Editor's Note: Fear vs. Opportunity

People fear the unknown. It’s a simple premise that creeps into our lives more than we realize. Change brings a great amount of uncertainty … and therefore, fear. The changes happening in the book publishing industry right now are enough to prompt even the bravest publishing souls to cover their eyes, cautiously peeking through the space between their fingers to see if it’s OK to look.

It has been a challenge for Book Business to provide you with enough information on digital content without scaring off or angering the print lovers among us. But the simple fact is that whether you love printed books or not, or whether you see them existing forever or not, there is a growing market for e-books and other digital content formats that cannot be ignored. It is going to impact the future of the entire industry.

A panel at the recent Tools of Change for Publishing Conference confirmed that. The session, called “The Rise of E-books,” shared interesting statistics and trends, and explored why e-books previously failed to gain momentum after their initial launch. David Rothman, founder and editor-publisher at news and commentary Web site TeleRead.org, said he believes the reasons for the initial failure were: the price point was about the same as for printed books; there were not many e-books available to consumers; digital rights management issues; and lack of viewability of e-reader screens.

Addressing advances in e-readers today, Russell Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink (the company behind the e-ink technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, among others), said, “Every 18 months, the speed of the ink is doubling.” Today, it takes just a quarter of a second for the ink to change (e.g., when you “turn” a page). This year, he said, will also see the launch of new sizes in e-ink screens, both larger and smaller; e-readers will launch in new countries; and we will begin to see touch and pen interfaces, enabling users to input as well as output content.