It's
a great time for ebooks. There are at least six ebook reader devices on
the market or in preparation. A major business magazine predicts that
up to seven million of these devices will be sold next year. A major
consulting firm says ebook sales will account for ten percent of the
publishing market in five years. And an executive at the leading
computing firm predicts that 90 percent of all publishing will switch to
electronic form in just 20 years. But the year isn't 2010 -- it's 2000,
and the ebook market is about to go into hibernation for a decade. What
went wrong? Let us learn why ebooks failed in decade ago?

I think the failure of ebooks ten years ago was due to five problems:
1.
Not enough ebooks. The core customers for an ebook reader are reading
enthusiasts, meaning they like to read a lot of books. If you ask them
how many books they'd like to have available for their reader, they'll
look at you funny and say, "All of them, of course. What's the point in
paying for an ebook reader device that doesn't let you any book you want
to read?"

In 2000, we had a huge problem with ebook
availability. They were expensive to convert to ebook format (hundreds
of dollars per title), and publishers were reluctant to make that sort
of investment. I don't have any statistics on the number of ebooks
available back then, but I remember that it was an ongoing, major
problem for the company.

Today, the situation is better but not
ideal. Looking at the New York Times bestseller list for February 28,
all but one of the top 10 books in hardcover fiction and nonfiction were
available in ebook format. However, there is still a problem with the
timing of availability. Barnes & Noble had 15 books on its "Coming
Soon" list for March 10, but only six of them were to be released as
ebooks at the same time as they came out in print. That's a poor ratio,
and would be a significant annoyance to an ebook user.

2. The
hardware form factor was wrong. When ebook readers failed to sell well,
ebook producers tried to focus on other electronic devices -- PCs, PDAs,
and smartphones.

The trouble is that for most people, the
ergonomics and psychology of reading are wrong on computers and
smartphones. A laptop is the wrong size and weight to create an
immersive reading experience, and the backlit displays on most laptops
create eyestrain compared to reading ink on paper.

PDAs and
smartphones are too small for immersive reading for most people, and
besides people are usually in a different mindset when they use a pocket
device. They use it briefly, in short spurts throughout the day, when
they are bored or need to find a bit of information. It's like the
information equivalent of snacking. A reference book might be useful in
this context, and holy books like the Bible sell well in electronic form
because some people take comfort in reading a bit of them every day.
But for most people, a pocket device isn't something that you'd curl up
with for a couple of hours, the way you would with a book.

This
is an area where we're obviously making a lot of progress. Amazon and
Sony have both been willing to subsidize their tablet devices for years
while the ebook market develops, and Apple and other big computer
companies are now entering the tablet market, not to mention a host of
smaller startups.

3. Ebooks were too expensive. Many book buyers
feel they get extra value when they buy a hardcover book. It's more
substantial than a paperback, and has a nice slipcover. The pages don't
turn yellow, and the printing is generally very clear. If they like the
book, they can put it on a bookcase somewhere to show their friends how
tasteful they are. An ebook has none of these benefits. To many users,
it feels more like a paperback -- disposable, intangible, slightly
cheap. But in 2000, many ebooks were priced the same as hardcover books.
Also, the format of most ebooks are epub, some are of text. people
always need to convert pdf to epub. and also need to convert pdf to text And they felt it is too troblesome.


4.
Periodicals weren't ready. Although we call these devices "ebook
readers," if you look at user attitudes and usage patterns, in many ways
they are a better fit for reading periodicals (newspapers and
magazines) than they are for books. Most printed magazines and
newspapers are viewed as disposable, so many people don't object to
paying the same price for an e-version as they do for the printed
version. And most periodicals can be read in short bursts, which fits
the usage pattern for mobile devices.

5. Poor marketing. In my
opinion, the right way to create a technology product is to identify a
group of customers who have a major problem, and to solve that problem
decisively. It's not clear that ebooks, especially as they are
constituted today, do that. Paper books simply aren't broken, from the
perspective of most users.

Now, ebooks are popular, especially
after the release the ipad, if you are a designer, you must have many
graphics of dwg format, if you want to share them with others, you have
to convert dwg to pdf with the dwg to pdf converter.