Amazon Kindle is doing to paperbacks, what CD’s have done to cassettes. Kindle books are outselling paperbacks on Amazon. For every 100 paper books sold on Amazon, 115 Kindle books are sold. Probably the first time it has ever happened. With many eBook readers coming out and tablets providing a way to read eBooks, the trend will continue and probably the gap will widen – between eBooks and paperbacks.
One important reason for the success of Kindle books is the delivery mechanism. Once bought a Kindle book can be read on any device which has Kindle installed on it. PC, iPhone or an Android phone, all can be used to read Kindle books. For someone living in India, some of the international sellers are not readily available. Even if they did, it would initially be in hard bound and would be expensive. Not that Kindle books are any cheaper, but Kindle provides a great opportunity to read some of the latest International sellers without any delay. This typically cuts out the frustration part for someone not living in India’s metro but has an Internet connection.
Dedicated eReaders like Kindle and Nook will continue to be the hot favorite as eBook readers and will drive eBook sales up. Tablets will be fast catching up as eBook readers too. Reading on a backlit display is hard and eInk provides great advantages in terms of reading ease and longer battery. PixelQi enabled tablets Notion Ink would be a good cross between a eReader and a tablet. Same goes for Barnes and Noble’s Nook color which is a 7-inch Android device with color screens. The next to drive the sales even further up is Kindle Singles.
Amazon has released its Singles for Kindle. These are priced between 99 cents and $4.99. A tad expensive, considering the price of full length book is $9.99. The price of Singles have to further go down for mass adoption. Singles provide great opportunities for writers and readers alike. Writers can publish smaller works and make money out of it. Readers who have tablets can read Singles which require spending short duration with the devices. For someone who wants to know what happened with the Mumbai attacks, without referring to multiple sources, “ Pakistan and Mumbai attacks by Sebastian Rotella” would be a great start. It costs $0.99. Such is the power of Kindle Singles.
Paper books will stay on for a while and they will not be extinct for the foreseeable future. The chances of you finding an audio cassette would probably be equal to the chances of you finding a paper book. In the near future, that is.
Source : DVice