With publishing companies dwindling profit margins and new technologies being released what seems like daily, it’s important that publishers take advantage of all the internet has to offer them. And that is the main idea behind an article from the New York Times this weekend, “Is This the Future of the Digital Book?” by Brad Stone. The article features some guy named Bradley Inman, an entrepreneur whose goal is to create some sort of weird book-YouTube-Twitter hybrid that will work on your mobile reading device. The project, Vook.tv, will inject multimedia into your reading experience. But I think he and others who are clamoring for technology-saturated literature are missing an important thing: those with short attention spans who need to have videos thrown at them, people who need all the flashing and buzzing that technology has to offer, aren’t the kind of people who read books. Books require you to be attentive. If you’re not attentive, you don’t read. I think that’s a pretty simple idea.

And before you label me as a technophobe, know that I love technology. I’m the kind of nerd who builds his own computer, I frequent the tech blogs, and I love learning about the hot new devices. But I think publishers are looking at their problems all wrong. Ultimately, it’s not technology that is killing publishing. No. The source of their problems can be traced to the content between the covers of the books they publish. Much like newspapers, who care little about content these days and more about sensationalist scare-stories and celebrity gossip, book publishing has become so concerned with the bottom line that they decided the best course of action is to publish as much sensationalist and celebrity crap they can get their hands on. It’s more about short-term gains than building a financial scaffolding for the future. Add to this that the publishing giants have grown too big to support themselves from a population that just doesn’t read, and you certainly have a recipe for failure.

I am all for injecting technology into books but I think you must simultaneously preserve the traditional draw of what books offer; namely, paper. Technology breaks, batteries die, and if you find yourself stranded somewhere without your tech device it’s nice to have a paperback with you. No batteries required. But I think that if publishing companies really want to take steps in the right direction, they’ll take a cue from film. Why not include outtakes and extras with a book? From a technology standpoint, it would be incredibly easy to include a disc with a book that includes, among other things, author drafts of the novel, editor notes, interviews, maybe even the book as audio book (perhaps read by the author?) and e-book. Maybe then they could justify the prices of the modern trade paperback. Sure, we have to consider inflation, but books have increased so much in price over the past decade that it’s utterly ridiculous. It’s not because it’s become more expensive to print a physical book; no, it’s because so many people have their hands in the pot trying to yank out as much coin as they can wrap their sweaty little fingers around.

I think the real innovators are going to be independent start-up publishers. The giants have too much to worry about, financially speaking, and will continue to publish whatever pornstar biography or television-inspired lawyer drama they can get their hands on. By the time they realize their folly, it will be too late. The independent publishers, however, who are able to embrace the future of technology but also keep publishing fundamentals strong will reign in the book forum. It’s cheaper than ever to print a book and it shouldn’t require a company of a thousand employees to get it out to the public. Once more people realize that the publishing industry could operate just as the modern music industry does, I think we’ll see better quality and more innovative technology.

The guy in the article is making a step in the right direction but he’s relying too much on internet fads. And excuse me if this sounds ageist, but I don’t think it’s going to be a 60 year old man who changes the face of books. It’s going to be some 20 year old college student who builds technology for fun rather than profit. It’s going to be someone who grew up in the face of technology and understands it on a visceral level. It’s going to be someone who realizes you can have the best of both worlds without sacrificing quality.

I think that change is on the horizon. If anything, this economic recession will breed innovation. As musicians have proven, it doesn’t take a giant company to release your work to the world. With technology anybody can be a publisher.

You’re probably aware that newspapers are on their deathbeds. I have expressed mixed feelings about this in the past couple weeks; I think the business model newspapers employ has become nothing but a fool’s errand over the past decade and their inability to change focus and embrace the onslaught of new technology has ensured their downfall. But I am not on the fence about the human element of this story, namely many journalists losing their jobs. Some journalists deserve to be forced out of the business as they’ve gotten lazy or never had what it takes it begin with but that doesn’t mean all journalists deserve to go. Journalists are important to the integrity of news and, on another level, important to the integrity of culture. We (those of us who care about books) need to know what’s going on in literature and it’s sad when a journalist who has spent his life covering what we love is put out on the street. After 146 years, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last paper this past Tuesday (March 17th) and gone with it is book critic John Marshall.

Marshall has presented us with his final thoughts of a long career, outlining his experiences with authors throughout the years. His list is funny and interesting; it’s always a treat to find out how your favorite author acts behind the scenes. Take a look at his article, “Final words: Literary memories jump off the page,” at the Seattle PI’s online presence, the only place you’ll find the Seattle PI from now on.

Here’s a hilariously snarky Gawker article about Time Magazine, as well as other paper news sources, trying to figure out how to squeeze the proverbial blood from a turnip and charge readers for online content. Among the heavies is the New York Times, one of the only news sources that actually reports on real news. I don’t have the solution but unless the subscription rate is a very low, all-access monthly fee ($5-$10 per month) and the site is shut off to non-subscribers (the front page just being a login screen and a link to the subscription page), not even the New York Times is going to make this happen.

If I had to propose a solution, it would be tastefully integrated online advertisements (which many of these online news sources already employ), a low subscriber fee for premium content (such as New York Times Magazine, the Book Review, the arts section, all reviews, opinions, and content written specifically for entertainment and enlightenment — all straight national and world news should remain free, I think), cut the salaries of those at the top unless they actually do something worthwhile and are irreplaceable, and… drum roll… stop printing daily newspapers. Instead, print a weekly magazine (connected to a subscription apart from the the online subscription) that can be bought at the news stand or mailed to a subscriber’s home that condenses all the important news that happened throughout the week. If all this could be integrated with automatic download or RSS of desired sections with a subscriber’s iPhone/BlackBerry/Kindle, that would make it all the better. I really feel like all this I’ve mentioned is common sense but maybe I’m crazy. I’d like to meet the technology officers from some of these bigger newspapers and magazines; my bet is that they’re all in their 60s, overpaid, and undereducated about how the online world works. To them, the internet is just a series of tubes.

Ultimately, though, there are very few newspapers/magazines/journals that I’ll actually pay for. If the New York Times wasn’t free online, I would pay for it. But Time Magazine? C’mon. Time decided sometime in the 90s that they no longer wanted to be a serious news source. Last time I looked at a Time, it felt overloaded with celebrity gossip and various fluff. If you’re not providing valuable, original content, what will keep people coming back? Journalism has really been debased in the last decade or two; it used to mean something. There are still serious journalists out there, but they’re a dying breed.

What newspaper or magazine would you pay for if you could get the content in no other way?