Seth Godin wrote about the latest Harry Potter book Internet “Spoiler” situation in his “Keeping a secret” post. Seth stated that:
The interesting thing for me is how the Net changes what it means for something to be a secret. Five hundred year old technology (books) is just too slow for the Net. The act of printing, storing and shipping millions of books takes too long for a secret to ever be in a book again.
I agree with Seth about the book process taking far too long to successfully contain a secret, but I have to take issue with Seth’s hybrid solution of printing a book without the last three chapters and then releasing those chapters on launch day.
What a butchered solution that would be!
I still hold hope for e-books driven by a revolutionary book reader, perhaps with flexible plastic display pages and an user touch interface (similar to the iPhone) to give it a “semi-book” look and feel.
It’d be interesting to see what type of device Apple would come up with if they set their design engineers to the task of making an e-book reader.
Technorati Tags: apple, harry potter, secret, seth godin
Funny you should say that about Apple. Some people are saying the iphone is that revolutionary reader. I don’t own an iphone so I can’t comment. But I did stumble on a website the other day called Exact Editions (www.exacteditions.blogspot.com). Here is what the blogger said:
“The iPhone will be much more important as a new way of promoting and selling physical books, than it will be for selling digital books….. for the next few years. Few of us want to read digital books all the way through on our handheld, but the iPhone is a bookshop window with an infinite catalogue. In your pocket. This is very good news for Amazon and publishers who want to sell you print copies. Its good news for all small publishers who want to sell books direct through the mail. Publishers need much better websites with more digital samples on their pages. The digital book market will follow more slowly.” This is the direct link if anyone wants to read the whole article: http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/07/if-iphone-is-best-ebook-reader-ever.html
Phillip,
Thanks for the comment and the link.
I’m in the process of testing some of the current machines that are relatively well suited for reading ebooks (the Lenovo X61t tablet, the Sony Reader and the iPhone), but I can already see that they’re all very much compromises.
A device with the iPhone interface and a larger screen, along with a bit more functionality (improved PDF support and file management) would be possible today, and it would be a huge step in the right direction.