NEWS: Ebooks in Decline

#ebooks #publishing #books

From the BBC:

 "E-books have developed a share of the market, of course they have," he said.

"But every indication - certainly from America - shows the share is already in decline. The indications are that it will do exactly the same in the UK." - Tim Waterstone

Big words from the founder of the UK's biggest bookstore chain, but is he right? The statistics certainly support it, but if someone had said the same of MP3s a few years ago, we'd now be laughing at their naivety.

The Telegraph's Gaby Wood has got a more liberal view - that the digital revolution hasn't even started yet.

Publishers have got to stop thinking of their digital products as “books”, and start imagining more expansive ways of communicating information. Until then, the digital revolution hasn’t even begun.

And I'm inclined to agree. When my wife first got a Kindle (the B&W, 3G with keyboard type) I said at the time that I just knew that we'd be looking back at it in a few years time in the same way we look at the brick-sized mobile phones of the eighties. When I wrote a report on epublishing for university back in 2008, it was out of date just two hours after I submitted it, due to how quickly the business and technology was moving. If you ask me, the epub format should be a dinosaur by now, replaced with a younger, faster, sexier model. Publishers need an open forum to throw their ideas around, and come out with a smooth running new-ebook. 

Enough of my yacking. Get out there and create the future.

image: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/pascal79