Publishing SIG
ELECTRONIC VS. PRINT PUBLISHING
SURVEY
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Publishing SIG
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Hola, Publishing Mavens,
I am looking for information on electronic vs. print publishing, and I was hoping that all you extremely bright and well-informed Publishing SIG members could help me.
I'd like to learn more about trends in electronic vs. print, pros and cons for different purposes and audiences, advice to specialists who are wondering which way to go, etc.
Reasons for asking: One of our subject-matter specialists asked that this be discussed in a concurrent session at our state Extension conference next August. I'm charged with finding a speaker (or, worse, presenting it myself). We've also had a similar request for a Publishing SIG session in Kansas next year. And I'm curious about it too.
I have found some information on the Web, but I need more. I'm looking for:
-- results of any research on print vs. electronic publishing
-- any other information on this topic
-- the name of some knowledgeable person who might be willing to speak
on it.
I'll report back to y'all on anything I receive from the SIG members.
Thanks for your help!
Best regards,
Diane
Judy Winn 10/31/02 11:11AM
Diane,
Sounds interesting. I hope you get some good responses.
It occurs to me that many major newspapers and magazines have been publishing in both media for a while now. There should be some analysis/research from that showing what readers think, whether they use the two formats differently or expect different things from them, etc.
Also, I wonder if there's any research on the effect of the purpose/intent of the reader on the acceptance of the medium or usefulness of it. In other words, if someone is reading for entertainment, general knowledge, or answers to specific questions, does that determine the medium they want to use?
I realize I've just raised more questions, but maybe somewhere out there are some answers. Good luck!
Judy
Barb Abbott babbott@iastate.edu10/31/02 11:32AM
We need to get rid of the "vs." This decision is really... what, of all the ways to get the info out, works best considering audience and purpose (what do we want the audience to do with the info). So, it can be hard copy print only, or print AND electronic, or only electronic.
My two cents worth :-)
Barb - Good point on the "vs." I thought the same thing too (like saying TV vs. radio), but I used the shorthand reference as a matter of convenience. Perhaps the benefits of brevity are outweighed by the tendency of that kind of phrasing to put blinders on our approach to the issue. Thanks for your insight! - Diane
Amy Hartman ahartman@oznet.ksu.edu10/31/02 12:37PM
Hi, Diane,
Great timing for your question. I'm in the middle of making a CD-ROM that will hold our big Swine Day 2002 research publication, because making CDs will be less expensive than printing this book of nearly 200 pages. Eric Rhodenbaugh, Gloria Schwartz and I are developing a paper on the project for the Journal of Applied Communication. Hmmm, maybe we should talk about doing an ACE conference session on this.
I'm doing it in Acrobat format, and including the previous research back to 1998. I just got a request to break all of the publications on the disc into individual linked articles, to make it easier for users to work with. This is more work for me, but we want to make the transition from print to electronic as painless as possible for our audience.
We have a number of other electronic-only Acrobat publications available on the web. It saves money, it's easy to add color, and it's never out of print until you take it off the web--and maybe not then, if someone has saved the file and put it on their own server. Remember that your audience may be pulling your publication through an old, slow phone line, so keep the file size down. Also your readers probably only have 8.5x11 paper in their printers, so you may have to reformat items currently on large paper, particularly if the arrangement for printing is not set up in the logical reading order. At present, we use Acrobat and arrange our publications as if we were going to print them, so they use paper efficiently. We've talked about converting to publications to HTML, but it would be a major project to turn complex publications like Swine Day into a coherent set of web pages.
Amy Hartman
--
Amy Hartman
Electronic Document Librarian
Dept. of Ag. Communications
Kansas State University
307 Umberger Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
ahartman@oznet.ksu.edu
JHoneycutt@agctr.lsu.edu10/31/02 11:00AM
About the only thing I know about it is that we are doing more of it. A few of our publications are on-line only, most probably because of departmental budgets. Others are in hard copy and online.
Good luck in your search.
Jane Honeycutt, LSU AgCenter
"Larry A. Etkin" lae@umn.edu10/31/02 02:35PM
Print vs electronic is a apples and oranges comparison. Over the years, I've been through this conversation numerous times. The two approaches address overlapping but not identical audiences, and their products do not always address the same purposes. I'll give you a very brief rundown of some of the issues.
Electronics lends itself to what I characterize as the quick reference audience - I also call them the read and attempt to recall group. People in this group are usually looking for a specific piece of information to address a specific question. The searchability function of "on-line" excels for these uses.
