I started writing an eBook. Then I read this. What do I do now?
The Economist had published a piece on the enduring value of paper. Studies showed that people assign a greater value to physical products than their digital equivalents. Shoppers are willing to pay more for books and films they can hold than ones they can only download. Consumers who receive paper catalogues alongside emails spend more than those who receive only digital marketing. In social situations, appearing ready to take notes with old-fashioned pen and paper makes those around us more comfortable with no visible social network to compete with a one-to-one conversation.
I was partway through writing a digital publication. And the evidence seemed to be pointing firmly in the other direction.
What the research shows #
The Economist piece has since been reinforced by a substantial body of research. Studies suggest that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books than with eReaders, and that physical books help readers absorb and recall content more effectively. Turning pages creates an index in the brain, mapping what we read visually to a particular location on a physical page. A University of Valencia meta-analysis involving over 450,000 participants confirmed this finding at scale. Geediting
Psychologists have also identified what they call the endowment effect; the well-documented tendency for people to value something more highly once they feel a sense of ownership over it. Physical book lovers develop deeper emotional connections to their possessions, viewing them as extensions of their identity, and this effect is particularly strong with physical books. The coffee stain on page 47, the boarding pass used as a bookmark, the margin notes from a decade ago; these are not just books. They are artefacts. uspto
And yet. The research on paper’s advantages was written about a medium that had existed for centuries. The eBook was still relatively new. Its advantages were of a different kind entirely and those advantages were ones that a small, independent creator could genuinely use.
Where technology has the advantage #
I sat with the research and then I listed the other side of the argument.
Portability. A mobile device weighs the same whether it contains one book or a thousand. Ease of updating. Cloud-based content can be revised and republished at any time, keeping information current without reprinting costs or lead times. Shareability. Digital content travels in ways that physical products cannot. Accessibility. Font sizes, screen brightness, and display preferences can all be adjusted to suit the reader’s environment and needs. Interactivity. Links, embedded resources, and additional content can be woven into the reading experience in ways that paper cannot accommodate. Environmental footprint. No printing, no transportation, no warehousing.
And then the consideration that mattered most for someone at the start of a publishing journey: a digital product can be conceived, written, and live in the hands of readers within hours. No printer, no distributor, no minimum print run, no warehouse.
The question that resolved it #
The Economist research was compelling. But it was measuring something slightly different from what I was trying to do.
The studies on paper’s comprehension advantages were largely conducted on long-form reading: novels, academic texts, dense non-fiction. What I was writing was not that. I was writing small, focused, practical guides for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. The kind of content that gets read on a train, at a desk between meetings, or on a laptop during a quiet hour. The kind of content where portability, accessibility, and ease of purchase matter enormously.
The question, it turned out, was not “paper or digital?” The question was “what format serves this reader, for this content, in this context?”
I would like my digital publications to be useful to people. If I focus on that: on genuine usefulness to a specific reader in a specific situation, the format question largely answers itself.
Where the journey arrived #
That piece in The Economist was read near the start of what has become a growing publishing ecosystem: a Gumroad store with several guides, a Medium archive with a hundred articles, and this Hub as the central resource for everything in between.
Nothing is wasted when we write. The post that didn’t land, the paragraph that got cut, the idea that seemed too small to publish; none of it is lost. It becomes the base for what comes next. The bit-by-bit philosophy that runs through everything here applies to publishing as much as it applies to lead generation.
The eBook got written. And then another one did. And then another.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu.
Onward and upward.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
