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Digital Books – Revolutionising The Face Of Publishing
Posted in Marketing Ebooks
Portable e-book readers have been around for a decade now – although you could be forgiven for thinking that they just recently exploded onto the scene in 2009. The Franklin eBookMan, released in 1999, is generally held to be the first dedicated e-book reader – although it should be noted that there were some earlier devices, the Apple Newton is sometimes mentioned in this context, which some may consider to be e-book readers.
Today, the most famous reader, and the clear (but not unchallenged) market leader, is the Amazon Kindle reader. Amazon can justifiably claim to have made a huge contribution to the development of the electronic book market. They are, of course, not alone and there are more than a dozen other companies with portable readers on offer – including Sony, iRex, Plastic Logic and Samsung. Apps exist for the Apple iPhone and Apple are expected to release a tablet based PC by the end of 2009 (or possibly early in 2010) which would be well suited for reading electronic books.
Apart from the development work being carried out by major electronics manufacturers, there are a number of other initiatives ongoing which serve to promote the use of electronic books.
For example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced that the state of California would commence supplying free downloadable electronic textbooks for students in the fall of 2009. Whilst Governor Schwarzenegger did not specifically refer to the Amazon Kindle, a new report published by the New Democratic Leadership Council – a Washington think tank established in 1985 which has Hilary Clinton as a member – did. Entitled “A Kindle In Every Backpack” the report proposes that each of America’s K-12 school children be supplied with a free e-book reader which would be used to access electronic academic textbooks.
It does very much seem as if the concept of portable electronic book readers is an idea whose time has come. The technology is, if not fully complete, at least developed to an acceptable level. The infrastructure is there – both Amazon and Google have very large libraries of electronic books. The political will seems to be growing and the academic establishment is rapidly getting behind the concept.
At this time there is, understandably perhaps, a strong focus on the technology and the functionality of the reader devices. However, it’s worth speculating as to what all of this means for the future of books, reading and publishing in general. Here are just a few future possibilities:
Conventional book publishing patterns – hardback followed by paperback a few months later – will evolve. Electronic books will offer a low cost method to release new books and will be used to test the market.
Electronic book readers sold based upon cell phone pricing models. A low initial device cost is subsidised by a monthly subscription – or possibly a minimum number of books purchased per month.
Electronic book readers given away free (or heavily discounted) to customers willing to commit to a long term newspaper, magazine, stock feed or blog subscription.
Free books to download – but with adverts every few pages. We could possibly even see hyperlinks from naturally occurring but commercially lucrative keywords in the text to advertiser’s sites. [Amazon already have a large number of free Kindle books available – and Google have a enormous library of public domain titles on offer]
Free readers issued by educational bodies to school children and students.
Free readers given to students by further education establishments as an incentive to enrol with them. [This is already happening in August 2009].