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?

Nook sales aside, the tsunami continues

What does it matter that Barnes & Noble had bad holiday sales? Does that mean books will mean less to people in the future? No. You can read all about the disappointing B&N digital device sales (Nook sales down 12.6 percent) in various places on the web right now. (Here's a pretty good one: http://www.idealog.com/) And what does it matter that digital content sales were disappointing (even though they were up: only 13 percent from last year). Does that mean that fewer people are reading books electronically? No. Only strict market watchers and investment people care about these short-term holiday sales figures. Those of us who believe in the progressive/revolutionary nature of digital readers and content know that the tsunami-like transition to electronic reading continues unabated. About one third of Americans now have read a book on a digital device. And there are by some accounts about 2 million ebooks out there. And every day more ebooks are sold by Amazon than print books. And the big news, as I've reported here before, is how the world is poised to adopt ereaders. There will be a big push of digital readers into South America, China, India and Europe this year.

Newspapers in the game in 2013

Well the Guardian should know what it is talking about. In its predictions for 2013 number 10 is "Newspapers will become bigger players in the ebook market, following the example of the New York Times, which has joined forces with startups Byliner and Vook to publish original and archive material." See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/30/future-publishing-2013-predictions-digital This makes a great deal of sense. After all newspapers have content, talented writers and self-defined audiences. The hard part of book publishing -- matching readers with subjects -- is for the most part automatically done. And with a little testing about and watching viewers' interests through web analytics it should be very straightforward for newspapers to determine what stories should be repackaged into ebooks. In Denver, the Denver Post last year did an ebook about the startling Tim Tebow/Denver Broncos arrival in the playoffs. And the Atlanta Journal Constitution did a restaurant guide: "The Atlanta 50." That's just to name a few of the newspapers that have gotten in the game. And now more are expected in 2013.

Can ebooks and print books coexist?

I think there is a real issue in whether ebooks and print books can coexist. Nothing is clear right now with everyone. Either you feel one way or the other. Either you prefer an ebook or you prefer a print book. And whichever you prefer is generally what you think will dominate. (Although sometimes you hear that someone likes both -- in fact buys the ebook and the print version of the same book.) I don't think this is an either-or situation. I think both ebooks and print books can thrive, in the future. Here is a very good video about this subject: http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/aggregatedcontent/video-can-print-e-books-coexist . Right-on is the video observation that the best analogy to this situation is the 19th century development of photography and its affect on painting. Photography thrived as a depiction of reality and painting thrived by becoming more subjective. But they both thrived; one did not replace the other.

3-D printing is truly dynamic

There is no more exciting virtual/physical invention today, I believe,than 3-D printing. If, like myself you have followed this phenomenon from busts, to bikes to now human organs, you know how unexpected this evolution has been. Imagine a world where organs can be cell-jet printed, some day. Just the way pictures are ink-jet printed today. That's an amazing world. People would no longer have to wait long for replacements of kidneys or hearts or even lungs, when their own were diseased. As long as a software program was available to personalize the manufacturing of the organ the receiver would be in business. Now, in the entertainment world, 3-D movies are all the rage. Seeing a movie in 3-D is to view a sunset as compelling as the real thing. Such movies may in reality mean that 3-D is among us, but in effect the experience makes it harder for us to grasp 3-D printing and all of its huge potential. You can watch on Youtube now a bicycle being manufactured by 3-D printing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmxjLpu2BvY Or see two companies talk about the benefits of their printers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5POu62l_Wo

First customer-dedicated book

2013 innovation begins with a book that allows readers to write their own dedication prior to its being printed so that, once printed, the book is personalized. It's as if the purchaser of the book met with the author in person and received a signed, dedicated book. Except the purchaser never met the author and instead ordered the book online with a customer dedication and a digitized signature from the author. Pictured below, the dedication ("Peter, The future is now") on the first page looks like this:

"Communicating with the Future," a book by Tom Frey, Google's top-rated futurist speaker and founder of the Davinci Institute in Louisville, CO, has been ordered 160 times by people who requested personalized dedication pages in the books they ordered. The dedications were printed on the first page of the book, which includes a digitized signature by Tom Frey as well as a dedication from Leaonardo Da Vinci: "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." If you would like to order "Communicating with the Future" and input your own dedication, paste this URL in your browser: https://asoft8136.accrisoft.com/newsconf/index.php?src=forms&ref=Personalizing+a+publication&id=Personalizing+a+publication FYI, here are some of the dedications people ordered: Aaron -- Wishing you much success in the future / To Mark, Here's to Reinventing the Future / To the Clark Family, Never Stop Reaching for the Future. / To Gordon, Make the Future, rather than Predict It. / To Danny & Stephanie The past and the future are based in light. Ours is to live in the grey inbetween /

Ebook globalization

2013 will be the year the ebook evolution goes global. Many countries, for the first time, will have the opportunity to get ebooks galore, or more accurately, be able to choose between ebooks and print books, to purchase one or the other, or both. Download for free "The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions and Future Projections" from O'Reilly and read for yourself. Here's the link:http://search.oreilly.com/?q=the+global+ebook+market%3A+current+conditions+%26+future+projections The UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Poland, Russia, Brazil, and China: all will experience the phenomenon. Personalize MEdia loves the ebook evolution because it makes the physical more virtual and the virtual more physical. Personalize MEdia's belief is that in every ebook file there should be a "Print Now" button so that people can buy and read the ebook first, and if they wish a unique keepsake, purchase the physical incarnation immediately and seamlessly. The "Print Now" button will link to an ordering page (URL) and the "ebook" can be designed (to some degree) by the reader, purchased, printed and delivered to his or her physical address.