The future of books
Team Composition
Research Questions
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?
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?
Are there any open-source books?
What is creative commons?
To what limit can people read copyrighted books without buying them?
Driving Forces
Invention of digital ink and paper
Increased usage/penetration of digital portable devices
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