That stops when things get powerful enough. Take a look at laptop prices - they have declined significantly in the past 10 years while getting more powerful. It does happen when there is a lack of competition through either a monopoly, like Microsoft, or through extreme brand loyalty, like Apple, but in most cases we see both a decrease in price and increase in capability. e-book readers will almost certainly fall into this class.
While true, eBook readers are not decreasing in price or increasing in usefullness fast enough to justify all the “books are dying!” hype from Kindle fans.
I know what you’re saying, “Of course the librarian thinks books are here to stay!” But it’s true, the Kindle is not growing enough to push out books anytime soon. And part of that, yes, is the library problem. You can’t rent or borrow books on your Kindle (that aren’t public domain anyway), so the desire to get one is lessened.
So you know they still make books on cassette? Trust me, paper books will outlive all of us and the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of teens growing up today who, while they get a lot of their media in digital form, react in revulsion at an eBook reader.
I think a decently priced eBook reader is inevitable. It isn’t here yet.
I do agree that books are going to be around for a long while, because there is a gigantic installed base. In my collection I have several versions of some books, for instance the original magazine serialization, an abridged edition, and then a full edition. I don’t think an eBook reader is ever going to give access to all of them, not to mention the various versions of the artwork.
But I do think the latest throwaway junk novel for summer reading is going to start showing up more and more on eBook readers as they get market penetration.
The idea of retail stores (in a physical sense) dates back to the very dawn of recorded history, and quite probably before that. If prostitution is “The World’s Oldest Profession” I’d say that “Trader” is probably second only by a matter of minutes.
With that in mind, I can’t see the idea of physical shops/stalls in the bazaar/that sort of thing ever completely going away, no matter how prevalent E-commerce becomes. And not everyone is a hip, funky Gen Y with earphones glued in place as they update their Facebook profile every few seconds whilst they buy the latest music and gadgets from online retailers over the net from the iPhone, either.
I haven’t counted my collection. I only measure by either boxes or by shelf-feet. And my husband threw away my grandpa’s magazine collections. Yet he (my husband) still lives…so far.
I’d love to have a sturdy, reliable eBook for things like daily or weekly newspapers, various magazines, and junk summer reading. The problem right now is that I managed to lose one cell phone outright, and I’m constantly misplacing the cell I currently use. I’d want some sort of tracking device for the damned thing, and I’d want it to be sturdy enough for me to throw it in my purse and not have to worry about it being banged up.
In fact, I do rather enjoy online shopping. I’ve been able to find things that the local stores just don’t carry. My husband was delighted recently when I was able to find him some socks (yeah, after he throws out my stuff, I don’t know why I bother either, but I do) which were over the calf, good quality, and had a knitted in heel, that is, that aren’t tube socks. And I frequently buy my own clothing online, though I’m careful to choose styles which are rather forgiving in fit. I just don’t like the virtual models that I’ve tried, so far. And I’d love to be able to tell a store “I love this dress, but I refuse to wear polyester. Can I get this dress in that fabric, please?” and have them comply.
I hate to shop for clothes - but online or catalog is worse. Because shopping for clothes involves trying on clothes to make sure they fit and look good. I want it over with - not one of those “wait three days to get it, try it on, discover the color makes my skin tone look like I’m about to vomit, send it back, pick something else.” Cuts and styles change to rapidly to be assured that my size ten Dockers are going to fit like the last pair of size ten Dockers I bought (and my size changes too - so especially things like bras are horrible over the internet unless I’ve done brick shopping really recently - in which case I might as well just buy it when I’m there).
My sister lives in the middle of nowhere, she drives into a city to do her shopping.
Basics you can have delivered - underwear, socks, t-shirts. And there are some people who do a ton of online shopping for clothes (and SHOES, the internet shoe market is huge - way bigger than clothes, and it isn’t me, I need to try on shoes too). But there will always be people who go to the store for clothes.
Brick shops are never going to go away, because there are too many unique items where you have to be able to fondle the actual product before you can decide to purchase it.
Food is one example. Sure, you can get fresh apples shipped to your house, but how can you be sure what you’re getting? So the experience of going to the market and picking out three decent apples is never going away. Likewise for knickknacks and tchotckes, art, handmade clothing, and so on. Also things you need right now, rather than tomorrow or next week.
But for things like books, video, music, magazines, and so on, online shopping and online distribution is going to be 90% of the market. Even if you want a paper copy of the book, you’ll order it and it will be printed on demand for you. Of course, e-readers are still a niche product. Wait a while, when people get used to smart phones. The market for e-readers will be for people who want a really large screen smart phone.
