All books may be ebooks first

Jamie Fiocco, Co-owner of FlyLeaf Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., explains in a Media Shift video that although it’s not a perfect analogy, the current discussion about whether ebooks will put print books out of business is like the discussion 250 years ago about whether photography would force painters to retire. Check out what she says: “When the camera came out painting didn’t go away. It will be a different thing selling print books, but this industry has been evolving the last 20 years.” Watch the video: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/12/video-can-print-and-e-books-coexist356.html There are two very likely scenarios for print books of the future. Both envision a book’s first incarnation to be electronic. So ebooks may become the first, most inexpensive way to put a book out, to see if it has legs. Then after the book has proven itself with myriads of downloads, then 1. Some people who have truly loved the ebook might want a personalized printed copy as a unique keepsake. 2. Or, the opposite. (And we already have examples of this opposite scenario.) A book starts out as an ebook, gathers an audience, and then the author gets signed by a large publisher and myriads of copies of the book are printed for the public to buy. Witness 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, which started out as an epub and print on demand book and evolved into a book carried by Vintage Books, which was founded by Alfred A. Knopf. On the same video, Land Arnold, the other co-owner of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., at first likens the epub/print book dialectic to I-tunes music vs. album collections, but observes that the two situations are not parallel because a book is a longer commitment of time than a song. So, by inference, one can’t imagine ebooks replacing print books the way I-tunes music totally eviscerated albums. What do you think?