Audiences of the FutureClaudio Pires Franco, By the Book 3, June 2016

• Hello everyone, it’s great to be here once more! • Today I’ll present an analysis of the very call for papers - to somehow ‘deconstruct’ the ways in which some themes are approached - and suggest that it may be fruitful to reframe some of the questions raised.

Converging Media, Cross-media Audiences

Reframing the Relations Between Books and Digital/Other Media

• The title of my paper could easily have been this one instead: • Converging Media, Cross-media Audiences: Reframing the Relations Between Books and Digital/Other Media

Mike Licht, 2010, https://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/5225049493 22.06.16

• The focus is on young audiences, on their current media consumption behaviours, on their relations to books and other media, and on how these may provide clues for the future - or futures - of the book. • I look mostly at the UK and US markets, although many of the questions that I raise may apply more globally • I intend to look at the relation between books and other media, namely digital, investigating the ways readers/audiences behave across media. • My main argument is that discourses of fragmentation and competition between books and other media can be complemented by a more nuanced approach… • An approach that also looks at continuities, flows, collaborations and opportunities across media. • This will be partly achieved by looking at book and media consumption from a reader/audience perspective • To show that, for younger generations, the most important drivers of consumption are specific brands and genres, and not as much the machines, the devices and media, where they can be accessed • Overall I wish to present the book as a resilient but also changing, elastic, adaptable form • I will attempt this by considering recent trends of media convergence, collaboration across media, cross-media consumption flows, and opportunities created by digital media in a changing book landscape…

Reframing Re + framing

• The main goal of my presentation is thus to defend a re-framing of the object, situations and issues portrayed in the CfP… • Let me first tell you a little about the concept of FRAMING…

– Wikipedia, June 2016

“The effects of framing can be seen in many journalism applications. With the same information being used as a base, the "frame" surrounding the issue can change the

reader's perception without having to alter the actual facts.

[…] a frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others.

[…] framing often presents facts in such a way that implicates a problem that is in need of a solution.”

Framing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing 22/06/16

• Journalism is full of examples of framing - and is the most fertile academic field for framing theory • With the same information being used as a base, a "frame" surrounding an issue can change the reader's perception without having to alter the actual facts. • […] a frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others. • […] framing often presents facts in such a way that implicates a problem that is in need of a solution.” • The ways in which questions are framed dictate, or at the very least strongly influence, the ways they are investigated and answered. • Let’s now look at the Call for Proposals… to see how our object of study and the issues surrounding it were framed • Let’s start with the main object of study of the conference… the BOOK…

“By the Book3 brings together scholars from the field of publishing studies, alongside industry professionals, to examine key issues around the digital transformation of the book […]”

“smaller print-runs”

“How can the printed book compete with digital content for attention and audiences?”

The “book” - what book?

– Call for Proposals, By the Book 3, 2016

http://publishing.brookes.ac.uk/resources/Call_for_Papers_-_By_the_Book3_-_23_and_24_June_2016.pdf 22.06.16

• The conference’s mission is to bring people together to discuss the DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE BOOK… • However, and although this is not entirely clear, it seems that the call for proposals is just - or certainly mostly - focussed on printed books • And is concerned with digital as something mostly external to the book… something that is happening to the book and the world of print publishing… • Let’s look more closely at the framing of key issues in the call for proposals…

Fragmentation

Competition

Challenge

Overload

• These are the main keywords that frame the relation of books to digital media • These seem to depart from a negative perspective, where digital is framed as a threat to print… but a sort of desirable danger too, or rather a threatening force that ought to be harnessed to help print… • Let’s see word by word… we have…

• fragmentation - the idea that audiences are somehow being torn apart, attracted by other media, and are very hard to reach • overload - similar to overdose - there’s too much media, too much content out there to be consumed • competition - it’s books, or print books, VS / against digital - and other - media • challenge - the idea that print books are in a kind of struggle, perhaps for their survival…

• I believe much of this framing is related to the way the BOOK was defined… and the strong emphasis on print and its survival…

The Multi-faceted Book

• Rather than thinking simply about print - and ebooks - perhaps it is more fruitful to expand the definition of book… and with it the definition of publisher… and of reader… or user… • Books are no longer just paper books, or e-books… they’ve come a long way within the last few decades… • This reminds me of an idea that I presented 2 years ago at the first edition of this conference…

The Future(s) of the Book❖ Unilinear path: one format is replaced by the next in

consecutive fashion.

