One Brick at a Time

I’m what you would probably call an early adopter. Not a very early adopter, mind – I simply don’t have the time or disposable income to tick that particular box on my wish list. Perhaps the term “quite early adopter” would suit better, or “earlyish adopter”.

Anyway.

I first became interested in the concept of electronic books and ePublishing about 7 years ago. When preparing for holiday, my wife (Gina) and I would pack 5 or 6 books each (we didn’t pack more, as we knew some of our individual selections could be read by the other, and there was usually a book exchange somewhere if you looked hard enough). The situation suited Gina perfectly well – largely because I was the one in charge of handling the luggage. I am man, see me roar! Rawwwrrrr!

One day whilst surfing the ‘net I came across a site that sold electronic books.

Books. In an electronic format. Eh?

The geek in me was aroused from its delicate slumber, and I investigated a little more. The site had a quite good selection of novels from which to choose, and a superb selection of short stories, and you could download them in a number of different formats. After checking to see if my phone/PDA could display them (it could) I decided to give it a try. The site had a special offer on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – it could be mine for just $7 (or about £4 in those pre-credit crunch days or yore). I entered my credit card details, and within minutes I was the proud owner of a novel I had been looking forward to for ages.

And I didn’t have to travel the 40-odd miles to the nearest bookshop to get it.

What I didn’t know at the time, was whether I would be able to read a whole novel on a screen half the size of a KitKat without getting eyestrain, or without getting seriously annoyed with the whole unnatural experience. However, I was willing to give it a shot for the sake of science and art – I mean, 4 quid is not much to invest in a potentially exciting new enterprise, is it?

The process of scrolling through the text instead of turning a page came pretty naturally, and it wasn’t long before I was so immersed in the text that the actual medium of text distribution became not only unimportant, but irrelevant. It was the words that mattered, not the format.

Of course, it was entirely possible that it was Gaiman’s superior prose that was responsible for my total immersion in the e-reading experience, so I tried other novels, short stories, novellas.

The same.

It got to the stage where my eBook purchases started to outnumber my dead tree book purchases.

Of course, all the books I purchased were protected by various DRM methodologies (more on that topic of evil publishing manipulation at a later date, probably) and I made it a rule never to buy a book if it was being sold at full price.

A huge percentage of eBooks are sold online as if they were physical copies. Hardback price £17.99, eBook price £17.99. It is also quite common to find eBooks priced higher than their physical counterparts, too – especially when you figure in bookshops’ 3 for 2 offers, or similar.

Paying more for an eBook than a physical book? Madness. The publication and distribution costs are vastly reduced – especially if buying direct from the publisher (if the publisher sells from their site at all, which surprisingly few do, at the moment).

So why aren’t we yet living in the future where all books and periodicals are read on portable electronic devices?

The answer, I think, is 3-fold.

Firstly, the head-in-the-sand attitude of publishers is delaying the process. Most of them, while acknowledging that eBooks exist, would rather pretend that they don’t. eBooks are the inbred bastard cousin, who you have to invite to the party for fear of upsetting Aunty Mabel, but you’re secretly relieved when they don’t turn up. Sooner or later, though, the cousin turns up and brings all his friends, and you’re going to have to deal then, yessirree bob!

This attitude has caused a lot of major businesses a lot of headache in the past, and it’s astounding to see it still prevalent in modern commerce.

Two closely-related examples: Book chains ignored – nay, dismissed – the opportunities that the internet presented for major national and international distribution of the physical books they sold, leaving the door wide open for a new type of bookshop. Amazon was born from nothing, and remains the most successful online bookseller in the world, having grabbed market share from every established brand in the game. To this day, none of the big book chains can come close to Amazon’s online dominance in the book trade. When Apple launched the iPod, legitimate, paid music downloads were scoffed at by worldy-wise muso types, who knew that the CD reigned supreme, and people would never stop buying music in physical format. Apple became reasonably successful, though, don’t you think?

If publishers don’t get into the game soon, and with a genuine passion for electronic publishing (rather than tentative toe-in-the-water steps) then someone else will come along and clean up. It’s no use believing that it couldn’t happen in publishing. It’s still early days, it’s true, but early days soon turn into late nights. In order to become successful, then, it will take either a big publisher with balls to grab the bull by the horn and innovate, else a third-party with little experience in the book trade will come along, and apply a bit of common sense to the situation, and steal the publishers’ thunder, and market share.

The second reason for the comparative rarity of the eBook as leisure item is the current cost of buying an eBook reader. The current market leaders in terms of eBook hardware both cost a couple of hundred pounds (the Sony PRS505 and the Amazon Kindle), which is a lot of money for the man in the street. When the cost drops, however, sales will increase, so the cost will drop further, etc, etc, until we get to the stage where a decent eBook reader is an almost disposable item.

Yes, there are free alternatives to dedicated eBook readers, but none of these are entirely satisfactory – at least, not for the mass market. Reading anything longer than a short story in PDF format on a PC or Mac is hard work. When reading for pleasure you want to curl up and hold your (e)Book in your hand. Reading on an iPod or mobile phone is fine (I’ve been doing it for years) but you really don’t want to drop that contract phone if you’re having a read in the bath…

So, cheaper readers (and waterproof, please!) are a must for the medium to expand.

And the third reason we’ve not all ditched the printed word? Because books are nice. There’s something satisfying about curling up in front of a roaring fire with a glass of something warming and a favourite book. I love eBooks, but I pray with a passion that they won’t kill the printed book – at least not within my lifetime. What’s likely is that eBooks will get more and more popular, while printed editions are made available through anonymous p.o.d. technologies, or as limited edition collectibles.

And that’s fine by me.