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iPadulation
By insidebooks | February 2, 2010
The launch of the tablet computer from Apple last week was a masterful demonstration of how to launch a product, with little advance information and great anticipation in the media.
The iPad has not changed the industry overnight but it does look like the cool object we have been waiting for in terms of ebook readers. The colour screen will move ebooks to the next level, and whilst there are undoubtedly flaws in the first version, Apple is used to fine tuning products once they have reached the early adopter market.
For publishers the iPad offers more choice – a new player with which to do deals alongside Sony, Google and Amazon. There are predictions circulating in the industry about 50 per cent of books being sold as ebooks within the next five years, and the interest from Apple certainly confirms the impetus behind such a trend.
The irony is that Steve Jobs had proclaimed the book as dead …
The irony is that Steve Jobs had proclaimed the book as dead – see our section of Publishing Quotes - and in 2008 he said: ‘It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. … Forty per cent of the people in the US read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.’ So funnily enough the iPad provides further confirmation that the book will continue to exist – and just because it is on a screen doesn’t stop it being a book. See the introduction by Bill Cope and Angus Phillips to their book The Future of the Book in the Digital Age.
People still want to read – and write books – and a further irony is that each successive prophecy about the death of the book usually comes as an extended essay, in book form.
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