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'High Fidelity' Author Nick Hornby Sounds Off On Kindle and eBooks
Since its release last year, Amazon's Kindle has surprised many by taking the market a bit by storm. The electronic reading device sold out quickly, and racked up some ridiculous highs on eBay (we were smitten after spending a little time with one.) Eight months later, we still love reading on the thing, but author Nick Hornby isn't quite so thrilled with the concept, and he has posted a lengthy diatribe over at the Penguin Blog about why he thinks eBooks still aren't destined for huge success.Hornby, author of 'High Fidelity' and 'About a Boy,' lists a number of reasons as to why he doesn't think eBooks will be successful, including the belief that book readers are not early adopters (we think those outrageous eBay prices say otherwise). He also mentions that eBook market and experience can't simply be compared to the iPod: you can't rip your existing library of books like you can with music. But, he makes an interesting point on why eBooks aren't a particularly hot business model: People on average only buy seven books per year, and 34-percent of adults don't even read books.
Of course, eBook readers also display newspapers, magazines, and blogs, so we don't think he's entirely hit the mark, but it's safe to say that it's going to be a long, long time before e-reading devices like the Kindle even start showing the same sales figures as Microsoft's Zune, which means they've got a looonnnng way to go. [Source: The Penguin Blog via Shiny Shiny]
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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsTVGeniusJul 7th 2008 9:15PM
Where e-books should catch on is as a replacement to textbooks. 95% of textbooks can do without or already don't have color or hi-res illustrations, and a student could get one in elementary school and use it clear through their doctorate. But the publishers and Barnes and Noble (and other campus bookstore operators) will fight it like the RIAA fights against legal fair use.
TomJul 8th 2008 9:57AM
Ebooks would be fine ONLY when those that offer them, like Amazon, pay the authors more than 30% of the sale. I look forward to the day when the middle men lose all control over artists, and are not able to rape them financially.
KoKoJul 8th 2008 5:37PM
Good point, TV. But textbooks are a mandatory purchase, and the publishers have a monopoly on them (sometimes they even make a college-specific version of a textbook, to discourage second-hand sales. Isn't that evil?) Overall sales amount to billions. Many textbooks are already self-published by their professor/authors.
Less good point, Tom. It might be evil or even just undesirable for publishers to make money as middlemen, and for artists or authors to make a pittance. But those publishers have until now performed a valuable service. Creating a nice clear, (relatively) portable, (relatively) durable hard copy of a book is too much trouble for most of us. But in my opinion, they got greedy ($160 for a textbook!) and the lashback, plus advances in technology, are catching up to them.
In my view, traditional publishers are kind of like the pharoah's scribes: useful until paper became cheap and literacy became widespread. If I were them, I would begin checking out new lines of business. Look what happened to Kodak.