Are Books Really Critical Or Just On A Steep Decline?
There have been some great discussions on LinkedIn since I started out with this question:
“The attention span declines. Many have stopped reading books, longer blog posts don’t get much traffic while Twitter-traffic has exploded. What is your view on this?”
In the Leadership Think Tank group, we have had a lively discussion and Deborah Nixon posted this response earlier today:
“Books are critical. Blog posts and twitter info cannot be confirmed. Complex issues cannot be explored through blogs. Deep and thorough arguments take more time than a blog post. I worry about a future where people think twitter and blogs represents knowledge. They are good as intro to a deeper discussion but can’t replace the time and content a deep discussion requires.”
I wonder. Are books really critical? What if I read not just one blog post but many and a couple of articles as well on the given topic?
I would argue this can give me the depth of knowledge implied in reading a book and most likely also give me different perspectives that can help me better shape my own view on the given topic.
Harvard Business Review is a good example on this. I have read great articles that delivers a lot of substance over 10-15 pages. I have often been disappointed when I then read a book on the topic from the same authors as it was often too long and not to the point.
I enjoy reading a good book and I also plan to publish many more books myself. The next one will be The Open Innovation Revolution published by Wiley in May 2010. But I am not sure books are that critical anymore. What is your view on this?
Books are critical – the issue of credibility, proof of content and authorship is a key part of that. But books are a sensual experience – they smell, they have texture and other tactile sensations, obviously visual…the smell of an old book, the smell of a new book – all these subtly (or not so subtly) affect the ‘reading’ experience. Perhaps it will depend on the genre, but maybe not. You’re right about reading a great HBR article and then the book drags on – but that’s due to not enough content to fill a book but making it into a book vs. ‘books’ in general (i hope!).
Perhaps this is generational (and I’m not even a baby boomer) but I wouldn’t want to give up the experience of reading War and Peace in paper vs. online or a tweet or blog about it – the source is very important.
Hi Stefan!
A good book shape my perception of the truth at least during some time and motivates me to learn more about the subject proposed in the book.
I know it is the single opinion of the autor and I search for the contraditory to be awere from reality.
Posts in blogs allowed me to see many perspectives (different bakgrounds) on the same subject and different opinions about the way we should read the authors.
Combine books and blogs is the best way to be critical,and we often do that, and it will be the same way with your next book.
I love books and like nothing better than to curl up with a good book. However, I also find that blogs and other articles are interesting and thought provoking; after all that is why I read-to provoke thought. I like to read something that can take me in a different direction, that can remind me that there are many valid opinions, ideas, etc. out there that are worth pondering. Some will enrich my life, some will amuse me, some will help me help someone else. If I can read it, I might like it or I might hate it, but it makes me think. But books will always remain something that I want to hold onto.
The object is not critical, the concept is. I think mind needs a frame to retain knowledge. Let say you have to really learn something like Cardiology or Marketing. A book or a similar conceptual object will be your base, your frame, to which you’ll later link additionnal pieces. I don’t think one can learn a complete subject fro small pieces. You need a map, a reference. Books – or similar concepts – are knowledge bricks
Each has its place. The blog can provoke, can inspire thinking, can generate a reaction, an immediate identification or not. The article, if well written, can deliver that initial detail on a specific subject but a book has a very different part to play in building our knowledge. A book builds the argument, builds a story by giving it a broader view and weight that delivers a greater substance.
The issue is one of attention span and the ‘frustration’ with a book is you are unlikely to finish it off in one sitting. Secondly many business books being written today have one great idea and ‘pad’ this out for 200 pages. This is when a book is a poor and an article would have been far better but we come to the next point- the need today for everyone wanting to write a book, seen today as an extra qualification, alongside the doctorate or higher degree’s.
So I would argue we are lowering the quality of a book in far to many cases to meet a set of changing ‘demands’.
