Clueless book publishers miss huge opportunity

Convenience

I read in the tub. I read on the bus. I read waiting in line. I read while walking. I can do all of these things because of the physical nature of books. For me, unless an e-book reader can do a better job mimicking those properties, it is a no sale.

Missing the point

A lot of the comments are missing the point of this article. The rise of e-books are a foregone conclusion. Someday the perfect e-book reader will exist to do everything you covet with your paper books, that someday isn't tomorrow, it isn't next year but the fact of the matter is the precursor to that 'someday device' exists today. Between the first gen e-readers (ala Amazon and Sony) and 3G phones (like the iPhone and Storm), a market exists that will continue to grow. People will want to consume digital media for those devices and those people will want new stuff.

The physical manifestation of the written word is not the final product. I can obtain Dante's Inferno in hardcover, paperback, PDF, text file and even on Google. The work is what the consumer wants. The publishing industry WILL find itself in the same boat as the music industry eventually unless they define the market. Otherwise someone else will be that provider that gets the content to the consumer in the fashion they most desire.

so very wrong

People are no more interested in the ritual of opening a book then they are putting a tape in a VCR. Books take up room, the print is too small and trees get chopped down. I'm also sick and tired of carrying 2 or 3 books around with me when I travel. 3 years ago, I got my first Ipod and now my music (and movie) CDs are gone... for good. I now have the content of 100 CDs in something that weighs a few ounces. Pretty soon, I am going to have an entire library in another device that weighs a few ounces.

Oh yeah, pretty soon, all my music and books are going to be on one device.

"Readers are attached to the

"Readers are attached to the ritual of opening a book, reading the print, etc."

Bullfeathers.

Even within the past few years people were saying much the same thing about newspapers. "Oh, there's no way that newspapers will disappear. There's just something about unfolding a newspaper on Sunday morning and holding it in your hands..." Blah, blah, blah. What a load of wood pulp.

Where are your precious newspapers now? They're either declaring bankruptcy, or they're scraping out a living online, trying to recoup the massive amount of time and money they wasted in trying to hold on to a dead content format.

Books will steadily become a novelty. You'll buy one for a close relative's birthday now and then as an investment or an exceptional keepsake. But 99.999% of the time you'll simply buy a digital version of the book's content.

Nonsense. I'll eat my hat if

Nonsense. I'll eat my hat if that happens. Books are like pieces of art in many cases. Why do people so prominently display them in their homes if there is no inherent worth in them being in the physical format? People might say they liked having a newspaper in their hands, but that is a disposable format. People keep books, that is the key difference.

Books will not "steadily

Books will not "steadily become a novelty" as CDs are becoming because they are simply not the same as CDs -- books have an intrinsic value beyond their content. A CD or music file must be played in a machine, such as a CD player or an iPod, but a book is its own playback device: you don't need anything but the book to enjoy a book. And, just as a CD player or iPod has value even empty of content, a physical book has value regardless of its content.

When you can walk into a music store and hold a CD up to your ear to hear the music in the same way you can open a book and begin reading, then you can tell me that CDs and books are similar media, and that the publishing industry faces the same challenges as the music industry. Challenges they certainly face, and they've been doing some boneheaded things, but it's just too pat an answer to equate them.

"The book isn't the paper. It's the content!" Wrong. It's both. Why doesn't the author of the article understand what he's writing about?

Somehow? If so, how? By your

Somehow? If so, how?

By your logic, the RIAA knows their industry better than we do also, yet they're going to way of the dinosaur.

The fact is that the book industry is entrenched in old business models, and will stumble their way to a more modern model.

There are advantages and disadvantages to digital versions of books, so both hard copy and soft copy industries will have to live side by side. Neither will completely take over the other. This is a point of difference between MP3 and CDs. That being said, the publishing industry had better figure out the opportunity to be had in the digital world and seize it before someone else does. As the author demonstrates, their entrenched views are biasing them away from a digital distribution model and towards a physical one. Why should their cell phone apps not offer BOTH mediums? They view the digital one as a threat to their existing industry, and so they are not fully embracing it like they should, and like how, eventually, someone will.