Check out this video of Nicholas Negroponte, of One Laptop per Child, talking to CNN’s Howard Kurts about why he thinks books will be gone in five years.
While time will tell whether the prediction is accurate, the discussion is interesting and of value to newsagents.
while reading this i was thinking back to just last night while i was reading my kids a book to put them to sleep and i tried to picture me doing this via an ipad or similar device and it just doesn’t seem to cut it . Who will pay for these laptops ? yeah sure there are a lot of well off kids out there but from what i see a lot of parents struggle to buy a few exercise books these days . just an example on why i think print will be around for awhile to come is i have 4 computers at work a lap top at home and still i will pick up a mag from the shelf and read it at home while having a coffee and a smoke . The every day working family just does not have the money for this to work .
I did not watch the video as i have no speakers on my computer so i may have missed something
You buy book and it is yours , you buy an app or device and in less then a yr it is useless as it is out of date and the newer version is what the kids want.
An example is all the first round of “free” school kids laptops are already out of date and out of warranty, so when they are broken it is the parents that have to pay to get them replaced or fixed.
While the internet will effect sales it is a bit rich to say that there will be no books in 5-10-20yrs.
Devices are great as long as you have them charged up, but what happens in the middle of a good book on the train or plane and the battery goes flat? There is a place for all forms of media, not just the newest, I still track down Lp’s when I get the chance because I think they sound better the CD’s but thats just me.
By the way for all those young ones reading An LP is the big black things that Nan and pop have that don’t play in the car.
People forget that for printed books to be viable as a mass market product they have to have two thing. A high volume of sales and a network of retailers to sell the product.
If the uptake of e-books continues at it’s current rate there will not be enough sales for print to be a viable publishing option for publishers. There is also a point (my guess is that this will happen before print becomes an unviable publishing option) where book retailers will no longer be a viable business. Retailer costs continue to rise and print sales are declining in the medium-long term. As book retailers close this in itself will further fuel the decline in print, which will further fuel the closure of more book retailers, which will further fuel the decline in print …
The entry price argument is essentially irrelevant. These devices are still in relatively early generation. As adoption of the medium rises, the price will fall. Some of the more basic e-readers currently on the market are not that expensive. When comparing the cost of print to the cost of on e-reader one also has to take into account the long term cost. Where the entry price may be higher for e-books, the long term cost is likely to be less given that e-books are cheaper to purchase than their print counterparts.
When people say that “there will be no books in x number of years” my understanding is that they are talking about books as a highly available, mass market product.
There are two sides to every argument Jarryd and not everyone is like you and have the need for new gadgets and technology and think it is the be all and end all and that older media will not survive. People said that the iphone would replace all other phones and now it is too bulky and outdated.
Maybe you are too young to remember that radio was dead when TV came along or that free TV was dead once pay TV came along the same as books are dead now that ebooks are coming.
There is a place in retail for everyone and everything, just look at independant supermarkets were you work, they were dead once Coles and Woolies became so big but you still have a job do you not?
It is important that we wonder and ask questions about the future of print. Music publishers, distributors and retailers did not do this enough and many ended up getting caught short when the future passed them by.
is radio dead yet?
i have all the cd’s in the world but yet i listen to the radio
My point was that Radio, free Tv, smaller supermarkets as well as books are all still here even though new technologies have become available. They have evolved as they needed to but they are all still here.
@Luke, I consider myself young (<20) and I have a old-school record player at home. The quality is so much better.
I haven’t watched the video, but does this only apply to the western and/or developed world?
Japan has a high number of digital books/comics, etc, but manga and novel sales are still quite strong.
As I have pointed out before the whole tv/radio argument is not the same as the print/digital situation.
The content of radio is very different to what it was before television. It serves a predominantly different market to that which it did pre television. Its content focuses on markets in which people are not in a position to watch television or in which the content itself is better suited to an audio-only medium. Radio and television are very different mediums that target different markets. Digital media is able to mimic print media and build on it. Digital media targets the same markets as print.
Print media needs high volume to continue being a visible mass market product. I don’t think anyone is trying to paint a picture if the future as some sic-fi flic in which paper doesn’t exist . Print is likely to still be available but like LPs or Records it will be a very expensive, niche market.