Nimble Books LLC

The immiment demise of Ann Arbor’s quirky, well-regarded Shaman Drum bookstore has sparked a very interesting thread over at the Ann Arbor Chronicle, which inspired me to write this about the future of e-books and publishing.  The whole thread is worth reading.

(in response to post 28) Scott — I am well aware of Tablet PCs — I attended Microsoft’s alpha stage Tablet SDK meeting and had a first-generation Motion Tablet– but IMHO there is still a long way to go for Tablets to approach the readability and portability of paper. That is to say nothing of paper’s instant-on feature, complete absence of [electronic] bugs, and [sometimes literally] bulletproof security compared to Windows Vista Tablet PC Edition …

What I don’t like about the current generation of e-readers is that the e-book manufacturers are forcing major design and readability compromises on publishers–a classic example of technology-driven product development. What publishers want and need is to be able to display e-books using the universal publishing standard for high-quality design display: PDF. You simply can’t present a design-driven title likeTHE DEFINITIVE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF TORPEDO BOATS (for Anonymouse’s sake!) in device-independent dumbed-down HTML.

As you may know, the current generation of book readers uses the E-Ink technology, which currently does B&W 800 x 640 on a flexible substrate. They project that color E-Ink devices will become available no earlier than 2011. Hi-res is important: readability studies shows that paper with 600 dpi is the gold standard. a 600 dpi 8 x 10 page is 4800 x 6000 pixels, which is still a pretty big image even for today’s computers.

I suspect that E-Ink devices capable of displaying hi-res PDF will be ~ 2015.

What does this mean for publishers and booksellers? For publishers, it means a (losing) struggle with e-book manufacturers over their share of the revenue pie. For booksellers, it means less revenue from simply delivering physically encoded books to people, and figuring out a way to move up the value chain–which I think is what Karl Pohrt is planning to do. I like the idea of a bookstore as a salon, but if I look around at other industries it seems that continuous physical presence is a more difficult business model to operate than old reliables like personal appearances, training classes, and consulting services.