I have recently become an owner of, dare I say, an electronic book reader – the Sony Reader, complete with a plethora of electronic books to read. Now, I am a book person. I work in publishing, I read books both for pleasure and for work. I devour print news from as many sources as possible, and I fancy myself a writer.
Publishers appear to fear for the future of books, magazine, and newspapers.
But I’m not sure that they should be. Books, magazines, and newspapers are tangible, real. They’ve been around for centuries. They bring people together, they tear people apart, they teach us, entertain us, enlighten us, provide us with opinions, they allow us to lose ourselves in a story … oh, and books look great on a shelf.
The Sony Reader is incredibly convenient … but possibly unnecessary. It holds upwards of a thousand books, which is nice, except why would I regularly need even ten books on me at once? The Reader is great for public transportation and presumably an extended vacation with lots of reading planned, but for sitting down for a nice read in the park or on the couch, I just can’t see myself picking up an electronic book.
At least not right now.
The future of devices like the Sony Reader can definitely be bright. The Ipod started as a device that only played music – already cooler and more practical than an electronic book – and helped people store not so portable music into a super portable device. The Ipod has continued to dominate the market and change the face of portable electronics because it continues to do more and more.
Electronic books like the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle can revolutionize the publishing world … once they become more than just book readers, that is. I imagine a device that, for a fee, can bring you magazines and newspapers electronically, as well as your books (and the Kindle 2 is starting to do this). Publishers can charge per book – ebooks are already out there (obviously), the trick is being able to keep margins up.
E-readers can actually save news publications, I think, if publishers embrace them. More people are reading news dailies online than in print, and most large papers offer online readership for free. I can’t speak for all people, but I would pay a fee to subscribe to a news daily on my electronic reader. Perhaps a portable, convenient reader is just what the newspapers need to increase subscriptions and boost their revenue.
Portable electronic readers can be a convenient device for people in urban centers that regularly use public transportation, but without modifications and multiple uses, the readers will never replace books. They have the opportunity to have an impact on all aspects of publishing, and I think it can be for the better. And for all those book people out there, books will still be around. But you might want to clear a spot on your shelf for your electronic reader.
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