Over the last few months I've made some decisions in post at TZ on the basis that they will simplify my working processes while not diminishing my ability to do my job the best I can. 

First, at the start of 2013 I decided to stop using a paper notepad for note making and organising my working week. Every meeting I go into I take only my phone with me. I get the occasional odd look, but I make sure I tell people at the beginning of each meeting that that is what I'm doing so they know I'm not playing Angry Birds Star Wars edition. I'm surprised at how many of my colleagues still use paper, considering we are a digital publisher, but at the end of the day you capture information in the way that best embeds it in your mind, don’t you? Everyone has the right method for them and I know I still sometimes feel a bit weird about using a phone for note taking. But after working as a paralegal assistant a few years ago, my shock at the volume of paper used on a daily basis has carried over into every job I’ve done since.

The other thing I've recently done is change the TrainingZone book club to digital only: just ebooks and PDFs. This is advantageous for a few reasons: It saves space, it saves paper, It’s cheaper, to name a few, but however many pros you can list, there is the nagging feeling for those still entrenched in the Marshall McLuhan idea of the ‘medium is the message’ that’s it’s not quite the same. As cultural analysts have surmised over the last however long, publishing is currently undergoing the changes that music went through a decade or so ago. Print institutions are going to the wall every day. For those who have a strong online proposition, many still haven’t quite got the mix quite right. But for me, ebook or paper, the words are still there in front of you. The idea can still be delivered, the picture still painted in your mind’s eye. 

I started DJing in my late teens and still do today. I haven’t bought a vinyl record for seven years. Has my passion for music waned? No. If anything it’s got stronger as music is cheaper and so my collection and interests have diversified. But it took the music industry a long long time to work out a business model that gave artists, labels and consumers a fairer deal, and one thing that has dwindled is the power of the major labels as artists go out on their own through sites such as Bandcamp. We see this happening in publishing with the rise of self-publishing sites like Lulu and Leanpub.

There are several major creases to iron out in the ebook process though. Recently I was contacted by a PR company about a business book by a popular entrepreneur that was about to be published. I asked if I could have a digital copy of the book for our book club, figuring that they might have proof pdfs to send out to people. The PR said she’d check. After a few days I was told I’d have to sign up to an ebook site called Net Galley, who probably had the digital distribution deal with the physical publishers. I signed up. I quite wanted this book and thought it was worth the effort. After a few more days I checked back and the title I was after was still not showing on my download list. I was waiting for ‘authorisation’. When I finally got authorisation I went through the next few steps only to be told that I needed an adobe ID to finally download the book. I don’t have one of those and I really can’t be bothered to get one just for downloading one book. Apparently the PR company didn’t have any PDFs they could give out because of DRM protection. This is ludicrous, yet also understandable. Ever given a paper book that you bought to someone else to read?  Of course you have. So here I am, bookless, stubbornly refusing to return to the world of paper.