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“Do you like kindling?”“Try me. Light my fire!”
Having started late, books in the printed word form are rapidly chasing the digital route taken by music, newspapers and video.
Digital books are now cheaper, easy to download, convenient (an entire library can fit into the palm of your hand) and have the added benefit of anonymity (without a telling cover, the person in the seat next to you on the plane does not know if you are reading Richard Dawkins, Lady Chatterley’s Lover or The Koran).
But the greater benefit is price: Amazon.com now sells more e-books than hard copy. The iceberg is rapidly tumbling as the trend gathers momentum. It is not merely a fad; it is good business.
E-books deliver higher profit margins and are not encumbered by the same constraints as print. For publishers, print too many and the stores return the unsold copies; print too few and sales are lost. High costs are involved in vast amounts of paper, printing, warehousing, transporting and time.
But now, with the switch to electronic, copyright owners face a more serious challenge: piracy. It is already rampant: downloads are easy, as a digital book file is tiny – less than music and much less than movies.
The greater threat to the entire print business, however, may well be the radical slashing of prices that has seen electronic attract bookworms away from print.
There is opportunity for savvy writers to self-publish and net higher rewards without a publisher. Yet, the strength of the new wave comes, as always, from the delivery point – the last point of contact with the final purchaser. Like supermarkets – Amazon.com, Apple and similar enterprises are now in the position of assessing the most lucrative trends and predicting needs. They can call in their own authors and market exclusive brands and the most popular writers. And do it with speed.
As if this were not enough, the tech wars for more reading toys are raging. As it becomes very cheap to buy electronic gadgets, their use is set to boom.
On this theme, Leadership magazine is now electronic. It is the first redesigned fully interactive digital folio magazine in Africa – not only giving this paper magazine you hold in your hand a version created for iPads, Android tablets and BlackBerry PlayBooks (in horizontal and vertical formats) but, at the touch of the screen, also animated film clips, music, sound and much more than the printed version can offer.
The future of books and magazines is quickly becoming a page-flipping thriller filled with a cast of pirates, poets, preachers and merchants of Venice.
Now watch this page disappear into space...
