Goodbye Barnes and Noble?

So Apple is set to make an announcement on January 27th.  I don’t believe it is official yet, but Wall Street reporters claim its going to be the announcement of the new iSlate or whatever Apple is going to call it.  I don’t think the official name has been released yet either.  Its all speculation…  However more than likely it is the new Apple tablet type device that is suposedly the Kindle killer.  That term “xxxxx killer” should be band.  I have heard it I can’t tell you how many times about the release of some new smart phone and the iPhone is still the number one selling smart phone.

So anyway I bought a Kindle for my wife for Christmas since she is a avid book reader, which I must say I am not.  However I am almost done reading a book I purchased on my wife’s Kindle when I can pry it out of her hands.   I do enjoy reading on the Kindle, I also feel like I am reading much faster using it.  But that may be because a page on the Kindle is less words than on the page of a regular book, so the feeling of turning pages if more frequent than on a regular book. 

The Kindle was Amazon’s top seller this past Christmas 2009.  In addition I think 2 or 3 of my friends bought them for thier spouse or someone they knew as a gift.  Even my father-in-law bought a Kindle for my mother-in-law.  So the popularity of ebook readers has significantly increased this last year.  AnthologiesOnline.com claims 23% of adults say they will read a ebook in the next year and 16% say they had read one at one time.  I know myself now owning a Kindle, I probably will only purchase a book via the device unless it’s not available.  I am starting to even see this when it comes to the educational system.  3 years ago when I was taking online classes to finish my degree, all the books for class were only available in down loadable format.  

I was thinking about getting a second Kindle in the next couple months for myself, however with the new iSlate about to release I will hold off until I can get a good look at one.  I wonder with all the hype on the iSlate how many Kindles will be availble on aBay the day after Apples anoucement?

My point is how long do you think Barnes and Noble and those other large book warehouses will stay in business with the popularity of ebooks growing?   Look at the old CD and Record stores.  Thanks to the popularity of MP3 players, all record stores have pretty much gone out of business.  Sure you can still pick up a CD here or there, mostly second hand type stores.  However most of the big CD types of stores are not near as popular and all going out of business.  I would have to search to find one in Jacksonville, Fl since all the ones I was familiar with at one time have gone under.  In addition if I did want to purchase some tunes today, I wouldn’t waste the money to buy a CD I would just download it through iTunes.

So I am wondering if in another 10 years this will happen to book stores?  I am sure you will still find one or two in a metro area in 10 years, probably the second hand types.  However I believe with the heightened excitement of ebooks and the new release of the iSlate, this is just going to kill the printed book industry.  Kind of sad in a way.  Maybe this won’t have the same effect that music has had on physical media, but its just hard to believe the sales will not increase in the down loadable format and reduce printed sales.  Don’t get me wrong I love technology, I thrive off this kind of stuff.   I just can’t imagine my 4 year triplets having the same experience with a ebook reader as they would with a Dr. Seuss book in the large color printed book version with all the cool pictures.

-techytripletdad

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