Apple Isn’t The Only Disruptor: How Amazon Is Killing Publishers

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/apple-isnt-the-only-disruptor-how-amazon-is-killing-publishers/

by FluidDjango • 15 years ago

44 47 15 years ago

I have no love lost for the publishing industry, but the death of printed books is one of the most tragic large-scale events in my lifetime (actual human suffering excepted, of course).

I'm still young, but I never thought I would see this day come. Go back to 1990 and tell the average person on the street that in the next few decades, bookstores would all go out of business and the only way to buy a book would be to read it on a digital device. They'd either flatly refuse to believe you, or be frozen in horror. Yet that's where we're headed, not so far in the future, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing we can do about it.

jmduke2• 15 years ago

Why is this a sad thing, besides nostalgia?

On my Kindle, I have a semester's worth of textbooks, a dozen periodicals, and a few novels I've been busting through. And that's a mere fraction of the allotted storage space, whereas it would take two backpacks to fit all of the physical copies.

As someone for whom reading is a passion, not a hobby, this is far and away my favorite technological development of the past ten years.

corin_3• 15 years ago

Is nostalgia not worth caring about of and for itself? I'm a happy Kindle owner, but there's something about it that just isn't quite the same.

No doubt it's only sad for people who grew up reading paper not screens - which probably will even include people being born now - and one day nobody will care how their great-grandparents read... but for now there's still plenty of people for whom books are more than just the sum of the words.

In fact I think it's generally a case that physical objects can do more emotionally than digital replacements - and I don't mean that the story, or whatever the object is for, will be better, but the item itself. The books that mean the most to me were either given to me by people I care about, or passed down generations. The same thing can become true of watches (won't be quite the same to inherit a four-generations-old iPhone...)

dmbass• 15 years ago

I too own a Kindle and one of the major downsides I see is that you cannot share it. You cannot give or lend a book to someone when you are done. You cannot put a Kindle on your coffee table and have anybody who picks it up be able to flip through and actually read without losing your place in the book. It's a device designed around a single user which is often enough not the use case for a physical book.

thezoid• 15 years ago

The one problem I have with eBooks is the lack of transferability that is inherent with print books. I've read a number of books I'd love to lend to my friends, but because I bought the kindle copy I cannot do that.

With a physical book the only hoop I have to jump through is meeting up with them and giving them the book. I've done this a number of times through university with textbooks and it saved me and several colleagues hundreds of dollars.

xibernetik2• 15 years ago

The rise of the printing press lead to the decline of scribes and handwritten books. Illumination, for the most part, is a lost art.

The rise of gun-based warfare lead to the decline of sword-making in Japan. It never recovered.

The movement from an oral society, where stories were passed down by story-telling, to a written society in ancient Greece, lead to the decline of the art of story-telling.

Disruptive technological advancement can, and has historically, lead to the loss of an artform, even while granting numerous additional benefits. The decline of an art is sad - it is a loss of a form of expression we once had.

I love my Kindle, but I also love old leather-bound books. The subtle creases and variation that marks some of my old books as unique and the sentiments/bond created by handling a physical object cannot be replicated by my Kindle, and I recognize that even while choosing to use my Kindle for convenience for most reading.

Even small things like some books are designed around the structure and material, with pages or patterns that are dependent on having two sides you can view in parallel, are a huge difference.

It's a new media that, if it does replace the old for the most part, will result in a small loss. There are benefits (such as hyperlinks) but there is still a cost that should be acknowledged.

javanix• 15 years ago

I don't understand this at all.

I don't read books for the experience of turning pages - I read them for the experience of reading and interpreting and taking in a story.

What exactly is more romantic or useful about reading the latest Stephen King novel on a tablet versus a bound sheaf of paper?

The death of the printed book boils down reading to the bare essence of appreciating the written word.

eugenejen• 15 years ago

For reading a new book, the physical form can be replaced by e-reader without problem.

But just in case, if you reread a book 20 years later. You may found the margin notes you left 20 years ago "romantic". Of course probably most books don't deserve reread every 20 years.

I don't have any notes that I kept on computer 20 years ago, they are either lost in disk crash or server meltdown. I still have some note books from then.

WayneDB2• 15 years ago

With printed books:

1) You easily lend them out to anybody at all. 2) You can save a ton of money by purchasing used books. 3) Once you buy it, the store you bought it from can't just delete it from your bookshelf like Amazon has done in the past and I'm sure Apple will do in the future.

beatle• 15 years ago

it's called creative destruction.

AzAngel• 15 years ago

You are going to make me quote Giles (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer): "Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell... musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is... it has no texture, no context. It's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um... smelly." It is true though, things I read physically stick with me a lot easier and hold my attention better then digital reads. Unless of course my computer was to catch on fire. I am sure that experience would stay with me for a while.

spodek• 15 years ago

"Romantic" and "useful" are your emotional response and opinion. Others have different values so they react differently. Since other people don't have all the same values as you, presenting your views as fact doesn't illuminate much.

You also compared your favorite parts of one medium with your least favorite parts of another. Why not ask yourself your favorite parts of ebooks and your worst parts of books also? You'll have a more valid comparison then.

