From M-novels to the Death of Paper Publishing
Part 2: Kindle, nook, Google Editions and Rumors of a Tablet PC
(If you missed Part 1, read it here.)
Just after Barnes and Noble’s hand-held book reader, nook, was released, Amazon’s stock skyrocketed. Why? Because the other major American bookseller had decided to participate in the hand-held reader market. It wasn’t just Sony’s failed publishing experiment anymore. Now, Amazon’s Kindle was the market leader in a big, booming, brand new business: digital book publishing. Even Google is going for the monetized digital book. Google is emerging with a service called Google Editions, which will let readers buy books and read them on any gadget with an internet browser (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2354272,00.asp).
Yes, it’s really happening. Books made of paper may eventually go the way of Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
From my perspective, Apple’s next device, the unborn Mac tablet is what fans of the paper publishing industry ought to be conducting black ops to thwart. But first, let’s talk about smart phones for a moment. Compared to the Kindle or nook, smart phones, like the iPhone, double as very, very small e-readers. However, note that across Japan, China, Taiwan, Europe and now South Africa, hordes of people have already embraced m-novels—which are read on even smaller cell phone screens than, say, iPhone’s 3.5 inch display.
Truly, what Kindle and nook have going for them (against cell and smart-phones as e-readers) are their easy-to-tote slimness and their highly readable, six-inch matte-screens. Those relatively sizable matte screens are pretty tough to beat. And the fact that digital readers are smaller to carry around than your standard magazine makes them very appealing.
Yet, e-book readers are one-trick ponies. All you can do is read books on them. Plus, it’s likely that the majority of the e-reading market already has a cell or smart phone. This makes the Kindle or nook just one more device to carry around and to manage. Although, if Apple comes out with a tablet, my bet is many will adopt an iPhone and a phone-ready tablet—because answering a tablet PC on the go isn’t terribly feasible.
A pair like an iPhone and an Apple-made tablet may be very well-integrated, making frequent transitions between the interfaces a cinch. Kindle or nook will not have the same integration. So, if digital readers are non-PC-integrated, one-trick ponies that are just another hand-held for consumers to manage and tote, then this may greatly diminish their appeal in a market that also contains an iPhone and an integrated tablet PC.
An up-and-coming tablet—whether it is fabled to be made by Apple or not—may have a much larger viewable reading space than the Kindle’s or nook’s six-inch display. Rumors demarcate a desire for a screen-size of 10.7 inches. And if Apple does manufacture such a tablet, it will likely serve as the iPhone does now: as a digital reader, phone, internet browser, text messenger, email application, camera (still & motion), organizer (calendar, address book, alarm), media player (music & video), GPS-enabled driving aide, gaming platform, etc. You see my point.
But let’s say all that doesn’t interest you. You just want to read the paper, some books, a magazine or two. You don’t really care how the media arrives. You just want some culture. The following video intends to demonstrate the experience of reading a magazine on a tablet PC—a tablet PC of any brand, because even if Apple isn’t coming out with one, this R&D release from Bonnier is evidence that someone will. After you watch this, you tell me that paper publishing isn’t on its way out:
From M-novels to the Death of Paper Publishing
Part 1: The South African M-Novel Kontax
The m-novel. The mobile novel: a novel written and delivered on a cell phone.
The m-novel is typically associated with the confessional thumbs of emotionally distraught Japanese girls. Although, the first m-novel, Deep Love (posted online in 2000), was written by a Japanese man, a tutor in his mid-thirties, who self-published his book and sold one hundred thousand copies (Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, December 2008).
Smartly, Japanese publishers now scoop up popular m-novels and routinely sell them by the tens of thousands. The m-novel has spread into China, Taiwan, South Korea and Europe, and now it’s reached South Africa. The latest news on m-novels swirls around Kontax, an m-novel about South African youths written in English and isiXhosa (a Bantu tonal language spoken by 7.9 million people).
Behind the project is Steve Vosloo, Communications and Analytical Skills Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation, a South African organization interested in open source learning. Vosloo writes, “In [South Africa] there is about 10% PC-based internet connectivity, while the number of people with access to cell phones ranges from 60% to 90% (depending on which community you look at). Of those phones, a high number are WAP-enabled and can access the internet.”
With high saturation levels of internet-ready phones (and not so much personal computer saturation), the hand-held is the premiere vehicle for delivering media in South Africa. Thus, Vosloo sees the cell-phone as the perfect device with which to improve South African literacy.
Promoting literacy in developing regions using cell phones and open source technology isn’t the only scoop here. What this South African success story hints at is wide-scale transformation in the publishing industry. The success of Kontax with newly literate South African teens is a harbinger of doom for those near relics: paper books.
In October of 2009, BBC reported that Sugar, a young member of Kontax’s audience, enjoyed reading the m-novel with great zeal; however, it did not inspire her to purchase and read paper books. Instead, she wanted more of the same delivered to her hand-held. Of course, Kontax cost her the equivalent of 20 cents. Comparatively, the cost of a paper book is steep. Even more persuasive for Sugar seemed to be the convenience of reading on a mobile. Sugar says, “It’s easy [to read] when you have your phone with you. You just log into the Web site and just read.” Click to read Part Two ….