Are You Ready for the Electronic Book War?
For books available in both print and on the Kindle, electronic versions through the Kindle make up 35% of the total sales. This amazing figure is being reported by TechCrunch, who also tried to get Amazon to nail down a figure for total Kindle sales, but they declined to comment.
Just as the CD is fading as digital music rises in popularity and we can see the eventual end of the DvD as streaming movies become more available, so will the hardback and mass-market paperback give way to the eBook. But there is one crucial difference: while the transfer of music and movies to a largely digital format has waited on the technology to be ready, the transfer of books to an electronic format has been waiting on us to be ready.
The Kindle has certainly helped out in that respect by providing a way to cozy up on the couch or in bed and read a book. Not quite the tactile experience of an actual book, of course, but it beats reading at the desktop or lugging the laptop around with you.
But eBooks go beyond just the Kindle. Fictionwise, one of the most popular sites for purchasing eBooks, was recently bought by Barnes and Noble. The iPhone and other smartphones have also played their part by delivering Fictionwise books through the Stanza application. And rumors are rampant that Barnes and Noble will put out their own Kindle-like device, which would certainly go along with purchasing Fictionwise.
They also fill an important void in the publishing industry. The 90's saw the decline of the midlist author, which were those authors that sold well enough to be profitable but not much more than that. The midlist author has generally made up the bulk of what you see on store shelves, but the rise of the chain bookstore created a more narrow book selection in stores -- generally those that sold the best -- making it more difficult for these authors to get on shelves.
The fact is that best-selling authors are not always the best authors. Stephanie Meyer is the hottest author in fiction right now, and yet her books are often criticized for being poorly written. (Stephen King is the most famous critic of her work.) And while not every midlist writer produced sparkling prose, there are many fine writers and great stories that are trapped in the midlist void.
Enter Web 2.0.
Electronic books are on a slow but inevitable rise that will eventually take over the book industry. This will no doubt have more to do with our own reading habits than technology -- the current generation is much more willing to read a book from a laptop, iPhone or Kindle than my generation -- but devices like the Kindle will definitely help move it along.
The problem will be finding the quality within the long tail. While there are many great authors and stories being skipped over by the mainstream publishing industry, these authors are also standing side-by-side with those whose words just aren't up to par and whose stories turn up lacking.
To this end, social networks like Good Reads and Shelfari that devote themselves to books might become as important to finding a good novel to curl up on the couch with as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. In the war between electronic book standards, these social networks might just be everyone's best friends.
Compare prices on the Amazon Kindle.
Social networks about books and reading
(Image © Amazon.com, Inc.)
I appreciate your analysis of the emerging eBook market. My concern is with the shift of model this will bring. So far I’m more than happy to share a book with friends, I even use sites like Bibale (www.bibale.com) to faciliate the sharing. If tomorrow books become cluttered with DRM and tied to a specific model of device (not to mention a specific device, i.e. my Kindle, not yours) it will bring the whole sharing to an end, and for the whole book industry I’m not sure this is good as many times I’ve bought books from an author I was first exposed through a lent copy, and not solely through a review.
Why doesn’t the book industry understand that they should start offering the electronic version of a book to those who bought the paper version? Not as a downloadable file, but as a right to access it online, let’s say on something like Google Books, just ask me from time to time to enter the Nth word of line Q on page P, this will prove the site I own a paper copy.
I like the idea of an electronic book, but I see a problem with it as well.
If hardcover and softcover books are done away it’s going to take away the feeling of being able to sit down in your favorite chair or couch to read a good book.
Also, it takes away an opportunity to have a good book to read if I am at a place like the doctor’s office where the wait can be super long.
I’ve been using an EBook for the last 4 years or so. It’s a ETI2 made by ebook technologies and sold thru Filament Books. I dislike the
Kindle because it limits you to Amazon as a
source and I feel overpriced. I can download a book, in most formats, send it to the Filament site, it will be converted to their format, then download it to the reader. All at no cost. I have found a number of new authors, their books are full length and free, which I have later bought their books in hard copy. I also dislike many sites which charge as much or nearly as much for the ebook version as they do for the hard copy. By the way, I am 70 years old and feel that the paper version of
books, etc. will be gone before I will.
Unless eBooks come in a standard like Adobe PDF files, it will not become a universal standard. Why trust just Amazon to be the source of books for instance? Imagine Amazon decides do de-list an author, then what?
I BELIEVE PSPERLESS BOOLS ARE AS VALUELESS AS THE PAPER THEY ARE PRINTED ON. I LIKE REAL PAPER BOOKS. EMAILED BOOKS HAVE NO VALUE TO ME. WHY ? BECAUSE:IF I WANT TO SEE THEM ON PAPER FIRST I MUST PAY FOR THEM AND THEN PRINT THEM OUT AT ADDITIONAL COST FOR PAPER AND INK. THIS IS FAR TO COSTLY.
I’ve been reading eBooks almost exclusively over the past 7 years, all on my Palm or Treo via Fictionwise (www.ereader.com). I much prefer the eBook reading experience and the convenience.
What I really don’t understand is the people who will not read an eBook because it lacks the “feel” of a dead tree book. Do these same people have CD players, or does it lack the “feel” of the concert hall. What about television? Or is it too much unlike Broadway to be worth making the investment?
Come on people, get over your hangups and make the plunge.
(note: the DRM argument was well taken, but I don’t see that changing any time soon.)
The “e-book”may replace the printed page, but if it does the general intelligence of the human race will decline. But, I guess that’s
already occuring.