WORDWAR

THE LAST BOOK
YOU'LL EVER READ

and other lessons from the future

Frank Ogden

Macfarlane Walter & Ross, Publishers

Macfarlane Walter & Ross
37A Hazelton Avenue
Toronto, Canada
M5R 2E3

This work is dedicated to those librarians, from the days of Alexandria to those in today's cloistered havens of leather and paper, who, by collecting, cataloguing, storing, and distributing the printed word in the Gutenberg format, have aided so effectively man's progress to a better understanding of our past and acceptance of our future potential.

Special thanks to my partner, companion, wife and editing disciplinarian Carol Baker for directing me along the path of (her) reality; to Anne Norman and Yvonne Van Ruskenveld of West Coast Editorial Associates for their work; and to Jim Semenick, creative hacker and fellow ten-year traveller in cyberspace, for his ability to provide the seemingly electronically impossible when required.

THE LAST BOOK
YOU'LL EVER READ

Introduction

First there were rough stick pictures sketched on the walls of caves in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain. Egyptian hieroglyphics appeared on papyrus, a paperlike writing material developed about 3500 B.C. Later came the alphabet from far-off Arabia to be studied and mastered by scribes in lonely secluded monasteries. A steady job in Europe in those days was copying the Bible for a small but elite clientele -- not a simple task when every word had to be written laboriously by hand.
Initially only the the illuminati of the church and then a few members of royalty were able to see a book and learn to interpret the symbols (letters and numbers). They then had to learn what the symbols meant when put into words and sentences (reading), next how to duplicate the messages (copying), and then how to create a message (writing). This literacy didn't spread, even among royalty, overnight.
A German printer, Johann Gutenberg, was the first European to develop movable type, and the first printed copy of a book -- the Bible -- was printed in 1455. Fifty years before Gutenberg's type, movable type from metal molds was being used in Korea. These developments at opposite ends of the earth allowed people to record history, knowledge, and wisdom for the benefit of the following generations.
Today Gutenberg-style publications -- printed books -- are doomed. The vehicle that carries the words is no longer an economically viable form of transportation. Most people acquire books for the content -- the words of an author or the pictures captured by a photographer on film prior to being transferred by an elaborate and costly process to paper. But the cost of the content is usually a relatively minor portion of the cost in preparing a book for the marketplace. The major cost is in building the vehicle to carry the words and images. During the five hundred years of use of Gutenberg's brilliant invention, the cost of the delivery vehicle has progressively increased to far exceed the cost of the content. Words and images are being delivered in a Lamborghini when all that is needed is a toy wagon.
The price of paper rises every year. As environmental concerns become more critical and fewer trees are harvested, prices for the cellulose to make paper are increasing dramatically. Skilled labor is shrinking. The cost of binding books can go nowhere but up. Hardcover books especially are becoming more costly to produce. Still, books are ground out in increasing numbers with less profit to all concerned, year after year. To realists, the situation is clear. The cost of producing books, even without including the cost of the content, is a nightmare for publishers.
Contrast this picture with electronic publishing on computer floppy disks or CD-ROMs (Compact Disk -- Read Only Memory). Disks cost less than fifty cents each wholesale, depending on disk size, type, and manufacturer. Packaging, distribution, and marketing costs are much lower than they are for books. Computer bulletin boards lift data from one another and spread the word globally along the network. Book reviews are written at a thousand desks and sent throughout the universe to precisely the purchasers wanting such information. A new group of people has risen who can manipulate digital information profitably. These digerati communicate at the speed of light and bypass old traditional, physical highways of the past.
This low-cost network brings millions of buyers to sellers all over the planet. In its own way electronic publishing is a replay of what occurred when print first hit the masses with what were then low-cost books. Millions found a reason to learn to read and write. Publishers and ad agencies that grew with that new market will find the old game not as profitable as it once was. They will find, perhaps too late, it's not the rules that have changed but the game itself. Many in that industry will start worrying too as others, raised with the new game, become more proficient players.
All books can be sent to the purchaser electronically, delivered on any size of disk, for any type of computer; or a thousand books of 300 pages each can now be put on a single CD-ROM. This disk itself dials an 800 number that sends you the previously encoded description code (upon receipt of a valid credit card number), which automatically opens the selected volume or volumes purchased. An excellent example is the monthly photonic magazine Nautilus, published in Dublin, Ohio, that issues a monthly edition -- a "book" in itself -- plus up to 999 other books on the same disk. No printing, no binding, minimal marketing, and no costly distribution system. No minimum print run. If one copy is sold, one is released. If a million are sold, an appropriate button is pushed and a million copies are deciphered and released.
Today knowledge navigators are finding innovative ways to transfer information at dramatically lower prices. That's why this could be the last book you'll ever read.