Amazon announced yesterday that it now sells more Kindle e-books than print books (hardcover and paperback combined). Extraordinary since the Kindle as a medium was launched just four years ago.
This is disruption in action. What we see happening with books will come to other print products. Maybe at a different pace and affecting some title niches more than others. But it will come.
Nonsense. Try reading an entire newspaper on line or via something like an iPad. It is tedious and disjointed.
Ask any person if they prefer online or PDF manuals for their computer programs, camera handbooks etc or a proper manual and I’d suggest more than 90% would say paper.
To beleive otherwise is believing what you have been told, not what is actual. The Kindle is successful as it is a) easy, b) cheap and c) convenient. Many buys are also impulse.
I am returning to print from being web only (www.auscamonline.com) for my videocamera magazine due to reader AND advertiser pressure.
David, record production companies said the same thing. I would rather be prepared than take my head out of a bucket of sand and find that the world has changed.
David, the proof is in the circulation figures. If what you are saying is true, magazine and newspaper circulation would be growing or at least steady. Instead we continue to see negative results each and every quarter.
David,
People dont read entire newspapers online or on mobile devices. Reading a newspaper is a linear process. Reading news online or on mobile devices is a much more organic non-linear task. Those publishers who simply try to put a paper-based publication into an electronic format only show that they don’t understand the medium and how people interact with it.
The Kindle has had time to enter the mainstream market. Tablet devices are only 12 months old. They are penetrating the market at an astonishing rate. And to say many purchases of the Kindle are impulse buys is ridiculous. One has to seek out the Amazon website, find the kindle the want and go through the purchase process (including creating an Amazon account) to get one. Hardly something someone does on impulse.
At least one contributor to our book exchange donates hard copies, and declines to swap, he is so in love with this kindle. But lots of people are still reading real books!
@Peter Circs may drop, but that doesn’t mean over counter sales on the have? Maybe people don’t want to fork out for 12 months worth in one go.
@Mark The difference is record companies (in past lefe I was PR Manager for CBS) WANTED the change to CD as they controlled the market. The do NOT control downloads.
David the record companies didn’t want the move to medium free distribution back in 2005/06. They and others talked the iPod down.