eBooks vs. Printed books

While digital media formats continue to constantly gain ground against their traditional counterparts, it is unlikely that ebooks will completely and totally replace print books, in the near future. The feeling of total relaxation, when you're sitting comfortably in your arm chair, infront of the fireplace, turning the pages of a brand new book you just brought from the bookstore will be something that will keep us from abandoning traditional books for many years to come. This attachment to paper books isn't purely sentimental: a quality paper book, printed on white paper with black ink has a substantially higher resolution and sharpness than any digital screens available today. Even the highest-grade digital displays have a quality of about half of what printed books have been offering for hundreds of years.

It seems, however, that ebooks and print books are a perfect complement of one another's strengths and weaknesses as there are also a number of advantages that ebooks offer against print books. Ebook require way less storage then printed book. They can be searched for a specific piece of text. And last bu not least, every ebook coould be eventually printed, thus becoming a printed book and effectively whiping out the main advantage of the printed books - their high visual quality.

So what future lies ahead of ebooks?

As it is always the case when new technolgy is competing against long established traditions, people's inertia is a major factor in keeping the "old timer" around. People have used paper books since medieval times, we all know how to use them, organize them and take care of them and no special equipment or knowledge is necessary to use the traditional books. Buying a paper book is also pretty straight forward (even if a bit pricey).

Ebooks on the other hand may need special devices to store and read them, may come in one of several formats which may not be compatible with each other or wit the devices used to store/read the ebooks. Also, ebooks may require some computer skills to use and organize them.

Getting an ebook typically requires some computer knowledge and the use of the internet. Even though there is hunderds of online ebook stores or download sites most people are simply not aware of them. When buying an eBook you're not incurring costs such as transportation as well as labour and materials, involved in manufacturing a printed paper book and that is why eBooks typically come at a fraction of the cost of a regular printed book (and many are free!).

Another point in eBooks' favour is that since it is very easy to change existing information or add new information the authors usually provide free updates to their customers at no additional cost whenever there is new inromation available on the topic.

Aside from the reader's perspective there is also the publisher's perspective, an important factor in determining the future market direction for both ebooks and printed books. Changing existing infrastructure and established business and industry procedures will require some time and will not provide good return on investment in the initial stages of the re-organization.

Another major point is that copyright violations, where unscrupulous users may download an ebook and use it outside the User Agreement (e.g. pass it on to friends and relatives or even go as far as removing the ebook protection and selling it on ebay). Despite the advances of the moder encoding and encryption technlogy the copyright issues are still a major concern among publishers. Even though most non-free ebooks are protected from copying or multi-user use in some way these protection techniques are not bullet proof and may be defeated by (some really determined) hackers.

While it is hard to predict whether a time wil come when ebooks start to completely dominate the readers' market one thing is certain - it will not happen during our time :) As the folks at palmpower.com put it:

If anything print books will remain as collector's items. The coffee table book won't be replaced for quite some time, and given that there's still a rather large market for hardback and paperback books, there's no danger of them disappearing anytime soon.