Is online reading replacing hard copy publications for reading pleasure?

Russell Farr

Barely a year goes by without someone, somewhere, proclaiming the death of publishing hard copy books. If it isn’t the internal machinations of the publishing industry causing this talk, the endless merging of publishing houses seemingly in a quest to form an Uber-Publisher, then it’s usually the words of a doomsaying geek on Slashdot or Boing Boing proclaiming the newest technological marvel that will replace books within the decade/ year/ month/ hour/ nanosecond.

Science Fiction fans the world over seem to be well placed among the harbingers of this movement, readily embracing PDAs and laptops and e-books if only to discard them for this year’s fad.

And if it’s not a device to replace books, it’s the internet itself that will do this, the world wide web will create a vast online library where everyone will browse and borrow, read and replace from the comfort of their own home. The daily commute in the ultra-quiet bus or train will no longer hear the turning of pages but instead become a symphony of keystrokes though, if the truth be told, it is unlikely that anything will be heard over the cacophony of mobile phone users with the loudest ringtones and louder voices.

Lally (2002) talks about the role of the PC in everyday life, noting how computers find their places with individuals and the household. She notes “computer acquisition is an important element in contemporary home building practices in the western world” (p. 100).

Just as the turn of this millennium produced an array of t-shirts proclaiming “Where’s my flying car?” in an age where solar and electric cars are a novelty, the promise of electronic books seems yet to be fulfilled. “Technology is just as centrally determined by society as society is by technology” (Farmer, 2003 p. 176). It therefore remains to be asked, is society turning to technology as an alternative to one of society’s everyday activities, reading for pleasure.

What is everyday reading for pleasure?

Reading for pleasure seems to be a straightforward concept, reading for no other reason than creating enjoyment and satisfaction for the reader. The idea is generally well understood; when asked what words people use to describe reading a book, words that are frequently used include “relaxation”, “comfort”, “escapism” and “excitement”. Bookselling franchise Dymocks’ magazine and frequent shopper program are both called “Booklover”; the website of HarperCollins’ Science Fiction imprint, Voyager proclaims the imprint as being “for lovers of Science Fiction and Fantasy” and “for travellers of the imagination” (HarperCollins, 2006); while Harlequin offers the caption “Ignite your Senses” for its Spice imprint (Harlequin, 2006).

Reading for pleasure can also be shown to be the opposite of reading for work. Richard Florida puts forward the notion of a Creative Class that “seem to be always working and yet never working when they were supposed to” (2002, p. 3) and identifying  themselves “through a tangle of connections to myriad creative activities” (p.12). This blurring of the line between work and play adds a complication to our definition, where the proliferation of the internet blogging culture can turn anyone into a reviewer; many reviews being posted on the internet can be seen to be at least as comprehensive as those by professional reviewers. Such reviews could be seen as an extension of volunteer work, unpaid yet still performed with a commitment approaching or equalling work in a paid role or profession.

It is tempting to try to divide reading for pleasure and reading for work down a line drawn between fiction and non-fiction. This notion quickly encounters difficulties, for not only do people read fiction for work, they also read non-fiction for pleasure, taking enjoyment and satisfaction from acquiring information. A glance at the Pan Macmillan Australia website shows that the at the time of writing the present bestseller is The Guinness Book of World Records 2007 (three out of the top five are non-fiction: third is Warhorse and fifth is It Doesn’t End There). Similarly, the Dymocks website with its caption “Discover More” lists a biography and an autobiography in its top five bestsellers.

It is a convenient simplification for the scope of this paper to, for the most part, adopt the idea that reading for pleasure represents a close approximate opposite to reading for work. The fiction/non-fiction divide presents some interesting connotations that will be covered later in this paper.

There is a challenge to defining everyday, with many finding it easier to define what the everyday isn’t (Martin, 2003). For many, everyday reading is exactly that, reading a book on the daily commute, a few chapters before turning off the light and going to bed. Sometimes the latter can lead to a later night than expected, as the right book in the right hands can lead to the reader being unable to put the book down until the last page is read. Others may not read everyday, but associate reading with regular rituals such as taking a bath. And while most of us do not fly everyday, taking along a book to read on the plane (or buying one at the airport) is for many an essential part of undertaking air travel.

Followers of the literature of ideas

If Speculative Fiction is the literature of ideas then its readers must be ideally placed to consider favourably, if not embrace new technologies. If reading onscreen has not readily been embraced by this community, the it seems unlikely that a more widespread uptake of this medium will face even greater challenges.

To gain a general understanding of onscreen reading habits, a number of targeted questions were asked as part of a general survey about Science Fiction reading. The survey attracted widespread attention, on reading and writing mailing lists, and technology-focussed websites such as Boing Boing. The data for this paper has been drawn from the first 160 respondents. The respondents represented a fair selection of readers and writers of SF in Australia. When asked about how comfortable they felt reading stories of varying word lengths, the majority of respondents were amenable to reading “flash fiction”, stories of up to 1,000 words. Beyond this, willing readership dropped away dramatically. Less than a third were enthusiastic about reading medium length short stories, and this continued to drop away as stories got longer.