Image credits: José-Manuel Benitos, Creative Commons

LINEAR EVOLUTION

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_evolution_scheme.svg 20.06.16

• Many analyses seem to conceive of change and innovation in book formats and technologies as if these followed a unilinear path. • In this angle, the commanding perception is that one format is replaced by the next in consecutive fashion. • The notion of survival, of an analogy in the ways we think about it with Darwin’s natural selection becomes nearly inevitable…

The Future(s) of the Book❖ Branching paths: older and newer formats co-exist.

Image credits: Tony Hirst, https://www.flickr.com/photos/psychemedia

BRANCHING EVOLUTION

• But what if we conceive of change and innovation in terms of branching paths, with older and newer formats co-existing, and influencing each other across reader interests, genres and media? • A branching model also highlights diversity within a major format • The label “print”, for example, hides a huge amount of diversity of printed books… think of novels, picture books, text books, pop-up books, and so on…

More book-like

More multimodal and/or making use of affordances of digital media

Ebooks

Digital Books

Enhanced ebooks ePub3

“Multimedia ebooks”

iBooks Author

Story / Book Apps

Game books

Digital fiction

“Bridging” Books

Narrative games

Social book

Adapted from: ’The Digital Book (R)evolution', in Logos (Forum of the World Book Community), Volume 25, Issue 4 - Article link

• The diversity in digital formats is also huge… • So we can no longer focus just on print… the book has expanded beyond paper and e-book! • Perhaps what we need is a more flexible, a more elastic definition of book… • And a wider perspective on the relation between books and digital media… to see digital not just as something external to the book, something that is happening around the book and threatening it… • …but something that the book industry - or rather the people who make and discuss books - are actually part of, and can explore… this is one of my main points.

• Let’s now look at the call for proposals again…

Fragmentation

• In the Introduction one can read…

– Call for Proposals, By the Book 3, 2016

“…[T]here has been a fragmentation of audiences across a range of digital media and devices, which is challenging traditional media from newspapers

and books to television.”

http://publishing.brookes.ac.uk/resources/Call_for_Papers_-_By_the_Book3_-_23_and_24_June_2016.pdf 22.06.16

• “…[T]here has been a fragmentation of audiences across a range of digital media and devices, which is challenging traditional media from newspapers and books to television.” • Fragmentation can perhaps be seen from two angles… • One: it means readers have less time for books because they’re spending their time consuming other media… • Two: there are so many platforms and devices that it becomes harder to market books - any kind of books…

http://www.slideshare.net/dubit/childrens-media-conference-2014

• This is certainly happening, and is best captured by the notion of Discoverability, which seems to be a popular term within the industry. • And whilst it can be seen as a problem for large publishers who want to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of readers, it also opens a world of niche opportunities… • For example, thanks to the use by smaller publishers and self-published authors of digital platforms such as Amazon, Facebook and Wattpad to reach readers they would otherwise never be able to reach…

– Call for Proposals, By the Book 3, 2016

“…[T]here has been a fragmentation of audiences across a range of digital media and devices, which

is challenging traditional media from newspapers and books to television.”

http://publishing.brookes.ac.uk/resources/Call_for_Papers_-_By_the_Book3_-_23_and_24_June_2016.pdf 22.06.16

• The claim that fragmentation “is challenging traditional media” could perhaps be re-phrased to say that it is challenging the biggest, most conservative players in traditional media… • Let’s take newspaper and TV as examples… • newspapers / TV - do similar things but in different media / platforms, across devices and technologies > changing business models, but are often producing similar texts, using similar processes and cultures of production… • ‘Old players’ are trying to make the most of new platforms too, with some being very successful at it… • For example the BBC rules on-demand viewing with the BBC and CBBC iPlayer • What we see is the springing up of new business models, new collaborations, new kinds of businesses… and a landscape where content and media are no longer split into neat silos… • The situation with digital books sounds similar to what happened in the 80s with CD-ROM interactive books… • Most publishers were caught up by innovation coming from outside publishing… again we see this with ebooks and Amazon, with story apps and enhanced digital books being controlled by Apple and Google… and with the

many smaller digital book publishers and storytellers that are pushing the boundaries of the digital book.

