Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

I believe publishers are starting to see that e-books are actually a really good thing, considering there’s no cost for printing, stock and logistics.

This means publishers will not be penalized by failing sales of certain books, meaning publishers will become more profitable overall, provided they sell the e-books for a reasonably high price, which is easy by the way: If selling the e-books for the same price as paper books, the margins are way better than for paper books. As you know, the same goes for CDs vs online sales of music. That was why I hinted in The death of music as we know it and Mobile Trends 2020 that all mulitmedia content will be downloaded or streamed in the future. It’s definitely not a wild guess.

Not that e-books will have an immediate major impact on book shops. It’s not like with music that there’s a huge piracy “market”, nor that e-book readers are flying off the shelves either, neither that people understand the concept of e-books as well as they do “e-music”, so the growth will be considerably slower.

The comments to Behold ‘The Amazon Effect’: Now Murdoch’s Gunning for the $10 E-Book indicate that many (including the publishers) don’t understand the benefits of e-books.

I believe more in e.g. the iPhone than the iPad as e-book reader, as there will be so many more that have iPhones (and Android’s, Pre’s, etc) than iPads, or even Kindles, even in the longer term. Buying an iPad is a conscious “I need a reading device” question (except for gadget freaks), but an iPhone is primarily purchased as a phone, with reading etc coming as a free feature. The display is a tiny bit too small though. 5” seems to be a sweet spot for emulating pocket books.

Posted by Anders Borg 20:35 | Permalink