On December 25th, 2009, something quite remarkable happened at Amazon.com
For the first time in Amazon’s history, the sale of e-books overtook the sale of physical books. And on that specific day the paper book downslide officially began. The Kindle officially put the early set of nails in the coffin. What the Kindle didn’t complete, Apple’s iPad (and other book readers) will be sure to finish off.
But surely books won’t die.
The death of books have been exaggerated before and hey, they’re still around. Surely books aren’t going to die in a hurry.
Books won’t die; the paper book will die.
Less than ten years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to load up your car with dozens of CDs as you went on a trip. It wasn’t uncommon to have a stack of CDs in your lounge. Where are those CDs now? They’re all nicely ripped and sitting in your iPod, iPhone or at the very least on your computer. Only a dinosaur carries CDs around these days.
That dinosaur story applies perfectly to books
So you’re headed on vacation, and you pick up a few books to read. You want to beef up on a specific topic? Again, you pick up a few books from the store or from the library. In a few years from now, that idea of lugging around books will seem kinda quaint.
Why would you want to have dozens of books stacked around taking up space, when you can have them all on your Kindle or your iPad? Sounds too sci-fi? Well the librarians don’t think so. Across the planet, libraries have latched onto the digital media. One of the early libraries to lend out Kindles and Sony Readers was North Carolina State University Library. And the list of libraries giving out Kindles, Sony Readers and e-book readers continues to grow (here’s a partial list).
If this revolution to digital media seems unreal, Apple just wait till devices like the iPad catch on.
Kindles set out to allow you to download books or newspapers from anywhere. This means you could read the New York Times or just about any book in the Kindle store without having any access to a wireless hotspot or internet connection. However in order to keep this download small, all the fancy colour and graphics were stripped out of the Kindle display. This meant of course that you were largely restricted to text in black and white.
Apple’s iPad has no such restriction
Not only will the iPad work via 3G, but it will also easily work through wireless. Assuming Apple allows all of the apps to work on the iPad (as it does on the iPhone) what you now have is the ability to experience the best of both worlds. If you choose you can simply download the Kindle app onto your iPad and read a book (in a nice big font and size). If you choose to ignore the black and white, you may be able to download the book in full colour (Yes, publishers are already queuing up to have their books on the iPad). As if that were not dramatic enough, you’d be able to do it wirelessly through a choice of 3G or indeed over your wireless hotspot.
Digital books have existed for a while, but there’s always been a problem
You could indeed take your PDF and try and read on a flight. Or you could download a magazine from Zinio.com and read it in bed. But you always had to contend with a laptop at the very least. And I don’t know about you, but a computer doesn’t exactly come close to the happiness you get when reading a book. On a Kindle or iPad that frustration goes away. Now instead of lugging a computer to bed, I can prop up my iPad and voila—I have the very same, if not an enhanced experience.
Enhanced? How could it be enhanced?
Already you can bookmark pages on a Kindle. That should be standard on a tablet device of the future. Underlining, scribbling on the book, doodling etc., is just a matter of time. But that’s just the reading experience. What really kills the paper book is the storage experience. I can now store whatever I want in a tiny little device. And find the darned thing when I want to find it (As it is, I already buy books and store them on my iPhone Kindle app, just for reference purposes). With the iPad and future devices, this storage and convenience will become standard fare.
This news isn’t for the sentimental folks
Most of us who are sentimental about paper and books will resist even the thought of the ‘death’ of paper books. This column isn’t for the sentimentalists. It’s about business and how it will affect your business. If you’re an author, or if your company puts out documentation, it’s a matter of time before you will need to put your information in an ePub (e-publishing) format. And no, it’s not even PDF, though PDF may well do for the short term. You may be so in love with the paper book that you may see information like this as being overly sensational. And again you’re missing the point. The point is simply this:
1) Your business needs to understand the e-book format.
2) It needs to be ready to publish in the ePub format.
3) It may well turn out that you can continue to print a paper book as a collector’s item or a special bonus, but the paper book will simply become unfeasible in the long run no matter how sentimental you feel about it.
The paper book will fade away.
Film in cameras faded away. CDs faded away. Horse and carts faded away. And paper books will have it’s own ride into the sunset—still around—but niche and largely marginalized.
You may not agree with this assessment. But you have little choice in how history unfolds.
And Christmas Day of 2009 changed history forever.
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Here’s a side story as well that may be of interest.
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/25/is-jobs-looking-to-overhaul-education-with-the-tablet/
too bad you didn’t put my post up Sean. . ..
