E-Books for Free
Summary:
And how this will dramatically change our perception of information.
We need e-books for free! And they will come along. When e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle get affordable for nearly everyone, more people will start writing more books – or just publish their manuscripts they couldn’t distribute before. And like people already publish news, videos, images or blog articles for free (yup, like this one), there will be alot who just want to publish their stories for free.
As a consequence, this will rise our perception of information. As Seth Godin points out in his Random thoughts about the Kindle “It changes (at least for me) what it means to buy and own a book. [...] I feel a lot less badly about stopping a book on page 10 if it doesn’t interest me [...]” And further “What happens to book consumption when books become social objects, commented upon by you and your participating friends or network?”
I believe, it will be the same as with the internet. People will gather information they have never dreamt of gathering before. Think about how many things you wouldn’t know without the internet! This on the other hand rises the requirement for filters to leave out the information you don’t need.
I’m speaking less about technical filters, but the filters in your head. When the number of books increase dramatically, people will start reading more books, because the chance that there is something that interests them rises. And since people’s time is limited, they will have to develop strong filters for their interests or they will be lost in the jungle of information. It is about to know when to stop clinging to a bad experience.
These thoughts are not only applicable for books, but for newspapers and magazines, too. It calls for mechanisms (like filters) to provide individuals with content that is relevant to them. And I believe, people would pay for that, to minimize their time spent on searching for relevant content.
While you can see alot of newspapers trying to offer more and more content online, you seldom see a good try to offer topic customization. There already is a step into this direction: But unfortunately the reading experience of Newsvine is far away from good.