I point this out because this pattern of comparing things is so common -- confusing opinion with objective truth and comparing the best of A with the worst of B -- and we benefit from avoiding the pattern. I didn't mean just to single javanix out and I hope this came out respectfully.

dredmorbius• 15 years ago

Lending/sharing, persistence (particularly against accidental or intentional deletion), device-independent access, resale, marginalia / underlining / dog-earing / highlighting, proven archival format, physical mnemonic value (there's something about the reading pile by the side of the bed or book left for a quick 1-2 page read in the bathroom), freedom from DRM.

Electronic media offer benefits as well: searchability, ease of duplication, amenability to quantitative/qualitative analysis (one example: http://www.ted.com/talks/what_we_learned_from_5_million_book...), extremely compact storage.

Both formats have their benefits. I'd greatly dislike having hardcopy disappear entirely. I appreciate the utility of online media.

The biggest concern I have with the Amazonization of the book industry is that we're moving from a highly concentrated publisher-dominated model to an absolute monopoly at the retail/distributor point. I'm very, very leery of concentrations of control and influence.

kenamarit• 15 years ago

For me, the physicality of the book, the object itself, serves as a reminder of the knowledge gained from reading it.

When I can easily browse my bookshelf in actual physical three dimensional space, it's easier for me to move backwards and forwards through thoughts and ideas that I have acquired from those books, thoughts that otherwise would get easily buried in digital layers of organization.

Don't get me wrong--I am pro e-book. I have many in my collection. While technology allows me to simplify many things and aggregate diverse objects to a single place, it doesn't solve or simplify how I organize books (and to me books represent hundreds of hours of invested time and education). To say that with an e-book everything is at my fingertips is somewhat misleading. The organization of a physical library still beats the organization of my books in Kindle or iBooks or any of the number of programs I've tried. And for a lot of my comics and art books, the dimensions of the paper itself is part of the final product.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, or maybe when I have touchscreen wallpaper I'll consider switching over to completely digital.

Florin_Andrei• 15 years ago

I think the tablets and e-readers these days still suck. The interface is still rough around its virtual edges. I can't get into the "zone" if I'm reading a digital book - not yet. This may change in the future, as today is still the early childhood of this technology.

I'm also concerned about volatility. Paper books last for decades, or even more if properly cared for. I struggle to keep e-documents even a few years old. This is a fundamental problem and it needs a proper solution, quickly.

Finally, DRM gets in the way big time. Lending an e-book? Forget it. Finding one day that the content on your tablet was remotely deleted from the mothership? It's unlikely, but the reality is you're at the mercy of whoever made the tablet and they can certainly do so by invoking some obscure paragraph in the 200-page EULA that nobody ever reads. You're the "owner" of an e-book in name only; Amazon is the real big kahuna who calls all the shots.

We will inevitably move to electronic formats, no doubt. But this is the Stone Age of e-books - these are the stone tablets of e-content. We're still in a very very early stage.

BrainInAJar• 15 years ago

That's just sentimentality. You could say the same thing about cave paintings or stone tablets

WayneDB2• 15 years ago

No it's not. The person you're replying to didn't say why he mourned the death of physical publishing, he just said that he mourned it.

Paper books come along with a certain amount of convenience and freedom. Digital books, while convenient in some ways, are inconvenient in other ways (like DRM). So, I really don't think that his statement must be sentimental.

patio11• 15 years ago

If you had grown up with a Kindle, and someone gave you a book for Christmas, you'd say they were certifiably insane.

Look at the features: a) It smells better b) You can store them and it only takes an entire room of your house c) They weigh enough such that you can curve your children's distressingly straight spines with them.

Dn_Ab• 15 years ago

I really enjoy reading and will be nostalgic about physical books. I also really like my kindle. For fiction reading I have not found it's match. But for non-fiction there is a UX feature where physical books currently dominate any book reader I've tried (laptop, tablet, kindle, smartphone).

Flipping to the index or table of contents, keeping a pen or finger in another page and flipping back and forth. Once that is figured out I will be a complete convert and stop preferring physical books.

serge2k• 15 years ago

and yet I would still rather have a book.

bbgm• 15 years ago

I grew up in a house full of books, have been reading since I was a wee lad, but today, you would have to pry my Kindle out of my hands. I read more than ever, and enjoy being able to carry my library with me, whether it be non-fiction, sci fi, or essays (I love Singles).

bh42222• 15 years ago

Printed books are not going extinct. Only publisher and most book store are.

Printed books will become a small percentage of all books, but they will be around for a very long time, even if they mostly become vanity items.

I prefer the tactile experience of paper books, you may call that vanity, I just call it my preference, not worse than anyone's brand preference.

harshpotatoes• 15 years ago

There are some disturbing thoughts that arise from this. For example, what if in a thousand years from now, all information about this century is forgotten, because it was written in a digital format which can no longer be read. Or some sort of technological apocalypse occurs, and there are no non-digital sources to be read.

r00fus• 15 years ago

A related concern: 1984-style "party" that views any historical content as a threat to it's existence easily censors and edits both non-fiction and fiction literature to promote itself.

