Hiphopmotivation’s Perspective

In just a few short years, MP3 downloads and the iPod changed the face of the music industry. CDs are going the way of the dodo, and high-street music stores fear for their future. Now there’s a new revolution on the horizon; this time in the realm of books.

For nearly 600 years — since the invention of the printing press — the printed book has reigned supreme as the “technology” of choice for reading. However, this looks set to change as more publishers, and even authors, put out their titles in digital format as e-books.

These come in a number of formats, the most ubiquitous being PDF, which is readable on computers and mobile devices (including Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) handhelds and the iTouch), as well as on dedicated e-book hardware such as Iliad Reader.

The Big Break

A number of pointers suggest that the e-book revolution is about to break big. The book publisher HarperCollins, for example, has launched a new e-book service tailored to work with Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone. The new “Browse Inside” service will allow users to view the first 10 pages of the first two chapters of upcoming publications. After reading the pages, users will be given the option of pre-ordering the book.

Just last week, the Booker Prize Foundation announced that — in conjunction with the British Council — it would release this year’s shortlisted books as e-books, including the winning title The Gathering by the Irish novelist Anne Enright. The hope is to pick up new audiences, particularly in Africa and Asia, which currently aren’t able to access the titles.

Early reports suggested that the e-books, expected to be available next year, would come as free downloads. However, a spokesperson for the British Council said this would not be the case, although “it is true that the British Council is in negotiations with leading publishers to create an online collection of contemporary literature, including the Man Booker Prize winners, in the form of e-books, which can be purchased”.

How Much?

The issue of pricing is an important one. Production costs for e-books are far less than for printed books. You don’t have to take paper, ink, thread and glue into account. Nor do you have to worry about delivery costs or warehouse storage . The process is electronic from start to finish — unless, of course, the customer wants to print some or all of the e-book (but that’s their choice).

So, in theory, e-books should be cheaper than their print counterparts, right? Well, often they are. However, a quick search on E-books.com reveals that the e-book edition of James Patterson’s 2007 title You’ve Been Warned is selling for US$17.99, while a hardback copy can be got from Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) for $15.39 (though you would have to add the cost of postage).

Discrepancy in pricing has been an issue in the music world, with MP3 downloads not always much cheaper than CDs. This was one reason why Radiohead this month released their new album “In Rainbows” on an online “honesty box” basis. The band wanted to find out what people would pay. There was a risk it would be treated as a freebie, but an Internet survey of 3,000 people who downloaded the album found that most paid about Pounds 4 ($8.21).

Print Is “Undoubtedly Sickening”

Quibbles over price aside, there are some who believe the printed book is in its last days. “While print is not yet dead, it is undoubtedly sickening,” says Jeff Gomez, an advocate of digital publishing and the director of marketing at Holtzbrinck Publishers (owners of Farrar and St Martins Press, among others). “Newspaper readership has been in decline for years. Magazines are also in trouble. And trade publishing — the selling of novel and non-fiction books to adults primarily for entertainment — has not seen any substantial growth for years.”

Gomez is putting his money where his mouth is. His latest book Print Is Dead: Books In Our Digital Age, published by Macmillan Palgrave on Nov. 13, is released simultaneously in print and digital editions. He’s also posted one-third of the book online for free.

Clearly, a book boldly declaring the demise of the printed book is obliged to have a digital edition. However, Gomez believes it will help him reach more readers. “More and more people are turning away from traditional methods of reading,” he says. “They’re turning instead to their computers and the Internet for information and entertainment — their lives are becoming increasingly digital.”

Add handheld wireless devices to that, and it’s clear that people are becoming more connected than ever. However, according to Gomez, the needs of an entire generation — people he calls “digital natives” (kids who have grown up with the Internet and are accustomed to the whole world being only a mouse-click away) — are going unanswered by the traditional print media.

“For this generation, which Googles rather than going to the library, print seems expensive, a bore and a waste of time,” he says. “What can a book give them that a blog or Web site can’t?” Gomez insists these are the questions that the publishing industry must face.

Don’t Dig Print’s Grave Yet

However, the London literary agent Andrew Lownie warns that it is too early to be sounding the death knell of the printed book. “The publishing industry has for some time been preparing itself for the e-book revolution, and agents have been giving thought to the contractual issues surrounding them, but the revolution hasn’t taken place,” he says.

“Only this morning, I was looking at the royalty statements for an author, one of the few on my list whose work is published as an e-book. His paperback sales to the end of September for a book published in February were 36,345 copies. The audio CD sales for the same period were 721 and those for digital download were 32.”

Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), is equally skeptical about the idea of an e-book revolution. She believes there is no substitute for the printed book. “For reading, you have to read a book in its entirety,” she says, “and I think there’s no substitute for the look and feel and smell of a real book, the magic of the paper and thread and glue.”

What about the incredible success of Harry Potter? Surely that proves the traditional book market is robust? Not according to Gomez: “The significance of the Harry Potter phenomenon is that it has largely been restricted to Harry Potter,” he says. “Studies have shown that, despite the mega-success of JK Rowling’s novels, kids are not reading more books. Instead they read the Harry Potter books, period, and then go back to playing video games or surfing the Web.”

First-Hand Experience

As an author myself, I have ventured into e-books and can certainly vouch for the fact that there is a demand for them. My first book came out in 2000 under the pen name Doktor Snake. It was published by St. Martins Press in the U.S. and fast became a cult classic. After that, I wrote as Jimmy Lee Shreeve. However, reader reviews on Amazon.com were saying: “Write more Doktor Snake.” So I did — but as 20,000-word e-books, which I sold from my Web site at $7.77 each. To date, I’ve sold about 5,000, more or less by word of mouth. Not only are readers happy, but I get all the proceeds from sales rather than the 10 percent I normally receive from my publishers.

Whether this will set a trend or not, I don’t know. However, a number of authors of my acquaintance have been following suit. So with that — and the fact that more and more of us do much of our reading online — I’d say the smart money is on Gomez being right that an e-book revolution is just around the corner.