There are, however, many uses for materials "away from the computer" that only print can satisfy. These range from so-called bathroom reading, to field identification manuals for plants or insects. For most audiences, things that require a lot of reading are just easier to review on paper that on scrolling screens. Some will argue that we can just use remote printing to let people in these categories print out their own copies of what they need. I strongly dispute this approach.
Especially with materials that require high quality images, my insect id manual example above, quality of output from personal printers can vary so widely as to make the process totally unreliable. And where color is appropriate, many people still rely on black and white lasers.
There is also the question of presentation. For subjects that are avidly sought, you could chisel the info in granite and people will find a way to get it. However, much of what we produce is aimed at convincing people to change behaviors or take an action. These can range from nutrition info to improve diets, to new ways of doing environmentally friendly production agriculture. The look and feel of materials -- what we traditionally call the "design" -- can be an important element of getting people to pay attention to our message. Electronics often force us to design for the technology rather than the audience, and the wide variations of displays means we often can't control what our materials will look like to the recipient of the material.
And I'll close with the note that we are still far from having universal access to the web's electronic universe. Without print we ignore many audiences, particularly those who find themselves on lower socioeconomic brackets, who, according to many use surveys, are less likely to have electronic access, and who use it less even when it's available.
I used to have a whole file of material on this subject, but its been a while since I've bothered to use it and I may even have gotten rid of the file as "lost cause argument" materials -- people seem to be so enamored by the technology these days that they often don't want to entertain the possibility that old-fashioned ink on paper can at times be a better use of resources. Our situation in Minnesota is a good example of this. The powers that be have decreed an emphasis on the use of technology to deliver programs and information. Our print production group is down five bodies from last year due to resource and personnel shifts (some permanent, some hopefully only temporary reassignments).
By the way, I'm neither a technophobe nor technophile. I was one of the early adoptors of desktop publishing when it came in to existence in 1984. I still use PageMaker and now also InDesign to produce print materials, but I also work with programs like Photoshop and DreamWeaver, and administer a pair of web sites for the MN Ag Experiment Station.
Hope this helps. Get back to me if you'd like me to clarify anything I've written.
LAE
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Larry A. Etkin, Experiment Station Senior Editor
Communication and Educational Technology Services
University of Minnesota Extension Service
1420 Eckles Avenue -- 405 Coffey Hall
Saint Paul MN 55108-6068
E-MAIL: lae@umn.edu PHONE: 612/625-4272 FAX: 612/625-2207
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Thanks, Larry!
I totally agree with you on the either-or question. I should have phrased that better. And your point about different purposes/audiences requiring different formats was good. If you're trying to sell people on a program (marketing), you've got to leave some piece of paper in their hands. They won't look on the Web for it. And, yes, our field guides have to be in print. But our news stories are sent to the media only electronically, and several cash-poor program groups are doing electronic-only educational publications because they just can't afford to print but want to get the info out there.
I would love to see the results of any research on audience use of the Internet. I work with two low-income families (they have HUD housing, food stamps, etc.) through my church, and at one time both families had computers and Internet access (one of them has since lost their computer when they could no longer afford the lease-to-own payments). I was shocked that they had computers - one family had a computer but no car! (Surprising in Texas, where public transportation is really poor and everything's so spaced out.) I think that one day computers will be almost ubiquitous, like TVs and microwaves, but we're certainly not there yet. And then there's the question of whether different groups are using their computers for information/education, or just for instant messaging, e-mail and games.
Thanks for your comments.
Diane
"Brown, Jane W." brownjw@purdue.edu10/31/02 01:11PM
Diane,
I don't know about "trends in electronic vs. print, pros and cons etc., but I do know that we are producing more publications that never go to print - they only live on the Web. In fact, some departments have Web only publications.
Horticulture, Botany, and Entomology don't print publications. Other departments are picking up on what they see others do. It avoids printing costs to the departments by moving the cost of printing to the user. They feel they can update publications easier. The county educators are asking for shorter pubs, so the specialists are trying to accommodate those requests.
It is just as much work for the editors and designers who edit, lay pubs out and PDF them (our secretary posts them), but it sure is less costly - and maybe more importantly, you don't have a lot of pubs getting old in a warehouse.
Jane Brown
Coordinator, Educational Media
Purdue University
Susan B. Roberts robertsb@wsu.edu10/31/02 05:00PM
Diane,
Why either or? Once our publications are designed in PageMaker, typesetting and design can easily send the files electronically to the press AND create a PDF for the Web site. Washington State University Cooperative Extension generally puts online new or revised publications priced at $2.50 or less, and publications up to 20 pages.
