Can your business capitalise on the rise of E-book readers?
I was bought an e-book reader for my birthday and it’s safe to say I have been blown away by it. For the uninitiated, e-book readers are small (mine is the size of a small paperback but much thinner), light (the weight of a heavy mobile phone) and very tactile (at least, the entry-level Sony model I have is). They hold hundreds of “books”, allowing you to carry a bookshelf with you and read any of them whenever you get the chance.
For the sceptical, I predict that once you see one of these, you’ll be converted. The screens are the thing: really sharp, they’re utterly unlike computer screens, in that if you look at it in a dark room, you’ll see absolutely nothing: they’re not back-lit at all, and can be viewed the same from any angle without the text fading. The appearance is just like the printed page, meaning no eye-strain, and they have a very, very long battery life (many thousands of “page turns”; the devices only draw any real power when “turning the page” for you).
A new age of self-publishing?
So here’s the thing for small businesses who have any kind of documentation, case studies, white papers etc. By packaging these up as PDF documents with very little effort (whereas Amazon’s Kindle book reader are proprietary, most of the others are quite happy with PDFs), and offering them in a slightly different manner on your website (“download digital reader edition” next to a picture of one of these readers?), you can now offer potential clients a new way to easily download and carry around company material that could lead to sales for you. After all, the worst part of downloading big PDFs from the internet is that you then have to print them – no longer is that the case.
It is now possible to put all your manuals, support documents, white papers, self-published items (blog post compendiums, tutorials etc) into a format that people can download and keep on a device that is not their PC or phone, and which they use all the time for reading novels and the like.
These things really will be big!
And before you write the idea off as something niche, something only techies will “get”, I have to pass along the fact that 1) My 60-year-old father bought me the reader, 2) Everyone I showed it to, from the team here in the Reedus office to my step-grandmother and my parents-in-law, took one look and absolutely loved it, saying things like “we are going to need two!”. 3) As big book shops and media stores set up their own e-book stores (Waterstones in the UK have just done so, Sony has its own), penetration will increase 4) Prices are dropping – mine was £150, they’l be £99 before long.
In short, if you have material that is more than a chapter or two in length that people currently download as PDFs from your website, there’s an opportunity to increase its penetration here by packaging it up for the new breed of book readers.
I was bought an e-book reader for my birthday and it’s safe to say I have been blown away by it. For the uninitiated, e-book readers are small (mine is the size of a small paperback but much thinner), light (the weight of a heavy mobile phone) and very tactile (at least, the entry-level Sony model I have is).
They hold hundreds of “books”, allowing you to carry a whole bookshelf with you and read from any title whenever you get the chance.
Sceptical?
I predict that once you see one of these, you’ll be converted. The screens are the thing: really sharp, they’re utterly unlike computer screens, in that if you look at it in a dark room, you’ll see absolutely nothing: they’re not back-lit at all, and can be viewed from any angle without the text fading.
The appearance is just like the printed page, meaning no eye-strain, and they have a very, very long battery life (many thousands of “page turns”; the devices only draw any real power when “turning the page” for you).
A new age of self-publishing?
So here’s the thing for small businesses who have any kind of in-depth documentation, case studies, white papers etc. By packaging these up as PDF documents (whereas Amazon’s Kindle book readers use a proprietary format, most of the others are quite happy with PDFs), and offering them in a slightly different manner on your website (“download digital reader edition” next to a picture of one of these readers, for instance), you can now offer potential clients a new way to easily download and carry around company material that could lead to sales for you.
After all, the worst part of downloading big PDFs from the internet is that you then have to print them – no longer is this the case. Now, people can download and keep your material on a device that is not their PC or phone, and which they also use all the time for reading novels and the like.
These things really will be big!
And before you write the idea off as something niche, something only techies will “get”, I have to pass along the following observations:
- My 60-year-old father and family bought me the reader (he hates computers, yet was highly enthusiastic about it)
- Everyone to a person I showed it to, from the team here in the Reedus office to my step-grandmother and my parents-in-law, took one look and also absolutely loved it, saying things like “we are going to need two!”
- As big book shops and media companies set up their own e-book stores (Waterstones in the UK have just done so, Sony has its own), penetration will increase
- Prices are dropping – they’ll be £99 before long
In short, if you have material that is more than a chapter or two in length that people currently download as PDFs from your website, there’s a real opportunity to increase its penetration by packaging it up for the new breed of book readers. It needn’t cost you much money to do so, and the benefits could be great.
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on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 11:19 am and is filed under Future, Internet marketing.
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