The Death of the Paper Book (And the Rise of the E-Book)
by Sean D'Souza writing in the Business Herald, Friday 12 February, 2010.

On December 25th, 2009, something quite remarkable happened at Amazon.com

For the first time in Amazon’s history, the sale of e-books overtook the sale of physical books. And on that specific day the paper book downslide officially began. The Kindle officially put the early set of nails in the coffin. What the Kindle didn’t complete, Apple’s rumoured iTablet will be sure to finish off.

But surely books won’t die.
The death of books have been exaggerated before and hey, they’re still around. Surely books aren’t going to die in a hurry.

Books won’t die; the paper book will die.
Less than ten years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to load up your car with dozens of CDs as you went on a trip. It wasn’t uncommon to have a stack of CDs in your lounge. Where are those CDs now? They’re all nicely ripped and sitting in your iPod, iPhone or at the very least on your computer. Only a dinosaur carries CDs around these days.

That dinosaur story applies perfectly to books
So you’re headed on vacation, and you pick up a few books to read. You want to beef up on a specific topic? Again, you pick up a few books from the store or from the library. In a few years from now, that idea of lugging around books will seem kinda quaint.

Why would you want to have dozens of books stacked around taking up space, when you can have them all on your Kindle or your iTablet? Sounds too sci-fi? Well the librarians don’t think so. Across the planet, libraries have latched onto the digital media. One of the early libraries to lend out Kindles and Sony Readers was North Carolina State University Library. And the list of libraries giving out Kindles, Sony Readers and ebook readers continues to grow (here’s a partial list).

If this revolution to digital media seems unreal, wait till the iTablet comes out
Kindles set out to allow you to download books or newspapers from anywhere. This means you could read the New York Times or just about any book in the Kindle store without having any access to a wireless hotspot or internet connection. However in order to keep this download small, all the fancy colour and graphics were stripped out of the Kindle display. This meant of course that you were largely restricted to text in black and white.

Apple’s iTablet should have no such restriction
Not only should the iTablet work via 3G, but it should also easily work through wireless. Assuming Apple allows all of the apps to work on the iTablet (as it does on the iPhone) what you now have is the ability to experience the best of both worlds. If you choose you can simply download the Kindle app onto your iTablet and read a book (in a nice big font and size). If you choose to ignore the black and white, you may be able to download the book in full colour (Yes, publishers are already queuing up to have their books on the iTablet). As if that were not dramatic enough, you’d be able to do it wirelessly through a choice of 3G or indeed over your wireless hotspot.

Digital books have existed for a while, but there’s always been a problem
You could indeed take your PDF and try and read on a flight. Or you could download a magazine from Zinio.com and read it in bed. But you always had to contend with a laptop at the very least. And I don’t know about you, but a computer doesn’t exactly come close to the happiness you get when reading a book. On a Kindle or iTablet that frustration goes away. Now instead of lugging a computer to bed, I can prop up my iTablet and voila—I have the very same, if not an enhanced experience.
Enhanced? How could it be enhanced?
Already you can bookmark pages on a Kindle. That should be standard on a tablet device of the future. Underlining, scribbling on the book, doodling etc., is just a matter of time. But that’s just the reading experience. What really kills the paper book is the storage experience. I can now store whatever I want in a tiny little device. And find the darned thing when I want to find it (As it is, I already buy books and store them on my iPhone Kindle app, just for reference purposes). With the iTablet and future devices, this storage and convenience will become standard fare.

The paper book will die.
Film in cameras: RIP.
CDs in the lounge: RIP.
Paper Books: RIP.

P.S. If you’re a publisher, or an author or plan to be one in the future, then pay very, very close attention to how e-books are rendering on tablets and reading devices. Your future depends on it.

Sean D’Souza is the driving force behind “PsychoTactics”, and an expert on using an understanding of psychology to dramatically increase sales. Sean regularly writes for the NZ Herald, (where this story first appeared in Friday's Business Herald), NZ Business and other local and international magazines. He has appeared on TV and Radio worldwide, and makes regular international speaking appearances.
The above article also appears on the PsychoTactics website.

He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why customers buy (and why they don't).
Details: ISBN 9780473117382, Psychotactics Ltd., paperback, $39.99