Getting this thread out of the gutter (I'm sure Mr. Jobs does not want the iPad associated with people that touch puppy's in an appropriate manner):
I read today that Amazon has been forced to increase the price of some of its ebooks and chances are other publishers will follow suit if they can get $12.99 or $14.99 rather than the $9.99 that Amazon has been charging.... Not the best timing considering the iPad will be aiming at the same market with, by all accounts, a better system.
On the other side of that coin, I was reading how a well known author (personally never heard of him) was the first to sell his digital rights directly to Amazon, giving him a 50% commission of each sale, far higher than he would receive through traditional media.
I think e-books is really just at the starting point of revolutionising the distribution and consumption of book sales. In the next few years "a" famous author is going to break the mould and publish their works purely in digital format and when that happens the dam will be broken.
On the positive side, many more people may be prepared to write books on a whole range of subjects without the fear of rejection from publishers experienced in the past and no doubt there will be some real gems amongst them, on the negative side, it probably means a whole load of crap will get electronically published too that would never have made it through in the past.
Prices will go down, and more will be encouraged to take a chance at writing something, with the prospect of success, literature will once again become art!
The music industry's definitely going that way. These days anyone can buy the equipment they need to record a demo for a hundred quid or so, and can upload it onto YouTube/their website. No need to get the massive record labels behind you.
I see no reason why books won't follow suit...although perhaps the internet nation's short attention span is more suited to watching 2 minute YouTube vids than spending hours/days reading books by various authors...
The internet is perhaps maturing... and with the right equipment, something you can lay in bed with rather than a heavy hot computer or laptop, now really is the time for books to go mainstream online.
I think if I had been asked to predict, I would of got it wrong, I would of guessed the book industry would be the first to be hit by the internet (before music/ video) but looking at it in hindsight it does make sense. I am still not sure the iPad or the Kindle are the killer applications, but we are getting very close to the start of the end of books, newspapers, magazines, the local newsagent, the bookstore and perhaps even to the reliance of search as we know it.
And imagine the shops of the future, you nip in and firewire or usb a new book in, no waiting for deliveries, out of stock etc, no more trains full of old newspapers and flyer inserts all around your feet.
I had a team that worked in a paper free environment once, and after getting used to writing customer notes no screen, instead of on scraps of paper, it worked perfectly, no data loss, no mess, loved it.
Touch interfaces are the market most of the big tech providers see as the next big growth sector. For items such as the iphone is works well, i can personally vouch for that.
For items requiring longer term more protracted use I remain unconvinced of touch interface. Human hands just arn't mean't to be used that way for a long time. No doubt Apple will have been quite smart with shortcuts and innovating the use of touch, but i suspect the type writer will be around for a long time yet.
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