E-Book readers really took off in 2009. Amazon released both the Kindle 2.0 and the Kindle DX, which generated a real buzz around e-book readers in general and the Kindle reader in particular. Other manufacturers such as Sony and Barnes and Noble fought back with readers of their own – the Daily Edition and The Nook – whilst others, such as Apple and Microsoft developed their own hardware for release in the near future.
E-book readers are essentially high tech electronic devices, so it’s quite natural to focus on the technical merits and demerits of the hardware involved. Amazon’s Kindle has wireless capability, the Nook has a color screen, Sony’s Daily Edition lets you borrow electronic books from participating libraries – and so on.
However, it may be worth considering that e-book readers may very possibly be the biggest thing to happen to reading – and publishing – since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. The invention of the printing press allowed books to be mass produced using paper instead of parchment or vellum. It made books cheaper to produce and, quite literally, placed them in the hands of the common man.
There have been very few fundamental changes to the way we read books since then. Certainly we have seen changes in printing technology – computers and word processing software have made the existing process more efficient and cost effective. Nevertheless, the end result has been consistently the same. The books that we read consist of paper with text printed upon it in some form of binding.
And the consequence of the unchanging end product also restricts publishers. A physical product is produced – at some expense – which also needs to be delivered, either to the point of sale or by direct mail to the customer’s home.
E-book readers represent more than a way of completing the existing process in a more efficient manner. They totally rewrite the rules, for both publishers and readers alike. For a start, there is no physical product. This means that there is less consumption of materials. No paper, ink, chemicals, bindings etc. And without a physical product, no delivery costs are incurred.
This means that e-books are not only cheaper to publish and deliver, and that they are – even considering the materials used in the e-book readers themselves – more environmentally friendly.
It also means that publishers have more options available to them in order to market both authors and. For example, if a publisher wants to highlight a particular author, then they could make a selection of their work available at very low prices – or even free – for a short period of time. Another technique which is growing in popularity is to offer the first title in a series free in the hope that the reader will buy subsequent titles or possibly other books by the same author. This would – just about – be possible with a conventional print run, but it would be a more costly, and much riskier, undertaking.
On the Amazon website there are a large number of free Kindle books available. Other Kindle books on the site generally offer the first chapter as a free download. Prospective readers can try before they buy. This may well encourage readers to experiment a little and try new authors that they might otherwise have overlooked.
Concentrating on the new, sexy, hardware is completely understandable. Nevertheless, in the longer term it will be the increased marketing opportunities and the ease of access afforded to readers that will change the way books are both read and published in the near future.