The Future of Documents

The big news in e-books this week is obviously the launch of Kindle to the rest of the world - obviously. Kindle Review has all the information you might need, including review, international wireless coverage, or even a comparison between the Kindle international and Kindle US - although the conclusion is pretty obvious.

Sure, lots of other stuff has happened, amongst which iRex’s new product, being delivered by Best Buy. But to me, the most important recent news in e-book is a bit older: for the first time, the Kindle edition of a major book outsells hardcovers on Amazon! And not a small book, for that matter – Dan Brown’s books are usually very popular. We’re really at a tipping point in book and document history, and its transition to digital media.

Maybe not. In this article, “E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students“, the Wall Street Journal describes a few experiments with e-books as student textbooks.

Some found the affordances of electronic documents (e.g. keyword searching) a major improvement over hardcopy textbooks. Weight, up-to-date versions of documents, and (at least in theory) lower price were also some of the qualities that were invoked.

However, dozens of the students dropped out of the e-Textbook programs, complaining the devices were awkward and inconvenient, and sometimes too fragile. They are “great if you’re using them on a beach or on an airplane, but not fully functional for a learning environment”, according to some. Even worse, the actual price (including the high entrypoint for the hardware, but also the actual price per book – which ends up often close to the hardcopy version) was also a major turndown.

A study from the Student Public Interest Research Group concluded that 75% of students would still prefer print to digital texts…

However, these are just first generations of textbooks. Future generations, with real annotation capabilities, no “flashing” of displays when refreshing, and closer to real paper physical format, should gain more traction from students… But this will take time.

Consolidation is hitting the e-Paper market, too. Prime View International (PVI) just announced their intention to acquire E-Ink for $215 million.

PVI reinforces its position as a vertically-integrated key player in the e-Paper market, as it acquired the e-paper business of Philips Electronics in 2005, and other companies such as Hydis Technologies, a transistor backplane provider components.

Despite a difficult beginning for the year, PVI expects electrophotoretic displays shipments to double over in 2H09. This acquisition is an extension of a four-year partnership, throughout which the two companies produced displays for many devices such as the Sony Reader and the Kindle 2.

The market for e-book devices is expected to explode, from 1.1 million unit in 2008 to 20 million units in 2012, according to iSuppli. This should be supported by major players are also joining that space, as Google announced yesterday that they intend to retail e-books by the end of the year.

For all the ePaper and eBook afficionados, a new site was launched last week – Gutenberg.com is the self-proclaimed “central resource for ebook lovers, ebook newbies, and the ebook industry”.

One of their most interesting posts to date are the “20 Reasons Why 2009 Will Be the Year of the Ebook” – an answer to my post earlier this year. Reading through those reasons, some of them more disputable than others, but worth checking out. I strongly invite interested readers to consult them and leave comments, like I did.