Here. Hold My Book. Yes, In Your Hand.
It’s the 21st century. Aren’t we past the idea of books?
Heck no. In fact, we’re only getting started.
Books are what you might call an old technology. Gutenberg’s invention of the 1300s radically revolutionized the world, much the way the Internet did in the 1990s (this time around, it happened a little faster). But keep in mind, every generation believed it had truly discovered what this awesome technology — whatever it is — could really do.
The truth is, what people discovered was ways of using this new tech and marrying it with that new tech. Since those equations change all the time, the possibilities change all the time. So it is with books. Yes, really.
But the thing is, no matter how awesomely we change the technological landscape, we’re saddled with a bottleneck — humans. We are physical beings. We require food, sleep, clothing. We like to touch things. We can (despite the multitasking mania) only do one thing at a time. Those things are permanent, and no technology will change them.
Now, it’s true that habits change. It’s true that expectations change. But it’s not true that people change [NOTE: I’m talking about the basal nature of the physical existence, the hardwiring of human beings to do certain things. I’m not talking about growth, or the ability to listen to criticism without punching someone or sobbing.] People require certain things in order to function well. One of those things is physical contact with the world around them.
The connected age features more feeling of disconnection than ever. Even the youngest teens are discovering that punching the little heart on Instagram does not have the same impact as giving someone a hug. Shockingly, even the modern youth doesn’t need real human connection any less than those that came before them.
And real human connection? It often requires stuff.
Nonsense, you say. You and I can have a conversation, and that’s (potentially) connective, and nothing is required but air and time. Leaving aside that air and time are both really valuable nouns in and of themselves, that conversation is made possible by stuff. First off, your stuff — you — and my stuff — me. We have to either be together — which will require transport stuff and housing/meeting stuff — or we have to use phones (stuff), computers (stuff) or the United States Postal Service (et al.), plus high-rag-content bond paper and a fountain pen. Also stuff. See what I mean?
Pretending we can divorce ourselves from the physical world is silly (and increasingly dangerous). But lots of people are so pretending. Businesses are hustling to move themselves to the virtual (which, ironically, requires a LOT of stuff) faster than ever before. Good for them. Or, actually, no, it won’t be, but that’s not our topic today.
Yeah. See, this is what I’m talking about. In business, the time to start questioning your tactics is when everyone agrees with you.
No one reads books any more. Except that isn’t true. In fact, more books are being read today than ever before. More words are being read than ever before by a long, long way. There are advantages there, for you, for me, for business.
There is a magical thing that happens when you hand someone a physical object (and to a lesser extent, when you hand them a virtual one). That experience is graphically illustrated above, and let me tell you, if you haven’t got an actual, written, personal letter from someone in a while, that comic dramatically undersells it.
December of last year saw the release of a book I wrote about the Harmon Brothers, a radical, cutting-edge new media company specializing in quirky, long-form advertisement featuring, among other things, a pooping unicorn (rainbow sherbet, duh), Goldilocks, and a woman making out with her carpet. You’ve seen their ads. They work. They’re massively released on YouTube, Facebook Watch, and everywhere else in the known universe. All digital. All virtual.
So we wrote a book. An actual, physical, book.
Of course, we also released book trailers, e-books, audiobooks, etc., all the stuff you have to release in the 21st century. But the cool thing, to me, about the response is that the hardback book has outsold all the other, virtual stuff by 5 to 1. That’s right. A work written about a new-media company, and sold to millennials, is selling physically five times better than virtually.
There are probably a lot of reasons for this, and I have my own theories, but for the moment, I don’t care. The point is that it worked. The book sold. Forbes picked it up as a best summer read — and let me point out here that Forbes.com exists because of Forbes the magazine, still published and reaching record circulation.
So in an age where the virtual is all the rage, some people are re-thinking a commitment to the physical, and seeing trends that make that commitment more advantageous than ever.
What do they know that you don’t know? Nothing. They’re just remembering, that’s all. Remembering what it felt like to hold something in their hand, to see it on their shelf, to say, “here, I’ve read it. See what you think.” In the 21st century, the book is seeing a renaissance as a marker of status, a thoughtful way of delivering information (in a bite-sized world), an engagement of both mind and body that forges a true connection between people.
Poetic? Yeah. I’m a sucker for poetry. I’m also a writer of books. And if you drop me a line, I’ll send you one.
Yes. In the mail.