Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
You know who else was reading on a Palm in 2003? Mike Shatzkin, publishing consultant. And he predicted that the Kindle would fail:
|
I don't doubt it. And yet this is the guy we're supposed to bow to when it comes to industry knowledge in general?
Quote:
There were people who were sure that Microsoft would be leading the ebook revolution. Where are they now? Others thought that Rocketbooks would be the dominant bookstore. Remember them? If we were to roll the tape back to 2006, who would have thought Amazon would be king of the ebook hill? Who had even heard of Kobo? Who would have thought that Borders would be no more? Who would have thought that tens of millions of people would be reading ebooks on Apple and Google devices?
I am quite certain that every one of those here who attack the publishers for getting it wrong missed would have missed those too , looking forward from 2003 or even 2006.
|
Read those first couple of sentences again. Seriously. You've just indicated that there was an "ebook revolution" as far back as Microsoft Reader and the .LIT format. You've even indicated that there was a leading ebook seller
before Amazon. I don't care about specific companies. I'm only addressing the fact that there were clear indicators that ebooks
were going to be a big deal before Amazon or Apple or Sony ever entered the device/ereader/app picture. You just supplied further evidence of that. So can we drop the pretense that publishers were utterly blindsided by ebooks? Please?
There were harbingers. It was their industry. I don't know if they could have done anything about it—I don't really care. I just know they (or Shatzkin, or you) don't get to claim they got t-boned without warning by the ebook's popularity.