The future of e-books in 2017

Introduction

When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing. In China,silk was also a base for writing and writing was done with brushes. Many other materials were used as bases: bone, bronze, pottery, shell, etc.Any material which will hold and transmit text is a candidate for books.

Nowadays information technology and the Internet offer total new ways of publishing. For years, newspapers and magazines have been published online, and on 90s also traditional printed books reached digital form. Electronic books or e-books, can now be bought and downloaded from online e-bookstores and be read on computer screen or portable e-book device.

Right to read

Team Composition

• Bauke Fahner
• XinYu Jiang
• Bas Sluijsmans
• Sanna Tauriainen
• Raymond de Vos

Client Questions

Future of the Book questions: (All the answers can be read in the Client question analysis section)

• as the materials that are now published in books are learned through computer screens, what about the form will stay the same and what will change? authorship, editing, presentation style, stored locally?
  

closely related question:

• will there be parallel publishing of a book on screen and print, and if so, will they be mostly similar or will it be a largely different production (such as a novel and movie).

• what will be the role, if any, of scanned books in the future ecology? sales tool? reference work for searching? only old books will be used this way? old books wont be used even on screens by the general public?

different question:

• certain types of books are large part gone already: books of court opinions, phonebooks, readers guide to periodical literature... Given the types of books that are out there, what will they morph or disappear into a computer service?

-brewster kahle

Research Questions

In our research we have identified 5 different categories, namely:

1. History (Xin Yu)
2. Economic Perspective/Value (Raymond)
3. General Information (Raymond/Sanna)
4. Prospective usage of books (Bas)
5. Law, Legislation and Stakeholders (Bauke)

See the research questions section for the actual questions and answers.

Driving Forces

Based on the PEST theory

Political

• Authors rights and personality rights changes
• Members of WIPO leave
• The future of publishing and supply chain change
• Government control of publishing

Economic

• Authors of books will be creating books under "open source like" licences
• eBooks and the effect on knowledge sharing in developing countries
• Importance of learning increases over protection
• Emergence of E-publishing
• Emergence of Library 2.0

Environmental

• Paper Industry and Environmental Issues

Social

• Literacy rates increase worldwide
• Escalation of plagiarism accusation
• Is there a future for the library
• Perception of reading habit

Technological

• Development of e-book readers
• New features compared to printed books
• New development in (free)energy http://www.steorn.org
• Unified standard for e-books
• Books (paper) are preferred over digital media
• Copyrights of digitized books become untrackable
• Screen technology
• Conversion of books to eBooks

Diagrams

Systems Diagram

Version 1

Version 1 of the System Diagram

Here is the final version of the System Diagram for the scenario on the future of the book. The diagram has been changed to give a better view of the system. Further more some relationships have been added between the different elements in the system.

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Version 0.1

Version 0.1 of the System Diagram

First version of the Systems Diagram, based on the brainstorm session by the group members.
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Scenarios

• Scenario 1 - Extinction of Traditional Books

• Scenario 2 - E-books for Niches

• Scenario 3 - Paper, Paper, Paper

References & Links

References page

Known Projects and sites: (non-exaustive list)

• Million Book Project
• Project Gutenberg
• International Childrens's Digital Library
• Distributed Libary Project
• The Oxford Text Archive
• O'Reilly Safari Books Online
• Knovel
• Diesel eBooks
• Google Book (Print) project
• Amazon's Search Inside the Book
• American Memory from the Library of Congress
• New Digital Library project by US National Congress