Back in the mid-90s, I made a prediction that didn''t exactly endear me to my bosses at the dead-tree journalism factory where I was working at the time. After I got my first good look at the Web, I fully expected newspapers to disappear. I still think they are going to disappear, but maybe not quite as fast as I once expected. Back then I had envisioned a small, wireless computer, probably embedded in a flexible, fit-in-your-briefcase-size screen, to deliver news 24 by 7, with maybe touch screen activation.
In fact, I had visions of thousands of rail commuters to New York City reading their Times or Daily News or Post on such screens, getting not only printed news and still pictures, but also bits of video -- the game-winning run from last night''s Mets game, for instance.
It could still happen that way, I guess, but it''s going to take a while longer. Still, you would think that something less complicated, like electronic books, might become popular a lot sooner.
But a new survey of Internet users shows that despite favorable perceptions, the demand for e-books remains relatively low. Only one-in-five users responding to a recent Arthur Andersen survey said that they were likely to set down their paperbacks and purchase an e-book in the next six months.
And a recent research report from Jupiter/Media Metrix on the e-book phenomenon was actually headlined "Limited Scope of E-book Opportunity comes into Focus."
Jupiter said that "The waning of e-book hype in the wake of author Stephen King''s abortive self-publishing venture, along with disappointing early sales of other e-book titles, has trade publishers wondering if they should invest in digital delivery at all."
One of the key findings from Jupiter was that the market for e-books will be just 2.5 percent of total book sales by 2005, coming in at an estimated $826 million.
However, four-out-of-ten users in the Arthur Andersen survey were at least positive toward the concept of e-books, and most respondents agreed that there were benefits to virtual page turning such as fast access, search capabilities and portability.
Price, however, remains a major factor. iReaders, no doubt early adopters who were perhaps accustomed to the free or nearly so culture of the early Internet, want bargains.
In fact, when purchasing an e-book, over three-fourths of consumers said they expect to pay less or equal to the price of a paperback. And on average survey respondents demanded nearly a 50 percent mark down from paperback prices.
Only 27 percent said they would be willing to buy an e-book for the same price they would pay for a paperback, and more than 50 percent said price was overall a major reason for not presently purchasing e-books.
Seventy percent said the need to purchase a book reader or book reader software had a major impact in preventing them from making e-book purchases. One fourth of respondents said they would purchase an e-book reader device only if the price was $100 or less. (Yes, I know that some of the software for reading e-books on laptops and PCs is free. But, just for example, the RCA REB 1100 portable reader is $299 at Barnes & Noble.)
Other findings from the Andersen survey:
- The second largest drawback for e-books was the fact that users need to own more than one book reader because of multiple formats. Sixty-six percent of users ranked this as a serious concern.
- Difficulty in reading an e-book because of small screens was a serious concern for half of the users.
- Forty-one percent of users currently hold a neutral perception of the concept of e-books.
The survey was based on responses from 1,461 online users between January 26 and 29, of this year. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.6 percent. The sample was drawn from Arthur Andersen''s Online User Panel, which is comprised of 5,000 U.S. online users.
All the big online booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, are experimenting with e-books, including some electronic-only content, although sometimes the e-book areas seem pretty well hidden on the sites. Some publishing houses, including Random House, are launching electronic labels. A number of other sites are experimenting with online publishing models, allowing unknown authors to get their work out to the masses and thrive based on merit, not ad campaigns.
But my take is that the widespread use of e-books, like my dream for a highly portable e-newspaper, may be farther away than most execs in the book business -- or the computer hardware and software business -- would like to admit.
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