Which post was that, Robert?
I agree with all you say and I’m happy that the truth about the publishing industry comes to light. It’s not dying, it’s mutating.
I’m a new author/illustrator and I’m currently preparing a book which content is completed with the collaboration of my blog readers. I’m giving away the ebook for free. My readers/fans will be also able to purchase a limited customized and hand signed paper version.
I believe that the furute of the publishing is in the use of the Internet and digital media to reach a wider audience and sell the product in a unexpensive way.
Then, for a minority who are fans and still love paper books, we can offer alternative customized paper version with bonus material.
We’ll see what comes out of this experience in a few months but so far you can follow up the making of my book, step by step, at my blog.
The problem is that it is not only a technical question. It is a copyright question. Publishers and authors won’t be able to protect their intellectual property. See the example of music industry, or the torrent sites with thousands of e-books. You can find e. g. thousands of computer books in torrent sites, and download in a minute. Authors and publishers won’t be so enthusiastic if amazon or Apple won’t be able to prohibit the illegal downloads. If something is protected by a software, it is not protected. See e. g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8428126.stm
Publishers and authors have already lost that battle a while ago. If you walk through the streets of India or China, for instance, you’ll find the books (paper books) for as little as 30 cents. It’s not that Indians and Chinese (and the rest of the world) don’t buy books in stores. They do. But the problem of copyright has already been in trouble for well over 25 years.
The point is that whether an author likes it or not, the e-book will exist. It has to exist because it doesn’t make sense not to exist. The torrents will also exist, and that’s just part of life.
There will always be buyers and there will always be pirates.
I hate virtual books. I wish The Brain Audit came via the mail.
I end up printing anything I read, but I will not be printing
out 100+ pages…. ever.
I think we have a little while before physical books are gone. At least I hope so.
Books are not trendy so can’t be compared to such things as CD or cameras and such.
Uh, Paul, The Brain Audit has been printed. Paperback, 157 pages….. http://brainaudit.com/blog/
I like electronic books for one time reads although paper books feel easier on my eyes.
For a book to read over and over and savor, nothing beats a paper book.
And for those of us who have seven or eight books going at once, there is a visual joy in seeing all those treasures laid out before us.
No one would be sad for CDs to go away; many would be sad for paper books to disappear.
The attachment to the printed book is not merely sentimental. Book lovers do not simply love reading. They love BOOKS!. There is the not small matter of appreciation of beauty – texture, fine typography etc. Most of the books I BUY are very beautiful … art and photography books for example. These survive reasonably well in a high resolution PDF on a large monitor, but on a tablet or phone in Kindle or ePub format? There’s no comparison.
Ebooks, from my point of view, are fine for information books, and perhaps text-only books like novels (though I’ve never read a novel onscreen, and have no desire to).
I also have absolutely no desire to have thousands of books on a portable device … too much choice results merely in indecision.
I agree that ebooks are changing the face of the publishing industry. This is both a good and a bad thing. I have collected heaps of ebooks, but have read only a fraction of them, and once I’ve filed them away I forget they are there. You can’t ‘search’ for something you’ve forgotten about! (I’ve read in a number of places that it’s estimated less than 10% of the books downloaded are read.)
Good for the self-publisher, yes. I am no fan of the publishing houses. Good for the reader? Maybe. But we are already seeing a proliferation of absolute rubbish … badly written, badly edited (if at all), and badly formatted (much of the typography is appalling). Anyone can write a book, right? Yes, but writing (and producing) a GOOD book requires specialist skills. We are being flooded with quantity; finding the quality will be a challenge.
The format is another issue. A well-designed PDF, specifically formatted for online reading is one thing … but thus far I have found other formats a trial to read. The epub books I’ve encountered are ghastly. (If anyone can direct me to well-designed epub books, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know.)
A year ago, at a Writers’ Festival, I attended a seminar on the future of the book. The presenter believed that the whole nature of the book would change (eg, becoming an interactive experience). I believe he is right, and I find this quite exciting. He also suggested that there would be a growth in demand for beautiful books, and bookshops would need to become like art galleries, displaying these books to good advantage.
An example: The Box, by the Terma Collective. http://www.lostborderspress.com/books/detail.cfm?book_id=14
I recently acquired one of these, and the description on the website does not do it justice. Truly a ‘thing of beauty and a joy forever’.
The printed book may well become a thing of the past, but the world will be a poorer place.
There is one more thing. When you “buy” an e-book to read in your Kindl or iPad, do you actually download a copy of it that is yours? The way I understand it, Apple or Yahoo could any time erased it if they chose for any reason
It also opens up the possibility to change the content of a book without anybody knowing. Facts could be changed in all books from one day to the next.
