In an interview recorded last month at Digital Book World on the morning before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, Evan Schnittman tells Chris Kenneally that even in a world dominated by bits and bytes, “Print is not going away. Print is a different metaphor, it’s a different technology, but it’s still a very, very, very high demand technology. What we’re trying to figure out is whether there are [business] futures that involve print and digital? Or will it be just print? Just digital?”
All that’s certain for publishers and authors in 2010, Schnittman observes, is uncertainty. “I think the seas are brisk and perhaps even stormy,” says the Oxford University Press VP of Global Business Development, “but we’re not heading into iceberg territory. We’re heading into unchartered waters.”