The e-book industry is shaping up quickly: last week, Borders UK announced its own e-book reader, developed in conjunction with with Elonex. They join Barnes and Noble (who is rumored to be releasing a device) and Amazon.com as a new breed of bookseller/publisher that is attempting to avoid suffering the same fate as the music industry:
The moves by Borders and in the future by Barnes & Nobles is also attempt to stave off a fate that music retail stores have faced as records went digital, says Epps. Still the transition is unlikely to be easy.
“It’s not a pretty picture right now for brick-and-mortar retailers,” says Epps. “E-books sales are growing but they can’t nearly bring in the same kind of revenue as physical books do,” she says.
Wired’s analysis of the situation missed one set of industry players: the publishers. While all of the e-reader vendors are currently dependent on publishers to provide content, that may change. Services, such as Amazon.com’s Digital Text Platform, could allow authors to sidestep the traditional publisher route either by publishing through the device seller, or publishing on their own site in standard formats (such as epub or PDF).
Which begs the question: when every bookstore is effectively a publisher, and authors have the ability to publish either through a device or directly, will there be any room left for publishers in the industry? It may end up that the publishers are the ones who should be worried about suffering the fate of the music industry, not the booksellers.
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