As we all know, the publishing industry is currently experiencing major upheaval as  it struggles to cope with the fallout of the battle between digital and print. Publishers are being forced to trial new revenue models as they battle to survive and the media world is enthusiastically debating how this will all pan out and which is the right horse to back.

There are commonly two main schools of thought.

The first is that print media as we know it will die as it’s swallowed up by digital formats. The new consumer will be so indoctrinated into digital media during their formative years that they will not demand printed media in the future.

The second is that it’s possible for digital and print to co-exist as separate formats on a long term basis. After all, many consumers love the touch, feel and smell of the printed page, something that an iPad or Kindle can’t provide.

It wasn’t until this week that I noticed there could be another possible outcome – digital and print media could come together to provide a unique, integrated format. A great example of which is the PhoneBook.

This format takes the traditional story book and makes it interactive through the use of an iPhone. The book becomes peripheral to the main story with the phone sliding into it to create a richer, interactive experience for the reader.

This example is obviously targeted at kids and parents, but this broad concept can also be applied to other audiences. Out of the Box targets users who have difficulty learning how to use a new handset. This would be of particular use to older audiences used to learning about new products from an analogue instruction manual and who don’t have the younger user’s mindset of  ‘play with it and see what happens’.

Could formats like PhoneBook also support a new revenue stream for the publishing industry with users first purchasing a book peripheral and then downloading an app? This seems unlikely and at present, it seems this particular example is only available in the Japanese market, but according to their website, demand does seem to be quite high.

Having downloaded the app for the ‘Ride! Ride’ book, it is quite appealing, but I’m not sure it’ll take off as a format. I fall into the camp that print media is living on borrowed time given the digital indoctrination of this and future generations.

There does seem to be at least some legs in the integration of these two worlds at least in the short-term though and having looked into this general premise,  it seems there’s even a name for it, PaperComp, or ‘paper computing’ where the worlds of digital and print literally collide.