José Latour

I am very pleased to report the results of the sur­vey con­ducted on Jan­u­ary 5, 6, 7 and 8.

I want to express my grat­i­tude to all respon­dents, twofold to those who for­warded it to rel­a­tives, friends, acquain­tances and cowork­ers. If you are one of the lat­ter, I would appre­ci­ate it if you also for­ward the results to them.

With­out fur­ther ado:

1. About fol­low­ing the news on elec­tronic devices:

            58 per­cent had fol­lowed them. 42 per cent had not.

2    Age:

            6.3 per­cent were under 40 years of age. 93.7 were over 40.

3.   Sex:

            54.5 per­cent were females. 45.4 per­cent were males.

4.   On hav­ing read one of my books:

            38 per­cent had read one of my books. 62 per­cent had not.

5.   On hav­ing read a book in an elec­tronic device:

            24.5 per­cent had. 68.2 per­cent had not. 7.3 per­cent didn’t respond.

6.   Con­cern­ing how many would buy a book only avail­able in an elec­tronic for­mat priced at 20% of hard­copy cur­rent prices:   

            37.2 per­cent would buy it. 55.5 per­cent would not. 7.3 per­cent didn’t respond.

  7.  About price:

            17.3 per­cent would pre­fer to decide how much to pay.

            12.7 per­cent con­sider a price between $1 and $ 5 fair.

              0.9 per­cent con­sid­ers a price between $6 and $9 fair.

            2.7 per­cent con­sider a price over $9 fair.

            10 per­cent chose a min­i­mum price with the option to pay more.

            34.5 per­cent said it should be priced as other e-books.

            21.8 per­cent didn’t respond.

  8. On whether it would be wise to try dig­i­tal books on a com­puter or smart­phone before buy­ing an elec­tronic reader.

           60 per­cent said yes. 20.9 per­cent said no. 19.1 per­cent didn’t respond.

9. Regard­ing where they would read the e-book:

          25.5 per­cent would print it and read it on paper.

          27.3 per­cent on com­puter screens.

            5.5 per­cent on smart phones.

          32.7 per­cent on e-readers.

          12.7 per­cent didn’t respond.

          (Ques­tion num­ber 9 admit­ted more than one choice, which is why the sum of per­cent­ages exceed 100 percent).

 In four days 110 indi­vid­u­als took the survey.

 FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 From Net­work Effects, an arti­cle in The Econ­o­mist, Decem­ber 19 issue, pages 142 to 144, I take the lib­erty of con­dens­ing a few para­graphs below. 

 “Some tech­nolo­gies pro­duce dra­matic upheavals. 

“When in May 1844 Samuel Morse con­nected Wash­ing­ton, DC, and Bal­ti­more with the elec­tric tele­graph, the sta­tus quo and busi­ness model that had served the news­pa­per indus­try for years was disrupted.

 “This great rev­o­lu­tion,” warned James Gor­don Ben­nett, the edi­tor of the New York Her­ald, would mean that some pub­li­ca­tions “must sub­mit to des­tiny and go out of existence.”

 “Instead, the news­pa­pers them­selves took con­trol of deliv­er­ing news over the wires with the for­ma­tion of the Asso­ci­ated Press. 

“[At present] there are pre­dic­tions of the death of the news­pa­per; but it is not clear if that mat­ters. For soci­ety what mat­ters is that peo­ple should have access to news, not that it should be deliv­ered by any par­tic­u­lar medium; and for the con­sumer, the faster it trav­els the better. 

“If paper edi­tions die, that is not the same as the death of news.” 

—0—

 Now, I sub­sti­tute a few words and add some from the last two para­graphs above. Bear with me: 

There are pre­dic­tions of the death of books on paper; but it is not clear if that mat­ters. For soci­ety what mat­ters is that peo­ple should have access to books, not that it should be deliv­ered by any par­tic­u­lar medium; and for read­ers, the faster they can reach books the better. 

If books on paper die, that is not the same as the death of lit­er­a­ture. 

—0— 

Pre­dict­ing the out­come of the present rev­o­lu­tion in the pub­lish­ing indus­try at this point in time would be futile. But edu­cated guesses are intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lat­ing and quite amus­ing, so I’ll make ten assump­tions and invite you to make an edu­cated guess. I would really like to learn what you think.

 My assump­tions are: 

1. All lit­er­ate peo­ple over fif­teen learned to read and write using paper and a pen­cil or ball pen, so it is pos­si­ble that mil­lions feel spe­cial affec­tion for the medium that taught them the world was some­thing more than Mom, Dad, teach­ers, school­mates and neighbors.
2. In the dis­tant future chil­dren prob­a­bly will learn to read on screens and use cer­tain elec­tronic gad­gets to write on the screen.
3. If assump­tion num­ber 2 turns out to be cor­rect, the new gen­er­a­tions will develop the same spe­cial affec­tion that we feel for paper and pen­cil toward the screen and the writ­ing device.
4. Young peo­ple are more will­ing to try new gad­gets and exper­i­ment than the elderly.
5. Most (not all) seniors are unwill­ing to try new gad­gets and experiment.
6. For some indi­vid­u­als read­ing books is a very plea­sur­able and thought-provoking form of cul­tural enter­tain­ment. Oth­ers never read a book.
7. Most middle-aged and older read­ers like to read printed paper.
8. Young read­ers are not averse to read­ing reg­u­lar books, but have been using tech­nolo­gies such as the Inter­net, the lap­top, the smart phone, video games, etc. since child­hood and are more will­ing to try read­ing lit­er­a­ture on e-books.
9. Back in the 1970s the expres­sion “gen­er­a­tion gap” became all the rage. It referred essen­tially to val­ues, opin­ions and behav­ior con­cern­ing morals, sex, music, drugs and other social issues.
10. Nowa­days, in what regards lit­er­a­ture and the par­tic­u­lar medium that peo­ple use to read it, we may well be expe­ri­enc­ing a tran­si­tion period and a tech­no­log­i­cal gen­er­a­tion gap. Older, middle-aged and younger read­ers love lit­er­a­ture, but their choice of the medium on which to read is evolving.

 Edu­cated guess: How will lit­er­a­ture be read 50 years from now? Let me know. 

—0—

Cer­tain evening in Octo­ber, 1957, sev­eral mem­bers of my fam­ily were stand­ing on my grand­par­ents’ ter­race, anx­iously look­ing north. The Cuban media had reported that on Octo­ber 4 the Soviet Union had launched Sput­nik, planet Earth’s first arti­fi­cial satel­lite, and Cubans could see it cross the sky at a pre­cise time that nightfall.

 I was 17 years old. My grand­fa­ther, born Novem­ber 1, 1881, was weeks shy of 77. Even­tu­ally we watched what looked like a big white star mov­ing from east to west over the horizon.

 Once it dis­ap­peared from view, Grand­dad heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. “The world is chang­ing too fast for me,” he said. 

Many years later I started feel­ing what he felt that evening in Havana. 

Copy­right @ 2010 by José Latour. This arti­cle is pro­tected under the Cana­dian Copy­right Act and other intel­lec­tual prop­erty laws through­out the world. Users are per­mit­ted to view it or down­load it for per­sonal use only. Such per­mis­sion does not con­sti­tute any autho­riza­tion to fur­ther repro­duce, dis­trib­ute, pub­licly dis­play or oth­er­wise trans­mit it, in whole or in part, by any elec­tronic or mechan­i­cal means. Requests for per­mis­sion to repro­duce, dis­trib­ute, pub­licly dis­play or trans­mit the arti­cle or part of it are to be made to the author, by email to jose@joselatourauthor.com.