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So the Amazon Kindle is out. How exciting.

I had a Sony Reader in my hand the other day which uses the e-ink technology (which is the same one that the Amazon Kindle is using as far as I understand). It is pretty amazing. It read just like a book and you need light to actually read it as it is not like a computer screen. It seems to be ’softer’ on the eyes plus the battery live is lasting for ages because the only time it uses the battery is when you ‘turn’ the page.

Now what I’m more interested in (other than the geeky gadget talk) is what this will do to the way books, magazines and newspapers are being consumed in the future. OK, lets say the Kindle is kicking off the way the iPod has kicked off for digital music what does that do to the way of distribution of written media? And of course will there be free written media widely available the way it is for music through peer-to-peer networks?

I’m not pretending that I will be able to answer those questions but these are a few thoughts.

Lets start with magazines. Now print magazines and newspapers are mainly advertising funded so even if all print magazines and newspapers are suddenly being distributed digitally they could (in theory) just take the advertising clients with them and of course sharing of those magazine through p2p networks will not be a problem at all as it will actually increase the circulation and be beneficial for the ad clients and therefore for the publishers. I think it just makes sense for those kind of publications to go 100% digital anyway but until now people just did not want to read their paper on a computer screen, sitting on the sofa with a laptop on your lap is just not the same as having the paper in your hand. The Kindle, the Sony Reader and E-Ink might change that.

Now for books we have a different issue. First of all they are not advertising funded (yet?) so sharing and copying without compensation for the rights owner (some people call that piracy) could be an issue. Since the file size for a book is extremely small it will be very easy to share it even on mobile phone networks. In fact I’m sure you can already find plenty of books illegal on the internet but I never bothered to download one. I know I will never read the whole book on my screen. On the Kindle I would. Now I’m not convinced that online file sharing is actually effecting the number of sales in the way that the music industry is claiming (there are even studies that suggest it acts as a promotional tool) but it has an effect, even if it’s just in the mind set of people.

One thing we have to keep in mind though is that many books are cheap. Retailers like Amazon are giving us printed books in a wide choice and at the same time made them very affordable so for many people there is little incentive to go out and download a pirated copy of a book instead of buying a printed copy. This goes for the paperbacks and bestsellers that you can buy for up to £20. There is a different interesting book market though which you might not find in the Amazon Top 100. The educational and specialist books you might have to spend several hundreds pounds on. I’m not an expert on this but there is a whole ecosystem of books needed for university courses which you might only need for one term and a second hand market that comes with it. If you think about students and make a big generalization that they are tech-savvy and would know how to get a free copy of their ‘Blackstone’s Criminal Practice’ (normally about £155) and how to load it on their Kindle, this could have a real effect on that industry.

The music business has been heavily effected by the digitalization (and by that I don’t just mean file sharing but also the effect of the internet as a legal music consumption platform) but high value products could never been replaced by digital copies. Collectors items always have to be physical whereby certain high value book products can be replaced by digital copies. Lets see how the book industry is handling the change that’s coming their way.