an ex-Amazonian looks at Amazon

[QuantumIguana]

If I play you music, if would be difficult to tell if the source is a CD or if it is from an unscratched vinyl record. Some fans of vinyl claim to be able to tell the difference, but even if that is true, most people can't. With e-books vs. paper books, the difference is obvious. E-books are likely to keep the lions share of the book market, but paper books aren't likely to be reduced to the market share of vinyl. We'll be seeing paper books next to the supermarket checkout for some time to come.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I doubt it will be quite as dire as the vinyl LP situation. We can print-on-demand if we insist on paper books. Vinyl-on-demand? Not so much.

Actually, vynil-on-demand is coming.
More precisely, the proof of concept exist now and what remains is improving the audio quality.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12...nted-vinyl-lp/
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=3AIxhxa9r28

Theoretically, you could buy a disk file over the internet, download it, and print it at home.

Welcome to the 21st century.

BTW, signed ebooks are easy to do with a minor tweak to the formats. No sidecar needed. The (unique) signature file can be embedded inside a file (if DRM free) or in the file's metadata. Other solutions are being tried right now, like this Autography effort:
http://www.autography.us.com/signing.html

[taustin]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

If I play you music, if would be difficult to tell if the source is a CD or if it is from an unscratched vinyl record. Some fans of vinyl claim to be able to tell the difference, but even if that is true, most people can't.

(More often than not, most sound engineers can't tell the difference between $1000 Monster speaker cables and wire coat hangers. Really.)

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

With e-books vs. paper books, the difference is obvious. E-books are likely to keep the lions share of the book market, but paper books aren't likely to be reduced to the market share of vinyl. We'll be seeing paper books next to the supermarket checkout for some time to come.

And the kiosk at the airport, and many other impulse buy spots, and spot where people might decide they'd like to read something but didn't expect to when they left home. (The FAA will eventually get their heads out of their asses on using electronic devices on airplanes.)

And hard covers aren't going away in our lifetime.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by taustin

And hard covers aren't going away in our lifetime.

Some of us are planning for a long run, you know...

Still, no, pbooks aren't going away soon... but they're going to get very expensive.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Some of us are planning for a long run, you know...

I have a friend who used to say if he couldn't take it with him, he wasn't going. I haven't heard him say that since the day he was in the emergency room with congestive heart failure and blood pressure so high their equipment couldn't measure it. The ER intern kept walking by muttering under his breath "I don't know why he's not dead" over and over.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Still, no, pbooks aren't going away soon... but they're going to get very expensive.

No, they'll actually get cheaper, adjusted for inflation, and be produced largely as print on demand. Quality might suffer, but those buying hardcovers 20 years from now won't be interested in poor quality. Not this year, mind you, not next, but we'll live to see it. An sfnal view that's eerily accurate so far can be found in Julian May's Intervention (in which the narrator owns a used book store), with "book plaques" being the order of the day for new stuff, but old, paper books being highly collectible. (Also treated gay marriage as an everyday thing, interestingly, though the brother/sister couple - with children - is still pretty outre even today).

[fjtorres]

I'm a tad skeptical of POD's long-term viability. I'm not sure that the hardware prices are ever coming down to a point where they can replace micro-batch printing with on-site delivery or that the output quality will ever reach the levels needed for the collectible object d'art market.
I might be less skeptical if the likes of Xerox or Ricoh were actually involved in designing and building the things...
(shrug)
Mostly I see (volume) pbook demand dying with genX and the annual catalog of hardcover releases dropping into the low hundreds with sales volume in the hundreds per copy. Pricing zooming into the high triple digits. And that is *with* POD. Timeframe: 2060+.
I expect to see that happen.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

If I play you music, if would be difficult to tell if the source is a CD or if it is from an unscratched vinyl record. Some fans of vinyl claim to be able to tell the difference, but even if that is true, most people can't. With e-books vs. paper books, the difference is obvious. E-books are likely to keep the lions share of the book market, but paper books aren't likely to be reduced to the market share of vinyl. We'll be seeing paper books next to the supermarket checkout for some time to come.

I beg to differ on some works (I would say: mostly on full orchestra: Clasical works). Each has its artifacts

Frequency Roll-off (even if RIAA compensated) vs Cut-off (Sample rate limited)
Compressed vs Dynamic range

I left out the media provided: inherent Noise, damage, transfer (pickup) limitations.artifacts

I have never heard the (nor could discover a non RF electronic principal) difference between 12Ga. Low Voltage Lighting (or any other decent parallel copper wire) and the Monster Hyped stuff.