I’m not sure how they could do that. Logically you’re backing up stuff, so even if they updated a copy, you could restore it from elsewhere.
But anyway, that’s hardly the point here. The point is that this is the way things are going to be whether we like it or not.
The link to the Amazon data is at:
http://www.macworld.com/article/145334/2009/12/amazon_ebooksales.html
Lord, how I hope you are wrong. Tragically however, I suspect you are right. What a sad day…
When a Kindle, iPad, et al is the shape, smell, feel, and has hundreds of flexible, paperlike screens (pages) that one can turn and flip back & forth, like a book, then I will consider purchasing one and download e-books onto it.
Until then, should your scenario come to pass, I will continue to buy reams and reams of paper and ink cartridges, and print out my reading materials. Having grown up in the computer age, I understand all to well, that nothing is truly backed up until it is printed out.
In the future Kindle and iPad will be as old fashioned as a computer from the ’80s. A more booklike object the e-paper will be certainly most popular. But the dispersion of e-book or e-paper doesn’t only depend on the demand of people.
Publishers and authors won’t tolerate the illegal copies after a while. Amazon, Apple or other companies won’t be able to protect their intelllectual properties. Yes you can also buy illegal paper copies of books in some contries, but not in the main markets. You can buy illegal copies of e-books everywhere, so e-book is unprotectable. That is a difference.
Big perfume companies try to protect their brands from fakes. Publishers will do the same. Currently I don’t see the possibility of the protection of the intelllectual properties on digital platform. So the success of e-book doesn’t depend on you or me but authors and publishers.
Some wise soul once said, ” There are no true endings in history”.
That will also be true for paper books. Yes, E-books are great too. But too often people in the west seldom look too far.
The world is in “EnglishMania”, but worldwide E-book mania may be some time off yet. So the demand for paper books world wide could actually increase before they decrease.
Of course e-book costs virtually nothing to publish and could be sold cheaper.
But paper books can be self published in the country they are ordered online through smarter publishers. At the very least they will be a $20 business card, giving the author more media credibility than a e-book.
Will the paper book die? History says NO.
Ebooks don’t cost nothing. In fact the cost of producing an ebook is almost 80%-90% of producing a physical book. All the proofing, design, editing etc still costs thousands of dollars (we’re talking about professionally produced books here). So it’s a big myth that e-books cost nothing. Overall the public is just misinformed and the myth pervades.
Trouble is, self-publishers are most reluctant to pay appropriately for professional design … or so I’ve found (I’m a graphic designer specialising in book design). I suspect they are also reluctant to pay for professional proofing and editing too, but they are more likely to recognise that’s necessary. Most people, I’ve found, think design has only cosmetic value.
When I said e-books are virtually fee to publish, I was refuring to mainly new authors writting non-fiction. If the content has value to enough people, a perfectly produced e-book isn’t as important. Content is what people look for.
To the graphic Designers out there: I’m a graphis designer but I don’t call myself one. I’m a ‘Visual Communicator’. We visualize infomation, concept & stories. We don’t make things pretty. E-books need this as much as anything. Hold your head high. You provide a alot of value.
Sean, I can’t agree that the cost of producing an ebook is 80%-90% of producing a physical book. Of the pre-print phase, yes. But after that there is virtually no charge per copy for ‘production’ of the ebook, whereas the print book + distribution costs can amount to a small fortune. POD, of course, can make an enormous difference … but POD is only cost-effective for simple paperbacks.
‘Visual Communicator’ eh? I like that Steve. I call myself a ‘book artist’ … I’m focusing on handmade & limited edition books. Probably no money in it, but we’ll see.
And you’re right, ebooks need the ‘visual communication’ approach as much as any. But it seems few realise it. I’m actually amazed at the dreadful quality of the vast majority of ebooks … even from authors who you’d expect to know better. My pet hate … ebooks that are hundreds of pages long, with no bookmarks, and no links from the contents page, and designed for an A4 (or US letter) printout, so when you ‘fit to page’ you can’t read it.
These are not my figures. They’re figures from the publishing industry. Printing is not as expensive as you think. You can print a thousand books well for about $3 a piece. When you see that the retail price is about $20-30, that gives you the costing of the book.
Hmm … none of the self-publishers I know have ben able to achieve those costs. And in any case, if $3000 = 20% that would mean the rest (graphic design and editing), would have to amount to $9000, which is unlikely.
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