Why E-Books Will Succeed
April 30th, 2007 (12:00pm) Anne Zelenka 20 Comments
Why will e-book readers succeed? Not because e-books are good replacements for paper books — but because they’re good complements to paper books and documents, especially for work-related reading rather than pure pleasure.
Time and again we see that technology doesn’t have to mean an end to the old ways of doing things. Tech tools allow us to do things in different ways or to do things we couldn’t possibly do before, adding new value to our lives, not just reproducing value we could already access. The computer never made offices paperless; in fact, it led to more paper output. Online personal information management apps don’t make paper to do lists obsolete. Sticky notes still have value in a digital world.
ComputerWorld argues that e-books are bound to fail because they “are not, and cannot be, superior to what they are designed to replace.”
People who care enough about books to spend $25 billion on them each year tend to love books and everything about them. They love the look and feel of books. They like touching the paper, and looking at words and illustrations at a resolution no e-book will ever match. They view “curling up with a good book” as an escape from the electronic screens they look at all day. They love to carry them, annotate them, and give them as gifts. Book collecting is one of the biggest hobbies in the world.
We won’t stop doing that. But paper books and electronic books and book readers can exist alongside each other, with overlapping but not identical use cases. E-books don’t have to succeed on the criteria defined by paper books.
I love to own books because I find the best way to really absorb their content is to mark them up, write notes in the margins, fold over pages, then refer back to them when I recall something interesting or useful from them. I wish, though, that I could easily get information out of them and into my electronic store of ideas, my “memex.”
Right now, to get interesting ideas out of paper books into an electronic searchable format requires scanning with OCR or typing it in. If you’re willing to take on that labor, there are ways of making these snippets searchable. It’d be so much nicer if we would get an electronic version of a book when we purchase the paper copy and then could easily transfer our favorite chunks into our personal idea stores.
There are other reasons e-books and e-book readers may have value even in a world where paper books don’t become obsolete. Students could benefit from electronic textbooks, carrying the equivalent of a backpack full of books in a small tablet. Knowledge workers might prefer to read technical articles or lengthy professional documents on an easy to read, lightweight reader rather than printing them out and carrying them. Imagine taking hundred-page spec documents onto a plane with you just by carrying a reader loaded with them, and being able to search them electronically instead of using a table of contents or index. Service people could carry readers loaded with installation and repair manuals.
You can’t take an e-book reader into the bath tub with you, but so what? There’s room in the world for electronic and paper books.
20 Comments Post your own comment
Eric Gruber says: April 30th, 2007 1:05pm
I checked out the Sony Reader this weekend, and was quite impressed.
As long a manufacturers make products this good, then e-Books will succeed just fine. I’m seriously considering the Sony Reader, as long as I can make it work with my Mac (it’s not officially supported).
Leo says: April 30th, 2007 5:44pm
I care a lot about paper books, but I don’t spend anywhere *near* $25 billion on them. *Maybe* $1 billion, but that’s my limit.
Seriously, though, I think e-books rock, and love a well-written and well-designed ebook. They won’t replace a paper book, but there’s room for both.
victor says: April 30th, 2007 10:19pm
Enjoyed reading your post.
For everyone’s info we at Bookyards have compiled over 500 free online libraries, broken into categories for simple viewing. The link is at http://www.bookyards.com/links.html?category_id=1780
There is more then enough reading there to keep one busy for years.
Ken McConnell says: May 1st, 2007 5:46am
Looking for free stories on the web? Drop by my site and read my sci-fi novel Starstrikers now being serialized or read my first draft of a mystery novel Null_Pointer set in IT. Lots of creative stuff out there if you look around.
Steve Opperman says: May 1st, 2007 6:11am
With the adjustible print size, think of the implications for the visually challenged readers who don’t have a good book as an option. There are over 20 million readers in America alone who have significantly reduced vision because of glaucoma, macral degeneration, diabetes related loss of vision, failed lens implants and a few hundred other causes. eBooks can give a big majority of those 20 million challenged readers an opportunity to curl up with an eBook if they do succeed.
