Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions

Finally, a paper company is fighting back against the ridiculous notion that electronic books are greener than printed books.

International Paper recently released “Are Pixels Greener Than Paper”, which compares the environmental profile of ink-on-paper publications (dead tree editions) to digital publications (what I call “dead dinosaur editions” because of the fossil fuels and petrochemicals they consume). It has good points backed by in-depth research, but we need to translate and reformat the PR-speak into something more understandable to the general public.

With The Wall Street Journal's bogus claim yesterday that "e-textbooks are environmentally friendly", it's more important than ever to take a realistic look at e-books. Therefore, Dead Tree Edition offers this color-coded "tale of the tape" (as they say in boxing circles) comparing Dead Dinosaur Editions with Dead Tree Editions on key attributes, with quotations from the IP brochure:

• Raw Materials:Paper is a renewable resource. The North American “paper and forest products industry replenishes more than it takes and ensures the sustainability of our forests by planting 1.7 million trees every single day, more than three times what is harvested.” But as for dead dinosaur editions, “making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals, including gold, silver and palladium, as well as the extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents.” No one is planting dead dinosaurs into the ground to make more oil for the petrochemicals that digital devices consume.
  
  
• Energy/Carbon Footprint: “Sixty percent of the energy used to make paper in the U.S. comes from carbon-neutral renewable resources and is produced on site at mills.” “The electronics industry uses more than 90 percent fossil fuels purchased off the grid."
  
  
• Recycling:“In the U.S., nearly 60 percent of all paper is recycled, recovered and reused to make new paper products.” Electronic devices have a recycling rate of only 18%.
  
  
• User Editing: The Journal article says most students prefer dead-tree textbooks to dead-dinosaur textbooks, partly because they can't highlight important passages or write notes in e-textbooks.
  
  
• Reliability: Digital editions are often read on machines running Windows or Vista. 'Nuf said. Dead-tree editions never crash, get infected with viruses, receive spam, or serve pop-up ads.
  
  
• Durability: Ever dropped a laptop? Not pretty.
  
  
• Lifespan: I read a 150-year-old book the other day and have 75-year-old copies of National Geographic, but my 15-year-old WordPerfect for DOS files are either unreadable or FUBAR. How many of today’s laptops, e-book readers, and iPhones will still be in use five years from now?
  
  
• Waste: “The lifespan of a computer is short, and electronics have become the fastest growing waste stream in the world.” Much of that waste is toxic. Paper is reusable, recyclable, and biodegradable.
  
  
• Personal Hygiene: Speaking of waste, which would you rather read while sitting on the toilet, a magazine or a Kindle? And remember that, before they had toilet paper, our ancestors had the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Ever tried to wipe your bottom with a Blackberry?
  

Quebecor World Update: Maybe Tomorrow

News Flash: Quebecor World has apparently worked out a deal with some of its lenders and goes back to U.S. bankruptcy court at 3:30 EDT tomorrow (July 16) for a hearing on an amended reorganization plan.

Here's a link to the agenda and QW's motion on its amended plan. It's not clear whether all of the objections to Quebecor World's reorganization plan can be resolved at tomorrow's hearing.

In turning down one of three takeover offers from rival printer R.R. Donnelley last month, Quebecor World said it could have difficulty continuing to operate if it doesn't exit bankruptcy protection by July 21. That's when its debtor-in-possession financing runs out.

Will Postal Rates Decrease Next Year?

The many people who spent years crafting and redrafting the postal-reform law and its accompanying regulations overlooked a key issue -- deflation.

The 2006 law caps annual rate increases for most classes of postage at the rate of inflation, as measured by changes in the Consumer Price Index. The Postal Regulatory Commission developed regulations interpreting how to apply the CPI calculations in various circumstances. Except one: When there has been deflation rather than inflation.

"The Commission's rules are designed for price adjustment proposals during periods of inflation," the commissioners noted in a decision earlier this month.

