Are Books Printed With Disappearing Ink Really The Best Way To Make People Read Them?
from the bit-of-a-waste dept
As Techdirt has noted, the main threat to artists is not piracy, but obscurity -- the fact that few know they are creating interesting stuff. As passive consumers increasingly become creators themselves, and the competition increases, that's even more of an issue. For writers, there's a double problem: not only do people need to hear about a work, they also have to find the time to explore it once acquired, and that's often a challenge in our over-filled, stressed-out lives -- unless we're talking about haiku. Here's an unusual approach to encouraging people to find that time to read books:
El Libro que No Puede Esperar (The Book That Can't Wait) comes in a sealed package and as soon as you start to turn its pages, the ink begins to age... and fade. Readers have less than two months to tackle the tome before the text toddles off into the ether.
As a video made by the Argentinian publishers explains (embedded below), an anthology of new writing from Latin America was printed using this ink; the hope was that the sense of urgency imparted by the disappearing texts would encourage more people than usual to read the book and discover its authors.
It's a clever idea, but I have a couple of problems with it. One is that this seems like a waste of resources: a book is printed and bound, with all that this implies in terms of energy, but at the end you have only blank pages. Yes, you could write on them, but how many people would do that? Alternatively, you could recycle it, but that uses even more resources to produce basic paper pulp.
I'm also troubled by the pressure the vanishing ink implicitly puts on readers. The idea that you must finishing reading a book within a set time or otherwise you'll have lost the opportunity is hardly conducive to enjoyment. It smacks rather of the classroom, where teachers tell you to finish a book by a certain date, with the justification that the experience will be good for you.
It seems to me that a much better idea would be to give away representative works as ebooks -- with no pressure that they must be read by a certain date. There's minimal waste of resources, since electrons don't cost much to deliver. And best of all, if you really like the book, you can give a copy to your friends in order to share the pleasure (provided there's no stupid DRM to stop you.)
Surely that's the best way of encouraging people to read new authors -- or try out new creations in general: getting those who already enjoy something to pass it on to people they know with the powerful added ingredient of a personal recommendation. No clever tricks involving vanishing ink can compete with something as strong as that.
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Filed Under: books, publishing, vanishing ink
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Anyway, I think it's a good idea, but not for most book readers; just for a niche. It's an interesting product for people who struggle to discipline themselves to read more than the first 30-50 pages of a book within a reasonable timeframe.
So that's what is the key factor in the purchase decision... Not the long-term value of owning it; but the value of it pressuring you to read it, if that's really an issue for you.
I definitely see a niche market for that... I have two issues with it though:
- The business issue: it's a niche product. However books, being carriers of content, often fall in their own respective niches. So it will take some research to figure out in what content niches you can find the most 'undisciplined readers' who feel they need more pressure to read books. One likely area would be in mainstream best-sellers, books that everybody is talking about, Fifty Shades of Gray comes to mind, or the Da Vinci Code, etc. The important thing is to get the timing right; it has to happen before the hype blows over.
- The sustainability issue: it is indeed a waste of resources. Doing the same thing with ebooks would be much more efficient... Of course, you could set up some kind of recycling program, where you get to hand in your blank book, for a discount on a new 'fading book'.
Overall, I like the idea: it's not for everyone, but I can see this working for a certain niche market.
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Made me chuckle anyway.
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{Fan club} Oh yea! We can buy the book over and over again if we don't read fast enough!! {Cheers}
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I'm gonna go have a cup of tea and read one of my 30 year old books.
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Libraries...
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DivX#section_1
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Far fetched, but...
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Re: Far fetched, but...
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There's nowhere you can run now
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disappearing ink
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Re: disappearing ink
Now you see it,now you don't.
Now you see it,now you don't.
Now you see it,now you don't.
Automatic Peek a Boo for the little ones!
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GIMMICK
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Yes, I can see where someone might think this is a good idea.
Make the analog world behave digitally.
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Would I ever buy a book like this? No.
Without this book would I have heard of this publisher? Probably not, but now I have.
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I want one of those books
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ARM
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Re: ARM
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Awesome
Seriously though, whoever thought this up needs to have his head examined, or be exposed to actual people, as I can only assume they haven't seen any for a long time.
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Which begs the immediate question, if I pay for something that disappears in two months, do I get my money back when the ink's gone?
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But you have to spend it right away or it will disappear.
