Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Citing the Association of American Publishers data , Nick Carr pointed out that the explosive growth of e-books sales in the US (doubling or much more every year between 2008 and 2011) seems to have not just slowed down, it seems to have come to a halt (it was an anemic 5% this year). Note that Carr is not saying that e-book sales have stopped; just that the growth in sales between successive years has slowed. In fact, as Carr points out, the share of printed books in the US continues to fall, just not as fast as before. E-books currently account for 25% of total book sales. Carr’s list of suspects for this apparent e-book plateau includes factors like the medium not suiting certain types of books (“like nonfiction and literary fiction”) or certain reading positions (like “lying on the couch at home”); the existence of multipurpose tablets that distract you from reading; and there not being much of a price difference between printed and e-books. And, perhaps, it also ha...

When one of my friends bought the Kindle, I was very impressed with the screen without a backlight and also by the much vaunted E Ink technology. The Kindle felt just like a book, you know, without any of the brightness (or irritation) associated with a PC/laptop screen. In fact, Amazon made it a point to highlight the device’s “paper-like” screen. And Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos wasn’t exaggerating when he declared, “Amazon Kindle is for reading”. So why didn’t the e-reader sweep the reading world off its feet? Why didn’t people switch from the world of atoms (books) to the world of bits (e-books)? Because of Steve Jobs. When he announced the iPad, people had to make a choice: did they want a single purpose device or a multi-purpose device? Something specialized for one use or something generalized for most things? Did they want to go back to uni-tasking or continue with multitasking? The world voted overwhelming for the tablet. But here’s an unintended consequence ...