With the news of JK Rowling putting her foot down in the whole ebook debate (she apparently has forbidden that any of her books be published as an ebook to prevent piracy), the solution of Stephen King that all his books should first be published in print before being published as an ebook and that Dan Brown's Lost Symbol was downloaded 100.000 times illigally within days after his book was published in both a paper version and as an ebook, I came to a very simple conclusion. Ebooks are the next generation paperbacks.

Books have a life cycle. First they come out in a fancy/hardback edition, after a few weeks, in some cases or even years the paperback edition is released and if the book is suitable enough special editions will follow. Extra cheap editions are published after a few years.

Ebook
Now there is a new man in town. The ebook. At this moment an ebook is nothing more than a digital version of you paper edition. It does not offer any extras. Ebooks are relatively new and even with DRM they are easy to copy. So how can publishers deal with this "problem" and survive these new developments (unlike the music industry). A lot of publishers are struggling with new business models or are even denying the importance of ebooks. But as long ebooks are nothing more than a digital book and does not offer anything extra, there is a simple solution.

Ebooks are paperbacks
The answer lies within the booktrade itself. Treat ebooks like paperbacks. Some books are immediately published in paperback edition because there is no market for a hardback edition. The market is to nich/small or the book goes straight to the bigger audience. Some books need to be treasured and are first published in a hardback edition because the sales are just to enormous (like for the a for mentioned authors) or the book is so special it needs to be treated a little bit different, like art books.

Well, if you substitute paper version for hardback and ebook for paperback, you have the publishers answer for how to deal with ebooks. Suddenly they are not scary anymore (were they ever?) and make sense within the existing business model. Yes, books will still be illegally downloaded. But the illegal downloads can be part of the business model. Publishers can take it into account when they choose what edition to publish first, looking for factors as the importance of a big audience, the (niche) market, exclusiveness etc. It also gives extra opportunities for special (expensive) editions with extras (signed, a personalized handwritten message, special illustrations etc). A good example of differentiated editions is The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch. You can watch this lecture on Youtube for free, you can download the ebook, buy a normal paperback version, buy a normal hardback version but also buy a special hardback version with personal pictures of Randy himself.

NOW!
For me, ebooks are part of now, not the future. Publishers will just have to deal with it and find ways to embrace the ebook. They need to add something extra to it so there is a clear difference between an ebook and its paper version. Besides that, it is interesting even necessary to explore the whole copyright and DRM issue, but that is a whole other blogpost.

Let me know what you think, and please mention if you do or do not work in the book trade.