Somewhat depressing that the submission to the actual source yesterday (or was it the day before) didn't make it to the front page, only had three upvotes when I found it hours after it's submission... but when TechCrunch regurgitate it, here it is on the front page.
I really hope this was caused by luck and timing, and perhaps by the overwhelming focus on SOPA - but a voice in the back of my head is saying that it could well be getting more attention for being from TechCrunch, which would be sad.
Regardless, better to see it on the front page now than not at all, good piece.
I have no love lost for the publishing industry, but the death of printed books is one of the most tragic large-scale events in my lifetime (actual human suffering excepted, of course).
I'm still young, but I never thought I would see this day come. Go back to 1990 and tell the average person on the street that in the next few decades, bookstores would all go out of business and the only way to buy a book would be to read it on a digital device. They'd either flatly refuse to believe you, or be frozen in horror. Yet that's where we're headed, not so far in the future, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing we can do about it.
If you had grown up with a Kindle, and someone gave you a book for Christmas, you'd say they were certifiably insane.
Look at the features: a) It smells better b) You can store them and it only takes an entire room of your house c) They weigh enough such that you can curve your children's distressingly straight spines with them.
When I upgraded Kindles, I had to go without one for a little while after I sold the old one. There was a book I wanted to read at the time, so I picked up a mass-market paperback of it. I found that I preferred reading on the Kindle in almost every way. It's more comfortable to hold, you can make the text bigger, and you don't have to move it around when you change pages (related: http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/04/13/the-pursuit-of-laziness/).
So then I hear people say things along the lines of "Sure ebooks have their advantages, but a physical book just feels better". They often make it sound like everybody either agrees with them or is indifferent, but this isn't the case.
Ebooks are cheaper to distribute than physical books. They are easier to carry around (thanks to the Kindle synchronization service, I _always_ have my book with me, because I always have my phone). The barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see books that wouldn't have, otherwise. Sure, a lot of it's crap, but most of everything is. We get some good stuff, too. The increased convenience and available gets many people (myself included) to read more. Moreover, some people, like me, just like it better.
Then I hear people say that the impending supremacy (in the sense of popularity) of ebooks over physical books is a catastrophe?
What?
More people are going to read more books, more often, more easily, and this is a tragedy? Really? How is this not excellent? How is this not wonderful?
Besides, physical books will still exist. LPs weren't killed by CDs, and they weren't even killed by digital music (although CDs might be, but nobody seems to care). Indeed, the fact that physical books will become a niche item probably means that they'll be higher quality (if more expensive) as people buy them for the binding, and not just for the book. Meanwhile, ebooks will enter the mainstream, and most people will be fine with them for most purposes. I'll wager dollars to donuts that the next generation won't really care.
The physical book is not dying. It's simply moving on to another stage of life. The book will be better off than it ever was.
On my Kindle, I have a semester's worth of textbooks, a dozen periodicals, and a few novels I've been busting through. And that's a mere fraction of the allotted storage space, whereas it would take two backpacks to fit all of the physical copies.
As someone for whom reading is a passion, not a hobby, this is far and away my favorite technological development of the past ten years.
I grew up in a house full of books, have been reading since I was a wee lad, but today, you would have to pry my Kindle out of my hands. I read more than ever, and enjoy being able to carry my library with me, whether it be non-fiction, sci fi, or essays (I love Singles).
There are some disturbing thoughts that arise from this. For example, what if in a thousand years from now, all information about this century is forgotten, because it was written in a digital format which can no longer be read. Or some sort of technological apocalypse occurs, and there are no non-digital sources to be read.
I don't know if publishing companies (or even book sellers, like Borders) have attempted this in the past, but this article (and the article it links to) lays out a pretty fair case for predatory pricing (sometimes referred to as "dumping") which is when a business attempts to root out competitors by selling below cost and then (hypothetically), when its competitors are out of the market, raises the price above competitive levels. This is generally illegal under the Sherman Act (antitrust law) in the United States (and likely in other countries, too), although, unfortunately, it is quite difficult to succeed on these sorts of claims in the US, most notably because, while a company is engaging in predatory pricing, consumers are better off since they are paying less (and a fair number of economists don’t believe that predatory pricing is rational or even possible to work for various reasons).
Still, there are remedies for companies that engage in this behavior--maybe they'll come too late to save small publishers in this case, but they exist.
Google missed a huge opportunity by not doing anything seriously disruptive themselves, too, when they entered the e-book market. Did they really expect to take anything from Amazon by just competing with Amazon head-on?
When market leaders are so entrenched, your only hope to beat them is by disrupting them and changing the game forever. One way they could've done that is by trying harder to bypass the middle-men and enforce self-publishing. They're sort of trying to do that with Google Artist Hub for music artists, but I doubt they are taking that very seriously, either.
Amazingly you've all missed the big problem with electronic books. One I worry about from time to time.
There's a reasonable chance our civilisation will collapse in the near future (within 100 years). (Not going to go into detail of why - think climate change, viruses, meteors... take your pick)
When it does, there'll still be people around. And if it is a severe collapse, there won't be the infrastructure to recharge, install new books, manufacture or maintain e-readers.
