Most project the market will finally takeoff. Just like most video stores went under, not all but some book stores will go under in the next few years.
Book sales will go up. Digital copies are easier to get and people impuse buy over the internet vs the delay in going to a book store. For the writers, publishers, and ereader makers this could be the next netbook boom.
doogald
· 2 weeks ago
It'll be interesting to see what happens. e-books may take far longer to establish that people think. It's not 100% analogous to music.
With music (going back to the old days), you buy some sort of media - a vinyl LP in the old days, a cassette tape, a CD more recently - and you still need some sort of device to listen to the music. (And, of course, most people listen to individual songs and albums far more than just once.) The MP3 player solved a huge problem - a smaller device than a cassette player of CD player, which could hold far more media. Video is very similar (though we probably re-watch things far less than we re-listen to music.)
Books are a different story. Most people read most of their books a single time. When you buy a book, you do not need some sort of device in order to read it - it's readily readable just as it is. The current ebook technology, though very, very cool, is still not easier to read than ink on paper - there is less contrast, etc.
ebook readers aren't quite so compelling to as wide a consumer audience (there will, of course, always be gadget-heads who will buy the latest and greatest cool hardware) as portable media players for audio and video. I'd be very, very, very surprised if book stores failed simply because of ebooks in the near future. (After all, as popular as PDAs were, back in the day, calendars and planner books never went away.) ebooks and ebook readers may end up being more similar to the PDA market than to the portable media player market.
At some point, perhaps ebooks will change what books are - there will be some sort of multimedia content or tie-in, perhaps more interactivity with readers, allowing readers to dictate where a story may go (i.e., the reader is allowed to direct some choices that characters in a story make, with ebooks that have multiple story lines based on those choices, non-fiction that allows readers to drill down more into research on a topic or just get more of a summary, etc.) I think that these things may start happening in the next few years, but by no means will they overwhelm "real" books. IMHO.
Tommy
· 1 day ago
2010 is definetly the year of the ebook. There are a lot op upcoming brands working on the road to release their new models.
All Comments
Book sales will go up. Digital copies are easier to get and people impuse buy over the internet vs the delay in going to a book store. For the writers, publishers, and ereader makers this could be the next netbook boom.
With music (going back to the old days), you buy some sort of media - a vinyl LP in the old days, a cassette tape, a CD more recently - and you still need some sort of device to listen to the music. (And, of course, most people listen to individual songs and albums far more than just once.) The MP3 player solved a huge problem - a smaller device than a cassette player of CD player, which could hold far more media. Video is very similar (though we probably re-watch things far less than we re-listen to music.)
Books are a different story. Most people read most of their books a single time. When you buy a book, you do not need some sort of device in order to read it - it's readily readable just as it is. The current ebook technology, though very, very cool, is still not easier to read than ink on paper - there is less contrast, etc.
ebook readers aren't quite so compelling to as wide a consumer audience (there will, of course, always be gadget-heads who will buy the latest and greatest cool hardware) as portable media players for audio and video. I'd be very, very, very surprised if book stores failed simply because of ebooks in the near future. (After all, as popular as PDAs were, back in the day, calendars and planner books never went away.) ebooks and ebook readers may end up being more similar to the PDA market than to the portable media player market.
At some point, perhaps ebooks will change what books are - there will be some sort of multimedia content or tie-in, perhaps more interactivity with readers, allowing readers to dictate where a story may go (i.e., the reader is allowed to direct some choices that characters in a story make, with ebooks that have multiple story lines based on those choices, non-fiction that allows readers to drill down more into research on a topic or just get more of a summary, etc.) I think that these things may start happening in the next few years, but by no means will they overwhelm "real" books. IMHO.
By the way i found a nice website called Ebook Reader Advisor
You can see an overview of the different brands and models which are available on the market nowadays.