Ever since I brought a Kindle 6 months back, I'm a hard-core Kindle fan. The last few years have been hectic with 2 young kids and the associated work, not to mention the never ending work. As a result, my reading habit had suffered with what-ever free time being spent on taking rest. Most of the reading tend to be either technical and consumed mainly from a few websites.
So, when I brought a new Kindle, it was to see if I can make a turn-around with my reading habits. And so far, it has worked like a charm, I've read 4 books in the last 4 months, which is great, considering that we were in the middle of a big international move and I had to cope with work also :-)
More importantly, I'm amazed at the technology. When I see the reading habits of folks in India, the distribution of print media is still via humans i.e newspaper is still distributed by someone early in the morning, if you need a new magazine, you still have to go to one of those stores nearby and pay money or you get a regular subscription to a magazine which is again delivered by a postman. Will we see a big shift towards digital distribution as the prices of these device drop down and it becomes easier for common folks to afford it ? Will the print media in India go the same way as in US where most of the newspaper are dying a slow death or will they survive with the same distribution and advertising model ?
The other interesting area where we might see a big explosion of Kindle-like devices is in the education space. Kids in India still carry a whole lot of books as they progress through the year. Besides the practical issue of carrying these books (which is a big burden), these digital text books might just help in easy indexing and discovery of information. The regular mode of learning something new in a text book at-least is to go to the index at the end of the book and then try to find a cross-reference to the terms you are looking for (pretty much like the way we would search for information on google.com, except that this is all done manually). So, my guess with digital text-books, it might help a whole lot in easily discovering and consuming new material.
A side-effect of digital text-books is that it makes it easier for copyright protection. Currently, at-least in India, there is a scant respect for copy-right, folks xerox/copy text-books without a regard that this is a violation of law. We all have been in the system where this is not frowned upon and in-fact encouraged to a large extent ("why do you want to buy a expensive text book when you can copy it for 1/10 th of the price"). My guess is that publication house will push the concept of text books just because it a good model for them and more-over in the long-run it is good for the economy as a whole if copy-right and intellectual property is respected.
My prediction is that in the next few years :
So, when I brought a new Kindle, it was to see if I can make a turn-around with my reading habits. And so far, it has worked like a charm, I've read 4 books in the last 4 months, which is great, considering that we were in the middle of a big international move and I had to cope with work also :-)
More importantly, I'm amazed at the technology. When I see the reading habits of folks in India, the distribution of print media is still via humans i.e newspaper is still distributed by someone early in the morning, if you need a new magazine, you still have to go to one of those stores nearby and pay money or you get a regular subscription to a magazine which is again delivered by a postman. Will we see a big shift towards digital distribution as the prices of these device drop down and it becomes easier for common folks to afford it ? Will the print media in India go the same way as in US where most of the newspaper are dying a slow death or will they survive with the same distribution and advertising model ?
The other interesting area where we might see a big explosion of Kindle-like devices is in the education space. Kids in India still carry a whole lot of books as they progress through the year. Besides the practical issue of carrying these books (which is a big burden), these digital text books might just help in easy indexing and discovery of information. The regular mode of learning something new in a text book at-least is to go to the index at the end of the book and then try to find a cross-reference to the terms you are looking for (pretty much like the way we would search for information on google.com, except that this is all done manually). So, my guess with digital text-books, it might help a whole lot in easily discovering and consuming new material.
A side-effect of digital text-books is that it makes it easier for copyright protection. Currently, at-least in India, there is a scant respect for copy-right, folks xerox/copy text-books without a regard that this is a violation of law. We all have been in the system where this is not frowned upon and in-fact encouraged to a large extent ("why do you want to buy a expensive text book when you can copy it for 1/10 th of the price"). My guess is that publication house will push the concept of text books just because it a good model for them and more-over in the long-run it is good for the economy as a whole if copy-right and intellectual property is respected.
My prediction is that in the next few years :
- we will see a change in the distribution model for print media as more people buy Kindle-like devices
- we will see a change in the education space as kids move to a more digital text books. Kindle-like device might be part of your kids school bag.
- we might see drop in the number of book shops.
- changes in the advertising and revenue generation for print media
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