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Let's just say bluntly what everyone's afraid of deep down: that MacMillan, Wiley, Scribners, et al. are going to look at this and go, "WOW! Why didn't WE think of that? Let's print our entire catalogs that way so people have to buy their favorite physical books over and over again...like we make them do for electronic readers!"
Terrifying, but unlikely to happen. I hope...
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We're used to seeing publishers and the like come up with all kinds of schemes, so people are overreacting quite a bit in the comments here.
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Sure... I doubt this could/would ever go mainstream, but gentleman's bet says we'll see something like this tried with in niche markets for financial reasons. University textbooks seem like a likely candidate. Look at the driving factors:
o $100-200/book
o Huge pressure to make sure the books are obsolete within a year
o Extremely limited DRM effectiveness with digital editions
Stir in a lot of greed, let the idea simmer for a year or two, and I think it's a pretty safe bet *someone* will try it.
(If so, I also predict a shift in popularity from the computer science students to chemistry students. It shouldn't be too hard to find something that would stop or reverse the reaction.)
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wasteful
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Sounds like a way to push dull reading
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I even shy away from limited edition collector pieces. If I like something I want to keep it and have a reasonable assurance I can replace it in case of disaster or it just getting worn out.
But something that kills itself?! Bleeh to that!
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William Gibson...
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READ THIS COMMENT QUICKLY!!!
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While I agree this disappearing ink stunt is kind of silly and wasteful, "Just hand out e-book versions" isn't particularly helpful if most of your your market doesn't have tablets or e-readers.
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Uh huh.....
So is this publisher trying to get readers to buy more e-books instead of physical copies? In case they didn't realize it, digitized documents last forever vs. having to go out and buy a product that will only last for 2 months and is probably more expensive than the e version. And while not all countries have tablets or nooks yet, they do have adobe acrobat reader, at the very least.
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OC
To me it's obvious this is not meant to be the one solution for all books, it's a niche, a gimmick that will sell a books to a certain type of audience. For that it's brilliant.
If you also take the idea and run with it, as some posters above has already suggested, and layer the ink so that you will get different versions depending on when you read it you have a whole new type of product. Or you sell a sortiment of sprays to use on the book that will alter the story in the way you desire.
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Re: OC
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Read it before it is too late
on vapor ink did you spend?
hototogisu
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DVD
As a stunt, maybe it has some merit (although maybe I just like blank books). As a business model, I think not.
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Trivial Books, Trivial Persons
Insisting on acid-free paper may not be economically practical, but it is at least psychologically healthy-- there is nothing of the suicide gesture about it.
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Maybe it could be used for a spiritual book about the impermanence of things or the art of letting go.
There are so many cool ways to implement this gimmick.
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Children's books and other things
One would think this is bad now with physical books, but it gets worse. I don't know how many people already know this as it is really old news.. IBM developed a Hard Disk format designed to simulate paper decay over a period of time. Imagine the uproars if they applies that to e-books.
Now as for the concept. This would be not a very commercially viable idea. Take one look at DiVx players to understand. Also, the cost of paper waste would be phenomenal. It won't happen.
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Re: Children's books and other things
Mister B. Gone.
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Give away electronic books for free
(Well, the trick obviously is to give out the first books of a series freely, and then speculate on the people who read it to buy the rest... But it works ;))
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Ink...
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It's an art piece, not a book
Doing something different with the existing forms is what Art is all about - challenging perceptions, thinking of new ways to look at stuff. Should every book be written like this? Of course not! But should some artist do it now and then, just to see how it plays out? Darn right they should.
Also, it's odd enough a thing to do that it will probably get them a bunch of PR, which is no bad thing in this day and age.
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How many people have gotten a book from a friend, read it, enjoyed it, and then bought multiple books from that same author? I'd guess that number is a HUGE number. And disappearing ink, well that will only make that number smaller. So good luck with that. Tell the recording industry we said Hi!
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It's art
This sort of ephemeral writing has a nice history to it. i, myself, am part of the work "Skin" by Shelley Jackson, which is written entirely on human skin, with thousands of people each getting one word of the story tattooed on them. If you want to read the work, you have to get us all together and line us up in the right order. As we die, so does the story.
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e-books are the way to go
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Will we have instances of people buying this book just to find page after page blank in the future due to some mishandling in part of the bookstore or the mailman?
Will people who legitimately buy hardcopies come full-circle and start pirating the .pdf versions to replace their fully-bought hardcopy book?
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Worst Idea ever
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ink
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