Correcting the most common misconceptions about e-books
May 01 '01
The Bottom Line People are a bit confused about the future of the e-book industry, and I am here to fix this.
For the last couple of months, I have spent quite a lot of time in the online e-book community. More accurately, on a couple of e-book pirating message boards. This new pirating activity was so interesting for me that I have made a small research as for why people really want to read e-books and why not.
In this essay, I will attach and hopefully destroy the two most common misconceptions people make when they talk about e-books:
1. The main growth driver of the e-book industry is the portability of the e-books
2. The main hurdle the e-book industry is facing is the slow technological advancement.
Growth drivers
While the portability of e-books is an important driver in the growth in demand of e-books, there are two even more important aspects. These aspects are: availability and customizability.
1. Availability. Availability is the single most important demand driver for e-books. Imagine the whole US having one big Borders store, and no other bookstores at all. Now imagine that after many years of no change, you’d be able to log into the Internet and get all the books you ever wanted. This is the situation in most non-English speaking countries. In Slovakia, for example, there is one store carrying about 200 different English books, each of which is being sold for the price of a double-CD. This store facilitates 5.5 million people. Slovakia is not the only country; I have gotten dozens of responses from the Middle East and South America as well; all those people describing a similar situation. All those people will be the determining factor in the early growth of the e-book industry.
2. Customizability. The second most important aspect is the fact that e-books can be fully customizable. You don’t like a certain chapter? Delete it! How about the font size? Change it, along with the color. And it is the font size that is the most important factor in this area right now. Many people told me that they are unable to read the small letters in paperbacks, and that the ability to increase the font size comes as a salvation for them. However, the technological evolution continues. Currently, there are several software applications that read the book to you, most notably Adobe E-book Reader. While the quality is still far from perfect, they improve very fast, and so soon we may see e-books replacing audio books. How about listening to “The Hobbit” during your morning exercise? It will be possible, very soon. I consider this factor to be the second most important in the early growth in demand, and the most important in the later stage of development of the e-books industry.
3. Portability. Portability of e-books means that you can carry them all in a small, light Palm Pilot. Later, you may have a small e-book reader. The advantages are clear – they take up less space and less weight, so they are perfect for travel. But let’s face it – the market is very limited, consisting virtually from an elite group of people who have a Palm Pilot and travel often. The rest of the population will suffice with the paper version for many years to come, and once they start buying them, it will be mainly because of the second reason.
Growth hurdles
Most essays in this section imply that a slow technological growth will be the main hurdle of the growing e-book industry. They argue that if the e-book readers don’t become gentle to the eye very soon, people will not buy e-books. There are other arguments as well – durability, design and vulnerability of the e-book readers. I, however, think that the main hurdle in the growth will be the e-book piracy.
1. E-book piracy. During my stay at the e-book piracy boards, I came across about 1,500 pirated e-books, 1,000 of which were computer books (average price of $50 each) and the rest fiction (average price of $7 for a paperback). That brings a grand total of $53,500 that you can pack onto a CD with space to spare. Compare it with software or music – with the of the most expensive graphics software, you won’t find so much value taking up so little space. Another example: the first four Harry Potter books in .txt format, zipped, take up about 1MB and cost more than a new computer game. As a consequence, E-book pirating will have much easier time distributing the books and cause much more monetary damage than the old-fashioned software piracy. In addition, it will be much harder to protect these books – you can copy/paste almost any text much easier than crack the DVD code or a CD copy protection. The publishers will shy away from the e-publishing sector until these issues are resolved.
2. Technological advancement. This places on a distant second place, for several obvious reasons. The demand for e-books is not driven by their portability, but by their world-wide availability and customizability of their contents. As a consequence, people are not ready to take them to a beach or into a bath, but they will be more than happy reading them from a Palm Pilot screen. As a consequence, the push for better e-book readers is a bit overstated. On the other hand, e-book publishers will scramble to establish some copy protection. In addition, we can expect reader software wars once again. The main fight will be between two giants – Microsoft, with its .lit format and Adobe with its .pdf format. Thanks to Adobe’s E-book Reader Adobe is now in front, embracing the reading technology. Microsoft, on the other hand, gives away its reader for free and if this fight goes the same way as the one against Netscape, we may be sorry soon.
In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the portability of e-books is not their main advantage. This misconception was created by the people forgetting to look outside of the borders and see that 75% of all people have no access to English books in the first place. In addition, the quality of e-book readers is not the main problem. Once again, this misconception was created by the same people, who now took their first misconception for granted and acted accordingly. Let us hope it is not too late and people will still concentrate on the real problems the e-books industry is facing.
Final note: I am aware that this essay does not fully reflect the topic of the category, but I could not find a better one, not for a lack of trying.
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