After writing yesterday (in The Economics of Shelfies) about the complementarity between e-books and physical books, and arguing that in general different vehicles for ideas are complements rather than substitutes, I happened to read this last night in Tom Standage’s [amazon_link id=”1408842068″ target=”_blank” ]Writing on the Wall: Social Media – the first 2000 years[/amazon_link]. It’s about the circulation of handwritten poetry among groups of friends and family members in Tudor times:

“The printing press was now a century old, but rather than making obsolete the copying and sharing of documents in manuscript form, print actually increased the importance and prevalence of handwritten text. Printing pushed up demand for paper throughout Europe, encouraging production and making it cheaper (its price fell by 40% during the 15th century) and more widely available.”

The passage goes on to explain the fashion for creating ‘miscellanies’ or commonplace books, large handwritten notebooks, sometimes shared.

[amazon_image id=”1408842068″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years[/amazon_image]

I’m about half way through the book and will review it later this week.

Digital technologies have obviously disrupted the publishing business as they have music and film and will do higher education. The record business was first to experience the shock and in its response offered plentiful examples of what not to do. To my mind, publishing has done much better, both in terms of the incumbents safeguarding their position and in terms of innovation with new formats and new creative options.

This is not to say that everything is ideal. There are new, damaging concentrations of market power in e-book distribution. There are too many celeb biographies and cookbooks due to the winner-takes-all dynamics – dynamics that Anita Elberse’s recent book [amazon_link id=”0571309224″ target=”_blank” ]Blockbusters[/amazon_link] explains.

[amazon_image id=”0571309224″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Blockbusters: Why Big Hits – and Big Risks – are the Future of the Entertainment Business[/amazon_image]

Still, as I’ve said a few times, the balance is positive in terms of innovation, and also number of titles available and book sales. This weekend I read this post about the ‘book porn’ phenomenon, the growth in websites like Bookshelf Porn and Explain Yourshelf, the ‘#shelfie‘ vogue on Twitter. The author of the post explains it in terms of the physical pleasure, turning pages, feeling the heft of the book, seeing the spines on the shelf.

There’s an economic account, too, namely that reading online and reading offline are complements, not substitutes. Many people made the assumption that e-books would substitute for physical books. But the sales numbers don’t bear that out, as physical book sales have not declined much (during an economic downturn) while e-book sales have soared (from a low base).

It’s the same mistake that was made when people predicted the paperless office; in fact, access to more information led to more printing of documents, not less. Or when it was predicted that telephones, or social media, would reduce face-to-face contact, when all the evidence is that they increase it (see Ed Glaeser on this).

Generally, forms of communication and vehicles for ideas are complements, not substitutes.