I value books in three ways, as a deeper source of reference, as a place to go and ‘dip into’ when I want to refer back and thirdly I have found I am increasingly reading business books not from cover to cover, but by being selective. This of course depends on how the book is constructued to achieve this.
Do they have a place, yes more than taking up valuable shelf space but as essential to digging that little bit more deeply into the subject that an article cannot achieve and certainly where a blog would struggle
I appreciate your insightful comments. I also think books still have a role to play although it is declining.
@Paul, I have begun reading business books the same way you describe. Perhaps this is both due to the attention span and that not very many business books are worth reading from page to page.
Some — but not all — books are critical. As Jb blanc mentions, only a book can present a strong framework for a complex topic. The critical, or seminal, books are the ones that present the rest of the iceberg, only the tip of which is exposed in the blog or article.
Some commenters complain about books being too long — but there are two ways to read a book — to get the gist (in which case most books ARE too long), or to learn enough to apply yourself (in which case most books ARE woefully inadequate). My partners and I run Blue Ocean Strategy workshops — despite the readability of this book, the gap between the written book and useful practice is wide.
By contrast blogs (and HBR articles) are easy to consume, and hopefully spark critical thinking and/or bring a different perspective, but do not provide a functional framework for applying the concept at hand, or even clear terminology. In the case of HBR articles, whose purpose is often branding for HBS or lead generation for the author’s upcoming book or consulting practice, the best they can do is identify a technique that others have used and that might appear promising, without necessarily providing enough detail to “do it yourself”. They are teasers at best.
Reading many blogs does not equal reading a book — at least a critical book. Blogs about non-critical books basically expose the fact there is really nothing new there.
As a book-aholic and as someone who has written a half dozen business books, I hope that books are and always will be essential. However, I do agree with the sentiments expressed here about how many books are “padded” to fill out the required number of pages. I have dealt with publishers who demand 60,000 words on a topic regardless of whether the topic requires that or not. I have never once had an acquisitions editor begin a conversation by asking how many words my co-author and I think we need to cover a topic thoroughly. Publishers want to be able to charge a certain price which in their minds translates to a certain number of pages. Many books, and therefore their readers, suffer because of this. I think this is self-defeating for the publishing industry in the long run because it turns people off to books.
Like several others who have commented here, I have always cherished the “experience” of a book. But this weekend, I read my first book on a Kindle and absolutely LOVED that experience, too. It was a novel and a real page turner (“The Help – two thumbs way up), but I am now anxious to see what it will be like to go back to an actual book.
As a short follow-up comment — this article/60,000 word book dichotomy is obviously an artifical one set by publishers. A terrific intermediate format is the “pamphlet”, such as “Good to Greate and the Social Sectors” by Jim Collins. Essentially an article reprint — but in handy-dandy perfect-bound book form. Give me that format any day — and its probably just as profitable for the publisher as the 200pp hardcover full of pulp non-fiction.
Books are an excellent consolidation of literature and experience, if the author does it really well. In addition, books provide a source of incrementally developed/created knowledge, which I guess will not be available on the blogs. Books are the first port of call when somebody wants to learn something new; blogs might confuse a novice. Blogs can be a place where people who are already conversant with ideas and thoughts could learn more – enhance their knowledge base and contribute to benefit others as well.
Book to keep, or blog to perhaps search for if you want to review based on new information you’ve discovered? Both have their role, as people have pointed out in response to this question posed at a critical juncture.
I see it as similar to whether you’ll listen to a piece of music once on the radio, that was a nice tune, let’s move on, or something you’d download and keep to listen to many times. Blogs, like music from a street musician, are contemporary but fleeting interpretations. Books and recorded music have a sustained lifetime (classics) and can be revisited anytime. All can be aligned with your interests or 180 degrees opposed, high or low quality. And your interests can be in passing, for a short time frame and forgotten, replaced by more contemporary interests next week, month or year, or sustained or complex, not satisfied by someone’s short blog ruminating on today’s new product announcement.
