The p-book is dead! Long live the e-book!

• In the first five months of 2009, e-books were 2.9 percent of trade book sales. Same period this year, they are up to 8.5 percent of book sales according to the Association of American Publishers.
• E-paper displays, used in dedicated e-book readers, sales are up to 10 million units (estimated for 2010) from 4 million in 2009. And this excludes the LCD displays used for the iPad, other tablet PCs and cellphones.
• “Enriched” books or multimedia books with embedded audio and video have started to appear, backed by leading publishers such as Penguin and Simon & Schuster.
• The physical book is going to die within 5 years, says Nicholas Negroponte. Just think about what happened to physical film and music, he says.
• People with Kindles buy 3 times more books as they did before they owned the device, says Amazon.

This is the future…

NO stopping over at the airport bookstore before catching the flight. NO going around bookstore aisles spending a pleasant afternoon browsing what is on offer. NO more protests over wall space taken over by an increasing collection of books. NO dog eared musty smelling books discovered by accident and re-read with pleasure.

So be it. The change will be for the better, as in the case of photographs and music. It will without doubt be disruptive for all players in the ecosystem – authors, publishers, distributors, bookstores etc but will take consumer convenience and benefits to a new level. What else will happen?

• Any book, Any time: Remember the old classic that you wanted to buy for your kids but couldn’t find in any book-store. Well, you will soon be able to find an e-book version. Conventional book stores have constrained shelf space which is why you usually find only “hot” selling new books that occupy costly real estate in the store. The digital world has vast storage space, and it should be possible to buy any book so long as a digital version exists somewhere in the world. Verdict

• Self Published Success Stories: Production and distribution of books will become democratized. Anyone with a PC can write, self-publish a book, and distribute it on the internet. As Chris Anderson explains, with examples from the music industry, in his book  “The Long Tail”, three powerful forces will come into play; (i) democratized production, (ii) democratized distribution and (iii) Connection between supply and demand. A self-published book can become a run-away success with demand connecting to supply through a combination of word-of-mouth and digital world influencers such as blogs, online reviews and recommendation lists. Verdict

• “Enriched” or Multimedia books: Now this is something I would like to reserve my verdict on for some more time. To create a book with audio and video embedded into it, while retaining the “reading” experience is a delicate balancing act. “Pure” books, with only text, encourage creative and original thinking in the mind of both the creator (author) and the consumer (reader). The ability to convey a scene or a situation, a feeling or emotion, using only words is a skill that distinguishes the good writer from the ordinary. The reader in turn, is drawn into the author’s world but still has the freedom to create his own rendition of the world and build upon the original thought/experience/idea. It allows the reader to exercise his intellect in a fashion no visual representation would be able to.  A good book that is “enriched” might actually become a dumbed down version of a great book and lose its impact altogether. Verdict

Is the physical book really going to die ? Well, I don’t think that it is going to die altogether anytime in the near future.  However e-books will emerge as the preferred choice of the average consumer and become the dominant form in a relatively short period of time. After a period during which the business models and ecosystem stabilizes, consumers will embrace the convenience and benefits of the new paradigm. Long live the e-book!

Links To Articles:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/physical-book-dead/?utm_source=TweetMeme&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=retweetbutton

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/books/29ebook.html

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/Indias-first-e-reader-Wink-unveiled-supporting-15-languages/articleshow/6338272.cms

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/E-reading-Revolution-in-the-making-or-fading-fad/articleshow/6373407.cms

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/media/12bookstore.html?pagewanted=2&ref=e-book-readers

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21books.html?_r=2