The future of e-books in 2017
Introduction
Scenarios on the future of the book up to 2017.
Team Composition
Research Questions
In our research we have identified 5 different categories, namely:
- History (Xin Yu)
- Economic Perspective/Value (Raymond)
- General Information (Raymond/Sanna)
- Prospective usage of books (Bas)
- 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
Environmental
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