Bear Highway

Paper Books

So while the publishers are fighting over book prices for eBooks at Amazon and the forth-coming Apple iBook Store (terrible name, by the way), it got me thinking about what the future of this book thing might be. The major publishers are looking to find a way to revolutionize book publishing in the way that music was changed by digital sales on iTunes and other online stores. In a way, they are trying to replicate success that worked for another medium. Books are very fundamentally different than music. When you boil the two down away from any physical or digital format, music is ideas through sound and books are ideas through words. It is very easy to move these ideas through the different formats of a particular era be it printing press, digital printing, or now eBooks.

I think for me, books are going to have a harder time moving to all digital in the way that music has. When I am going on a trip or even just across town on an errand, I am going to want my music with me to play in the car. When I am doing the same trip, I don’t really think about bringing my entire book collection with me. So this idea that eBook readers will allow us to haul our book libraries with us all the time seems a little silly to me. Books, unlike music are not a passive thing. I can listen to music while I work or do other things, but I can’t read a book while doing chores. Books require full attention. Even if you do a lot of reading, you can only read one book at a time…so why does one need their entire collection with them all the time?

The success of the digital music revolution worked for music because of the nature of it’s medium, and simply building a digital store for a type of product does not mean it will be as a revolutionary of a success. So are books an industry that needs a digital revolution? I’m not so sure about that.