M
MEP
Guest
I already buy most of my books online rather than going to a store. Will I be downloading my books soon and skipping the physical distribution altogether?
Is anyone else convinced that books are a dying medium? Now before anyone raises their hackles over this, I’d like to mention that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile with more books than places to put them, and a designer with a love of good typography to boot, so this isn’t an attack on anyone’s favorite past time or anything.
It’s just that this e-ink thing is finally starting to take shape (after years of promises) and we finally have an electronic display medium that possesses all of these traits:
The Librie is cool and it looks like a million bucks (the device as well as the screen), but the DRM built into it essentially makes it the world’s most expensive electronic paperweight (stupid Sony never learned their lesson from Betamax). Now, there’s this Chinese device from Hanlin without the DRM restrictions (further illustrating the pointlessness of DRM as a business model), that has the same display technology without the mindnumbingly stupid copyright “protection” technology.
Add to this the fact that a paperback novel can be produced on demand, complete with color cover, in a few hours for about a dollar a copy and it’s pretty easy to see a world where the distribution of paper with words on it is a dead business. Why buy a book when you can just download one and read it on your incredibly cool e-ink reader or just go to the corner vending machine at your local 7-11 and have that latest John Grisham novel printed on demand while you pump your gas?
The technology for the first option already exists and the technology for the second option is just over the horizon with some books already being printed on demand for sellers like Amazon (they have a few thousand titles that aren’t warehoused anywhere, just printed one copy at a time as orders come in). As William Gibson once wrote, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet”.
I for one will always have some books in my home simply for what they bring to a space that can’t really be replicated with anything else. And those large format coffee table books with lots of pictures are still going to require real printing methods for a while longer (but not much longer, it’s only a matter of time before they become easy and cheap as well, progress marches onward after all).
How long before we start owning books as fetish items rather than as tools for information? Expensive binding techniques will always be around for those who want a status symbol or a fetish item to decorate their home, but the vast majority of books produced now are poorly made and frankly, who would notice if we just went to automated distribution? Is anyone else kind of looking forward to having a single pocket-sized reader that contains a library of information? I already do this to some degree with my Palm, but the display is terrible. E-ink devices will change that (I’ve seen the Librie in person, and frankly, I like it more than reading from a book now that the display looks as good as paper, wish I could afford one). Who else sees this as great news for authors, readers and publishers but terrible news for booksellers?
Is anybody else chomping at the bit here or is it just me?
Is anyone else convinced that books are a dying medium? Now before anyone raises their hackles over this, I’d like to mention that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile with more books than places to put them, and a designer with a love of good typography to boot, so this isn’t an attack on anyone’s favorite past time or anything.
It’s just that this e-ink thing is finally starting to take shape (after years of promises) and we finally have an electronic display medium that possesses all of these traits:
- High resolution - It looks as good as the printed page – really, it does. It’s hard to describe how good this stuff looks in person. It’s like someone printed the text on top of the screen. I’ve seen people swear that it was paper until after they see the image change before their eyes.
- Lightweight and small
- Low power requirements so the devices that use it don’t have to be much larger than the display itself.
The Librie is cool and it looks like a million bucks (the device as well as the screen), but the DRM built into it essentially makes it the world’s most expensive electronic paperweight (stupid Sony never learned their lesson from Betamax). Now, there’s this Chinese device from Hanlin without the DRM restrictions (further illustrating the pointlessness of DRM as a business model), that has the same display technology without the mindnumbingly stupid copyright “protection” technology.
Add to this the fact that a paperback novel can be produced on demand, complete with color cover, in a few hours for about a dollar a copy and it’s pretty easy to see a world where the distribution of paper with words on it is a dead business. Why buy a book when you can just download one and read it on your incredibly cool e-ink reader or just go to the corner vending machine at your local 7-11 and have that latest John Grisham novel printed on demand while you pump your gas?
The technology for the first option already exists and the technology for the second option is just over the horizon with some books already being printed on demand for sellers like Amazon (they have a few thousand titles that aren’t warehoused anywhere, just printed one copy at a time as orders come in). As William Gibson once wrote, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet”.
I for one will always have some books in my home simply for what they bring to a space that can’t really be replicated with anything else. And those large format coffee table books with lots of pictures are still going to require real printing methods for a while longer (but not much longer, it’s only a matter of time before they become easy and cheap as well, progress marches onward after all).
How long before we start owning books as fetish items rather than as tools for information? Expensive binding techniques will always be around for those who want a status symbol or a fetish item to decorate their home, but the vast majority of books produced now are poorly made and frankly, who would notice if we just went to automated distribution? Is anyone else kind of looking forward to having a single pocket-sized reader that contains a library of information? I already do this to some degree with my Palm, but the display is terrible. E-ink devices will change that (I’ve seen the Librie in person, and frankly, I like it more than reading from a book now that the display looks as good as paper, wish I could afford one). Who else sees this as great news for authors, readers and publishers but terrible news for booksellers?
Is anybody else chomping at the bit here or is it just me?