Stan Beer
Monday, 19 November 2007 16:13
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
As the success of J K Rowling will attest, reading is still one of the most popular inter-generational pastimes. Now Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is attempting to do for books with a product/service called Kindle what Steve Jobs has done for music. Is the analogy between Kindle and iPod/Itunes valid or are there enough significant differences to cast doubt on Bezos' dream?
Many of us these days, myself included, do much
if not most of our reading online. However, few of us go online to read
a novel or non-fiction classic. For those, we're still happy to spend a
restful hour or two browsing the shelves of a local bookstore or a
Borders. Or if we know the title we want, we may go online and order it
from Amazon.
The way people buy books today used to be the way
people bought music. That of course is no longer the case. CD sales are
plummeting in the wake of music downloads, led by Apple's iTunes online
store and the iPod portable player, followed by a plethora of
competitors.
Could Bezos and Amazon succeed in disrupting the
way works of prose are distributed in the same way that the music
downloads industry has disrupted the way music is distributed? Perhaps
but there are still too many unanswered questions to give an
affirmative answer.
Books are a centuries old tradition far more
entrenched than music recordings. There are shelves devoted to them in
family homes. They get passed down from generation to generation. First
editions and signed copies from famous authors have intrinsic and often
significant monetary value. Books generally don't get copied and
pirated.
So what makes Jeff Bezos think that his new product Kindle can be a game changer in the reading industry?
