Publishers Must Pander To E-Book Reader Owners

E-book readers really took off in 2009. These readers have been around for 10 years now - the Franklin eBookman was launched in 1999 - but it was the release of the Amazon Kindle 2.0, and the larger Kindle DX model later in the year that seemed to propel both e-book readers and e-books into the mainstream consumer consciousness. The Kindle reader quickly became Amazon's best selling product and, with the huge growth in the e-book reader market, other manufacturers either upgraded their existing readers or developed new ones to get their share of what was clearly a hot, emerging market.

With such a large number of e-book readers available, and bearing in mind that they are hot and trendy gadgets, it's hardly surprising that there's a lot of focus on the hardware. It would be easy to get so wrapped up in the technical aspects of e-book readers that the broader - and more important - implications are overlooked.

The fact is that, as well as changing the way that books are read, e-book readers will change the way that books are published, purchased and delivered. Without overstating the case, e-book readers may very well be the biggest change in books and reading since the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg.
When it comes to reading, most potential customers will probably be more interested in how e-book readers compare with reading a "real" book than how one e-book reader compares with another. The e-ink technology displays used in most modern e-book readers are extremely good and give the reader an experience which is very similar to reading text printed on paper. A recent survey of U.S. e-book reader owners found that 80% of them preferred using their e-book reader to reading a traditional paper book. That's a fairly solid endorsement of the reading experience.

Most e-book readers feature either 3G or Wi-Fi wireless connectivity these days. That means that, as long as you are in an area with coverage (most areas these days), you can purchase and download an e-book whenever you like. A lot is made of the fact that e-books do not require any paper, ink or bindings. The fact that the delivery of a physical book can double its carbon footprint is often overlooked. E-books are both environmentally friendly (even taking the materials and energy used in the production of reader hardware into account) and cost less than traditional paper books.

As far as publishing goes, e-books change the traditional cycle of hardback release followed, usually a few months to a year later, by the paperback edition. The cheap e-book edition is now released at the same time as the newly published hardback version. This is something that has caused the big publishing companies - who want to protect their profits from hardback sales -something of a dilemma. However, they will need to accept the new technology and change their business models to suit.

The fact is that the owners of e-book readers, although currently in the minority, are a very influential group. People who read a book a month are not about to rush out and buy an Amazon Kindle or Sony Daily Edition reader. E-book reader owners read a lot of books. They are the target dem ographic of both booksellers and publishers and will therefore be as instrumental in shaping the future of books as the e-book reader manufacturers themselves.