Not long after dashing some nascent hopes that Apple would unveil some sort of awesome e-Reader device at this week’s MacWorld expo to compete with the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, Steve Jobs stomped on the book industry a bit more with this quote in today’s Times
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Um. Ouch. You could have just kicked my dog and gotten it over with, Steve.
>yeah, and everybody posts percentages and facts the numbers change
whoops! I meant to say that every time somebody posts facts and percentages, the numbers change.
~David de Beer
>The amount of people in the world who can read still outnumber the amount of those who cannot
that should be the other way around.
flippin hell, I should start proofing comments before I post!
~David de Beer
Its pointless to argue over the accuracy of his 40% statistic or point out that me or my friend or my cat’s uncle reads a lot and therefore his “people don’t read” quote is wrong, the real point is that it should be alarming that such a brilliant person as Steve Jobs would say such things.
Brilliant? Of course he is. This is the guy who has brought us the Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone, as well as been a major player in another revolution in a completely different industry (digital animation and Pixar). He has a phenomenal track record of taking leading edge technology and blending it into products that people didn’t know they wanted or needed until they saw it.
I think its more of a disparaging comment on the future of e-readers than reading in general, but this was still Steve Jobs who said it, not some 30 year old, never-kissed-a-girl World of Warcraft player who doesn’t come out of his mother’s basement long enough to see the light of day.
The funny thing is, Jobs said they won’t build an e-reader but they already have – their own TV ads for the iPhone show users reading the New York Times on it. What, that’s not reading? I’m in hopes that Apple will add book e-reader capability to the iPhone and e-books to the iTunes store. As an earlier post pointed out, Jobs has changed his mind before.
No, I don’t have an iPhone, but my daughter would sell me into slavery for one.
Well, of course you’re a grownup, Nathan. You can rot your own brain all you like.
Insert “motherly sigh” here.
“People don’t read anymore.”
I read.
So I conclude, logically, that I am not “people.”
So… sixty percent of American DO read more than one book a year. Some percentage of those people read five or more books a year. As many as 20, perhaps.
For fun.
With an American population of over 350 million people, that’s *a lot* of readers!
I don’t know, but maybe; just possibly, SJ meant that people aren’t buying as many books nowadays? Publishing is a business, after all. And the sales figures always tell the truth. Just thought I’d toss this one out there as a possibility.
AmyB said…
“People don’t read anymore.”
I read.
So I conclude, logically, that I am not “people.”
Tee hee.
I read. Therefore, I am not.
…their own TV ads for the iPhone show users reading the New York Times on it.
Actually, their TV ads for the iPhone show people not reading the New York Times. The finger keeps flipping the page thumbnails, then goes on to something else.
You know, this reminds me of the book I was reading the other day, called Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs. Quite funny, actually.
Here’s the report from the NEA that Jobs apparently got his statistics from: To Read or Not to Read. (Or if you don’t like PDF, use the Google cache.)
I really think it’s sour grapes on the part of Jobs that other people beat Apple out of the gate. Most notably SONY and Amazon. Apple getting beat by Amazon. That really has to sting.
And slightly off-topic: If anyone is considering buying an ebook reader, don’t buy one that cannot read both TXT and PDF in addition to the other formats they support. And support for MOBI and HTML would be good too.
I would say that I’ve been reading more either online or at least on screen rather than print. But I am reading.
I think the idea of the e-book isn’t catching on, but audio books and audio book podcasts seem to have some interest. If they produced an e-book reader that would actually read the book out to the listener it might do well. Maybe an audio playing device that would read text. It’s already available for the computer so it shouldn’t be that difficult to add it to a portable device.
It’s all a matter of habits. An e-book reader is only good if you’re sitting at home or riding somewhere. You can’t use it while driving, and if you’re at work you’ve probably got a computer sitting in front of you. But an audio player is something one can use anywhere, even while working on a computer.
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
All this tells me is that Steve Jobs has gone from being a maverick to being one of those myopic corporate chieftans that let “the next big thing” slip through their hands.
The development of the electronic reader will go to some brand new start-up with the vision to make it happen. Then all the “non-readers” will see how much fun the “readers” are having and jump on the bandwagon.
It’s been this way in business since time immemorial.
And five years from now Jobs will be trying to buy out the start-up that perfected the e-reader for several billion dollars.
A man I know casually at work has been gone for a week, and the person who filled in for me told me he’d gone to Chicago for a funeral. I hoped it wasn’t his brother, about whom he’d spoken many times. When he returned tonight, I expressed my sympathies. He lost two family members in one week, but the one who touched me was a young man, twenty-three years old, whose name was Bronsson McKinley Johnson, a/k/a Baby Biscuit. My friend showed me the program from Bronsson’s funeral, which told a little about him. He’d been ill, so at some point, he must have contemplated his mortality, and had written out his dying wish for his family. I was touched by it, and copied it exactly as he wrote it so I could share it with you all. The title was If I Should Die Now.
“If I should die now, my wishes would be giving my books to people that will actually READ and enjoy them. Tell my family how I lived, what I wanted to do with myself. I think it was to be a comedy writer like Mark Twain, without all that Southern dialect.”
Tell my family how I lived, what I wanted to do with myself. I think it was to be a comedy writer like Mark Twain, without all that Southern dialect.”
“. . . a dream deferred . . .” That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. This is why people should WRITE, even if the results are “awful.”
I can’t even believe someone would make the remark that Jobs did in good conscience. But it’s scarily true. I’m a heavy reader – at least a half dozen books every month, and usually more. But my friends and coworkers cannot fathom how much I read. People tell me, all the time, usually when they see me with book in hand, that they try to read at least one book a year. Or that they’ll try to get to a book in a few months or so. Like they’re so busy that they can’t read for even 15 minutes each day. BLOWS MY MIND. What’s worse are some writers I know who do not make time to read. How can you expect anyone else to read what you wrote…if you don’t read what anyone else writes?
I’m glad I don’t own an iPod or any other Apple device. Because if I did, I’d have to destroy them now in protest. Argh.