The future of books
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Team Composition
Introduction
Coming soon
Research Questions
General book and e-book
- In what kind of categories can we split different kind of books?
- What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading a paper book?
- What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading on a e-book reader?
- What is pleasant and unpleasant about reading on a laptop?
- What is the typical weight of an e-book reader?
- What are current limitation of e-book readers?
- What is the refresh rate of black and white e-book readers?
- What is the refresh rate of the colored e-book readers?
- Will refresh rate of e-book readers improve in the future?
- What is the maximum resolution of current 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
Technology
- Invention of digital ink and paper
- Increased usage/penetration of digital portable devices
- The availability of Internet bandwidth
- Lower cost of datastorage & bandwidth
- Increase in amount of people connected to internet
- Increase of amount of people connected to internet with mobile device
- Research and development in the book and ebook industries
Social
Industry
- Rise in price of paper
- Difficulty of having a book published and distributed
- Cost of digital book compared to normal book
- Increase in reachability of potential customers
Copyright law and copy preventions
Economy