The future of books

Team Composition

• Arjan Assink
  
• Istran Dulos
  
• Tim van Meurs
  
• Raluca Toader
  
  

Research Questions

General book and e-book

1. In what kind of categories can we split different kind of books?
   
2. What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading a paper book?
   
3. What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading on a e-book reader?
   
4. What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading on a laptop?
   
5. What is the typical weight of an e-book reader?
   
6. What are current limitation of e-book readers?
   

Market

How many paper books are sold each year?
How many e-book readers have been sold so far?
How many audio books are being sold each year?
To what users would e-books provide a serious advantage over paper books?

Paper and ink

What is the price of printing a book out of the total costs?
What is the current trend in price of paper?
Will the price of paper go up in the future?
Will the price of ink go up in the future?
Are there physical alternative to paper books?

Language

In what amount are printed books available in non-native languages?
What percent of the market is the industry loosing because of non-native speakers (in the US)?
Would on demand printing of translated ebooks satisfy this non-native speaking market segment?

Financial

What is the main source of revenue for writers?
Breakdown of sales of different book types
How are freely available ebooks financed?
Breakdown of publishing costs

Digitizing of books

What companies are digitizing books?
Are all new books printed already digitized?
What is the percentage of old books that has already been digitized?
How much does it cost to have a book digitized?
At what rate is the digitizing of old books happening?
How many books that are in the public domain are already digitized?
What is the size (in megabytes) of a typical ebook?
How much data-storage will be needed to store every book in the world?
What is the number of new digitized books per year?

Distribution of books

What are the current major companies/sources that offer free ebooks?
What are the current major companies that offer paid ebooks?
What is the price for a standard ebook? (and how does that compare to a normal book)
How much does it cost to distribute ebooks over the web? (bandwidth, server costs)
How are ebooks distributed?
How is access to certain 'sensitive' books regulated?
How is 'renting' of ebooks from libraries handled?
What are alternative ways to get (e)books to the customer?

Format of ebooks

In what file-format will books be distributed now (in the future)?
What are the alternatives to ebooks?
What are the options to read digital books?
What are future possibilities of ebooks, will they for example incorporate sound or video?

Copyright of digital books

Who holds the copyright to books? Writers? Illustrators? Publishers?
What are current copyright laws on books?
How is copyright handled on current ebooks?
What limitation imposes copyright on ebooks?
Are there any open-source books?
What is creative commons?
To what limit can people read copyrighted books without buying them?
Does piracy of books pose a significant threat to the industry?

Driving Forces

Rise in price of paper

Invention of digital ink and paper

Increased usage/penetration of digital portable devices

Changes in the copyright laws

The security of digital right management

The availability of Internet bandwidth

Difficulty of having a book published and distributed

Cost of digital book compared to normal book

Increase in reachability of potential customers

Lower cost of datastorage & bandwidth

Increase in amount of people connected to internet

Increase of amount of people connected to internet with mobile device

Scenario 1

<suggestion>The downfall of printed books

Scenario 2

<suggestion>Copyright laws and DRM makes ebooks a complete failure

Scenario 3

<suggestion>Printed books and ebooks both die and internet based open source information becomes the new way