Getting on the E-Book Bandwagon

Mr. Adler has a longer essay on the subject of e-books on his blog. He has give us permission to print this portion. A link to the complete essay is below.

The SONY launch was the opening gun in the e-book juggernaut. Then came Kindle and it is now apparent that every major electronic company is jumping into the fray with both digital feet. None of this surprises me. The traditional publishers and the big box book retailers had their heads in the sand about e-books and are now playing catch-up, although it must be apparent to them by now that the paradigm for their business is changing rapidly and, sadly, they have not yet come up with a big replacement idea to keep their business economically viable.

Having gained some degree of entitlement from having recognized the shift to electronic reading early on, I offer here some further observations on the future of the e-book enterprise. I hesitate to call them predictions, despite the fact that I have complete faith in my own certainties. Here goes, for better or for worse:

The most cautious industry prediction is that there will be 16 million electronic readers by 2014. I would double that figure.

The major worldwide publishers of paper books along with the big box bookstores will morph into other business entities through mergers or other creative ploys and find different ways to monetize their vast libraries of content.

The methods by which books are promoted and best sellers created especially via mass media will be severely constricted as newspapers and magazines migrate to the Internet.

Getting the word out about new books will be a monumental challenge as more and more information niches are created to disseminate news and reviews concerning books.

Creating a mass readership for authors will require rethinking old methods and, of course, relying on creative innovations yet to be devised.

As always, word of mouth will remain the main tool to promote books, but its enhancement will be severely limited by the shrinking of the mass media which often provides the spark that lights the fire in the first place.

The monopoly of promotion, marketing and distribution enjoyed by publishers and big box bookstores will decline and eventually disappear as new methods will be found to promote and distribute books mostly via Internet sites and direct mail, which will also decline largely because of rising costs.

Among the rising tide of innovations will be the empowerment of the author who will take greater and greater control of the destiny of his or her work through alternative publishing methods. These will include creating his or her own publishing umbrella or hooking up with the major e-book distributors like Amazon and other partnerships. This has already begun.

By digitizing all out of print books, Google will become the primary source for publishing backlists and books which have long disappeared from public libraries and many personal collections. I'm not sure how it will affect author oriented book publishing, often referred to as vanity publishing, a term that may lose its meaning in the future as authors become more involved in their own marketing.

Public libraries will continue as an essential service to communities in numerous ways, but will change the methods required for their traditional role as a free distribution center for content.

Textbooks will be delivered almost exclusively through electronic means creating a new paradigm among textbook publishers and makers of backpacks and other related paper book services in the education field.

I know that these predictions are a big gulp to swallow and I could have guessed wrong in some instances. There are always unintended consequences, new refinements in technology and other esoteric or unknown factors that will intervene as the e-book business evolves.

But one thing is absolutely positively certain. The e-book will transform the publishing industry. In five years its old business paradigm will be unrecognizable.

Oh yes, there is one more certainty. Content, the product of man's creative genius in every aspect of intellectual endeavor will continue, as always, to enhance, inform, and contribute profoundly to our lives.

For more on this story, please visit: Mr. Adler's Blog