This week’s technology is all about Information goods. We have looked into the e-books market, linked it to education, predicted the future and made a video with theories, models, an interview and sweet animations. Check it out here
Publishing is the activity of making information available to the general public. In the 15th century, the art of publishing took a huge leap due to the invention of the book press. From that time onwards it became easier and cheaper to print multiple copies of a book and information became more widely available to the public. Today, the printing of books is making way for a disruptive innovation called electronic books. Hardware devices for reading e-books were introduced to the market in 2004 and the sales of e-books are starting to overtake the sales of hardcopy books.
To analyse the market of e-books and the actors that are playing a role, we use Porters five forces model. Due to the ease of publishing your own work with for example Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing the threat of new entrants is very high. The intensity of rivalry is also high as many big companies compete with each other on prices. The threat of substitutes is high due to hard copy books. The bargaining power of suppliers is low because authors can publish their work directly on a platform (retailer). Lastly, the bargaining power of buyers is high as they can easily switch between the various platforms.
A SWOT analysis will now give us an idea of what the future may bring. Strengths for the e-books market lie in innovative features that offer new ways to interact and engage with content. Furthermore, the technology improves the cost-effectiveness, ac
cessibility and disadvantages. However, the technology is not without drawbacks. As a weakness you can think of licensing and copyright issues, as well as implementing the necessary IT-infrastructure. Opportunities for this market include increasing collaboration, enriching distance education or content and the increase in the interconnectedness of people. Threats are the existing culture around hardcopy books, the lack of viable business models, high tax-rates on e-books and the absence of awareness.
The market depends on quite a lot of factors in determining how strong the market will grow in the upcoming years, including the willingness of people to adopt to this technology and the VAT on e-books.
To conclude, we actually believe that the book market will definitely change and that eventually everyone will read e-books. That does not mean that printed books will totally disappear, but at least everyone will own a device that allows you to read e-books and will be used to reading from screens. We see a lot of old-fashioned thinking in the industry, but with new players knocking on the door it is only a matter of time till the market is disrupted.
The educational system we live in will definitely change, and e-books and online education will play a huge role in that.
We want to thank Farshida Zafar of the EUR and Floor Theunissen of STAR for their cooperation. Group 38.
Daniel Bos
Joep Beliën
Robbert Brouwer
Stijn Oude Elferink
Reference list:
Reference list:
Gardiner, Eileen and Ronald G. Musto., The Electronic Book, Suarez, Michael Felix, and H. R. Woudhuysen. The Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 164.
PwC (2014), Media Trend Outlook: E-books on the Rise
Chalmers, T. (2015), 10 Industry Predicitions for 2016 [online], Available at: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2015/10-industry-predictions-for-2016/ . (19 September 2016)
The printing press, Wikipedia, 6 September 2016, Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press (20 September 2016).
