About E-Publishing

KNN has run across a couple of interesting articles about the e-book phenomenon.  People in very high-profile sources are talking about electronic publishing, but we aren't sure they're thinking about it very much. 

Amanda Katz's piece in The Boston Globe from July 17 is fascinating in many ways.  The thing that concerns us is that the structure of the piece seems to feature an implied or expected conflict between electronic and printed material.  Why is that necessary?  Does it have to be all or nothing?  A no-holds barred cage match?  Can't we have both?

Likewise, the piece in the New York Times on July 15 about how the structure of a non-traditional summer class introduction to the publishing industry is changing because of e-books is interesting as well.  The focus is the course, but KNN has a concern.  It's the blase nature of the business concern for the publishers that e-books create.  Of course, they're not going to come out on stage in front of a bunch of students and yell the business equivalent of "FIRE!!"  But no one quoted in the article wanted to make any sort of pronouncement about the future effect of e-books on their business.  Or what their businesses plan to do about it.

It seems to be too soon to do much open thinking about this phenomenon, at least for publishers.  The sense we've gotten is that the publishing industry just wants e-books to go away and they are ready for them to do that.  But the Katz article shows that people are using e-books in a variety of ways, from sampling a book that they'll later want to buy a paper copy of because of ownership issues, to full replacement of paper works.  Businesses of all stripes will need to get comfy with e-books or they'll inadvertently provide their competition with a technology gap that can be exploited for little or no hard investment. 

KNN would like to state for the record:  electronic books will not completely replace paper books.  Nope.  Not ever.  Bank on it.  But the time is now to prepare for the loss of market share that publishers will face as a result.  It's coming.  E-books are too convenient and too adaptable to individual choices to just go away.  The market won't stand for it.