Re: Interview w/Sarah Pritchard, Univ. librarian, Northwestern U.

[Michael Clarke <michael@clarkepublishing.com>]

What is the saying about overestimating the impact of new 
technology in the short term while underestimating the long-term 
impact?

I think we take it as a given that no one finishing primary 
school this year will read anything on paper in college. When 
exactly will we hit the threshold where most reading (excluding, 
I'm sure, a niche of print readers just like we have a niche of 
people who still buy vinyl): 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Who 
knows. But it will not be longer than that. This is not a fad. I 
think we must assume that tablets/readers will be shortly

1. be cheap,

2. have resolution as good as paper (Apple's new iPhone 4 screen 
is there already),

3. be very light light-weight,

4. come with interoperable and annotatable software.

Reading a 300 page monograph on screen will be commonplace 
(insofar as reading of 300 page monographs is commonplace). Will 
there be a few die hard print readers? Sure. And those die-hards 
will no doubt keep the office toner people in business for 
another decade, albeit with smaller margins than they make now.

Michael Clarke

On Jun 11, 2010, at 5:29 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> Ah, but will they want to read 300-page monographs on screen? As
> an acquiring editor for a university press, I read submitted MSS
> electronically now, but i usually only need to read a few
> chapters to make my initial assessment.  It would sorely try my
> patience to read an entire book-length manuscript on screen. And
> we still find that many of the academic reviewers whose opinions
> we solicit want a hard copy to read, not just a PDF. Old habits
> may die, but they will die hard--and there will probably remain
> some diehards who never make the shift!
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 11:42 PM -0400 6/10/10, Hutchinson, Alvin wrote:
>
>> The technology should come down in price as quickly as it has
>> for other technologies.
>>
>> Pretty soon these things become commodities and you start
>> finding old, dusty electronic devices in the back of your desk
>> drawer or your glove compartment.
>>
>> 44 year olds who love romance novels is a distinct market, but a
>> much more fast-growing and robust market is those who are
>> under 25 and who have read more text via electronic display
>> than on paper.
>>
>> And if we're talking about university presses, I'd say the
>> latter are more likely users.
>>
>> So I'd say Joe is right.
>>
>> Just my 2 cents.
>>
>> Alvin Hutchinson
>> Smithsonian Institution Libraries
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> From: Quincy Dalton McCrary <qmccrary@gmail.com>
>> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>> Subject: Re: Interview w/Sarah Pritchard, Univ. librarian, Northwestern U.
>> Date: Mon,  7 Jun 2010 19:04:16 EDT
>>
>> You know they said the same thing when microfiche was
>> invented...give me a 2 dollar kindle and maybe...
>>
>> But a 400.00 iPAD is just not going to sway the 44 yo mother who
>> loves her romance novels.
>>
>> Lets see the technology come down in price and then maybe, maybe
>> we will see a rise in digital formats.
>>
>> Till then open publishing is going to be unfundable over the
>> long term, imho.
>>
>> Quincy