E-Ink leaves its mark

Driving forces

The scenario

The year is 2020; Everywhere on the street people can be seen occupied with their small electronics. They always seem to be on the run. Technology has become the driver of this society. Libraries have disappeared, paper books are nowhere to be bought anymore. You can find them only on the dusty shelves of old people whom are still attached to them as they represent a piece of history - their youth.

But how do people read nowadays? Everything started more than a decade ago when the first e-readers came up. They were quite big and difficult to use but their advantages were soon to be discovered. Their "take-over" has been also sustained by other forces

Due to environmental changes, the paper book industry was on a constant decline. The trees, water and oil became scarce resources and organizations' propaganda influenced the logging and distribution laws: an interdiction on cutting trees as well as limitations on water distribution were put. Publishing companies had no alternative resources for printing the books and the industry started to fall apart. At the same time, more and more people were able to connect to the internet via various portable devices. A limited access to paper books due to scarce resources, together with heavily advertisement of e-readers advantage,s determined the majority of book readers to take into consideration the alternative.

The first adopters of e-books were students. The weight of paper books they had to carry to classes, the difficulty of finding specific information in books, and the high price of buying paper books had determined students to adopt the next best alternative: the e-reader. Because of the change, universities considered it useful to provide students the opportunity of buying e-readers and e-books from an online store at lower prices. Furthermore, all study material (e.g. presentations) were provided via e-readers. With the advantages of easy bookmarking, searching through text quickly and jumping to pages directly from the index, the e-books brought advantages to the students that paper books were lacking.

As the market expanded, professionals that also needed to carry around a big number of books started to use the e-readers. With increasing technology, text-to-speech technology became also available and e-books were ‘read’ to the listener by the e-book reader, virtually destroying the market for audio-books, as each e-book became an audiobook by default.

With technology constantly evolving to satisfy the mass of customers that had to shift from paper books to e-books (as a result of global warming and the negative effect that printing industry had on ecology), the e-readers became thinner, lighter and with a weeks-long battery life. In 2020, the e-book reader looks like a thick piece of paper, which can be rolled up to a small package with a small block of plastic for the necessary connectors and electronics. Controls are going through motion and touch-sensitive surface. The access to free e-books given by Google's library, has convinced everyone that the solution to paper books unavailability is represented by the e-reader.

Background Information

Introduction

The “E-Ink leaves its mark”-scenario focuses on the rise of ebooks and ebook-readers and the downfall of the traditional paper books. The major advantages ebooks bring with them will make them a success in almost every possible part of the book-market as we know it, leaving paper books to a mere niche market of collectors and nostalgics.

This scenario is based on the cumulated effects of several forces. The following discussion is presented from the year 2020 perspective, providing information about what happened since 2009 that lead to the extinction of paper book industry and development of e-book industry.

Global warming

One of the most important factors that will lead to this scenario are environmental issues. The environment is of big importance as it represents the supplier of resources needed for paper books to be printed. Global warming is a current problem that affects the environment and will have a major impact on our society.

Trees

In year 2020 the carbon dioxide in the environment has reached even higher levels with an increase of 15% compared to 2008. This increase has been responsible for the death of 10% of the worldwide tree amount over a timespan of 10 years. Moreover, global warming had increased the number and the intensity of forest fires so much that fire fighting techniques are not sufficient anymore to extinguish them. Forests have become smaller and smaller which caused governments to enact laws against logging. The trees planted to improve the situation had no major effect as the number of trees that died was much bigger than those planted.

As trees are needed to support life, their purpose as wood supply for printing books has been pushed to the background, greatly fueling the development of e-books.

Water

Global warming raised another issue: earth's fresh water resources. For years countries have recycled water but now the problem has become so serious that the water is supplied to people based on rations. Due to some innovations in industry that use water, the waste of water has been reduced, but as the global warming is generating lakes and rivers to dry up, the water is being provided only as a necessity for human consumption.

The book industry was forced to find new ways of providing books to their customers, ways that did not involve the use of water, and eventually companies had to resolve to e-books.

Oil becomes scarce

Transportation

Around 2015 the oil issue has the first major impact on the book industry. There is a constant need for fast book distribution which couldn't be satisfied by the old ways of transportation - ships. The fast distribution of paper books involves such high air transportation expenses that companies, in order to recover these expenses, have to rise the price of book so much that they become a luxury. Customers start to resolve to e-books as they are distributed instantly and for much lower prices.

Printing industry side-effects

Number of trees cut

In 2008 the number of trees cut for book printing reached the number of 30 millions. Around 70% to 90% of these trees were coming from natural resources. Although several recycling project were developed trying to make people aware of the trees problem, this had no major impact on the number of trees cut. Moreover, not many people were willing to give their novel books to recycle, and even the students were reluctant of giving away their expensive study books. So, with the increase in paper books, there was a decrease in the number of books sent to recycling. By 2015, more than 90% of paper was coming from natural resources. Around that time the governments started to ban any kind of tree cutting activity and publishing companies were allowed to use only the paper available at that moment for printing.

Level of CO2 generated to print a book

To print a book weighting 1kg CO2 produced would be as much as 34kg. This influenced the availability of trees, the global warming issue, and resulted in another more reason for paper book production to be stopped. It appeared that the ecological side-effects created by the printing industry were too severe.

Demographics

Population becomes more tech-savvy

People like technology because it saves them time, improves the quality of life, and gives an image of superiority because they own the lastest gadgets on the market. With the internet era, there have been organized courses for old people to learn how to use a computer and keep up with technological innovation. Kids have grown up already with iPods, laptops and by 2009, iPhones so by 2020 all people are enrolled in programs to constanly prepare themselves in the usage of the latest technology. People learn faster how to use the technology and e-book readers become extremely popular among all ages.

Industry changes

The power of Google and the copyright laws
After Google finally settles their 3 year book-scan lawsuit in 2008, the company becomes more and more powerful. In the next 3 to 5 years Google starts scanning all books available and offers them as free e-books online creating a global digital library. This not only impacts the paper book market by having electronic versions of books available for free, but also increases the demand for e-readers. By the time government counters Google with new copyright laws to restrict and punish their actions, the e-books are already worldwide spread and the damage is done. Everyone holds an e-reader and although people have no more free access to new book titles, the paper book industry finds it difficult to recover.

E-books are available in all languages

Society is continually become more and more multi-cultural, with as a results their is huge diversification in use a language. The growth of this phenomenon proved to be a big burden to publishers and book stores as suddenly they had to print and carry all books in an increasing amount of languages. Advancement in fully automatic computer language translation and e-books were a enormous relief and solved this problem. People could now download the book in the original language and have their computer translate it to their language of choice.

Innovation

E-ink and e-reader

The ink industry was replaced by the e-ink one as a result of paper book industry crash. E-reader providers invested heavily in innovation to bring to the customer the best reading experience. The two major areas that were subject to innovation were represented by e-ink and e-reader interface. Companies focused on how to offer the same or even better reading experience to customers.

Digital portable devices

As e-books can also be read on other devices than e-readers, many companies found it worthwhile to innovate in portable devices industry. Not everyone wants an e-reader to carry along with their phone, mp3 player and laptop.

Conclusion

With technology evolving quickly, virtually all possible disadvantages that ebook readers currently have versus paper books will disappear in the years to come. E-books will take over the book market by types of books, starting with study books and gradually taking over the regular book market. The issue of DRM will take some time and effort to overcome, but will never seriously hold back the evolution of e-books and e-book readers.