How do readers aged 7-16 spend their free time? (Dubit, 2013)

http://www.slideshare.net/dubit/bookseller-childrens-conference-a-story-about-story-telling-research-by-dubit 22.06.16

• Fragmentation also seems to be introduced from a top-down perspective too focussed on media, devices and platforms… without much consideration of reader or user tastes and flows across media… • Book readers do also use other media… they watch TV, play games, they even go out sometimes… • In this and other studies that I did for the largest book publishers in the UK, we found that book readers were also the highest media consumers of all groups… • And note that increasingly we also see flows of audiences - driven by brands and genres - navigating their way with the same brand across media…

http://www.slideshare.net/dubit/bookseller-childrens-conference-a-story-about-story-telling-research-by-dubit 22.06.16

• In the early 21st century we see a content environment where media are converging, where horizontal structures and adaptation are ripe, and where stories, characters and brands travel across media • It could perhaps be said that we’re living in the Panmedia era… well, at least for successful brands… • Cross-media is the norm, and especially younger audiences will follow their favourite characters across media, devices and platforms… as we’ll now see…

http://www.slideshare.net/dubit/cross-media-consumption 22.06.16

• Children and young people consume major brands across many media and formats • The original medium is usually the most consumed, but not always… • And whether they start as book, film or game, major characters end everywhere else in the media landscape…

http://www.slideshare.net/dubit/cross-media-consumption 22.06.16

How does a medium drive consumption on other media?

• According to this research from 2013 TV / film was the biggest originator of consumption across media… • A few decades ago book would probably have been the biggest driver… • The role of games was still relatively poor as a driver for other media, but the last few years have seen great movements from game onto book publishing… • Could it be that brands originating from other media - and specifically digital media - are actually helping book sales?

http://brightgroupinternational.com/bright-agency/good-news-all-round-from-the-booksellers-childrens-conference-2015 20.06.16

• Data shared by Egmont UK at the latest Bookseller’s Children Conference showed a clear shift in sources of content, with a great increase of non-traditional sources (i.e. from other media, not traditional book brands and author selection processes)

21

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/08/golden-age-of-uk-childrens-books-bucks-falling-sales-and-print-runs 20.06.16

• In 2014 the top of the bestsellers list was dominated by children’s titles… • The top one, The Fault in Our Stars, derived from a traditional publishing route, I assume… • And the top 10 included 4 books dedicated to Minecraft! Minecraft books sold 1.8M copies in the UK.

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http://www.youbrewmytea.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/minecraft.jpg 20.06.16

http://www.trojansnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/minecraft-Merch.-250x144.jpg 20.06.16

http://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/minecraft-single-handedly-saving-childrens-book-market-now 20.06.16

• According to the latest figures for bookstalls supplied by Nielsen, Minecraft led to the largest ever brand expansion in print publishing… • Minecraft may take time away for book reading, but then it leads to kids reading books on Minecraft… these are complex ecosystems of content and media consumption… • So Minecraft has clearly helped sustain sales of books… But perhaps some people may then argue… • But would readers have bought other books? More booky-books originating from within book publishing industry? • Not in a big slice of the children’s YA’s market, where consumption is very mass driven - driven by mass media blockbusters, popularity choices when buying books for kids, e.g. relatives, parents, etc. - also driven by supermarkets

growth as sellers of books, they sell what’s popular… limited selection. • > Let’s now turn to the Economy of Publishing

The Economy of Publishing

• The latest data for the UK shows a decline in sales of print books, but especially of adults… and it shows a different picture altogether for the children and YA markets…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/books/review/continued-growth-at-the-bologna-childrens-book-fair.html?_r=0 20.06.16

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/08/golden-age-of-uk-childrens-books-bucks-falling-sales-and-print-runs 20.06.16

http://brightgroupinternational.com/bright-agency/good-news-all-round-from-the-booksellers-childrens-conference-2015 20.06.16; note: it should read “Nielsen”

http://brightgroupinternational.com/bright-agency/good-news-all-round-from-the-booksellers-childrens-conference-2015 20.06.16

