If people get too dragged down by fear, then they're going to lose out. For example, when Napster first hit the scene, the music companies (and certain heavy metal bands) freaked out and responded by shutting them down. As they now acknowledge, it was totally the wrong approach:
We used to fool ourselves…We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won. (Bronfman, head of Warner)
What if they'd worked with Napster to turn it into a subscription based music service, or something like iTunes? They could have ridden the front of the wave, instead of scrambling to catch up.
If the publishing business doesn't learn from this, then they're fools. Stop focusing on all the things that make physical books better -- you can read it on the beach! books are still greener! -- because the digital form will overtake the physical book. I don't think books will disappear, but the digital form has only just begun, so people have no idea what it's capable of. A soundtrack to go with the story? More visual content because it's just as easy/cheap to put a picture in a digital book than to put in words? Interactive content? Research content? Hyperlinked footnotes? Imagine you're reading Harry Potter #4 and a character references something that happened in book 2--and imagine if you had the capability to click on a link and it would take you back to the appropriate passage in book 2?
Right now the possibilities are endless. Our predictions about the digital form are going to be wrong, and probably as silly as a Jules Verne story; but the reality is still going to be beyond our wildest imaginations. I'll get off my soap box now.