I’ll not seek out a blog to help my daughters with a physics or calculus problem, I’ll head to my library of college textbooks I’ve preserved along with classic technical or theoretical texts and manuals. I will seek out a blog for an early report of what’s coming out in the next release of a new product.
One aspect of books that has not been mentioned that is critical to me is the fact that it is very easy to access a volume some time after you have read it- say, six months from now you need to refresh your memory about some fact, event, theory, or whatever- it the volume is not in your collection, it can generally be accessed quite readily through a public library (even if the volume is not in the local library’s stack, they can usually borrow a copy from another library). Try to relocate a critical blog entry six months from now…It probably still exists, and if you recognized the significance of the information at the time you encountered it, then you may have a copy somewhere in your files. If, on the other hand, you have to search the web for the content, even when you remember the author, the subject and the site where it was encountered, you may still find it a challenge to locate the specific content that you seek. Stefan- how many of your blogs that you wrote six months or a year ago are still accessible on line, complete with comments? Although I have no use personally for Twitter, I suspect the life expectancy of your typical twit is even shorter than that of the typical blog.
One also has an issue with the volatility of on-line information. For example, the original UN climate study included some critical information on paleoclimate that was eliminated in subsequent releases of the report. Those who have not thought to retain a copy of the original for comparison to the latest release may miss this subtle change. Wikipedia and other sources are also subject to change with time- both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on who is doing the modification and what motivates the modification…
Books give us continuity, which is not always possible with on-line sources…
Charlie, the access to books – whether in a printed or digital version – is definitely an advantage over blogs. You’re right that we might loose a lot of content on this account.
BTW: All my blog posts are still online – with comments
I still use books (work context) to learn or review fundamentals…the last few I bought were on materials science for learning and a review of the periodic table of elements and critical usage/applications. Some of the books had online chapters so it was a mix of online and written textbooks. Just today, I was looking for a good tutorial book on biocompatible materials and applications.
Having that fundamental knowledge to revisit when needed will make a blog discussion much more accurate and meaningful.
I used books to learn or review fundamentals…the last few I bought were on materials science for learning and a review of the periodic table of elements and critical usage/applications. Some of the books had online chapters so it was a mix of online and written textbooks. Just today, I was looking for a good tutorial book on biocompatible materials and applications.
Having that fundamental knowledge to revisit when needed will make a blog discussion much more accurate and meaningful.
Books are as critical as we make them to be, depending on the nature of the need; be it used as a reference, confirmation of a claim, provocation of certain thoughts and proclamations.
Blogs are as critical as our needs shape them to be. This is the most modern form of Dialectics but different in the case that they aim not to persuade others to conform to our way of thinking but stating our views on certain subject matters, in this regard; the importance of one medium compared to the other.
One is interested to see how will we argue the importance of our existing mediums (books & blogs) with the advent of new technologies in 50 years down the line.
Here is my take
Book = A depth of knowledge on a particular subject or topic,
Dissertation = A depth of knowledge on a particular sub-topic,
Academic articles = A deep look at a very particular sub-topic
White paper = A light or broad look at a particular sub-topic or topic
Blog post = A very brief commentary on a topic
Tweet= A link to any of the above, otherwise it is useless
Books alone will not create a fully accurate understanding on a particular topic, for example, you could read all of the books on “Strategy” you can find, but if you are not familiar with the Academic articles on that topic, you will have a fully accurate understanding of that topic.
Why?
Well because fields evolve and change, each book presents their own perspective, and discussing all the articles and research on a particular topic is often boring and makes a book read like a dissertation, yet that is what is needed for a comprehensive understanding of that topic from a single book.
Now, there is a difference between an operational knowledge of a topic and a fully accurate understanding of that topic.
Often I would give it the 20/80 rule, if you read 20% of the top literature on that subject you will have 80% of the knowledge needed to operate.
However, as a thought leader I am requires to have a fully accurate understanding of the topics I write on and this requires me to have read 80% to 90% of the literature on the particular subject.
Dr. Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management from Purdue University