Once we hit these 5 milestones, we’ll enter endgame.
Today’s book market:
1. Cheap paperbacks (bad for environment, needs to die)
2. Archival quality hardcover (bad but redeemable to good with right pricing)
3. Ebooks: best for environment, but technologically only 50% there
Conversation
Future, post-transition market:
1. Jeweryfied collectibles (think $50+ hardcovers on acid-free paper, stable version)
2. Basic ebooks
3. Rich ebooks descended from static websites, roam research, interactive widgets, Seymour Papert/Bret Victor type clever shit, etc.
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Can’t predict timing or details but that’s where things are headed. And when we’re there ebooks will dominate both revenue and unit sales.
Think of the fraction of ALL clock technologies (including clock chips in every digital device) vs jewelry wristwatches.
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The ebook of the future may not even be distinguishable as such. Your top 3 clocks today are: phone, microwave, stove. But it won’t be generic atomized content online either. It will be a designed and published experience.
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Here’s a thread I did on Friday on my own experiences
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Just did an analysis of 10 years of half-assed self-publishing. Executive summary:
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For the future, I’m considering doing the following:
- Quality ebooks + pricey ($30+) higher-quality print books with carbon priced in somehow
- No cheap print.
- Experiments with rich books (based on roam+gatsby content garden with paywall perhaps)
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I didn’t even discuss a big topic — affordances: highlights/search/notes vs free-form marginalia. It’s a subjective toss-up but ebook wins hands-down for me. Search and exportable highlights way more important than doodling in margins.
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And fwiw, doodling in margins is getting there. Try LiquidText with PDFs on iPad+pencil. Somebody will figure it out. It’s purely a compute problem. Capturing real-time handwritten annotations on vector files with low-enough latency and non-janky retrieval is just better silicon.
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Oh, and on the buying side, my book consumption is currently:
70% ebooks checked out from library
20% ebooks I buy
10% print and hate it except with larger format comic books and technical (with diagrams)
Sold/gave away about half my collection in the last decade
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Of what I have left, I’d say it’s 25% sentiment and aesthetics, 75% special case books not available in ebook or not worth selling/rebuying. Also wife won’t jet me get rid of more. She’s Xennial.
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Replying to
Have you tried using something like ? Over the years it has become my go-to for markup, white-boarding, handwritten notes and I prefer it to iPad due to simplicity and good ux.
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Hmm I tried the first version. Didn’t feel it was worth the extra device. Hmm... will reconsider. This second version looks good.
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