• 2015 was the best ever recorded for sales of children books… according to Nielsen data. • print sales were up 10% compared to a decline of 5% for the whole of the industry… • And children seem to prefer print to ebooks… • And it’s not just the UK that shows a growing children’s sector… • Sales were up 12% in the US and children’s book sales now represent some 50% of the total market in Australia and New Zealand. • These stats include large numbers of YA titles bought also by adults… and fuelled in recent years by cross-media global brands such as the Hunger Games and Twilight…

http://disneyanimated.touchpress.com/ 20.06.16 http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/ 20.06.16

http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/ 20.06.16

• We’re also seeing a new breed of digital publishers… • TouchPress example - publishing veterans + tech guys = new kind of digital ‘books’ • And Inkle, who created an online platform for the creation of interactive stories, and make game-books such as Sorcery. • These are breeds of digital creatives that make new, hybrid formats somewhere in-between games, apps and books…

• And we also see traditional publishers increasingly acting as Brand Nurturers - Penguin and Egmont for example… • Simone Murray’s study* also showed there are clear interdependence and influences between the film and book industries… the cross-media potential of a novel is often a factor in book selection…

* https://www.routledge.com/The-Adaptation-Industry-The-Cultural-Economy-of-Contemporary-Literary/Murray/p/book/9780415999038

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/69646-buongiorno-bologna-bologna-children-s-book-fair-2016-preview.html 20.06.16

Bologna Children Book Fair

• The importance of digital media, and of cross-media, of licensing and brand nurturing has been recently recognised by the Bologna book fair with the creation of the Digital Media Hall, to bring together people from different sectors, and with different skills…

• Increasingly, book publishing is entangled with other media, and digital media playing an ever more important role in the wider media and content ecosphere

Conclusion

Fragmentation

Overload

Cross-media behavioursAdaptation, licensing, transmedia

Diversity, Choice

Competition

Challenge

Collaboration, ConvergenceHybrid formats

OpportunitiesNew players, New models

• I’d propose the re-framing of keywords to also include those on the right… • so instead of just talking about FRAGMENTATION, we can also talk about cross-media flows, adaptation and mutual influence… • ETC…

• Much of the framing for the conference results from the way the BOOK was defined… • I think we need is a more flexible, adaptable view of the book… and the roles of publishers, both traditional and new breeds of digital publishers…

Digital books at the intersection of print books and digital media

https://zoomkind.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/digital-books-at-the-

intersection-of-print-books-and-digital-media/

• In our era digital coexists with print… • digital and print are distinct but also merge, converge, overlap and influence eat other… • authors and publishers and others choose formats depending on what they’re trying to achieve - there is room for all • rather than focus on more negative words / aspects: fragmentation, threat, competition, end… more interesting to look at flows, influences, new formats, creativity, expansion and so on… • perhaps this may mean that the wealth of digital books can be seen as worthwhile of being studied… and recognised by industry awards… for now many are in limbo… in-between media and academic fields that haven’t yet

adopted them… • And to understand the book, in its various shapes in the digital era we need a more open, less protectionist multi-disciplinary approach that brings together distinct fields… • …such as history of the book, publishing studies, media and cultural studies, audience studies, perhaps even games studies… in order to better grasp our evolving and elastic object of study

• Digital books at the intersection of print books and digital media • The Wheel of Intermediality for Digital Books

• This wheel represents a model for looking at the ways in which digital books are influenced by both print and a wide range of digital media forms.

• It builds on a paper presented at the conference By the Book 2: • http://www.slideshare.net/clauzdifranco/bythebook2014-claudiofrancothedigitalbookrevolutionslidesnotes • And on the ideas evolved on the subsequent article 'The Digital Book (R)evolution', in Logos (Forum of the World Book Community), Volume 25, Issue 4: • http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1878-4712-11112056 • The three concentric circles represent media and formats: print books, digital books and a range for other relevant digital media • The three slices are linked to key areas in publishing: Reference, Fiction and Professional & Educational • Mapped around the wheel, around thematic areas, for example travelling, are the different kinds of texts - in print, digital book, and other media - that influence each other • Hybrid media books and game-books are the more obvious border-crossers, with one foot in each territory… but there are more, a lot more to explore. These are borderline cases, hybrids, mongrels that defy any neat traditional

classifications onto separate silos. • This is work in progress, the result of over two years of research, sketches and attempts to find a way to create a diagram that can adequately locate digital books at the intermedial intersection of print traditions and the

The End

claudio.pires.franco@gmail.com