After my last post on inevitable nature of the shift of the book toward electronic formats, I revisited the data which highlights the decline in sales of e-readers. Some of this is probably competition with tablets. But I’ve had the same Kindle for two and a half years. I got a newer version of the Kindle for my wife, but have seen no need for me to upgrade (and, I got a Kindle Fire for my daughter). Why? The point of e-readers is the content, not the delivery. This reiterates that “e-books” aren’t revolutionary, they’re evolutionary, and the fixation on technology is going to be transient. A true revolution in information transmission and delivery would be a direct data port, which would transform “publishing” in a much deeper fashion than the digitization of type and script.