[LovesMacs]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I'm a tad skeptical of POD's long-term viability. I'm not sure that the hardware prices are ever coming down to a point where they can replace micro-batch printing with on-site delivery or that the output quality will ever reach the levels needed for the collectible object d'art market.
I might be less skeptical if the likes of Xerox or Ricoh were actually involved in designing and building the things...
(shrug)
Mostly I see (volume) pbook demand dying with genX and the annual catalog of hardcover releases dropping into the low hundreds with sales volume in the hundreds per copy. Pricing zooming into the high triple digits. And that is *with* POD. Timeframe: 2060+.
I expect to see that happen.

When I first heard of POD, I thought it was a great idea--allow booksellers to sell any title in the world without the downside of unsold inventory. As time went on and I became more familiar with geographical restrictions and used to e-books, I grew less taken with the idea of POD.

I'm beginning to think that POD may be analogous to the short-lived efforts of record stores to offer custom albums of your choice of singles: an interesting concept that unfortunately has been leapfrogged by changes in tastes and technology.

[taming]

Well, I bought the book and have read about 30% of it. Clearly Jason Merkoski has a compelling story to tell. He is an evangelist for ereading and although he loves kindle and is proud of his role in making it happen, he also seems to appreciate what Apple and B&N have done to move the industry forward and improve on the digital reading experience.

The book is engaging, even though there is a whole lot of showmanship and bravado in his writing. I, very briefly, used his first end of chapter link to open up the interactive features through Twitter (instead of Facebook, which was also a choice). It turned my Twitter account into a marketing channel for his book, so I discontinued the "app".

a quote:

It's hard to love Amazon, though. Not the way we love Apple or a bookstore. At best, you respect Amazon for its obsession to detail, for its cheap prices, and how it achieves the promised arrival dates its products. You may not love Amazon, but you trust it as a brand...."

He spends a lot of time writing about the future and what that might look like if we change how we read into a more social experience. He even makes a pass at explaining the neurobiology of reading. Interesting stuff, even if I am not nearly as excited about making reading more social as he is.

It's an enjoyable and provocative read, but I think that someone a little more removed from the process would probably write a somewhat different, and maybe more balanced, account. It is definitely his personal take on the events he described and their meaning.

[pidgeon92]

An interesting critique of the book:

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...ning-the-page/

[taming]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

An interesting critique of the book:

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...ning-the-page/

I guess he didn't read the part where the author speculates that the day will come when authors will "think" the book and readers will directly connect to the author's brain. Interesting that a futurist can screw up so much of the past.

[JakesFriend]

Even if print books still persist (and I believe they will), I can't help but wonder what will follow ebooks?

[Joseph R]

The paperless library has as much chance as the Paperless Office, which is still eluding us in 2013.

Secure PDFs are ubiquitous in the workplace yet printer manufacturers, especially ink suppliers are far from going out of business.

In academic circles, I highly doubt ebooks will replace textbooks; PowerPoint was supposed to do that! . There is FAR too much profit at stakes in newer yearly editions to kill that goose!

The future of reading will not be large bookshelves in people's home to impress guests (OK, maybe one or 2 coffee table books) but Facebook and Twitter updates about the book they have read.

[Joseph R]

Originally Posted by taustin

(More often than not, most sound engineers can't tell the difference between $1000 Monster speaker cables and wire coat hangers. Really.)



And the kiosk at the airport, and many other impulse buy spots, and spot where people might decide they'd like to read something but didn't expect to when they left home. (The FAA will eventually get their heads out of their asses on using electronic devices on airplanes.)

And hard covers aren't going away in our lifetime.

Bingo! Customers are opportunists, as demonstrated yearly on Black Friday (US) and Boxing day (The British Colonies).

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

[Ebooks] are indeed wonderful for read-once novels. They will decimate the MMPB market.

Once the Big Six fix their MMeB pricing, that is. As long as my choice is between an $8 ebook that's not eligible for discounts and an $8 paperback that is, the paperback's going to win. Knock the ebook's price down by about 25%, though, and I'm all over it. Especially if there's no DRM, so I can easily fix the formatting if it irritates me...