The Death of Books
In April, Amazon sold 105 ebooks for every 100 paper books.
That is amazing, and somewhat terrifying. And the numbers are "real" - they do not include free ebooks, so the numbers are not artificially inflated.
Does this mean that paper books are going to dissapear? No - just like peak oil, we are not going to see the end of real books any time soon. But it is a sign that, well, they are on their way out.
And that kind of sucks. Because while I love gadgets, and while I see a place for ereaders, I just cant get past the fact that ebooks are fundamentally temporary. Sure, you can keep them on your device as long as you want, and you might even be able to transfer them to a new device when you get one, but in the long run, those books are not going to stick around, just as the papers you wrote in college on a computer are much less likely to be around when you retire than the crappy drawing of a turkey with you hand as feathers you did in 1st grade. Depending on the quality of your turkey, you may see that as a good thing, but I am not sure I do (I drew a damn good turkey).
The net result is that if you are thinking of getting into the book printing business, I would suggest alternate ways of wasting capital.
God bless you Gutenberg, you had a good run.
That is amazing, and somewhat terrifying. And the numbers are "real" - they do not include free ebooks, so the numbers are not artificially inflated.
Does this mean that paper books are going to dissapear? No - just like peak oil, we are not going to see the end of real books any time soon. But it is a sign that, well, they are on their way out.
And that kind of sucks. Because while I love gadgets, and while I see a place for ereaders, I just cant get past the fact that ebooks are fundamentally temporary. Sure, you can keep them on your device as long as you want, and you might even be able to transfer them to a new device when you get one, but in the long run, those books are not going to stick around, just as the papers you wrote in college on a computer are much less likely to be around when you retire than the crappy drawing of a turkey with you hand as feathers you did in 1st grade. Depending on the quality of your turkey, you may see that as a good thing, but I am not sure I do (I drew a damn good turkey).
The net result is that if you are thinking of getting into the book printing business, I would suggest alternate ways of wasting capital.
God bless you Gutenberg, you had a good run.
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