The future of eBooks? Will print disappear? An end‐user perspective
| Published date | 20 November 2009 |
| Pages | 570-583 |
| Date | 20 November 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830911007673 |
| Author | Wouter van der Velde,Olaf Ernst |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The future of eBooks? Will print
disappear? An end-user
perspective
Wouter van der Velde
eProduct Management and Innovation, Springer, Heidelberg, Germany, and
Olaf Ernst
eProduct Management and Innovation, Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out whether eBooks are cannibalizing print books, as
well as an assessment of factors that are influencing eBook usage. Ebooks are a hot topic. Traditional
book publishing, especially in the academic world, is changing at a rapid pace. The question on
everybody’s mind is what direction book publishing will take? Will print survive in the
Google-generation, or is it destined to be totally replaced by eBooks? Springer publishes over 4,000
book titles annually, which are converted into eBooks almost without exception. Being the market
leader and innovator of a new business model in electronic books in the STM area, Springer has
conducted a study on the implications of the Springer eBook collection in comparison to its print book
activities.
Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on interviews with both end-users and
librarians. In addition, Springer has assessed the (COUNTER-compliant) usage statistics from
SpringerLink.
Findings – Overall, Springer’s eBook usage is already 50 percent of its journal usage, while the
amount of content compared with journals is only 15 percent. Taking this success of eBook usage into
account, Springer still believes strongly in the print model, and has recently launched MyCopy: heavily
discounted print-on-demand books from the electronic versions.
Originality/value – The study shows that print and electronic can exist together, and will
complement each other’s strengths.
Keywords Electronic books,Books, Book publishers, User studies
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
1.1 What are eBooks?
In principle an eBook is quite similar to a print book: only the medium is different. For
a traditional print book the medium is paper. Because an eBook is the digital
representation of the printed material (print book), the medium can vary from a (laptop)
computer to digital eBook reader, PDA, mobile phone or even (through a desktop
printer) traditional paper. Usually the content is available in PDF or HTML format, but
also plain text or XML formats. This makes the content much more versatile, and
flexible than the traditional print book.
All these features enable an eBook to be fully indexed. Readers can also find these
books through search engines (such as Google), the library catalog (OPAC) or the
publisher platform, so the primary difference between print books and eBooks is that
eBooks are exposed and visible to a larger audience. In the traditional paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
LHT
27,4
570
Received 29 August 2009
Revised 7 September 2009
Accepted 8 September 2009
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 27 No. 4, 2009
pp. 570-583
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830911007673
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