This is a pain, as books will be really useful then. e.g. About farming, traditional methods of manufacture etc.
Do you think the internet is a bad idea too? There is an awful lot of digital knowledge and tools out there these days we won't have access to in the event of a collapse. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that this is "the big problem with electronic books".
So Amazon's underground PR effort got Sarah Lacy to write a largely negative article about how they're destroying the publishing business by dumping books at below cost and overpaying authors? That's a pretty paranoid POV.
Both Amazon and Apple want to obsolete publishers and labels eventually. It's a no brainer. They're high-overhead middlemen that are adding less to the value chain every day. By eliminating them, they can lower prices to consumers while increasing profit to themselves as the new distributors of content.
[+] [-] corin_|14 years ago|reply
I really hope this was caused by luck and timing, and perhaps by the overwhelming focus on SOPA - but a voice in the back of my head is saying that it could well be getting more attention for being from TechCrunch, which would be sad.
Regardless, better to see it on the front page now than not at all, good piece.
[+] [-] jaysonelliot|14 years ago|reply
I'm still young, but I never thought I would see this day come. Go back to 1990 and tell the average person on the street that in the next few decades, bookstores would all go out of business and the only way to buy a book would be to read it on a digital device. They'd either flatly refuse to believe you, or be frozen in horror. Yet that's where we're headed, not so far in the future, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing we can do about it.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
Look at the features: a) It smells better b) You can store them and it only takes an entire room of your house c) They weigh enough such that you can curve your children's distressingly straight spines with them.
[+] [-] javanix|14 years ago|reply
I don't read books for the experience of turning pages - I read them for the experience of reading and interpreting and taking in a story.
What exactly is more romantic or useful about reading the latest Stephen King novel on a tablet versus a bound sheaf of paper?
The death of the printed book boils down reading to the bare essence of appreciating the written word.
[+] [-] hypersoar|14 years ago|reply
So then I hear people say things along the lines of "Sure ebooks have their advantages, but a physical book just feels better". They often make it sound like everybody either agrees with them or is indifferent, but this isn't the case.
Ebooks are cheaper to distribute than physical books. They are easier to carry around (thanks to the Kindle synchronization service, I _always_ have my book with me, because I always have my phone). The barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see books that wouldn't have, otherwise. Sure, a lot of it's crap, but most of everything is. We get some good stuff, too. The increased convenience and available gets many people (myself included) to read more. Moreover, some people, like me, just like it better.
Then I hear people say that the impending supremacy (in the sense of popularity) of ebooks over physical books is a catastrophe?
What?
More people are going to read more books, more often, more easily, and this is a tragedy? Really? How is this not excellent? How is this not wonderful?
Besides, physical books will still exist. LPs weren't killed by CDs, and they weren't even killed by digital music (although CDs might be, but nobody seems to care). Indeed, the fact that physical books will become a niche item probably means that they'll be higher quality (if more expensive) as people buy them for the binding, and not just for the book. Meanwhile, ebooks will enter the mainstream, and most people will be fine with them for most purposes. I'll wager dollars to donuts that the next generation won't really care.
The physical book is not dying. It's simply moving on to another stage of life. The book will be better off than it ever was.
[+] [-] jmduke|14 years ago|reply
On my Kindle, I have a semester's worth of textbooks, a dozen periodicals, and a few novels I've been busting through. And that's a mere fraction of the allotted storage space, whereas it would take two backpacks to fit all of the physical copies.
As someone for whom reading is a passion, not a hobby, this is far and away my favorite technological development of the past ten years.
[+] [-] bbgm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bh42222|14 years ago|reply
Printed books will become a small percentage of all books, but they will be around for a very long time, even if they mostly become vanity items.
I prefer the tactile experience of paper books, you may call that vanity, I just call it my preference, not worse than anyone's brand preference.
[+] [-] BrainInAJar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harshpotatoes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newbusox|14 years ago|reply
Still, there are remedies for companies that engage in this behavior--maybe they'll come too late to save small publishers in this case, but they exist.
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
When market leaders are so entrenched, your only hope to beat them is by disrupting them and changing the game forever. One way they could've done that is by trying harder to bypass the middle-men and enforce self-publishing. They're sort of trying to do that with Google Artist Hub for music artists, but I doubt they are taking that very seriously, either.
[+] [-] frabcus|14 years ago|reply
There's a reasonable chance our civilisation will collapse in the near future (within 100 years). (Not going to go into detail of why - think climate change, viruses, meteors... take your pick)
When it does, there'll still be people around. And if it is a severe collapse, there won't be the infrastructure to recharge, install new books, manufacture or maintain e-readers.
This is a pain, as books will be really useful then. e.g. About farming, traditional methods of manufacture etc.
[+] [-] macrael|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tomkarlo|14 years ago|reply
Both Amazon and Apple want to obsolete publishers and labels eventually. It's a no brainer. They're high-overhead middlemen that are adding less to the value chain every day. By eliminating them, they can lower prices to consumers while increasing profit to themselves as the new distributors of content.