Figure 1: Percentage of readers comfortable and not comfortable reading onscreen at various word lengths

Writers were also asked a number of questions, including about their perception of online publications and willingness to submit stories to them. Of the writers surveyed, most were willing to submit stories to online publications (of 10 possible factors influencing a writer’s decision to submit to a particular market, this factor rated 10th); though when asked almost half agreed that they liked to send stories to paper-based markets because they preferred the feel of paper. One writer described herself as a “luddite” for this preference, though clearly this survey shows that she is not alone in this.

The follow-up survey

From the general survey, a group of respondents were then interviewed and further information about their reading habits and overall reading experience was obtained. These respondents were selected to include a mix of age and a number were selected as being frequent onscreen readers. The group included editors of online SF publications, self-confessed geeks, university students ad teachers.

Despite this carefully diverse selection, the follow-up interviews produced very similar results. Even when a group was selected as being those most likely to engage in a great deal of onscreen reading, the results indicate that few if any read onscreen for pleasure. Even among those who do read onscreen for pleasure, such a practice tends to fall outside of their everyday life where by and large these readers would rather pick up a good, old-fashioned book.

The respondents were grouped by age into two very broad categories those 28 and over and 27 and under. Those under 28 could be seen to be those who have grown up surrounded by computers, emerging into their teenage years with the world wide web. If Science Fiction fans were going to be the likeliest to read online, then there would be reason to believe that it would be the younger members of this group that would be at the forefront of this activity.

Issues with On screen reading

On screen reading for pleasure was seen to have a number of problematic issues preventing the habit becoming assimilated into the everyday. These issues can be best grouped into two broad categories: direct issues with the technology; and issues with the perception of the technology.

Direct issues with the technology

People generally find laptops to be bigger, bulkier and less portable than the average paperback book and as a result would rather take the latter with them on the bus to work in the morning and to bed with them at night. Similarly, for those who like to relax in the bath with a good book, any electronic device doesn’t get a look in.

Computers also appear to be a lot easier to put down than a good book. Of those surveyed only two found that their onscreen reading experience came close to their book reading when it came to being unable to do anything else until they had finished reading. Even so, both volunteered the qualifier that this would generally only happen when reading something significantly shorter than novel-length.

On screen reading is also fraught with difficulties as it is generally dependent upon the individual technology of each reader. Every reading experience is potentially different, for example if reading a html file across different internet browsers. If reading a number of stories across different websites, there is every chance that each will show a greater degree of variability than two books (you would rarely find different colour paper and ink) that some readers find uncomfortable.

Issues with the perception of the technology

For many people, including the survey’s respondents, computers imply work and information, not pleasure or comfort, and especially not pleasurable reading.

Figure 2. Survey responses when asked “Which of the following words would you use to describe reading a book/on screen?”

None of the respondents to the survey felt that reading a computer screen gave them a feeling of comfort, though all felt that computers carried a connotation of information. Two respondents went so far as to comment that on screen reading carried a connotation of discomfort, and while reading a book was seen as “escapism”, “immersion” and “experiential”,  reading on screen carried meanings of “distraction” and “restriction”. Almost all of the respondents were comfortable with curling up in bed with a good book (the positive responses ranged from “Yes…” to “Yes!!!!!  A thousand times yes!!!”), though when asked to substitute a laptop the response was almost universally negative. The most positive response to this suggested that they would take a laptop to bed “more for audio or video than for active reading… playing an audio book file or playing a DVD”, highlighting again the perceived role of computers as anything other than reading devices.

The sensual aspect of reading books is a part of the reading experience. The feel of the paper, the turning of a page, all carry connotations of comfort to the reader, the “visceral experience” of reading.

The group were also asked if they would be reaching for their laptops to read the minute the captain of their flight turned off the no smoking signs, and while the response was more positive than for the bed of the bus, there was still the overwhelming feeling that this was another situation where a book was required. Laptops were considered to be a “last resort” or “If there’s no book available”, and if they were used, were just as likely to be used for writing or playing games. The lack of portability of the screen or laptop sees the technology labelled as a lodestone or burden that books provide escape from.

Computers have a number of perceived uses, and reading fiction for pleasure is not among the most common uses. The recent advertisements on Transperth busses trains illustrate this: to advertise a new service where users can get email updates on the state of the service, there is an image of a woman sitting in bed with a laptop, and again it is the informative connotation that is being reinforced.

While books have only one recognised purpose (in all houses where floors are level and tables have four legs of equal length) computers have many, and users are able to undertake more than one at once. Online reading has connotations of work, inspiring the reader to be distracted. Few people read a website they way they would read a book, and many appear to spend a great deal of time doing anything other than reading while reading online (Auld, 2002). Auld gives a fairly comprehensive list of activities undertaken while web browsing, including making “telephone calls, watch television, listen to radio, read magazines and books, open mail, write and read email…” (2002, p. 15). Reading onscreen is not an exclusive activity in the way books are: while many people find themselves reading more than one book at a time, this hardly means reading a page from one book and then a page from a different book.

