Newspapers are dying – that is irrefutable at this point. Published books might be next on the chopping block. Amazon.com, the giant online bookstore, sold more of their e-books, which are read on their Kindle, digital, hand-held book readers, on Christmas Day this year than real books.
There are a lot of other similar devices. All of them sold well this Christmas. Readers can now download books, newspapers and magazines and read them at their leisure, on these devices.
The question to ponder now is why do authors even need publishers? Now they can sell their books online as downloads and pocket all the money.
And think about how much money students could save on textbooks – and how many trees we could save in the process.
Publishers are fighting back, according to the Washington Post. “Publishers have ignored this demand. In response, several conglomerates have aggressively moved to protect their legacy. Macmillan recently announced a plan to delay the publication of e-books and offer enhancements that will justify a higher price. This tactic is aimed at Amazon’s policy of trying to set $9.99 as the expected price for an e-book.”
The publishers are going to lose this battle, just as the music labels lost their market to the online music sellers, such as ITunes. Sure, they will keep making money, but a lot less of it. They will have to embrace becoming nother more than distributors.
The public will win out in the end. As will freedom of expression. Think about it. Anyone will be able to publish a book now. The marketplace will decide if the e-books are worth buying and reading…
What is to stop somebody from altering the content of digital books? Ideas deemed subversive could be erased with a click.
Orwell discussed this in 1984. We need to keep real books, books whose content cannot be rewritten by some corporation.
I have a Windows 95 Compaq Presario sitting next to me that I still use today, its floppy doesn’t work and it CD-Rom doesn’t work, but a few programs still work and it prints-out on an old printer.
My Window’s 98 and 2000 and XP all have crashed and burned. Running XP #3 now.
I picked up a book, Battleship Boys, a Navy book about life on a US Battleship during the time of the Great White Fleet.
Computers and electronic stuff is the real Fad now, and then in a few short years they are useless piles of junk. But Battleship Boys, is still in fine shape and readable for a 100 year old book. (MCMX 1910)
And Newspapers, I see that the library keep copies of the newspapers going back decades in their basement archive, but they don’t keep old computers.
By the way, anyone interested in a TI 99-4a computer from the 80’s, that I have in my basement, next to the 98 and 2000 Compaq’s
Bought the wife a Kindle for her birthday last spring (bought one for me, too, at the same time). It’s quick and painless to use – charges any purchases to your approved credit card. Has it’s own browser, so you can order any place you can get a signal. Takes 60 seconds to download a book. Costs vary, but that 10 buck price mentioned is about right. You can also subscribe to newspapers (Wall Street Journal, etc.) for a pretty cheap rate compared to the normal print and web versions and you can get some blogs, too.
A potential downside – that browser is a two-way street. Amazon was made aware that they had distributed an unauthorized version of a book last summer, so they just reached out to their customers and yanked it back – and refunded the charges. No problem, but there might be a little too much “Big Brother” in that to suit some folks.
My wife LOVES her Kindle – it’s easy to handle (I bought an inexpensive cover for it so it “feels” like a book), has good battery life. Only downside on using it is no backlight on the screen. I have seen the future and bought a couple pieces of it.
Oh, yes… forgot to mention that we can “share” books on our Kindles because they are attached to the same account. Now, if I can just get her to read conservative stuff…. 🙂
Publishers are just about PR and hype, i.e peddling a product – in their case “book.”
It might be a good thing for college students who really get screwed on textbooks and other required reading. First the publisher piles on, then the student book store goes to work.
Personally I like having a book in my hands and I like using a bookmark and I hate reading anything on a screen longer than three…
I have been wondering too.
Do you have a kindle or like device Art?
What do you think?
duplojohn,
I use my Blackberry to read news online. I would love to buy a digital reader but I am waiting a few months for the technology to improve.
And now there is word that Apple is coming out with an iSlate that will likely be a similar product…