E-Books, Act 2

The storyline in trade book publishing for much of this decade has followed the shifting answers to a single question: Is print dead?

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010, the pundits and the journalists were ready to declare the death of print. They saw the digital reading device from Apple, and its Amazon-bred competitor the Kindle, as twin stakes to the heart of paper and ink. Over the years since, we watched the rise of e-books; the attendant pressure on print; and even the surprising plot twist that many readers, including young ones, continued to prefer physical books over their virtual counterparts.

Industry analyst Rüdiger Wischenbart says this is hardly the whole story, and in fact, it is only Phase One. About to dawn as the decade closes is the second act in the e-book play, which Wischenbart calls, “digital reading.” As evidence, he recently published – eBook 2018: Phase 02 and The European E-Book Barometer. Both are data-driven reports on consumers’ relationship with digital consumer publishing.

>“E-books will inhabit a transformed publishing ecosystem where audiobooks, subscription services and self-publishing drive readers deeper and deeper into the digital environment. In this world, a book is a fluid digital object and not a physical format.

“It’s so funny to see that even Steve Jobs, the big innovator, when he innovated the iPad didn’t anticipate what he would do next with the iPod and with the iPhone. Because it was the iPhone which kicked off the smartphone revolution that where we are in now,” Wischenbart explains.

“One of the consequences for books is suddenly we realize that not even the text is a holy grail. Suddenly, people take in the stories by listening to the stories, and they don’t just listen to them from the iPhone or the smartphone,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “Now they have Alexa speakers and other smart speakers in their living rooms to read books for them. I don’t expect that reading is going away. Not at all. But I see that there are different things that can coincide, and that’s what I want to make the key point of reference of my observations.”