Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikewolf
I tend to think Amazon, Apple and others will eventually adjust, and Amazon in particular will not hesitate to make the Kindle app and store a "service" that can be consumed in the clouds.
What do you think?
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I think the whole broadband/cloud/G3 ebook system is a niche market approach to a universal marketplace. The category "people who want books, and will consider digital versions of them" is a much, much bigger customer base than "people who want books, will consider digital versions, and will be content to read those versions at a desktop or on a device currently connected to the internet."
Allowing cached versions in personal computers is fairly irrelevant; the market for ebooks didn't take off until we had devices that let those books be read while lying in bed or sitting on a bus. If they don't transfer to mobile, offline devices, it's a limited-appeal techno-geek market. (Or a niche entertainment market. Yes, a lot of businesspeople have cellphones. It's fairly well established that very few of them are going to be reading substantial numbers of books on those phones.)
To tap into the
reading marketplace--rather than the gadget-loving marketplace, or the computer geek marketplace, publishers & distributors need to first figure out how people use books. And a lot of ebook strategies have centered around "how do customers use
computers, and how can we add ebooks to their use thereof?"
When it first shows up, it'll be greeted with enthusiasm. It's only when alternate bookstores and new devices become popular that the question will arise, "how can I read my google books on my [X] device?"
Of course, it'll show up immediately for current owners of ebook devices, and Google will have problems if they have to say, "You can't read our books on any of the current e-ink readers on the market." That'll get them publicly labeled as "online content, not really ebooks" -- or potentially "library, not personal books; you can read them in *their* locations, but not take them home." And people won't pay as much for access to online content or a library.