• by Jonathan Blum , October 1, 2007

Print media is facing well-known challenges, but from a strictly technological perspective, the industry is on the cusp of a promising new age.

“Cheap LCD screens have turned the display industry into a commodity,” says Gregory B. Raupp, director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University in Tempe. “Digital paper replacements are where the action is for the next five years at least.”

Already, droves of content are available electronically and early versions of digital ink are on the market. Starting as early as 2009, the first truly electronic paper replacement — a flexible screen that looks similar to real paper but can receive and display electronic data — will come to stores.

“Publishers think there is a big future for ebooks and have been preparing for a long time,” says Pat Schroeder, former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate, and president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers in Washington, DC. “We see it growing every day.”

These new tools will almost certainly form an ecosystem worthy of marketer respect. Here are some gadgets and services advertisers need to know about:

e-Content

Here, at least, the dowdy publishing world has the flashy movie and music industries smoked. Reading has none of the content logjam that plague films and recording. Publishers understand that their future lies in the digital realm and they have made vast amounts of material and technology available to consumers. 

Electronic versions of printed texts are available in Adobe PDF-formatted pages, the Mobipocket format, the Microsoft Reader, the Palm Reader, Zinio and other bits of software that offer print-quality digital riffs of just about anything on most any laptop or PDA. London’s Daily Mail even offers a downloadable digital version of the paper, and many American newspapers are premiering similar products. 

Not only that, but electronic re-creations of printed text is a real business. Ebook revenues have swelled from $20 million in wholesale turnover in 2003 to $54 million in 2006, with roughly 60 to 70 percent of the titles on The New York Times bestseller list available in both print and electronic form, says the Association of American Publishers. If you’re holding any book, magazine or newspaper in your hands, chances are there is an electronic version of it.

The eBookwise

Looking for the template for ePublishing’s future? Look no further than the eBookwise from Fictionwise. This simple unit, priced at $139, offers a basic LCD display that supports a 64-megabyte SmartMedia card. The unit can hold about 15 to 20 books and be read for roughly the same number of hours.

It scores almost zero on the hip scale. It’s a drab green like Apple’s ill-fated Newton. And the screen is far from perfect. But you can easily store and read a semester’s worth of textbooks at a fraction of the cost of bound books. And you won’t have to endure the frustration of trying desperately to sell them at the end of the semester. 

The Sony Reader

Far sexier — and more expensive — is the sleek Sony Reader.  The $279 unit uses a new type of electronic ink from a company called E Ink, which was spun out of the MIT Media Lab back in 1997. E Ink uses small zones of black or white pigment that, depending on an electric charge, display an image. Since E Ink devices do not create light like an LCD but rather reflect light like real ink and paper, power consumption is very low.

Sony says the Reader can show 7,500 pages without a recharge. And there are more than 15,000 titles available in this format on the Sony Connect Store.

The Reader has spawned a flock of competitors: the StarBook from eRead, the Hanlin eReader from Tianjin Jinke, the Panasonic Words Gear, The Booken Cybook and the ILiad from iRex Technologies, which lets you read and write on the reader. But Sony’s Reader is the one to beat as of now.

Polymer Vision Readius

The future is upon us. The Readius, made by a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics called Polymer Vision, is billed as an information companion with a rollable E Ink display built in. That’s right — the display flexes like real paper.

Early prototypes are making the trade show rounds, with shipping of the unit expected sometime in 2008 or 2009. This USB- and WiFi-enabled device claims to offer 10 days of
operating time and boasts the ability to function not only as an ebook, but as a fully operational PDA.

If Polymer Vision can pull off the Readius, the market is clearly looking at a new paradigm for PDAs and paper replacements — one where the display can be larger than the footprint of the unit.

There is plenty of competition to Readius’ flexible screen concept: British screen maker Plastic Logic is building a factory to make just such a new screen. And Taiwanese maker Prime View International is getting into the market with a flexible display of its own.