It's almost certain, however, that the average monthly CPI for this year will be lower than the 2008 average. The CPI would have to increase at an annualized rate of more than 4.7% for the rest of the year for the U.S. Postal Service to have a rate cap above zero next year. The number for June was higher than that because of rising energy prices. But with that mini-bubble bursting and the recession continuing, changes in CPI are likely to be minimal or even negative the rest of the year.

Consider some of the questions that will arise if, for example, an inflation rate of about 2% for the rest of the year results in the average CPI for 2009 being 0.5% lower than in 2008:

• Would USPS have to decrease prices next May for First Class, Standard, Periodicals and other "market-dominant" classes by at least 0.5% (less any unused rate authority from this year)? The Postal Service says no because the law just limits the size of postage increases without referring to mandatory decreases.
• Could the Postal Service increase some rates next May and offset those with decreases in other rates of the same class? The answer is probably yes. The more difficult question is whether average rates in each class would have to be 0.5% lower or merely the same as today.
• If the CPI rises by 4% in 2010, would May 2011 rates be capped at 4% or at 3.5%? Logic says if there is no rate change next year that the 2011 price cap would be the difference between 2008 and 2010 CPI, about 3.5% in this scenario. But the PRC's price-cap methodology calls for comparing one year's CPI with the immediately preceding year's CPI (that is, 2010 to 2009), which would yield a price cap of about 4%.
  

So how should mailers budget for postage rates next year? Definitely do not count on a decrease: Nothing in the law or regulations would require that. My guess is that the Postal Service will be allowed to adjust rates as long as the average for each class does not increase.

For Periodicals, I would assume that relatively light publications will pay slightly higher postage rates next May, just as their increases were a couple of percentage points above the theoretical Periodicals price cap of 3.97% this year. More specifically, I would expect the basic carrier-route rate to increase while the pound rates decrease, as happened this year.

USPS justified the carrier-route increase by pointing to the decreasing value of carrier-route bundles from the Flats Sequencing System roll-out. Cynics cite another FSS-related reason: Postal officials have promised that efficiently packaged, dropshipped FSS copies will cost less when FSS-specific rates are introduced (reportedly in 2011) than dropshipped carrier-route copies do. Moving the goalposts – that is, increasing carrier-route piece rates – will make it easier for the Postal Service to reach that goal.

Twitter vs. RSS: So Much for Superior Technology

I’m coming to the conclusion that RSS is the Betamax of the Web and Twitter the VHS.

Some of you old-timers will remember the infancy of VCRs, when Betamax and VHS were the two competing and incompatible formats. Many techies concluded that Betamax was the superior technology, but within a few years VHS's superior marketing made it the format of choice.

Although I still don’t like Twitter (as I made clear in my 140-character poem about why so many Twitterers quit), I have signed up for it because it seems to be the way many people keep up with favorite Web sites.

Don’t expect me to tweet every time I go to the bathroom or watch a TV show. (Note: Because D. Eadward Tree is a mythical person, he does not engage in such mundane and disgusting activities.)

I plan to use it mainly to notify followers of newly posted articles – and occasionally to seek information and advice.
But, frankly, I don’t see any reason to use Twitter rather than RSS to keep track of favorite Web sites.

It’s much easier to glance at a program like Google Reader to get a summary of updates at favorite Web sites than to scroll through a bunch of tweets and then click on the ones that you hope are relevant.Like VHS before it, however, Twitter is capturing the public’s attention despite the existence of a superior technology.

Twitter has the cute little bird logo that goes with its name, while RSS's logo is -- what the hell is that? Twitter is all over the mainstream media, recently making the cover of Time magazine and no doubt the magazine’s leading candidate for Bird of the Year. But the glitterati have decided that RSS is not worth discussing.

That’s such a shame, even for an old print dinosaur like me who didn’t know his RSS from a hole in the ground until a few months ago. Give it a try: Go to Google.com/Reader and click "Create an account" on the right to open a free account.

After you sign in, click the "Add a subscription" button on the upper left, then enter this: http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Now whenever you open Google Reader, you’ll get capsule views of Dead Tree Edition’s latest posts. But if you’d rather follow me via Twitter, here you go: http://twitter.com/DeadTreeEdition.