2010: the Tipping Point in the Future of Reading?
By Gail Nickel-Kailing on December 22nd, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor – now published only electronically, not printed on paper anymore – published an excellent and intriguing piece on e-books and e-readers (including the images above and more).
At Print CEO, the debate has been going on for quite some time; today we get another look. Here’s what the Monitor had to say:
The year 2010 is widely seen as a tipping point when the e-book, once an avant-garde oddity, begins to supplant the hidebound codex. This transition, sweeping in scale, recalls nothing less than the move from stone tablets and scrolls to the bound volume.
Already, the number of electronic texts is expanding exponentially, changing the very way we interact with the written word. Sony sells about 100,000 e-book titles through its online store; Barnes & Noble, a million; Amazon, 360,000. Book Search, an initiative headed by Google, has scanned more than 10 million texts since 2004. The Dostoevsky canon can now be searched the same way you search for the nearest Chinese restaurant.
Here are just a few of the posts that have appeared on PrintCEO in the last year; read what our authors (and readers) have to say:
Delay eBooks by four months? What are they thinking?
Developments in the eReader Market
Main Content Feed
4 Responses to “2010: the Tipping Point in the Future of Reading?”
By Michael J on Jan 4, 2010 | Reply
Actually the CSM has not eliminated their print edition. Like many other papers they have changed from a daily to a weekly. I think I read that the number of subscribers have stayed pretty constant, but I’m not positive that’s true.
In any case the either or conversation about printed books is not very helpful, in my opinion. It’s pretty clear by now that it will be different mediums for different people at different times.
Somehow i think the conversation misses the point that readers are not a zero sum or a market that cannot radically expand.
My take is the heavy users of print medium in the codex form ( say over a 100 books a year ) is a very small number. I think that aside from El-Hi and College textbooks, most books sales happen at Christmas.
That says to me that a significant part of the market is for giving, not for reading.
Electronic books are not suited for giving. That needs the physical object. Note that photo books, the content of which is free on the web, is one of the bright spots of the industry.
The opportunity is that with the level of illiteracy in the States the more people who actually read, the more e books and print books.
By Gail Nickel-Kailing on Jan 4, 2010 | Reply
Michael,
In my household, we are “heavy users” of print, but I agree it is not a zero sum game. That’s the whole problem.
I think it’s the “reading” issue that is more important. We need a literate public, reading on screens, on paper, on anything! Just reading!!
G.
By Michael J on Jan 4, 2010 | Reply
That’s exactly the opportunity. There is little question in my mind that the number of readers is going to increase exponentially.
Being able to write an email, a blog post a linked in entry and most especially a tweet has become critical to success at work. The more you write, the more you read, the more you write.
It would be nice if the industry put their weight behind a literacy campaign instead of the various Print is Good ( no fooling around, we really mean it) campaigns.
By Alois Senefelder on Jan 10, 2010 | Reply
As Ray Bradbury once said, ” You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”