The End of Gutenberg's Era: The Case for E-Books and the Case Against Printed Books
December 26, 2007
With the development of digital book-reading products no larger than a book, the world of book publishing is about to change forever.
If you you could store 10,000 books in a book reader in your lap, dictate your observations into the device, and store the notes in a free-form data base, why would you buy printed books? Yet you can do this today -- almost -- with a Gateway C-140x tablet PC. It costs $1,000. You just are not supposed to put it in your lap: ventilation problems.
When the reading device is a third of the size of a tablet PC and costs $500, the serious reader will buy far fewer bound printed books. This may take another three years to become commercial. The readers exist today for $300 to $400. They don't have note-taking ability.
We will buy used bound books, but intellectually serious new books will be digital. Bound books will be the realm of antiquarians.
Google is digitizing non-copyrighted books. I digitize books that I can sell or give away to my subscribers. Book by book, the good ones will be digitized.
Book lovers often suffer from Picard's Syndrome, a psychological affliction that keeps people from being able to read books printed on 8.5" x 11" pieces of paper. The reading material must be bound. My article on this is posted here:
I still buy bound books. But the era of bound books, except for coffee table books, will slowly draw to a close. The costs of entry are too low for the old distribution system to survive.
I used to publish printed books. I ceased after 1996, when the modern Web browser appeared. Here is why I switched to PDF book publishing.
1. For a book like Tools of Dominion, it cost about $10,000 in typesetting fees and $25,000 up front to print it. Then it cost for the storage space. When I finally liquidated the books stored by the Institute for Christian Economics, the total number was over 100,000 volumes, which were stored in a very large barn. I had to give them away. No one wanted them. This was after months of fire-sale prices.2. You can't do Print on Demand (one book at a time) for a 1,300-page hardback book.
3. I can update, revise, or correct a digital book in PDF in less than three minutes.
4. Readers can forward a PDF book for free.
5. Readers can decide whether it's worth paying for toner and paper and a 3-hole binder. It's their call. I don't have to decide for them.
6. A book printed out has wide margins for making comments.
7. A digital book can be filed in the reader's data base program (EverNote is free). Searching for a phrase lets him retrieve the specific page.
8. You can make a preliminary translation using Babelfish if you have the document in ASCII text. You can convert a PDF book into ASCII text.
This has not satisfied some people. That's because there has been no convenient book reader that you can put in your lap.
The control over book printing and distribution gave the Left almost total control over book publishing from 1940 until about the year 2000. This control has begun to end, thanks to e-books.
Ideas have consequences in digital form. They no longer need to be baptized by their presentation in bound printed books.