With paper printing and thousands of independent copies, this becomes difficult. With digital copies, especially in an iTunes-match or Amazon Digital Locker scenario, this becomes trivial.

If you think this is paranoid, watch the latest moves that DHS and TSA are making and combine them with SOPA for chilling effect.

The digitization of books is, to me, like the digitization of voting - appealing, but very dangerous and possibly not worth the societal dangers that come with it.

jaysonelliot3• 15 years ago

You've hit on one of my biggest secret fears. Heck, right now I have information on 5.25" floppies that can only be read by an Apple ][, old SyQuest and Zip disks that need to be transferred before they can be read, and probably somewhere, a data cassette or two.

Information that requires special equipment to read is a dangerous thing.

tybris• 15 years ago

What if our entire view of history today is misguided or very much incomplete because of similar events that occurred in the past when there was hardly any redundancy of information?

hypersoar• 15 years ago

When I upgraded Kindles, I had to go without one for a little while after I sold the old one. There was a book I wanted to read at the time, so I picked up a mass-market paperback of it. I found that I preferred reading on the Kindle in almost every way. It's more comfortable to hold, you can make the text bigger, and you don't have to move it around when you change pages (related: http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/04/13/the-pursuit-of-laziness/).

So then I hear people say things along the lines of "Sure ebooks have their advantages, but a physical book just feels better". They often make it sound like everybody either agrees with them or is indifferent, but this isn't the case.

Ebooks are cheaper to distribute than physical books. They are easier to carry around (thanks to the Kindle synchronization service, I _always_ have my book with me, because I always have my phone). The barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see books that wouldn't have, otherwise. Sure, a lot of it's crap, but most of everything is. We get some good stuff, too. The increased convenience and available gets many people (myself included) to read more. Moreover, some people, like me, just like it better.

Then I hear people say that the impending supremacy (in the sense of popularity) of ebooks over physical books is a catastrophe?

What?

More people are going to read more books, more often, more easily, and this is a tragedy? Really? How is this not excellent? How is this not wonderful?

Besides, physical books will still exist. LPs weren't killed by CDs, and they weren't even killed by digital music (although CDs might be, but nobody seems to care). Indeed, the fact that physical books will become a niche item probably means that they'll be higher quality (if more expensive) as people buy them for the binding, and not just for the book. Meanwhile, ebooks will enter the mainstream, and most people will be fine with them for most purposes. I'll wager dollars to donuts that the next generation won't really care.

The physical book is not dying. It's simply moving on to another stage of life. The book will be better off than it ever was.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Google missed a huge opportunity by not doing anything seriously disruptive themselves, too, when they entered the e-book market. Did they really expect to take anything from Amazon by just competing with Amazon head-on?

When market leaders are so entrenched, your only hope to beat them is by disrupting them and changing the game forever. One way they could've done that is by trying harder to bypass the middle-men and enforce self-publishing. They're sort of trying to do that with Google Artist Hub for music artists, but I doubt they are taking that very seriously, either.

corin_3• 15 years ago

Somewhat depressing that the submission to the actual source yesterday (or was it the day before) didn't make it to the front page, only had three upvotes when I found it hours after it's submission... but when TechCrunch regurgitate it, here it is on the front page.

I really hope this was caused by luck and timing, and perhaps by the overwhelming focus on SOPA - but a voice in the back of my head is saying that it could well be getting more attention for being from TechCrunch, which would be sad.

Regardless, better to see it on the front page now than not at all, good piece.

newbusox• 15 years ago

I don't know if publishing companies (or even book sellers, like Borders) have attempted this in the past, but this article (and the article it links to) lays out a pretty fair case for predatory pricing (sometimes referred to as "dumping") which is when a business attempts to root out competitors by selling below cost and then (hypothetically), when its competitors are out of the market, raises the price above competitive levels. This is generally illegal under the Sherman Act (antitrust law) in the United States (and likely in other countries, too), although, unfortunately, it is quite difficult to succeed on these sorts of claims in the US, most notably because, while a company is engaging in predatory pricing, consumers are better off since they are paying less (and a fair number of economists don’t believe that predatory pricing is rational or even possible to work for various reasons).

Still, there are remedies for companies that engage in this behavior--maybe they'll come too late to save small publishers in this case, but they exist.

frabcus• 15 years ago

Amazingly you've all missed the big problem with electronic books. One I worry about from time to time.

There's a reasonable chance our civilisation will collapse in the near future (within 100 years). (Not going to go into detail of why - think climate change, viruses, meteors... take your pick)

When it does, there'll still be people around. And if it is a severe collapse, there won't be the infrastructure to recharge, install new books, manufacture or maintain e-readers.

This is a pain, as books will be really useful then. e.g. About farming, traditional methods of manufacture etc.

macrael• 15 years ago

Do you think the internet is a bad idea too? There is an awful lot of digital knowledge and tools out there these days we won't have access to in the event of a collapse. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that this is "the big problem with electronic books".

Apple Isn’t The Only Disruptor: How Amazon Is Killing Publishers

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