The eBook tipping point is coming. The tipping point is mass ebook adoption/usage. Bear with me for a moment. My wife still buys her music on CD's, but she starting to warm up to the idea of getting music over downloads instead of CDs. The tipping point is having to store the music, whereas I have reached that point where a music download takes up less space on my hard drive virtually then having to haul around the CD, case, and cover art and store the compact disk. My car has an Ipod adapter and able to play music/podcast in my car. My wife uses the CD player in her car and she won't give up cd's yet even though she has an ipod. The music experience is really no different whether it comes from the Ipod or from CD it still sounds about the same...Same thing is applicable to books. If I and others, and this is the big if, can get the same touch and feel out of a book with the content in an electronic form there is nothing stopping me from switching over to books in electronic form. The benefits of not having to physically store the book and portability is what is driving the tipping point. Music formats have changed, think a-track, cassettes, dap (short-lived in the middle) and cd's now in similar quality to MP3's. Yes the drawbacks are hurdles, sharing materials, preserving digital rights to content, and ensuring providers are justly compensated. Technological change has served music well and it will work with ebooks. Only time will tell how...
I'm wondering if the tipping point, and making predictions about technology is a risky business? However, it is probably time to say 4 or 5 years from today book purchasing of content online will be definitely higher and maybe where the itunes market was in its' first few years. I know I'm willing to buy a cool ebook reader if it is practical, affordable and will improve my lifestyle freeing me up to do more with less stuff...
Bottom line, the following two articles via lisnews.org all occurring in the same month about Amazon selling ebooks to Iphone users and Barnes & Noble buying fictionwise ebook retailer are making me wonder. The time is short for the paper book being the only major format for the book. Long live the ebook... Both can coexist. Photo credit to: Wikipedia Commons
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