We offer other publications online by request, including our annual crop protection guides (16 to 84 pages), often before the print copy is available (timing helps growers apply dormant sprays).
Any reduction in print sales is more than offset by advertising WSU Cooperative Extension as the "go to" Web site, and by service to our clients.
If printing does not fit the budget for the fiscal year, we can publish the bulletin online, posting information in a timely manner and providing credit to the author, while waiting for printing $$.
We're still learning too.
-- Susan
Susan B. Roberts, Publications Specialist
Information Dept. Washington State University
PO Box 646244 Pullman, WA 99164-6244
Phone 509-335-2960 FAX: 509-335-2863 robertsb@wsu.edu
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Thanks, Susan!
We're having exactly the same experiences in Texas that you mentioned. We produce both print and electronic versions of educational publications for the programs that can afford to print. We try to put almost everything on our site, even most of our for-sale-only publications. The Web has been a real boon to cash-strapped program groups that still want to disseminate important information but can't afford to print.
I'm just trying to put together some guidelines for specialists who have some funding but want to know how best to spend it. Some audiences require printed copies (such as low-income groups without Internet access), and some information just doesn't work well as Web-only material (such as marketing pieces for programs). But we do electronic-only news stories to send to the media.
Thanks again for adding to our education!
Diane
"Jan Bay-Petersen" janbay@ms42.hinet.net11/01/02 10:39AM
Dear Diane,
I'm very interested in exactly the same thing. Please, do share the results with us!! I have been cogitating on the problem for some time.
I feel that electronic publishing has a clear advantage for dynamic information, publications are best suited to static information. (This leaves open the question of what information IS static, in this fast-changing world. Extension recommendations to farmers used to change only slowly: an extension manual might be in print for ten or twenty years. Now, extension information seems to be valid for a shorter period of time before being replaced).
I think the target audience, and their access to the Internet and downloading speed is of central importance. Our Center collects and disseminates information for small-scale farmers in Asia. Computers and Internet access are expensive, at least by the standards of small-scale Asian farmers. If we make too much use of the Internet, we are in danger of missing our target audience.
I wrote an (unpublished) paper earlier this year to present to our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on the use of our website. It was concerned with the speed of downloading files, and the probable Internet access speed of our Asian users. In that paper, I pointed out that anyone with access to the Internet and WWW has ipso facto good access to information. Therefore, we should continue publishing on paper, since this reaches those without Internet access who need the information the most.
I also made the point that although the Internet is often referred to an efficient means of disseminating information, because it is cheap (at least from the viewpoint of the Center disseminating the information, though maybe not for the user) and quick, and the information can easily be updated and added to. However, efficiency should not be judged in abstract terms, but to the extent that it helps one meet the stated objective. Our aim is to help small-scale farmers in Asia. If we focus on the Internet , which most of them do not have access to, we become less efficient, not more.
Another point is that use of a website can be quantified, and use of a book cannot, at least not easily. We've tried to track how many people are reading our books, but they are distributed free to libraries, not sold, and, we find it is difficult. Quantifying the number of users of information is very important to funding sources. It is also a good "reality check" on whether the information is useful or not.
Regards, Jan.
Jan Bay-Petersen, Information Officer
Food and Fertilizer Technology Center for the Asian and Pacific Region
5th. Fl., 14 Wenchow St.
Taipei, Taiwan ROC
Tel. (886 2) 2362 6239
Fax. (886 2) 2362 0478
E-mail bay@fftc.agnet.org
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And finally, from Diane Bowen, a few links to articles about this subject on the Web:
What Ebooks Can Do That Print Books Can't
Pamela Jones
The Vocabula Review
January 2000
http://www.vocabula.com/archives/VRJan00.htm
Overview: Online Vs. Print Desktop Publishing
http://writing.colostate.edu/references/processes/onlinepub/index.cfm
This site also has these articles:
History of Print Publishing
History of Electronic (Online) Publishing
Advantages and Disadvantages of Print Publishing
Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Publishing
Advantages and Disadvantages: A Comparison
Reflections on Two Department Publications
Things to Consider
Time and Money
Marketing, Distribution, and Circulation
Content and Quality
Online Resources
Bibliography
Electronic vs. print publishing
http://www.awdsgn.com/HTML/CDROM2.html
Introducing the Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/home.htm
By 2010, more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed
on demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks.
Wired Magazine, May 2002
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/longbets.html?pg=4
Thanks to all who contributed to this discussion!
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