Other issues

A minor point raised occasionally by the group was that the quality of the fiction may contribute to people’s on screen reading habits. Certainly reading online makes it more convenient to skip to another article or story, and if the reading material is free the reader has less commitment to see a story through to the end in the same way they would a purchased novel.

One reader felt that “there’s something magical about a book that a screen or home-printed page doesn’t quite have”, suggesting that for an onscreen story to have the same drawing power to provide suitable escapism, it would have to be in some way qualitatively better than a book-bound equivalent story. Ellen Datlow found that her webzine Sci-Fiction demonstrated that there were people willing to read novellas onscreen (Datlow, 2006), though it could be suggested that this reflects her publication’s ability to attract the most popular SF writers.

The future of books

Many respondents felt that books will slowly go the way of the horse and cart, to become anachronistic “just as there are people still producing medieval weapons and costumes”. Some however believed the notion that can be best summed up by “there are enough people who enjoy the experience of books that they won’t in the foreseeable future”. While books remain comfortable, dependable, light and convenient it will take an extraordinary achievement to replace them. “Technology is just as centrally determined by society as society is by technology”, and regard to reading for pleasure, the technology currently determined by society is the same medium that has existed for centuries.

Further Study

While this study suggests that books are not in much danger of being replaced by any present onscreen reading technology, books may well be facing a challenge from a different angle. Just as society shapes technology, there is a popular technology already in widespread use with the potential to supplant reading for pleasure entirely. Interview evidence suggests that secondary school-aged teenagers do very little reading for pleasure and are looking to audiobooks and podcasts for their fiction.

There is a scene from the English comedy series that comes to mind, where verbal-diarrhoea-suffering character Jeff launches into a monologue about reading:

It’s nice to see people reading. Not a lot of people read these days. People prefer to… hear. But all this ‘hearing’ is reading for lazy people. Kids should be prepared to pick up a book, and not just go around all the time with these modern… ears. Sometimes I just want to rip people’s ears off and say ‘Read a book, for God’s sake!’… Well, actually I’d probably say ‘Read a book’ and then rip their ears off, otherwise they wouldn’t hear me…” (Moffatt, 2000)

Not only is listening to a book “lazy” or at the very least a more passive act, with MP3 players seemingly shrinking in size at an exponential rate while their capacity increases similarly, listening to books is a far more portable act.

Many children’s first exposure to reading is having stories read to them, and this new technology may well represent an example of that. With this is mind, there is room for further similar studies in reading habits looking not at onscreen or online reading but the podcast phenomenon. While I do not know of any book published first as a podcast edition, such an object may not be too far away.

Conclusion

The telephone took almost 100 years to become an item of what Brett Farmer calls “everyday technology” (Farmer, 2003), yet it has taken less than 30 years for personal computers to achieve the same standing. The world wide web is only 15 years old, and while its information function is solidly entrenched in everyday life, it seems to hold appeal as a library of fiction. Present technology doesn’t not appear to allow it to compete where most everyday reading is done, yet even if there were handheld electronic books, there seems to be a connection with paper-based books that is hard to shake.

Reading for pleasure is a sensual experience, a part of everyday life that presently has no substitute. While a great many readers are willing to read fiction on a computer screen, they are finding that this serves a different purpose, a distraction from work, a change from routine, and does not deliver the pleasure that reading a book brings.

References

Auld, Malcolm (2002) “The BIG news on internet marketing”, E-mail marketing Made Easy, Professional Marketing Publications, pp. 11-18.

Farmer, Brett (2003) “Everyday Technology”, Interpreting Everyday Culture, ed Fran Martin, London: Arnold, pp. 173-187.

Florida, Richard (2002) “The Transformation of Everyday life”, The Rise of the Creative Class, New York: Basic Books, pp. 1-17.

Lally, Elaine (2002) “Computing in the Domestic Pattern of Life”, At Home with Computers, Oxford: Berg, pp. 99-122.

Martin, Fran (2003) “Introduction”, Interpreting Everyday Culture, ed Fran Martin, London: Arnold, pp. 1-10.

Television Shows

Moffatt, Stephen (2000) “The Girl With Two Breasts”, from Coupling Season 1, Hartswood Films/BBC.

Web Sites

Datlow, Ellen (2006) “The Fear Remains the Same”, TiconderogaOnline, http://ticonderogaonline.org/007TOL/interview007a.html

(Interview with the author conducted in June 2006. TiconderogaOnline is Australia’s longest-running semi-professional SF webzine.)

http://www.voyageronline.com.au/default.cfm

(Website of Voyager Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Australia)

http://store.eharlequin.com/t10_view_series.jhtml?CATID=80188&PRIM_MONTH=-2&_requestid=333357

(Website of Spice, an imprint of Harlequin Books, one of the world’s largest publishers of Romance fiction)

http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/

(Website of Pan Macmillan Books, a large Australian publisher)