My group did a presentation on the future of books and it amazes me how something as simple as a book can evolve with the help of technology.
Books in the past are basically books that we are used to; bulky, heavy, bother to carry around especially research books. Reminds me of the times when my group camped at National Library, flipping through the books with more than 1000 pages worth of information for the ICMT case. Not only are they dusty, they are HEAVY and difficult to read because of the small font. The yellowed pages did nothing to motivate us to look at the court details but instead put us off.
Books of the present include audio books, online books and electronic books.
Personally, I had only 1 encounter with audio book because I can’t find the physical copy and had to listen to it. It turned me off as I find it uncomfortable to be listening to others reading the book out aloud for you, especially when listening it through earphones. It’s like someone talking to you up close, nothing like listening to music. Audio books are so not my kind of books. They are cool however, as they are the kind of books that you can “read” even without light.
Online books are mainly Google books which contain like 10 million books in its digital database. It’s insane. You can get 2 million of them on full preview, meaning you get to read them for free. Downside is that like it’s named, they can only be accessed if you are ONLINE. Without mobile broadband, even if Singapore has wireless@SG at some places, you can’t have easy access to the books. Unlike if you own a physical copy, you can bring it everywhere, even up the Bukit Timah Hill or something. But well, you get to read like 2 million books for free though, if you ever get down to reading them and if they are your type of books.
Electronic books (e-books) are the kind of books we are slightly more familiar with. I download (legally and illegally) lots of e-books online. Back when I was in my peak of the Twilight craze (much before the movie was released), I borrowed my friend’s books and read them all. Being cheap, I didn’t want to buy them (but I did eventually) and I did a simple search online for the e-book versions and got all 4 books in my laptop in 5 minutes. Talk about convenience, speed and of course, piracy.
With the easiness of reading e-books (you just need a pdf reader), everyone can read e-books. With sites like mediafire and megaupload, everyone can share e-books. What does that mean to us?
With the technology we possess, we can read the books we want in electronic form almost everywhere. You can download the e-book into your laptop, transfer it into a smartphone or you itouch/palm top and bam! You can access it ANYWHERE even without the Internet. Especially for this generation which is generally really tech-savvy, throwing the title of the book you want into any search engine and adding free ebook to it will bring up a whole list of possible downloads. You can download 100 books into your itouch and read them on the train to work or school and it weighs…..just the weight of your itouch! Imagine bringing 100 physical books around!
What does this means to the authors and publishers?
Drop in sales of physical books due to the easiness of everyone downloading e-books, especially via the illegal outlets? Intellectual rights being trampled on because a lump sum of money is paid instead of by royalties? Lesser works by authors because they are no longer getting paid enough? Publishers closing down companies because lesser demand in physical books?
I believe that this calls for the authors and publishers to strike a deal with either online companies to sell their books in e-books format in an agreement that is win-win, or to come up with alternative methods to attract physical books sales. We know that for books like Harry Potter and Twilight, fans will still purchase the book for keepsake, but how can authors/publishers attract non-fans, the regular readers to buy the books? I believe knowing answer to this will allow physical books and ebooks co-exist.
And if you ask me whether traditional books will die out? I say no.
Given a choice now, I will still grab a book rather than “flip” through an ebook. Unless its for research purposes where Control+F can be your best friend for ebooks.
