According to New York Times's columnist Paul Krugman, the day of electronic books has arrived. Krugman, who is a respected economist, correctly points out that "e-books have been coming, but somehow not yet arrived, thing for a very long time." Indeed so: fifteen years ago, Alberto Vitale, the tycoon of Random House, engineered the purchase of Bantam Electronic Publishing to beef up his own electronic division. As proof of his commitment, Vitale formed Random House's New Media Division to 'identify and pursue multimedia opportunities."
The opportunities were very slow in coming, and Random House, together with Microsoft and a bunch of other enthusiasts, lost tons of money in pursuing various e-book projects, while Vitale happily retired after cashing his stock options. Nevertheless, we may finally have reached the point at which e-books are about to become a widely used alternative to paper and ink: the small device Amazon Kindle.
The slow penetration of Kindle (now $359) may allow paper books to survive for decades more, but Krugman stresses that its importance lies elsewhere: all business models based on making money by selling contents (either in the form of music CDs, newspapers or books) will find difficult to survive in an era dominated by internet (which is what allows you to read these lines right now for free).
One idea is that the content of books, like music, could be subsidized by merchandising, but it seems easier to sell t-shirts of the Grateful Dead than mugs of Amartya Sen. The Nobel in Economics for 1998, and former Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, is probably happy to let the world know his opinions for free, but the entire building of intellectual creation is shaking. Do not be surprised if the name of this publication will become Marco Polo Review of Kindles, one of these days.
