Will E-Books Ever Take Over from Hard Copies?

Online publishing is going from strength to strength and people who have always wanted to see their name in print can now do it without the hassle of having to get a publisher interested first.

But lots of entrepreneurs are bypassing the idea of publishing a book in hard copy form and instead they are releasing it as an e-book.

The advantages of this for both the entrepreneur and the customer are obvious. Firstly because there are no hard copies there is nothing to mail out, no costs involved in getting the books printed, and a system can be set up whereupon the e-book is delivered automatically as soon as valid payment is received.

The biggest draw for the customer is instant delivery. They can literally read the sales page, make their payment and be reading the e-book in just a few short minutes from the time they decided to buy it. This benefit is virtually guaranteed to bring in more impulse sales because all the barriers that prevent people from buying it are taken away.

But while the e-book definitely has its audience and is selling hundreds of thousands of copies all over the world, will it ever completely take over from the trusty hardback?

While it may grow to rival it, the two book formats are so different that they appeal to different types of people. While the e-book can be downloaded onto portable e-book readers, if you want a copy of them you need to print them out on your own printer - using up tons of ink and paper in the process, especially if it’s a long one. It also doesn’t make for very easy reading if you have to flip through a large sheaf of paper.

True book lovers will also state that there is nothing quite like a proper book to pick up and read. Even though they get more dog eared than e-books - which most of the time will simply sit on their purchaser’s computer, looking as good as the day they bought them - there is something about a proper hardback book that is simply not there in any other format.

The truth is that unless the e-book starts to make significant inroads into the fiction market (not to mention more areas of non-fiction that are of interest to a wider audience) there is no real danger that the hardback will disappear altogether. The majority of the e-books published online that make sales into the thousands are about making money online, so it has its limitations.

So while e-books do rival hardbacks in certain specific sectors of the market, it seems that hardbacks still hold the majority vote in most other areas. There is also the problem of giving a book as a present. The idea of giving someone an e-book as a gift simply doesn’t made the grade, even if you were to burn it onto a disk and present it more attractively.

Whatever your own opinion of e-books might be, it looks like hardbacks will be here to stay for some time yet.

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