I read this article, and it coincides with a cover story related to Barnes & Noble in last issue of The Edge. Since it might be related to Popular business model, I post the article here for discussion.
From the cover story, the message to take away was, printed books will stay, and people still enjoy being around books, holding them, turning their pages. When people buy tablets, they don't necessary use them to read. The numbers in the article were half iPad owners, and 25% of Kindle Fire owners didn't read a single e-book last year.
The following article provides more insight on the topic...
The end is nigh ... for printed books
A recent report from the Association of American Publishers signalled that the apparently inexorable growth in ebook sales has stalled. Having captured 24 per cent of the book market, the digital juggernaut ran out of puff and stopped. To the relief of booksellers and bibliophiles everywhere, it looks as if ebooks are going to take their place as just another format, alongside audiobooks, leaving plenty of room for printed books.
Almost from the moment ebook sales took off, the format recorded triple-digit annual growth rates in the United States. But last year, growth slowed to just 45 per cent. And just this month, it was reported that ebook sales in June were similar to sales for the same period in 2012: Looking very much like an abrupt halt.
Sales of ebook reader devices may be declining. And there is even evidence that some early adopters are putting their Kindle in the bottom drawer and returning to print.
For those of us who have enjoyed a lifetime of visual, tactile and olfactory pleasure from the printed page, any sign that printed books are going to survive this digital tsunami is welcome. But these trends and headlines bear some scrutiny.
BULLIED ONTO BANDWAGON
First, what caused this slowdown in ebook adoption? The short answer is that the market for ebooks — the present-day market — is saturated.
It should have been clear to us from the outset that there is a limit to the number of people who would actually want an ebook. For now, the “natural” market for ebooks includes a lot of early-adopter enthusiasts, extreme users (who read a book or two per week), travellers, professionals and scholars. It is likely that these natural users will continue to prefer digital, for obvious reasons.
But there is another group of users who could be described as normal people who were bullied into getting onto the ebook bandwagon by friends, family and the media. There are countless thousands of Kindles and Nooks in the hands of grandmothers and uncles who received them as well-meaning gifts. Millions of us succumbed to brute force marketing campaigns by booksellers with everything to lose. Having tried the ebook experience, some are now drifting back to print. The novelty just wore off.
Many of us are buying both print and digital. If you see an interesting book in your local bookshop, you buy it. If you search for a book online, you download it. It is not a zero sum game, but it goes some way to explaining the slowdown in ebook market growth.
SOON, BETTER THAN PAPER
Notwithstanding this current hiatus, there are three key drivers that determine the destiny of any market: Innovation, price and demography. What happens next with ebooks will be a function of these three things.
By “innovation”, I don’t mean “enhanced ebooks”. A lot of heat is being generated these days about adding cool things to books to make them more appealing. Video and audio are tops. Links to external resources, functional mathematical formulae, in-book collaboration … There is probably value in all that, but the more of it there is, the less clear it is that the object you are enhancing is still a book.
The innovation I look forward to is not so much about added functionality as about elegant simplicity. Today’s ebooks are still a slightly awkward simulacrum of a print book. You cannot just flip through an ebook, back and forth, the way you can with paper. Even turning pages, after all the practice I have had, is still a bit clumsy.
Writing margin notes requires a keyboard of some kind. The list is long. But with time, and through the incremental efforts of thousands of designers and developers, all these things will resolve.
There will come a time, quietly, when the experience of reading and managing your ebooks will actually surpass that of paper.
The second driver of ebook adoption is demography. While the natural market for ebooks sits at about 24 per cent of the total book market today, the relentless march of generations will have its way.
My Gen-X children and their friends already get 85 per cent of their news and information online. My grandchildren are digital natives. There is no doubt that, by the time they enter consumer mainstream, they will prefer digital over paper. And that time is not far off.
PRICE: THE POINT OF COLLAPSE FOR PRINTED BOOKS?
Finally, price. The low-price channel always wins.
The massive downward price pressure in recent years has been a boon for consumers. More importantly, all that pressure simply accelerated a process that was inevitable.
It is true that the capital costs incurred by publishers and booksellers in re-tooling for the digital age are considerable. But, having built the infrastructure, the unit cost of production per ebook sold is tumbling, and ebooks have the capacity to just keep getting cheaper in coming years. Consumer expectations and the natural competition between publishers will continue to drive ebook prices lower.
The widening price gap between ebook and print editions, combined with improved usability and a generational growth in demand for digital books, will precipitate a moment of collapse for printed books. Improvements in book production and distribution services may delay things, but there will come a point where ever-smaller print runs will push the unit price of printed books upwards, beyond tolerance. Something will break.
It will no longer be economic for publishers to ship books or for booksellers to pay rent. When it happens it will happen quickly — over a year or two.
There will always be a market for printed books, just as there is still a market for vinyl records and fountain pens. But the real future, a golden future, for books and reading is digital. All things considered, I expect the print book market to collapse on Sept 12, 2020.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Stephen Cole founded eBooks.com in 1997, which has grown to be a leading independent ebook-store. He launched Ebook Library in 2004, which is now the premier ebook vendor for academic and research libraries around the world.
Mr Cole was a panellist on the topic, The Future of the Book, at the 2nd International Summit of the Book on Aug 16 in Singapore.
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/end...nted-books
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