KNOW THIS: E-Books Update: The E-Books Revolution Rolls On
September 4, 2009
Other articles in this Know Something Project series:
E-Books: Where Literature and Technology Meet (June 2009)
E-Books Update: Pricing and Release Date Debates (July 2009)
E-Books Update: Amazon’s Disappearing E-Books Debacle (August 2009)
E-Books Update: Publishing Industry Options for Piracy Protection, Full Use Guarantees, and User-Friendly Formats (August 2009)
Since this series of articles on e-books was launched in June of this year, The Know Something Project has become a solid resource on some of the more confusing aspects of this growing segment of the publishing industry. While it’s time for us to move on to topics of increasing concern to a wider swath of the public, we’d like to wrap up with a few thoughts on the future of e-books and their potential impact on:
General Consumers
The content of tomorrow’s e-books may look very different from today’s as new technologies deliver full-color documents, sharper illustrations overall, and wireless interactive features. E-publishers may be forced to include some form of advertising or sponsors’ logos in future e-books as they struggle to find other forms of income to supplement increasingly lower returns of e-books due to bargain-basement prices, even as e-book sales numbers continue to rise.
Change is also inevitable in the tools with which we read e-books. Demand for an all-in-one electronic device that allows a user not only to communicate with others via audio and text but to download e-books, e-magazines, and e-newspapers in a user-friendly format may drive the creation of a mid-sized phone-reader that ultimately replaces tiny phones and large-format readers currently on the market. Since consumers have varied tastes in preferred tools, however, demand will also drive the need for universal acceptance of an open e-publishing format that allows anyone to download anything onto any web-enabled device they own.
For more on this—and how current e-books in a wide variety of formats may someday have to be converted to be read on multiple types of e-readers—see this recent insightful TeleRead post.
The Environment
As e-books grow in popularity, the potential environmental impact of digital versus print books continues to be studied. One organization, Cleantech, conducted a recent survey that found that, indeed, e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle do have the potential to reduce the amount of pollution produced by the publishing industry (currently noted as “one of the world’s most polluting sectors”). On average, the report notes, “the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use.” The report predicts that e-readers purchased between now and 2012 “could prevent 5.3 billion kg of carbon dioxide in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period.”
Public Libraries
The latest news for libraries has been Sony’s high-profile announcement of its new Reader Daily Edition’s wireless “library finder” feature that will allow avid readers to “borrow” e-books from public libraries across the country. Sony’s aggressive pursuit of partnerships with public libraries and their leading supplier of digital content has made the idea of virtual libraries much more immediate and intriguing to book lovers. For more on this, follow the links posted in this enthusiastic Engadget post.
In the future, e-books will likely allow much-improved access to library titles for patrons who are unable to physically go to a library location, as long as those same patrons have access to the necessary technology. The adoption of universal standards—and possibly the conversion of current e-books—may be required for such full access to become a reality.
Students
Those in education are also excited by the potential for future e-books to be truly interactive. Already—via CDs on desktop computers or laptops or on interactive websites—some elementary school students can instantly hear how a vocabulary word sounds as well as how it is spelled and defined. Some high school students take interactive quizzes by filling in electronic answers that can be quickly and completely cleared for the next review. And some college students conducting research can link to pre-screened, specific websites that include not only additional print material on a topic, but streaming videos, as well.
Recent debates have centered on the controversial suggestion that the U.S. should put “a Kindle in every backpack.” While on its face this idea may appear generous, it’s got a wide range of critics. The idea that providing textbooks on Kindles for all U.S. public school students would save significant taxpayer dollars down the line was immediately shot down. A recent US News & World Report article quotes various experts who predict extensive long-term expenses with such a program. Syracuse University assistant professor of instructional design, development, and evaluation and author Jing Lei argues that even if the Kindle exists five years from now, at that time it will probably not represent the ideal e-reading tool. Potential long-term costs of a program that would require routine hardware as well as content updates would be prohibitive. The price of replacing lost or damaged expensive e-readers would also drive up program costs, as would the cost of converting current e-textbooks to a Kindle or other e-reader format.
What seems to be safe to predict, at least, is the reduced weight of future student backpacks due to the current push for “e-textbooks,” whatever form they eventually take.
Independent Authors and Publishers
The promise of more accessible, easy-to-navigate, and inexpensive distribution options has to be the most exciting aspect of the e-publishing revolution for independent authors and publishers. Just last week, self-publishing site SmashWords announced its agreement with Barnes and Noble, which will distribute certain SmashWords titles through its multiple on-line distribution channels such as Barnesandnoble.com and Fictionwise.com, both sites that until now primarily offered only e-books produced by established publishers. Since SmashWords specializes in books produced by independent authors and publishers, this means a much wider audience will be made available for independently created titles. As SelfPublishingReview.com puts it: “What makes this deal significant is that a major corporate entity has agreed to distribute a well-known marketplace for self-published books—further blurring the line between traditional and self-publishing.”
Publishers of Colorful Content
Nearly two years ago, Forbes ran an article on the future of e-books that trumpeted the promise of post-Kindle readers, most of which are still in production. What ties all the many e-book readers together, however, is their use of electronic “paper-like display technology” called E Ink developed by a Cambridge company of the same name. E Ink cornered the early e-book market because it “not only…offers high-resolution images that resemble print on paper, but also because it dramatically reduces power consumption when compared with the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that currently dominate the market.”
While E Ink makes reading easier on a devoted e-reader than on a laptop, it doesn’t do much for color images. E Ink has been working on a color-screen option for a few years now, as have other companies in the U.S. and abroad. Which electronic paper product will bring full-color comics and beautifully photographed coffee table books to your favorite e-reader without driving up e-book costs remains to be seen, but its impact on important segments of the publishing industry—including electronic newspapers—will be significant.
Big Publishing Houses
Clearly the e-book revolution is picking up speed and promises to continue to evolve very quickly. While this fact continues to shake up the traditional book publishing industry, many industry watchers insist e-books represent a terrific opportunity for even big traditional publishers, despite the harmful deals some houses have already struck with online retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Sony, retailers who’ve set the generally promoted (though not always accurate) under-$10 average e-book price threshold. According to Mike Shatzkin of The Shatzkin Files at the IdeaLogical blog, some major publishers predict such e-book prices (especially for bestsellers) will drop even more, a detrimental development for all involved. His advice: “Don’t worry about Amazon telling you they need more margin. Because they’re going to need your titles fully as much as you need their sales.” Maybe the bottom line for everyone in the publishing industry—regardless of their specific niche or the general direction of e-publishing in the future—is to continue to strive to create top-notch content. More than ever, that may be what truly matters.
Through the many very helpful resources quoted throughout our series of e-book posts, we at KnowSomethingProject.com look forward to keeping up with what’s happening on the digital print frontier right along with you. We hope this series, meanwhile, continues to provide new readers with a solid primer of e-book developments and issues, especially as more and more book lovers decide to learn what all this e-book stuff is really all about.
—Karen DeGroot Carter
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