E-books WILL replace p-books, says Barry Eisler
By Paul Biba
Barry Eisler, who has a new book, Fault Line, out soon has an interesting post on Buzz, Balls & Hype, entitled Dead Trees is a Dead Model Here’s an excerpt:
Tonight I sat down to write a piece on how authors, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers need to change their business strategies to adapt to the advent of ebooks. I wasn’t going to spend much time arguing that ebooks will displace paper ones because the displacement seems not just inevitable to me, but immediate, as well. But then I came across a review of Amazon’s latest Kindle in the New York Times. The article’s author, NYT technology columnist David Pogue, loves the new version, but nonetheless concludes that paper books are going to be fine:
“The point everyone is missing is that in Technoland, nothing ever replaces anything. E-book readers won’t replace books. The iPhone won’t replace e-book readers. Everything just splinters. They will all thrive, serving their respective audiences”. …
he only thing keeping paper books going as a mass market today is inertia. But as older generations die out and younger ones come online, and as generations in the middle try ebooks and realize their advantages, the demise of paper books will continue to accelerate. That’s an important point: the marginalization of paper books won’t continue at its current rate. It’ll pick up speed until it hits a tipping point, and then — poof! — the only paper books published will be coffee table books and other niche forms that serve a unique (and relatively small) market.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Will I miss pBooks? Of course. Will some pBooks be printed indefinitely–I think so. Then again, you can still buy scrolls or clay tablets if you shop hard enough. It’s just that ordinary readers don’t think, hmm, I wonder if I should buy the latest Tom Clancy in paperback or scroll.
I’ve been preaching the dominance of eBooks for a long time, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
February 24th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Kindle 2 = $AUD560
Kindle 1 (ebay) = $AUD400
Sony PRS-505 (ebay) = $AUD380
Sony PRS-700 (ebay) = $AUD740
I could be wrong, but tipping point is a little way off yet.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Clay tablets, ostrakha, and vellum scrolls, analog TV, dialup bulletin boards, the telegraph, the phonograph record, the floppy disk, the zoetrope and zoopraxinoscope, VHS and Beta videotape, film photography, the typewriter, the fountain pen … it’s true these supposedly obsolete media are all thriving and none have been replaced by anything else. Wait – what?
The historical blindness of some people is not to be underestimated. Seriously: people think “I prefer (paper) books, therefore … books will continue to exist for ever”.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Not yet, no. But the critical mass necessary to reach a tipping point would be a lot smaller than, say, an iPod, because the serious reading public is a lot smaller than the music-listening public. And, I imagine, more discerning, so, slow to take action, but decisive when they do.
A vast generalization, I know.