Digital Business

It's been interesting listening to and reading about the eBook versus printed debate that has been happening over the last two weeks. There have been articles in the major newspapers, discussions on the radio, commentary on blogs and discussion on mainstream TV shows. For instance I watched the BBC TV Breakfast show presenters, Susanna Reid and Charlie Stayt talking about reading an eBook 'not feeling right'. Other guest on Anne Robinson's show 'My Life in Books' on BBC2 were picking up books and smelling them.

There really has been a lot of strong sentiment being expressed and it appears to have polarized into the lovers and haters of eBooks too. The commentary is often melodramatic about eBooks saying how un-green they are and that printed books are better for the environment. There have been observations that reading an eBook on an eReader allows you to read books in public that you would not normally read.

eBooks, it appears are like marmite. You either love them or hate them.

For me, the reality is that I like both printed books and eBooks. My Amazon Kindle is brilliant. But, I can't read some types of book on it like a colourful cook book, or an illustrated self help book on how to treat your own back. I do read a newspaper on it. I read novels, military history books, self help and business books. I also read a substantial number of documents on it too, which saves me both printing off lots of pages and carrying the damned stuff around with me.

The negative noise about eBooks is, generally, coming from the people who won't try an eReader. It's as though something sacred has been ruined for them. But, check the reality out. If you follow the business pages, you will have seen that, in the UK, the HMV Group, which owns Waterstones, the book chain, is in a bad place. Sales are declining as are their profits. People are buying fewer books. It's becoming increasingly expensive to have a high street presence while you have to sell books at declining prices and compete against the major supermarkets for your core business that have substantial economies of scale.

I don't want books to go away. But, in truth, I don't want authors and editors to go away. I want to read good, well thought out and researched books. I now read more books because of my amazon Kindle (it's so easy to get them) and I still read printed books. So, let the debate become a more intelligent one and let's start worrying about the authors and editors who are the life blood of the publishing industry. Let's debate the future of content and not the medium in which it is written.