Scenario 2 - E-books for Niches

2007

E-book industry seems to be stagnant, and the general public is not really interested in e-books. Launches of new e-book readers, e-libraries and webshops don’t increase the general interest. People still stay their way of reading a paper-book because it is more comfortable compared to digital ones.

2008

Newly developed e-book readers are used only by small group of early adopters, but they are not able to convince the rest of the public to start reading e-books. E-book reader manufactures and publishers are starting to consider whether to stay in the business or not. Because of the stagnating market on e-books DRM is being pushed into the market to protect their sales.For one side, e-books and e-readers are still expensive compared to paper-books, for the other side, a lot of people especially young people are against the DRM which prevent them from sharing to friends or just changing a reading device. Additonally, young people are exactly those who could become the primary customer of e-book.

2010

Book publishers realize that some e-books sell better than the others, and some books doesn’t sell at all. They conduct several market surveys to find out, what the readers really want and what they don’t. Publishers find out that there is no sense even to try to publish all books in electronical format, and they start to focus to publish books for smaller potential groups. More and more people are have a cracked version for DRM to be able to read the books with out the limitations of the DRM.

Publishers come up with rules of what can be done with their books and how the ownership is done. The first book rule ‘A consumer may lend a book but the publisher keeps the right to change or update a book and has the right to prevent a consumer from reading the book after a specific period of time’.

2012

Governments are trying to encourage libraries and educational institutions to get more e-books available, but due to the low interest and high costs, libraries finally stop renting e-books and e-books are not used at schools. The e-book readers are well developed, but they cost around $300-400 and that’s why they are not affordable to everybody.

Besides stimulating libraries and educational institutions governments in Europe, the United states and Japan come up with stricter regulations on copyright in relation to e-books. Because of the DRM on e-books governments are able to censor content from books which they find not appropriate for their citizens to read, this counts the same for complete books.

2017

Only few e-book publishers and e-book readers have survived and they are doing reasonable well by concentrating on niches. The rest of the public still prefer traditional printed books, and won’t be willing to start reading e-books in the future either. Due to the high price and the scares availability of e-books. In order to be able the find new niches in the market e-publishers are selling parts of their books in e-books to make it more attractive for the customer so that they are able to read only the content that is needed for them to read.

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