Making Reading Fit Today's Lifestyle

Is it a surprise that men read less in today’s channel hopping, multimedia, time poor environment? Are we really shocked to find that some 63% of men polled in a recent UK survey said that they prefer to spend time on the internet or watch the big screen version of a book? Many claim to blame a lack of time, whilst 20% stated that they find it difficult or don’t enjoy reading.

So what is the industry response and reaction to the news from the study commissioned by the Reading Agency conducted by OnePoll which polled some 2,000 UK men and women?

Some believe that the answer lies in more of the same assisted by that great give-away event, World Book Night. It’s as if they believe that all can be converted to reading by a freebie and that they can somehow like King Canute, control the tide from coming in. The reality is that social culture is changing and is being driven by many competing demands. The internet and mobile technology is having a significant impact on what we all do, how we do it and where we spend or effort, time and money and although books have significantly benefited from the exposure they have been given, they remain wedded to the physical world and yesterday’s culture. Many still believe that it’s just a case of pouring the finished physical book content into the digital container. They have failed to grasp the opportunity or understand the difference between physical and digital consumption. Some also believe that it is a case of adding more to what already exists and by doing so enrich the physical book with multi media. They have often failed, or ignored the lessons of others and from the often disastrous CDRom days of the late 90s.

To get more people reading and enjoying the experience you have to encourage them by giving them something that fits their lifestyle, habits, time windows and technology today. Some will not take up the offer, others may migrate to the physical book and time commitment and some may remain at the entry point. But trying to force feed them with something that they already have rejected and doesn’t fit their culture is very questionable.

So it’s no surprise to many who have read our previous articles that we believe that the digital offer now requires serious and radical overhaul. Merely pouring that physical content into the digital container is naïve, as it undermines the physical product and makes it a substitution sale, assumes that the experience and appeal is the same and importantly reduces opportunities for authors to reach new audiences.

If we want to grow reading we have to adapt what we expect people to read. We have to give them something that is digestible. Some would suggest that what we are doing to today is like expecting, in the early age of mass literacy, the Victorian masses, to rush out and read War and Peace as their first book. We may learn from other media sectors but we can also learn a great deal from history too.

Making reading relevant to today's lifestyle is different from making today's lifestyle adjust to reading. Giving away books is relatively easy, getting people to change their habits is a lot harder and without change some would suggest that it is relatively easy to predict the results of next year’s Reading Agency survey.

Providing Rich Reading For Time Poor Readers

How do we get people reading again or introduce them to reading?

We have to accept that reading is different in that it stimulates thinking and imagery that is often served up on a plate with other media. After all, you don’t have to imagine what someone looks like when they are stood as large as life in front of you on a screen.

We have seen many charity and government-backed initiatives and ones driven by the industry itself but the bottom line is that at best they are treading water and at worst losing the battle. We may all cheer from the battlements when books are donated and given away free to folk but if this is not succeeding we have to ask whether the focus and process is correct and what we have to do to really engage and make a difference.

The YouTube age is impacting not just the young but the older generations. We are becoming more and more visual and increasingly time poor. Giving someone a book is not addressing the problem and merely compounding it. We have to create the thirst and feed the habit not just give someone War and Peace and expect a convert. The studies don’t lie. The latest from the National Literacy Trust study of 34,910 young people, claimed nearly a third of children between eight and 16 say they read no text-based media at all in their daily leisure time and that the number of children who read outside school has fallen by 25% since 2005.

Many thought that children's reading was migrating from print to digital, but in reality their consumption of information is moving away from reading or writing text. Their attitude to reading have also become more negative over time. This was reflected in 21.5% of young people agreeing with the statement, "I would be embarrassed if my friends saw me read," up from 16.6% on the 2010 study.

In the US, The National Endowment for the Arts claim that only 46.9% of Americans interacted with art and literature in 2012 and that again reading is in decline. That’s down from 2008 (50.2%) and it’s down considerably from the 1992 survey (54.2%) and the 1982 survey (56.4%).

So let’s skip past the doom and gloom and look at ways to stimulate reading. Giving books away is probably not going to be the answer.

Should we focus on the children, the young adults or the older generations? Who are the social influencers and who are the responders? Do parents teach and influence their children or is it visa-versa? Can reading be combined with other activity such that it is less solitary in an increasingly virtual social world? Can the movement towards self-expression be harnessed to create a virtual circle of reading and writing?

There is no silver bullet or quick fix but we must understand what used to work and see if it can be reapplied to today.

We would point to that reading revolution and creative writing explosion of the second half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. What captivated the masses many of whom had just learnt to read?

