Автор работы: Пользователь скрыл имя, 26 Января 2011 в 20:25, доклад
E-books. They exicts for more then 30 years [1], but they started to become more and more popular only couple of years ago. What is this trend? Some say that it’s a really useful devise that will save money for costumers and trees for future generations, some say it will kill books, as we know them, and does not like it as we will loose the pleasure of holding a real book, nothing still beats the smell of that newly opened book still fresh from the prints and enjoining the romance that book can carry.
Written by: Kateryna
Kabanets
E-books.
They exicts for more then 30 years [1], but they started to become more
and more popular only couple of years ago. What is this trend? Some
say that it’s a really useful devise that will save money for costumers
and trees for future generations, some say it will kill books, as we
know them, and does not like it as we will loose the pleasure of holding
a real book, nothing still beats the smell of that newly opened book
still fresh from the prints and enjoining the romance that book can
carry. The relatively new phenomena of e-books and the success of Amazon's
Kindle is getting the world of publishing and reading into a whole new
age of turmoil and controversy. Amazon.com Inc. said it reached a milestone,
selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months.
Amazon said Kindle device sales accelerated each month in the second
quarter—both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year
basis.[2] But the statistics that Amazon shared were all relative—it
didn't share actual sales figures. The company has never said how many
Kindle devices or e-books it has sold.
According to
the S-Curve theory, I would place e-books somewhere in the end
of the 1st quarter of going up. The reason is, that the technology
is developing, amount of consumers are growing, but there is still a
long way to the peak. E-books are continuing to gain popularity and
still keeps a lot of potential.[7] Later in the text we will go
through examples and reasons for this. And when one of the competitors
on the market of e-books will be nearing the top of the S-curve, others
will likely exploring alternative technologies that could give rise
to curves of their own and we will probably get a new breakthrough in
this field.
Talking about
the Adjacent Possible, as Steven Johnson wrote in his The
Genius of the Tinkerer “Each new combination opens up the
possibility of other new combinations”
[9] and we already
can see how fast e-reading is moving in a direction of opening new doors.
Kindle which owns biggest part of E-books market[3], already is in
danger of loosing position, because on tablets entered the market [11].
After Apple had launched its iPad, lots of users understood the priority
of having everything mobilized in one device so companies which are
specialized on e-books, now have to work hard on thinking about innovations.
Another aspect of new possibilities for e-books is
color screens, while E-Ink
has color prototypes in the labs, there are still lots of obsticles
for technology became available.
Though it is
getting more and more popular, if it would be need to place an e-book
into a Technology Adoption Life Cycle, I would place in into
an Early market phase with rapid growth of ampunt of users. Sure, the
sales are growing and E-book readers have become the hottest consumer
products of the year 2009, but it is nothing comparing to how successful
e-books can become and I am sure will become. Those who are looking
for new technologies, opened for innovations and comes up with the times
are buying e-books now, but even bigger wave of buying is on its way.
I see lots of reasons for this.
To start with, E-books are great for travel. They are light weight, compact, and easy to carry. In our world of globalization and need of mobility this is extremely important. Secondly, nature protection is getting more and more important our days. About 68 million tons of paper and paperboard are use every year only in US [5].With help of e-book a serious amounts of paper can be saved. I am talking not about books paper, but also about a possibility to keep your documents, notes, all kind of everyday printing outs in an e-book. One more thing – you can buy a book in few minutes just by going on line, no need of going out and searching for a book in the shops. Moreover in case of fire or flood the books you have loose the books that are stored at home. If the same happens with your e-book – you have your books in the on-line library( e.g. Kindles library is backed up on Amazon). Another important thing is that with e-books, people will have a possibility to choose how they want the book they are reading to look like. In the future, more brands will make their e-book popular. Not only Kindle will be exploding e.g. now Kindle owns around 58.59% of the market. [3] Sony Reader, iRex etc are already available now, and to compete on the market, e-books will be improving more and more. It also looks like Apple's iPad may provide better format for texts. Apples' iPad has a larger color touch screen and integrated Wi-Fi and is better for presenting textbooks with color pictures, diagrams, and charts than Kindle. In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had claimed that his company's iBookstore, which launched in April, had taken 20% of the market.[2] Its possible to keep on naming advantages, but I would like to finish with really worthy one – e-books are cheaper in the final sum. We know that textbooks are hugely expensive and e-books could cut down on the cost and weight of textbooks. But of course, you can not press flowers on Kindle for your herbarium.
So the popularity
is definitely growing, e.g. 66% of public libraries in US offering e-books.[4]
Though, there are certain minuses about e-books the same as pluses.
Talking about the impact of this kind of technology on our life in future, it will definitely be significant. Adding to what was said before, there will be am impact on book sellers and especially book printing. If booksellers can change to selling e-books, printing agencies will face more difficult situation. Some area used-book dealers say they're already feeling a loss - others haven't and don't expect to.[6]
Another point that will be influenced is the Intellectual property rights, as there should be another approach found, in order to regulate this aspect in the world on e-books. These transformative evolutionary developments are not, at least today, heavily constrained by issues of control and protection of intellectual property, or of revenue and economic viability. “They are still largely experimental, and are focused primarily on improving the ability of authors to communicate and document. They provide new levels of control, monitoring, and usage restrictions for digital books that may well go beyond what consumers are accustomed to with physical print books, and they create serious questions about our ability to manage, preserve, and provide access to our cultural and intellectual heritage.”[10]
All this also raises serious question of the future of libraries, and how they will look like in the future. The question of preservation and the integrity of our cultural and intellectual record are especially sharp in the context of e-book. These have enormous importance both for individual consumers and for society as a whole, and for libraries, which are mainly in charge of the archives in our society.
This and much more, will be the changes with the e-book will bring it. Talking about gadget itself, it will definitely improve and diversify.
To draw the line, lets think of some ideas on a business model that can be used, in order to work with e-book and exploit this technology. Here is the couple of ideas:
-A tablet with 2 screens can be made, in order to combine the pluses of the tablet and an e-ink or alternative.
-A music player can be built in, in order to be able to listen to music while reading the book.
- Another idea is to make them look more like real books, with cover or so, so it will be easier for those who are skeptical, to change from traditional books to e-books.
- To make an e-book colorful, will give it new possibilities, like having books with colorful pictures for children to get this niche of children’s books, educational books, etc. Additional income can come from this niche by distributing the books within schools and any educational institutions.
-It will be very useful to have a possibility to highlight parts of the text if needed, and may be to make some remarks, especially if we are talking about schoolbooks.
Talking about
income, the stream can be from the advertisement that can be put in
some of the books.
References:
http://www.newmediareader.com/
http://www.news-journalonline.
booksellers-consider-impact-
7. E-books Continue to Gain Popularity By Ruth Hendrickson
http://ezinearticles.com/?
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-
20101212-18u27.html
9. The Genius of the Tinkerer article in The Wall Street Journal (29. 9. 2010)
http://online.wsj.com/article/
Volume 6, Number 6 - 4 June 2001, by Clifford Lynch.
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/
http://www.alltouchtablet.