The Way We Read Books Will Be Altered Due To E-book Readers
2009 was the year that e-book readers became hot news. Amazon released both the Kindle 2.0 and the Kindle DX, which generated a real buzz around e-book readers in general and the Kindle reader in particular. Other manufacturers such as Sony and Barnes and Noble responded with their own readers – the Daily Edition and The Nook – whilst others, such as Apple and Microsoft developed their own hardware for release in the near future.
E-book readers are essentially high tech electronic devices, so it’s quite natural to focus on the technical aspects of the hardware involved. The Amazon Kindle has wireless functionality, the Nook has a color screen, Sony’s Daily Edition lets you lend books to your friends – etc.
However, it may be worth considering that e-book readers may very possibly be the biggest thing to happen to reading – and publishing – since the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1440. The invention of the printing press allowed books to be mass produced using paper instead of vellum or parchment. It made books cheaper to produce and, quite literally, put them in the hands of the common man.
There have been very few fundamental changes to the way we read books since then. Of course, there have been some advances in printing technology – computers and word processing software have made the existing process more cost effective and efficient. Nevertheless, the end result has been consistently the same. The books that we read consist of paper with text printed upon it in some form of binding.
The unchanging end product imposes restrictions upon publishers. A physical product is produced – at some expense – which requires to be shipped, either to the bookshop or by directly to the customer’s home.
E-book readers represent more than a way of completing the existing process more efficiently. They completely change the rules, both for publishers and readers. For a start, the physical product (the book) is no longer required. This means that there is fewer materials are consumed. No paper, ink, chemicals, bindings etc. And with no physical product, there are no delivery costs.
The end result is that e-books are considerably cheaper to publish and deliver, and that they are – even considering the materials used in the e-book readers themselves – more environmentally friendly.
It also means that publishers have more options available to them in order to market both authors and. For example, if a publisher wants to highlight a particular author, then they can offer a selection of their titles at very low prices – or completely free – for a short period of time. Another increasingly common tactic is to offer the first title in a series free in the hope that the reader will buy subsequent titles or possibly other books by the same author. Whilst not completely impossible, this would be a much riskier and more costly undertaking using a traditional print run.
Amazon’s website has a (pleasantly) surprising number of free Kindle books available. Other Kindle books on the site generally offer the first chapter as a free download. Prospective readers can try before they buy. This could well encourage readers to experiment a little and perhaps to try authors that they wouldn’t normally choose.
The strong focus on the new, sexy, hardware is perfectly understandable. However, in the longer term it will be the opening up of new marketing methods for publishers and the ease of access afforded to readers that will make the difference in the way books are both read and published in the not too distant future.
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