Man Is The Media.
A Few Thoughts About Why the Kindle Won’t Save the Publishing Industry
December 10th, 2008 by Martin
Tags: Kindle, publishing industry
In my last post, I noted that the Kindle might not save a publishing industry trying to turn digital “threats” into advantages. Today I discovered a post by writer Charles Stross, who talks about a similar reader, the Sony PRS-505:
I’ve been thinking for a while that e-paper machines like the PRS-505 are a dead end. At the high end, e-paper readers that support a stylus or keyboard and allow annotations have got a promising role in those professions that rely on carrying copious documentation around (lawyers, engineers, and doctors being the prime candidates). And at the low end you can use your phone as an ebook reader, if you’ve got something like an iPhone or a Windows Mobile machine (with a decent-sized screen). But the in-the-middle readers that cost £150-300, like the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle, are trapped in the middle. 70% of the population don’t ever buy books, and about 30% of the books sold are bought by maybe 1% of us. The real bibliophiles are probably going to stick to their first edition hardbacks, and the sort of folks who buy a big fat novel for the beach or the Christmas break twice a year aren’t going to buy a machine that costs twenty times as much as that book (before you add any content).
I think this sums it up nicely. The biggest problem with the Kindle or a comparable Sony reader is that it’s just that: A reader. No matter how sleek they’ll make it, it’ll need more to justify its presence in any handbag.
The truth is that all types of media content are going digital and just as the MP3 player quickly merged with the mobile phone, only niche markets or enthusiasts will want an expensive device that does just one thing. The Peek emailing device is another perfect example of that. It was on Wired’s 2008 top ten list, just as my T-Mobile G1 was, which does the exact same thing as the Peek, plus essentially most other things you can do on a laptop computer. That the two are on the same list, only proves my point above that highly specialized gadgets only appeal to tech/fringe lovers (such as Wired’s readers).
As all things go digital there’s only one natural place to be. And that’s online, with free, cheap or ad-sponsored access/permission to comsume that content. The web is building its main destinations for each content type already, and the example of video shows that there’s plenty of room for more than one platform within each field (YouTube, Joost, Hulu just to name a few in the video space).
Natural and inevitable consolidation (such as Google buying YouTube although they already had Google Video) and the increasing richness of browsers – also on mobile devices – makes me want to put my money on more versatile devices, such as TechCrunch’s proposed tablet computer, which would be ideal for enjoying any kind of digital content online:
To recap: As a consumer, I’m not really interested in the concept of the ‘e-book’ (the name alone illustrates that it’s outdated): I want my books and magazines to be part of the combined stream of digital content I enjoy, and I want publications to be accessible and interactive through whatever devices I use already.
