SA not ready for e-books

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rpm

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SA not ready for e-books

High bandwidth costs, low access to e-readers and choking e-commerce legislation will keep South Africa's adoption of e-book technology "limited" for the next five years.
 
I guess it depends which demographic they're talking about. Just about everybody on a domestic flight can be observed reading on their Kindle or tablet these days. However, I suspect in an environment where good old fashioned paper books still haven't quite taken off among the masses, the market for the electronic kind must be tiny. We are not known to be a nation of avid readers.
 
Yea, i don't get the high bandwidth cost thing. Ebooks are like 1MB-5MB tops, kinda like saying SA is not ready for MP3 music? Seriously? It's also not something you download every day or even every week.

Even the e-reader thing, with an android phone you're sorted.

I would say it comes down to the cost of ebooks and books in general and the bit about alot of people in this country simply don't (or can't) read books
 
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“As a result, consumers are more likely to read newspapers and magazines,” PwC said.

According to data collected in the report, South Africa’s consumer book market is smaller than the educational book market, though both markets are expected to pick up by 2017.
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Is PwC for real? The SA consumer book market is small, since the majority of books are ordered from Amazon (physical or via Kindle). By 2017 the traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores will be dead (same fate as your video stores) and you will probably only find a few handful "speciality book stores" (think Skoobs @ Monte). Don't get me wrong, nothing nicer than to open a book and smell it, but the last time I bought a physical book was in 2011 (signed by Kirk himself).

It is pretty much a given that Amazon rules in the eBook distribution and as much as Apple tries, it will be tough to catch up. Some of the niche-solutions (such as Kalahari) will need to put up serious investments to compete locally.

OTOH: Schools have moved to electronic media and with grade 8 my kid uses an iPad (awesome interactive Maramedia educational content and all books are either Amazon or Kalahari sourced). An educational book printed today, is outdated tomorrow - so there is absolutely no point in distributing physical paper for educational purposes.
 
Yeah make the eBooks price relevant and an option INSTEAD of physical books not an option equal to physical books and people will adopt them.

Instead of taking all my money out of the country by buying my eBooks elsewhere considering it's more affordable than local. Bandwidth isn't my problem, access isn't my problem.

Pricing and legislation are the very real bottlenecks.
 
I am one of the people that will continue to buy physical books. And i know a lot of people like me.

My bookshelf grows with each book i buy, and it is an awesome thing to have.

I can sell my books one day should i fall on hard times.
I can give my books to my kids, friends, other family members to read. I can donate them to the needy etc.

You cant do any of these things with ebooks.

Really hope physical books remain for a long long time to come.
 
Oh, and i think a lot of people illegaly download ebooks. Probably fostering easier adoption of ebook tech.
 
I'm not ready. I much prefer my DRM-free real-world books. They smell good, have very high resolution, and amazon can't delete (or subtly modify) them remotely.
 
Ninja'd said:
<< "amazon can't delete (or subtly modify) them remotely."

They do this?
Click to expand...

A) They have deleted stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Privacy, but they promise now only to do it in special copy-right violation situations. But things change...
B) They can also (obviously) analyze your reading habits very carefully
C) There has been no revelation of subtle modification (rewriting history) that I know of, but it's totally possible, and referenced (as a political control mechanism) in the book (Orwell's '1984') that they did delete (see point A)
 
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cr@zydude said:
Not going to happen. The bookshops will refuse to stock a book, if the ebook is cheaper. Same issue as seen with online sale of games.
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Since when? Steam, PSN and XBLA's stuff is far cheaper than retail games that have been out for a while.

Fingolfin said:
* They have deleted stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Privacy, but they promise now only to do it in special copy-right violation situations. But things change...
* They can also (obviously) analyze your reading habits very carefully
* There has been no revelation of subtle modification (rewriting history) that I know of, but it's totally possible, and referenced in the book (Orwell's 1984) that they did delete.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Damn. Now that's DRM to the extreme. :wtf:
 
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Ninja'd said:
They do this?
Click to expand...
They have, at least once that the world knows of. Which is (at least in part) why I want nothing to do with that kind of abusive relationship.

But back on topic, that article smacks of PWC not looking at all/closely at what PnP are doing with the Kobo ..and what Kobo themselves are doing to drive costs down.
 
The only valid reason there is maybe access to ereaders, the other reasons aren't valid. We get nearly all of the books available in eformat and the book size even for technical books uses very little bandwidth
 
also not getting the high bandwidth cost statement, so far only two things have limited my own personal adoption of e-books:

1. Kindle, unlike the vast majority of other imported electronics, is MUCH more expensive here than overseas

2. Kobo, at the nearest PnP to me that sells it, is stuffed in a corner with an incomplete setup or flat batteries etc etc making it impossible to play with them in store ... zero marketing, zero salesmanship in store, weak execution
 
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