When we look at our daily lives many will relate to the time spent commuting to and from home. For many the newspaper is a vent to boredom, others it’s scrolling down the email and Facebook alerts that are fed to our smartphones and tablets. For others it’s being plugged in and switched on to their music. Then there are the gamers who apply fast dexterity over the keys of their smartphones whilst some animated character dives and ducks to save themselves from being zapped. The point is that commuters want to do something more than stare at the person opposite whilst contemplating some fantasy liaison with the good looking person two seats away. Giving them something that can’t be consumed in the journey is like offering them a five star gourmet meal and suggesting that what they can’t finish they can have cold tomorrow or can be put in a doggy bag for later. Time poor people will demand speedy service.

Poems on the London Underground was launched in 1986 and was the idea of American writer, Judith Chernaik, who wanted to bring poetry to a wider audience. Some 3,000 advertising spaces in train carriages displayed a diverse range of poetry including classical, contemporary, international and work by new poets, has been a great success. The service was geared to the audience. It is like a gentle thought for the day, a quiet moment of reflection, a digestible read for a brief journey. Some would say that poetry doesn’t engage but others would suggest when served alongside music, it works, and on the Tube it works especially well. Perhaps the way we bundle and package literature is the problem.

Then we have to look at the huge success of the short form writing competition today. Some will say that they just promote more slush and a feed a writing habit that goes nowhere. It’s true, printed short stories are not often top of the publisher’s agenda or the charts but that doesn’t mean they don’t work or there isn’t a latent demand for them. It just means that trade publishers still tend to publish 256 page volumes and short stories and poems have to be shoe-horned into collections.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was the brilliant short story master, Alice Munro.

It’s no wonder we are working on bringing Read Petite to market!  

Who Is Watching What You Read?

In a previous life, we learnt the power of information on behaviour and buying patterns. Some 30 years ago one of the leading examples was Vons supermarkets in the US. They not only tracked every purchase, but also every purchase against the individual store layout and other associated products. This information enabled them to send their customers paper vouchers not for what they did buy, but also associated products they didn’t buy, or areas of the store they didn’t buy from and when a competitor open up nearby they supplied vouchers for  the essentials the individual bought regularly. Now we take this information analysis and use as normal and within 24 hours the likes of Asda have not only analysed our transactions, but also compared it to their competitors and worked out the value of reward you have earned as a result.

So what has this to do with publishing?

Some years back we developed a digital inspection copy and ecatalogue system for publishers. The inspection copy is particularly relevant to academic and educational markets where books are sent out to institutional clients for adoption on spec. We obviously enabled the full digital copy to be read, annotated, bookmarked and shared with others on a limited time window and then followed up automatically by a feedback process and adoption feed straight into their back office systems. The savings were clear as was the ability to promote all titles and not just the new ones and also send them out like confetti with little commercial cost or risk.

However, the real power was in the information collected, which wasn’t always fully exploited.  We collected information on every click, access, page turn, timing, annotation, bookmark and also what was read and even if the copy was even opened! A goldmine for any proactive marketer and salesman! The information could also provide feedback into the editorial development process itself on what worked and what didn’t.

So where are we today?

There have been some raised eyebrows recently over the extent of information that today’s ebook platforms have potentially been accumulating on our reading habits. Amazon like others has a cross device platform, which is supported by cloud services and is able to identify some interesting habits. For example, if a reader highlights a passage, this is collated when the account is synchronised. Amazon aggregatesthose highlights into Popular Highlights which they share with others in their most popular online reports. You can view most viewed data both over time and currently so are able to spot today’s as well as historic trends. Importantly they hold the information at both an individual and aggregated level

In this case, the content has to be highlighted first and maybe that makes you question whether that is a true representation of activity, or just the material that has been highlighted? However what other information do they have access to?

Another twist on the information front is to turn the tables on its head and respond interactively to specific activity and information from online users and then track its adoption. GPS and mapping works this way, in recognising where you are and feeding you the relevant directions or places near you etc, and in doing so, it responds to information you have given it.

 J Now Eli Horowitz has developed a story app ‘TheSilent History’, which is about a generation of unusual children born without the ability to create or comprehend language but who have other skills. The work is released in daily episodes like a Japanese Keitai novel. For readers who wish to explore more, Horowitz has created hundreds of GPS locked ‘Field Reports’ that can only be read when the reader takes their device to the specified place. The location-based stories can be accessed across the U.S. and around the world. 

Education has already adopted online assessment based on student responses and today McGraw-Hill announced Smartbook, which is a new ‘learning’ ebook for students, enables students to read the same textbook. However, as they individually start to answer review questions embedded throughout the chapter, different passages become highlighted and point the reader to where he or she should focus attention. It like having the teacher looking over your shoulder as you read!

So is the tail wagging the dog or the other way round? Information about behaviour, likes and dislikes is not just for the supermarkets and online retailers but can be used to shape digital content and even determine our individual navigation through it. Of course all this data can also feeds the ad model businesses , so those little tick boxes on many registrations may be more important than you think. It’s a pity we can’t easily find out what information is being held against us.