I got to try one of these out the other day, It’s a Sony ebook reader which is meant to be the future for digital publishing. It’s really slim and about the size of a paperback and can hold over 100 books on it depending on the size of the hard-disc.  I work in digital publishing so hear a lot about these things and how they will revolutionise everything but I’m not so convinced

Granted It’s very clever and lots of design has gone into the screen which looks as crisp as I’ve ever seen a screen – apparently it uses real ink to make it look more like a real book.  Having said this I am yet  to stare at it for hours on end in order to see if my eyes hurt just as they do when you look at a computer monitor for too long. ..The battery life is almost endless with 7500 page turns before it needs changing.

I do see the advantage of being able to have 100 books on one reader, for students it could be a very useful resource and would alleviate the need to have textbooks for everything. For the traveller who can’t get editions abroad, they could have all the books they ever want stored in one location.  So for a select few it could prove to be a very useful gadget to have.

The problem is that at the moment there are very few e-format books that can be bought and downloaded from the major publishers. And so part of what I’m doing in my current job is to help get all the titles converted so they are available in E format.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m quite cynical about this.  I don’t really think many people (beyond those in digital publishing!) will go out and by one of these devices with their own money. Firstly they’re really expensive, £250 is the figure going around, just for the reader – then you need books and they cost the same price as the print equalivant!

There’s no way I’d pay £30 for an eBook, even if it was the best book ever written.

The publishers still haven’t grasped the pricing viz-a-viz eBooks – they are paranoid that by undercutting the price of the print book they would be losing margin. i.e. people would buy eBooks and not print books and as 95% of their current business is based around printed books they’re obviously very keen to preserve the status-quo!

Sadly this Luddite attitude could kill off the eBook before it even has a chance to establish itself but perhaps that is what many in traditional publishing really want…

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Print books have advantages.  They can be held, do not require batteries, can be thrown around and won’t break.  Some people even like the smell of the pages…   I think to many the tangible side of a book that makes it what it is.

Crucially for me, unlike other mediums (Music CDs, DVDs etc) often people want books because they are a book.

Of course there will always be the techies and the yuppies who want to buy the next gismo and show off, but beyond this I suspect there is only a very niche market of people who will use this kind of product as it currently stands.  This does not mean that in the future this won’t take-off, It’s just at the moment I feel the technology is not sufficiently advanced to make the product that much better than a printed book.

For me It still lacks a real USP.

When bendy screens,  flexible rubber like plastic, wifi connections and good colour screens become available perhaps this may change.

Perhaps a more important development to come out of this is that  traditional publishers -like my employers- if they are not responsive to the change from print to digital, may increasingly find themselves marginalised as more and more content is released online directly to the consumer – bypassing the middle-man that is the publisher.

Also retailers like Amazon are increasingly dealing directly with authors, which was traditionally a relationship maintained by publishing houses. I think if the big dinosaur publishers are not careful they may face  terminal decline as technology  to an extent makes their current business model  more and more irrelevant.