GigaOM » What’s On GigaNET says: May 1st, 2007 7:17am
[...] WebWorkerDaily: Why E-Books will succeed [...]
engtech says: May 1st, 2007 9:45am
I absolutely love it when free e-books are available for books I own. There’s nothing quite like being able to do a full text search to find that exact passage that you want to quote.
Mike Elgan says: May 1st, 2007 10:32am
I wrote the column you referenced, “Why e-books are bound to fail,” and discovered your blog entry while looking for productivity ideas. I have no counter-argument for you. I made my argument and you made yours (which was super constructive, well thought out and well written, and I appreciate that).
I just wanted to thank you for that, and also compliment you on a fantastic blog. I’m going to become a regular here.
Mike Elgan
Computerworld
Brad says: May 1st, 2007 11:23am
I agree that ebooks aren’t meant to replace paper books in the way that DVDs have replaced VHS tapes. But ebook technology has been around for a number of years and has failed to catch on with the public.
So you have a chicken and egg problem. While publishers are resistant to putting much of their catalog online for lack of demand or fear of piracy, readers aren’t likely to invest in eBook reading devices if there’s not content they’re interested in. Until these issues are resolved, I think the eBook market’s growth will stay stunted for a while.
booktwo.org Notebook » Stop Press for April 30th through May 1st says: May 1st, 2007 5:31pm
[...] Why E-Books Will Succeed – A rathional response to Computerworld from Web Worker Daily [via MobileRead] [...]
Daniel says: May 1st, 2007 11:45pm
I would not be so sure about impossibility of reading ebook in bath tube. Technology Review (see link below) wrote about epaper in 2001. Some companies are still working on this.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/12295/page1/
Joe Wikert says: May 2nd, 2007 9:24am
I’m in the publishing industry and am a big believer in the future of e-readers. The Sony Reader is a first-generation product, needs plenty of enhancements and a much lower price-tag…but it’s an interesting start.
I tend to believe success here won’t just come from a killer device alone. We’ve also got to start thinking differently about the content and how it’s built/presented. It’s been said many times that the early TV shows were nothing more than radio programs made in front of a camera. It took awhile for everyone to learn how to truly leverage the new medium.
The same is true for e-readers. Simply porting a printed book to an e-device isn’t terribly exciting. There’s no depth to the content. How about layering the content so that I can drill down deeper into it, but only when I want/need to? How about creating rich linkage between other bodies of work so that I’ve got a very useful resource, one that can’t be replicated in the print world?
Taking advantage of the e-reader medium and re-thinking how content needs to be written, edited and presented is the key. Btw, a novel is a novel, for the most part, and may not benefit much from this. But think of the possibilities for most reference and how-to works…
fade theory » e-books will succeed says: May 3rd, 2007 8:32am
[...] Worker Daily is the voice of reason: Why will e-book readers succeed? Not because e-books are good replacements for paper books — but [...]
Chris Webb says: May 3rd, 2007 1:11pm
Great post Anne,
The biggest challenge for e-books is not the readers as many claim. Instead it is the books themselves. As I posted recently in my blog, and as Joe Wikert is alluding to in a comment above is that we must stop thinking about e-books as the “pdf copy” of the printed book.
‘0’s and ‘1’s have much more potential to be dynamic and connected than paper.
links for 2007-05-04 | Chris Webb: Publishing, Media, and Technology says: May 3rd, 2007 5:37pm
[...] Web Worker Daily » Why E-Books Will Succeed « (tags: ebooks publishing) [...]
Warum E-Books siegen werden « Globolibro: das internationale Bibliotheksblog says: May 14th, 2007 11:46am
[...] Link: http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/04/30/why-e-books-will-succeed/ [...]
e-books « Eric Jennings says: June 18th, 2007 8:18am
[...] Posted May 3, 2007 This set of aticles presents a dichotomous view on e-books. One says that e-books, while not perfect, are good and are here to stay. The other says that e-books are [...]
Contact Lens and Glasses Information/Source says: July 26th, 2007 6:07am
Contact Lens and Glasses
Interesting read, plus I like your template. Thanks!
dvd says: August 12th, 2007 9:55am
Great post. always nice to learn something new.
The OPLIN 4cast » Blog Archive » OPLIN 4cast #62 says: August 7th, 2008 11:33am
[...] Why E-Books Will Succeed (Web Worker Daily) [...]