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.