New Possibilities For Authors Thanks To E-Book Readers

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 10:31 pm

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, the internet retail giant, in 1994 and in 1995 the first Amazon website went live. Right now, Amazon is a phenomenally successful business and probably one of the most recognisable and trusted brands in the world. It’s easy to forget just what an innovative notion purchasing books on the web and having them delivered by mail was at the time. A lot of business analysts and investors predicted that Amazon would have a hard time of it – and indeed it took until the end of 2001 before they reported their first profit.

Having changed the way that many people bought books, Amazon diversified into other areas very quickly. Music CDs, computer software, videos (later DVDs), consumer electronics and toys were all added to the Amazon product range. Today you can buy almost any consumer item that you can think of from Amazon – including your groceries.

In addition to diversifying their product range, Amazon launched websites in the UK, France, Germany, China and Canada. However, they never lost their original passion for books and they continued to retain a very strong association with books in the perception of the buying public.

This was something that would stand them in good stead in November of 2007 when the Amazon Kindle e-book reader launched. Having previously changed the way that books were purchased, Amazon was now modifying the way that books were actually read. The Kindle attracted a great deal of publicity and it’s reasonable to suggest that the e-book reader market really took off with the release of Amazon’s modified and enhanced Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009.

In June of the same year, Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX. This incorporated a large, 9.7″, e-ink technology display and was targeted at readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. Much of the buzz surrounding the DX was generated by the normally conservative world of academic publishing.

So, the manner in which books are bought, delivered and read have all been radically modified in a relatively short time frame. The fnal piece of reading’s jigsaw – publishing – is also likely to see major changes in the near to immediate future. Any major publisher will almost certainly require to publish an e-book version of any new editions in future. The traditional cycle of hardback publication, followed a few months later by the paperback version will be modified by the addition of an e-book version right at the front end of the process.

Since publishing e-books is less costly than either hardback or paperback release publishing houses may be encouraged to be more daring in future. It could conceivably result in more new authors being published as the process will carry much less financial risk. It could also result in more authors taking greater control by self publishing. In fact, publishing Kindle books is, even now, an achievable goal for anyone who has an Amazon account and who can operate simple word processing software such as Microsoft Word. E-book readers are a true revolution in both reading and publishing.

Share and Enjoy: