Kindle: the end of the book? No. And yes.

All the fuss about Amazon’s new Kindle e-book product/service has resurrected the old question: how long will the paper book be with us?

The answer: a long time. It’s a perfectly formed piece of technology, refined over more than 500 years, which distributes content in a portable, low-cost, low-power manner. It’s a dream medium.

That’s why I chose it as one of my top ten learning tools on Jane Hart’s list (along with 6 others).

It’s also true that the paper book is eventually doomed.

It’s been looking for a while this year as if an ‘e-book moment’ of perception was coming, and the introduction of Kindle is probably it. Back in May, the BBC’s Andrew Marr outlined the pros and cons of e-books very well in the Guardian, focusing on the Sony Reader following its September 06 launch. This was one of a number of stories on the Reader, but nothing seemed to stick in the common imagination. 

Then this week’s Newsweek had Kindle on the cover. I’m not going to give you the tech. spec. for Kindle. Just imagine it, and it’s probably got it: Wi-Fi for downloads, adjustable font size, real-paper effect and a $399 price tag. Oh, and it’s sold out.

George Siemens has blogged it, and the New Yorker has given us an excellent long term view on the digitization of content. David Weinberger’s thoughts on digital content are well-considered and worth a read.

Here’s my two-pence worth.

I don’t care about Kindle. It may be the tool that does it. It may not. However, the rise of the e-book is inevitable for the same reason as always: it’s the economics.

Considering the amount of effort that goes into a book they are cheap. Amazingly cheap. (Go on, you try getting someone to write a 100,000 word manuscript for next to nothing, edit it, copy edit it, design a book, print it, market it, distribute it, and get into someone’s hands for a few pounds or dollars.)

But an e-book will, eventually, be cheaper, and that’s what’s going to change everything.

Someone, somewhere will make a breakthrough in terms of volume sales. For my money, it isn’t going to be Jeff Bezos trying to iPod the book market. It’s more likely to be a government hi-tech initiative.

Perhaps Singapore or maybe China will recognise that to supply all the books they need to some university students, it will be cheaper to give them an e-book which, although more expensive than a single book, can contain every single study book they will ever need (with live cross references and plenty more that paper books don’t have).

Someone else will follow suit. Then others, and within a few years there will be enough demand for e-books – and supply of content – to drive the price of the reader down so that it becomes a true consumer product. That’s when the iPodization of reading will begin.

A new technology never completely kills off a previous one. It just changes its focus. So what will happen to books?

They will go the way of the horse.

The horse populations of New York and London both peaked at the same time: 1902. The demand for horses to pull trams and buses was so high that close to half a million lived in London.

Within fifteen years the populations in both cities were slashed. In New York by the introduction of the car, in London by the coming of the electric tram.

After four decades, horses – which had provided the only major land transport faster than foot since the dawn of civilization – had been transformed from a vital part of the economy to a rich person’s play thing. Going for a ride in Hyde or Central Park became a status symbol rather than a tedious daily mode of transport.

And that’s the way books will go.

I love books: their smell, their touch, the comforting feel of the hardback by the fireside, the reassurance of a paperback in the pocket before a long train journey. I’m afraid that all this avails us naught. What counts is the economics. Be sure that at the point when it becomes cheaper to provide an e-book than a collection of a few physical books, the end of paper is nigh. Within a decade or two books will become luxury items.

Its success is certain. The e-book will eventually be more widespread, more open, more functional, and cheaper than the paper book.

But it will never be as beautiful.

LATE ADDITION

Some other recent comment:
Mark Oehlert is excited by Kindle

Writer Charlie Stross doesn’t like it all – particularly because it’s no good outside the US

Tech Crunch claims that Stealing Books for Kindle is easy

Tech Connect Magazine points out that Sony have a cost-cutting counter punch