 Digital Publishing  The eBook, an emerging new frontier for book publishers, is creating a frenzy in the market. After an initial surge of interest, the market will cool down as the novelty wears off and users get a better feel for the shortcomings of the electronic medium. Over time, eBooks will complement traditional books, as readers become comfortable accessing information in a variety of formats. |
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 What is happening? Without a doubt, eBooks were one of the “hot themes” of last week’s Seybold seminars: Microsoft used the San Francisco seminar and exposition to launch Microsoft Reader, and to announce a deal with Amazon.com to create an eBook store on the Web. Adobe, on the other hand, acquired Glassbook to extend its reach into the emerging market. This market, everybody tells us, is ready to explode: some analysts go so far as predicting that eBooks will make the dead-tree variety a thing of the past in a few short years. Publishers are scrambling to get on the eBook train before it’s too late. Analysis A good dose of this frenzy comes from one of Stephen King’s widely publicized forays into electronic publishing: about seventy-eight percent of those who downloaded the first chapter of his serialized novel, “The Plant,” (including the author of this text) paid the requested dollar, thus creating an impression that the market is ready for the electronic distribution of documents, and set to make every other form obsolete. Now, I’m not suggesting that there is not a real push in the market for electronic books. We have come a long way from the first attempts in the field, such as Voyager’s “Expanded Books,” published in 1991 using Hypercard and a floppy disk as the data carrier. (Ironically, one of the first volumes published, Douglas Adams’s “Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy,” includes a word of advice which with hindsight could be intended for publishers: “Don’t Panic.”) Neither am I suggesting that eBooks will not play an important role in a variety of fields in the future - in fact, eBooks are already a major part of our lives, judging by the number of computer and software manuals which are now only distributed in electronic form. Nonetheless, there is currently no clear indication of an emerging MARKET for such things. Stephen King has had a lot of success with his forays into electronic publishing - some would argue that the person considered the world’s bestselling author would have success even if he launched a new line of designer pasta - but the fact that the author of “Misery” makes money on an eBook surely doesn’t indicate that other less-exposed writers and publishers will have comparable success. Quite to the contrary, really. For a market to emerge we not only need a product, but a desire to own and to use it. There are indeed fields where electronic texts are a useful extension of the current tools: handheld devices such as the Palm or PocketPC allow us to read in situations, like standing in line, where most of us would not have access to a book. eBooks stored on a laptop can make a long plane trip more agreeable. (If you are lucky enough that your battery doesn’t run out.) So what we see happening today is quite simply the excitement generated by the potential of a new medium. As such, it inspires companies and individuals involved in digital technology who see a new playing field opening up. This is an essential phase in every new technology. Yet, as exciting as it is, it does tend to blur the realistic evaluation of the novelty’s reach in the real world. What is happening with eBooks today is strangely reminiscent of the arrival of CD-ROM-based multimedia. Those who lived through that period may remember how, all of a sudden, content CD-ROMs were going to be the ultimate medium for publishing. Every publisher under the sun was scrambling to get onto the new medium, which was universally viewed as a serious threat to publishing as we know it. What has happened since? In some very distinct market segments, CD-ROMs have indeed fared extremely well: paper-based encyclopedias, for instance, have all but replaced traditional ones. But in most other areas the content CD-ROM has gone down as a fad which failed to create the market everybody anticipated. Content CD-ROMs exist, but they have hardly taken on the status that was expected, despite the heavy investments made both in content itself and in distribution and marketing. In other words, the new technology expanded our media space instead of replacing existing forms. Something similar will happen with eBooks. We will see a mad rush fuelled by industry players trying to be the first to grab market share. All of a sudden an increasing number of eBooks will come on the market, and initial sales of eBooks will be quite encouraging, giving the impression that the market has taken off for good. After that initial phase of curiosity, however, the market will cool down significantly, as the first enchantment with the new medium wears off and users realize that the new books do not replace the old as much as was anticipated. In some fields, the electronic variety will of course be a success: technical information and reference books are very convenient in a searchable electronic format and electronic schoolbooks would have many advantages. But it would be a mistake to expect that these natural successes mean that we will switch to reading only electronic books any time soon. This may eventually happen, as new generations of readers become increasingly used to different ways of acquiring information, but it certainly wont occur in the next five to ten years, and in any case it will be a slow process. What will happen over time, however, and eBooks will help that process, is that we all get increasingly used to accessing information in a variety of ways, using each format when it is most convenient. Commercially, eBooks can only be a success if they are either significantly cheaper than the printed variety (look at the price of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD-ROM vs. the printed edition), or if they offer something which is impossible to get through the printed medium (such as regular updates to the data, or hooks into the Internet). Recommendations What does this mean for publishers? Get ready for eBooks. Research authoring technology. Experiment. But watch out for the market to sort out initial mistakes. One thing is for sure: it is unlikely that many users will be willing to pay as much for a copy-protected eBook as they currently pay for a printed copy. For a very long time we will have eBooks alongside the traditional form. Get used to preparing content for different formats. Who knows - we might even get to the point where publishers sell “bundles” of the printed book, including a CD-ROM or internet access to an electronic file for reading on a laptop or other device. So? Don’t get over excited. eBooks are here to stay - but they won’t replace the other kind any time soon. Pfeiffer Consulting is preparing a report on eBooks. Contact us with your development news and suggestions, or if you would like to be informed when the report becomes available. 04Sept2000 ©2000 Pfeiffer Consulting |
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