thousand videos on the subject. When you make the same search in English, the number of videos that appear exceeds two million. Although these books still have an average sales figure among students and hobbyists, it seems inevitable that they will disappear in the face of free alternatives unless they are supported by online content. The future of drawing and art books doesn't look very bright either, thanks to the online content and courses offered by professional illustrators and artists.

Children's Books

Children's books are one of the areas with strong sales, especially in Turkey, and publishers often do not regret it. Families are always generous when it comes to buying books for their children, and children's books are always one of the most popular gifts. Although technological development does not directly threaten children's books, rapid progress in other fields creates many new competitors every day. In particular, the new generation, growing up while increasingly dependent on technology, makes digital transformation necessary. Digital children's books offer many alternatives and enrichment options that printed publications can never provide. Although the publishing industry does not foresee a decrease in sales of printed children's books in the short term, it is thought that these books will be among the areas most affected by digital transformation in the long run.

The publishing industry is more closely tied to tradition than other industries, and publishing companies have a hard time adapting tonew developments. This is why ebooks are debuting within tech companies like Amazon and Apple, rather than publishing giants like DK and Penguin. For this reason, our industry has lost control of the emergence of e-books to the technology giants. But ebooks don't seem like a change that publishing can resist. The New York Times reports reveal that ebook sales increased by 1,260% between 2008 and 2010. However, the same reports also indicate that ebook sales have stabilized over time and that we are not yet approaching a feared end for print publications. The SurveyMonkey site shares the following statistics on the issue:

As these statistics show, most readers today (at least in the US) prefer both ebooks and printed books, but print still seems to have a sales advantage over ebooks. Other statistics on the same site show that book readers find this format more comfortable or prefer it because they travel frequently.

But there is little doubt in the industry about the long-term results. As the rate of the new generation's dependence on technology increases, a significant change awaits the sales figures we see today. Studies conducted in developed countries today show that six out of ten people prefer printed books, but this rate is expected to reverse in the future. More than 60% of those surveyed by SurveyMonkey predict that ebooks will be the most popular format in the future.

Today, we access the content we need in many areas, such as music, movies, advice, and news, from digital sources. We live in an era where newspaper circulation is falling, and magazines are turning to online content. The increase in smartphone ownership reinforces this phenomenon, and ebooks are no exception. In 2012, 24% of ebook readers used their phones; this rate rose to 54% in recent surveys. Factors such as the time it takes to reach the content, the number of titles you can have (and carry with you), the price difference, and the fact that no bookstore can have all the titles you want show that the future of ebooks is bright.

Ebooks also offer advantages for publishers' business models, as they reduce costs, keep books in sight longer, and reach a wider audience. The problems caused by printed books getting damaged in storage, during shipping, or when returned from bookstores because they weren't sold can be a thing of the past. Sales reports are easier to follow, and you can easily access demographic statistics for each title. Thanks to sales data on digital platforms, you can access information such as whether women or men prefer your book and which age group you sell more to. For authors, ebooks offer many advantages. Authors who get the chance to publish their own content without being affiliated with a publishing house also ensure that their books reach a wider audience (at least abroad). As the number of businesses that take a share of the book's profits, such as publishing houses, distributors, and bookstores, decreases, the author can make more money. This increases the number of career writers.

Another advantage of ebooks lies in areas where the publishing industry struggles to compete. Printed publications, affected by the invention of television, faced even greater competition after the advent of the internet. Today, books compete with movies, TV series, social media platforms, and online video sites that are increasingly high-quality and widely available. The ebook allows our industry to be more competitive with others in factors such as accessibility and price. Thanks to the ebook, you can start reading on your smart devices immediately, instead of waiting for the book you ordered to arrive, just as you can download the movie you want to watch.

When we think of the horse carriages, typewriters, DVD rental shops, and simple cameras that have disappeared with the development of technology, the future of printed books doesn't look very bright. Publishers seem to have no choice but to accept that the technology will go hand in hand with their industry. Think about how quickly publishing adjusted to social media advertising. The publishing industry may have missed the first big steps, like the advent of the ebook phenomenon, and lost the edge to the tech giants, but there's still time to make up for the past mistakes. Big publishing companies should be on their toes to avoid missing the next big opportunity that technological developments will create for the industry, and they should have employees responsible for technology. Undoubtedly, we can successfully carry publishing into the new century by keeping pace with new developments and leveraging technology.