Article: “The future of books is a real page-turner”

I just came across a very well written article about the future of books, in terms of their evolution towards ebooks, and I thought it was worth sharing here. I especially like the “bits vs atoms” idea:

He noted that the publishing industry had to decide whether it was in the information delivery business (bits) or the manufacturing business (atoms).

Of course, that refers to ebooks (bits) and paper books (atoms). If you’ve been running a company for decades that has produced physical products and shipped them to customers on trucks, then changing to a business model that produces ebooks, which are software, in essence, is a huge switch.

And I think this is the most important part, about the availability and delivery of ebooks to the customer:

Where Amazon and Apple have got it right is the immediacy of purchasing an ebook. Both the Kindle and the iPad come with wireless connectivity to the Amazon and Apple stores, respectively. If you have an Amazon account, the Kindle comes preconfigured with your details so you can buy a book at 3am if you so desire. Bilton calls this ”Me Economics”, which is really just instant gratification in book buying.

Don’t bother reading the comments (it’s just the same old ebooks vs paper books list of arguments) but the article itself is worth a read.