Changing The Publishing Paradigm With E-Book Readers
Online retail giant, Amazon, was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and the original Amazon website launched in 1995. Right now, Amazon is a phenomenally successful business and probably one of the most recognisable and trusted brands in the world. It’s easy to forget what a radical idea buying books online and having them delivered by mail was at the time. Many business analysts predicted that Amazon would struggle – and it wasn’t until the end of 2001 that they reported profits.
Having changed the way that many people bought books, Amazon diversified into other areas very quickly. Audio CDs, video, consumer electronics, computer software and toys were all additions to Amazon’s portfolio. Today you can buy almost any consumer item that you can think of from Amazon – including your groceries.
In addition to diversifying their product range, Amazon launched websites in the UK, France, Germany, China and Canada. However, they never lost their original passion for books and they continued to retain a very strong association with books in the perception of the buying public.
This was something that would stand them in good stead in November of 2007 when the Amazon Kindle e-book reader launched. Having already changed the way that books were bought, Amazon was now changing the way that books were read. The Kindle reader got a lot of publicity and it’s fair to say that e-book readers really took off with the launch of Amazon’s upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009.
In June of the same year, Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX. This incorporated a large, 9.7″, e-ink technology display and was targeted at readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. A good deal of the excitement regarding the new DX actually originated from the somewhat traditional world of academic publishing.
So, the manner in which books are bought, delivered and read have all been radically modified in a relatively short time frame. The last piece of the reading jigsaw – publishing – is also likely to change in the near future. Any major publisher will almost certainly require to publish an e-book version of any new editions in future. The traditional cycle of hardback publication, followed a few months later by the paperback version will be modified by the addition of an e-book version right at the front end of the process.
The fact that publishing e-books costs so much less than either hardback or paperback print runs might encourage publishers to be more experimental in future. It may lead to more new authors being published as the process will carry considerably less financial risk. It could also result in more authors taking greater control by self publishing. In fact, publishing Kindle books is, even now, an achievable goal for anyone who has an Amazon account and who can operate simple word processing software such as Microsoft Word. E-book readers represent a genuine revolution in reading.
