Someday, we are all going to be reading books with some form of eBook reader. While some may doubt this prediction, let me explain why, and I hope that after you read what I have to say that you may just agree with me. First, let’s counter the prediction with an observation about reading books on current eBook readers: it’s not an enjoyable or ‘better’ experience than reading a paper-bound book and, hence, that’s why very few people actually use them today.
Let me make another prediction: eBooks are not going to be successful until they offer the reader a ‘better’ – more worthwhile – and enjoyable experience than reading a traditional paper-bound book does today. To be sure, all of this hinges on what providing a ‘better’ experience actually means. While it’s easy to say eBooks today do not offer a better user experience, it’s more difficult to describe what must be done in order to make the user experience ‘good enough’ so that most people reading a book would prefer an eBook reader than using a paper-bound book.
It seems to me that someday we should be able to make an eBook reader that would be really slick – so cool that it would be emotionally like seeing the iPhone for the first time. You’d feel as if it was really right and that you ‘just have to’ have one. Here is what I believe must be done in order for most people to adopt an eBook instead of a paper-bound book:
Correct Size. The correct size for an eBook is larger than an iPhone and smaller than an ultraportable. It would most likely have a 6”-8” diagonal display and be very thin, like the iPod touch. It must also be light and feel elegant in your hand.
Instant On/Off. You have to be able to turn it on and off instantly without any ‘boot up time’ (other than perhaps, when you buy it, plug in the batteries and turn it on for the first time). It’s an appliance, not a PC. It would likely be based on Linux and operate like TiVo.
Great (Natural) User Interface. Apple doesn’t need to distribute a User’s Manual for the iPhone. You pick it up, turn it on and it works the way you expect it to work. That’s the kind of user interface that will be in our future eBooks. Could it be based on the Apple iPhone OS? Sure. But, most likely it will be more of an open standard, and if I were a betting man, I would bet it would more likely be based on Android than the iPhone.
High Contrast, High Resolution, Bright Color Display. This seems impossible today but the iPhone display leads me to believe that this is possible. It would also need to work well indoors and out. The technology used in General Dynamics’ rugged laptops comes to mind as an example of this capability. The current displays using eInk technology are just too slow. There’s way too much latency between displaying the characters and making changes, but, advances in technology will solve this in the coming years. It may take a breakthrough in display technology to get something that’s great to look at over extended periods, is bright and readable both indoors and out, as well as ‘pliable’ so it can adapt to changing pressures as you walk around.
Random Access. This is basic but really important because it’s one of the capabilities of most eBooks – you can select a chapter or bookmark and jump instantly to that place in any of the books in which you are reading.
Durability. Naturally, any eBook reader that people will enjoy using over time must be durable to last years and not just days or weeks.
Storage. With the price of flash storage dropping year after year, it’s reasonable to expect that a gigabyte of flash will be under a dollar before long. Additionally, it would seem that a 50GB would be adequate … 5GB would be minimum. It’s not the text that would be challenging to hold in memory, it would be the multimedia such as audio, photos and videos.
Easy Annotation. The basic form of annotation is the yellow highlighter that we’ve all used to highlight in text books while in school. Additional annotation is the writing we do in the margins and anywhere we want to over the text. This brings up a very big challenge: how to provide the right texture and feel that is like pen on paper but only better. You’d need to be able to select width and color of the line and perhaps, eventually some electronic painting functions like filling a shape, but that’s likely to be a higher-end feature.
Easy Access to the Dictionary & Synonym/Antonym. Again, this capability would make reading an eBook ‘better’ than a regular book today because currently you can’t look up that interesting word in a paper-bound book. You want to be able to highlight a word and easily see the definition – most likely by simply tapping and holding the pen on top of the word.
Acceptable Cost of Device. I’m leaning more toward the cellular telephone and cable TV business model where users pay a monthly fee and get the device (set top box or phone) for little or no cost as long as they sign up for a multi-year contract. Family plans will make this even more affordable. Additionally, schools may subscribe to educational eBooks and simply pay a monthly fee for each student. While an educational computer may need a keyboard for composition writing, a consumer eBook reader certainly doesn’t. We’re talking something like $10 to $20 per month for a basic system with a lower number of books, and perhaps, $40 per month for a high-end system and access to more content.
Built-In Wireless Communications. This is one area in which Kindle got it right: you turn it on select books and they show up without you doing anything else. That’s the way the future eBooks will work, only allowing more content to arrive faster and much of it delivered during the night when most wireless networks are unused. Eventually, the future eBook would have multiple wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and cellular wireless wide area networking (3G and WiMAX). This should be hidden so that users can simply turn it on, order books and then they show up in the device.
Acceptable Business Models. The industry will have to get away from pricing books like their paper-bound relatives. The incremental cost to publish an eBook is zero. Authors need to get paid with perhaps some form of supply and demand adjustment to the monthly ‘all you can eat’ model. You could, for example, give users a certain number of credits each month for their fee and let them choose how to spend them. The author and publisher of a popular book may adjust the credits required to buy their book based on demand. A book may naturally decline in credits over time as its popularity wanes.
Broader Distribution. Unlike the cell phone networks today, eBook networks should work on all networks – just like the Internet so that subscribers can go into any distributor to get the book of their choice. The distributors need to have roaming-like credit transfers between them just like using a cell phone works today on any (GSM) network.
Integrated Animation & Video. This is definitely where the future of the eBook takes a dramatic advancement over current books. Today, photos are expensive to reproduce on paper but shouldn’t be expensive to include in eBooks. Thus, future authors can include their favorite photos or videos inside a book and have them become part of the book reading experience rather than having them in some special photo section that’s only in the center of the book. Sure, the web can do this today but it isn’t portable and isn’t designed to communicate a story in book form.
Acceptable Digital Rights Management (DRM) & Intellectual Property Protection. I fully understand and recognize that there’s a lot of digital content piracy, especially in music. But, it seems to me that if we provide an open standard for eBook publishing that is cross-device and cross-publisher and includes DRM – all at reasonable prices – then people will gladly pay for the privilege of enjoying reading a really good story. Authors’ and publishers’ rights will be protected and the entire ecosystem will be stable.
Thus, I feel that the future eBook is a distinct physical form factor that’s bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a small laptop portable. While those who created Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader should be commended for pushing the envelope on technology, we still have a way to go before the criteria above will be all achieved. However, once it does happen, then the market will explode like what has happened with adoption of the TV and cell phone. We’ll see 75% worldwide adoption in less than 10 years from when the right set of technologies shows up in an eBook.
My prediction again: someday – let’s say, hopefully, by 2025 (but certainly by 2050) technology and business models will have matured so that eBooks will be used by more than 50% of the population. At that time, reading an eBook will become a far better experience than reading a paper-bound book is today, and then we’ll honestly look back and wonder how we possibly managed to kill all those trees and print millions of books on paper when it’s such a better experience reading them on an eBook.
Written by:
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. VP & Chief Analyst Mobile & Wireless Frost & Sullivan
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