The Bookseller.com

8th January 2009

Duncan Clark is editorial director of GreenProfile and a consultant editor at the Guardian.

Books are not music

14.08.08

I’m the sort of person who should be excited about e-books. A hopeless technology junkie, I’ve written books about iPods and am rarely off the internet. I’m also a committed green (yes, I’m aware of the contradiction), so I find paperless publishing an appealing concept.

But despite the Kindle’s imminent UK launch, I’m not excited at all. On the contrary, I’m increasingly bored of digital-publishing hype. Especially the endless references to the coming "iPod moment", when e-readers will suddenly become as ubiquitous as Apple’s white earphones.

Comparisons between iPods and e-book readers are flawed on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start. Given the limited space, I’ll highlight just three key differences.

First, the iPod was a technology waiting to happen. Its predecessor—the personal CD player—was fiddly, skip-prone, unsexy and required you to carry around loads of delicate discs. E-book readers, by comparison, are competing with one of the best-loved products ever developed. Books are cheap, convenient and robust. When you’ve finished reading them, you can give them to friends or display them on your bookshelves.

Second, iPods aren’t just for downloads. They also enable you to make better use of the music you already own. All those housebound albums are suddenly available on the train or car, on holiday, or at work. E-book readers, by contrast, do nothing for your existing books: you’re just buying a receptacle for future downloads.

Third, iPods’ many benefits don’t come at the expense of the listening experience. The music on an iPod sounds the same as ever, whereas e-book readers downgrade the visual and tactile experience of reading. Out with multiple formats and papers, and beautiful typography; in with a single-size plastic "page" and a small font selection.

Even if the iPod/Kindle comparison was valid, it would miss the point that iPods are already yesterday’s news. The future is represented by the iPhone, which is all about convergence: phone, iPod, internet and more in one tiny device. E-book readers fly in the face of convergence by requiring people to buy, charge, maintain and carry a separate gadget for just one purpose.

Publishing’s long-term future may indeed be digital. But that doesn’t mean anyone will succeed in selling e-books in propriety formats for expensive, single-purpose gadgets. No wonder we still haven’t seen sales figures for the Kindle: they’re likely to be unimpressive.

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