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Steve Haber, the man in charge of Sony's digital reading business division, is confident that ebooks will become more popular than their physical counterparts withing the coming five years. He told the UK's Telegraph that the change being brought about by e-readers and other devices with digital reading capabilities is irreversible. Haber likened the current state of the publishing industry to the times when music and photography stepped into the digital era.
"Now more and more devices are enabling digital reading, which is to be expected. It's just like digital imaging, where you can take pictures with a cellphone - and many people take pictures with cellphones - but if they want the best possible picture they'll use a point-and-shoot camera or a digital SLR,” Haber told the Telegraph.
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JohnP
June 04, 2010 at 3:24pm
Of course, physical books will be around forever and there are quite a few of them (like a trillion or so). But for richer nations the trend towards e-book readers will be unstoppable. I have an e-book reader and one of out of every two books I read is on it (rest are from the library).
I have started going down this irreversible path by recycling any physiclal book I own once I have it in digital form. That included 20 years worth of Fine Woodworking magazines once the archives came out on DVD.
Now how many people under 30 actually read novels these days is more of a question. It's not that they are illiterate, it's just there are so many things to do with your time these days. Something like 20%+ of Americans under 30 have no religious affiliation, who has time for church? The same with reading.
The other thing is that there will soon be a common format (E-Pub is a start) and then DRM will be cracked so there will be a ton of books out there for the reader. Imagine a dual layer DVD or 20 GB USB drive with nothing but SciFi or Mystery books. It would last you a lifetime..