This, I seriously doubt. The process of printing a decent quality book (as opposed to a crappy stack of printouts in a three-ring binder) doesn’t lend itself to printing singles. Either books will remain on at least some shelves, or be printed in bulk and distributed through online shops, or they’ll go away entirely, but this particular middle ground you describe isn’t going to happen.
ETA: any more than it’s already happening, I mean. You can get individual books printed, for BIG bucks; my mom has done it to print family histories. But this will always be a limited niche market.
Hmm.
Making certain presumptions (like, the “perfect binding” is really perfect), and apparently saying bye-bye to hardcover and maybe books over 550 pages (well, it’s not like anybody reads Clancy anymore anyway), that does look interesting. Ignorance fought.
Presuming the presumptions, there are some out-of-print books I wouldn’t mind seeing run through that sucker, to give me a nice warm hardcopy to hold in my hot little hands. I still want bookstores around to browse in though. I suck at browsing Amazon.
“Perfect binding” means the pages are glued to the binding, like in a crappy cheap paperback. So it isn’t going to be an archival copy of a book. But it’s still a book.
Most likely use for print on demand is that you’ll order a rarely-stocked or out of print book, and some factory will print a copy and drop ship it to you. These things run about $100,000, so you won’t have one in your living room any time soon, or even at most bookstores. But a university library or a big box store might have one, where you can walk in, ask for a book, wait five minutes, and get a printed bound copy.
The thing is also farkin’ huge (and I suspect a little noisy), so I’d personally be surprised to see it in any brick-and-mortar or library. If this thing goes anywhere (which I can’t say is a certainty yet), then I’d expect through mail order only.
Well, the link I posted said the University of Michigan Library is getting one. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be in the lobby for the patrons to play with, more probably somewhere in the basement. And “huge” is relative–it’s only 9 feet by 5 feet by 5 feet.
It seems to me that University libraries are the most likely customers for this sort of thing, because they have requests for all sorts of very limited products. But even so, most of those things could be delivered digitally to the one guy who needs that doctoral thesis on snail radula from 1972, rather than printed for him.
Seeing how often photocopiers break down I would imagine that machine will be a fucking nightmare to keep running.
E-readers won’t get to “essentially zero” for the same reason cellphones haven’t.
well, you can get an essentially free (<$10) phone but it doesn’t have 90% of the extra features you want. In twenty years the iPhone that today rocks the world would be to disposable ones drug traffickers use because it won’t do XñiQ4-YYp that we don’t know know what it’ll be so important then.
THAT cellphone will cost $400 (adjusted)
The phone I have now was free, and its big benefit is that it doesn’t have all the features that I didn’t want. I don’t use internet on it and I don’t subscribe to GPS.
If there is any competition among eBook readers, I bet they eventually get given away if you buy tokens for N books up front. They will have to come down in price a bit first, but they will.
Of course, but in this case you are the niche consumer, not the general one.
I can imagine that an eBook reader will be given away free! if you sign up for a bundle of periodical subscriptions…which would include USA Today (or some other national newspaper which carries only snippets of national news), Reader’s Digest, People, Sports Illustrated, and possibly a real newsmagazine or two. IOW, a bundle which is carefully tailored to appeal to the vast majority of people who bother to read periodicals at all. These readers might automatically download issues whenever the device is in a wifi (or whatever) zone, and ads will be downloaded FIRST. And there WILL be advertisements. And I’ll be on the current equivalent of the SDMB, bitching because I don’t want ANY of those magazines, other than the newsmagazines.
What’s more, I predict that these reading devices won’t work to receive the competitor’s magazines/newspapers.
Eh, the days of a proprietary reader like the Kindle are numbered. These things will be commodities. They’ll be cheap as anything. And we’ll be very used to connecting whatever device we have–probably a phone-sized thing–with whatever display that’s around that we want to use.
So you’ll carry your phone around, but you’ll have various displays that can display anything your phone can serve to it. And these displays/readers could be of any form factor you can imagine–from the phone display itself, to a tablet size, to a laptop size, to a desk display, to a wall display.
You won’t have to worry about carrying “your” e-reader around, because there will be displays all over. A reader or display that can only display proprietary content will be seen as trash. Nobody will want one. Open platforms will win because there’s nothing fundamentally difficult about an e-reader.
Of course there will still be books, but people will stop getting trashy throwaway books in print. Only books that people imagine keeping on their shelves for decades will still be printed–coffee table books, art books, status-marker books, etc.
Yes, I’m betting it will be a very traditional razor and blade kind of thing (just like cellphones.) However, if magazines are still advertiser supported, there will be a strong incentive for them to be available anywhere.