Bowing to the arrival today of four new kinds of Kindles (priced at $79, $99, $149, and $199), Tech Crunch charts "The Future of Books: A Dystopian Timeline." They claim independent bookstores will be gone in 2015, lifestyles magazines will convert to a digital-only format in 2016, and Barnes & Nobles will be merely cafes and digital access points by 2018. Maybe they're wrong. Nicholas Negroponte wrote Being Digital in 1994, promising a laptop that looked like a sheet of paper by 2004; Tech Crunch says it's 2023.
Make of this what you will: IKEA has renamed its ubiquitous bookshelves, now simply "shelves," and they have rejiggered the dimensions to accommodate things -- stuffed animals, empty beer cans, picture frames -- rather than books.
Photos courtesy of Borders.
This is the perfect opportunity to bring up something that has bugged me for a while. You (and, to be fair, some other bloggers) helpfully and conveniently post the Kindle link to books. That's great. However, you don't post the Nook link as well. Digital product - ebooks and Nooks - is one of the few money-makers over at B&N, and at least for now and until that date when physical books disappear from their stores (2018?) they are actually a big part of what keeps those physical doors of the bricks and mortar stores propped open and enable them to sell the paper product. We can (and have) discussed what is wrong with B&N, but arguably one of the things that they did right as opposed to the recently shuttered Other Chain is to get into ebooks and the devices to read them on in a big way. You might want to consider supporting B&N in their cross-subsidization of ebook product and physical books/bookstores. Especially timely with Amazon's announcement today of a tablet that will go head-to-head with B&N's marquee Color Nook.
Posted by: Steve | September 28, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Love those! I enjoy following your posts on facebook and rss!
Posted by: mulberry alexa | October 24, 2011 at 07:32 AM