The first, Europe Between Oceans, by the renowned archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, is a masterful work, combining history, archaeology, geography, anthropology, and a smorgasbord of other disciplines in explaining the transformation of human culture and society in Europe from prehistoric to the dawn of the modern, encompassing a ten thousand year period from 9,000 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. Cunliffe writes with erudition and clarity, never oversimplifying, but without the befuddling writing designed more to impressed than to illuminate that is so common in academic circles. The publisher, Yale University Press, is clearly at the top of its game here: the layout is splendid, with plenty of pleasing white space, yet full of helpful maps, photos, and charts. Europe Between Oceans covers much familiar ground, but drawing from the latest research in a multitude of disciplines it provides strikingly new insights.

The second is Lapham’s Quarterly, a literary journal edited and published by former Harper’s editor Lewis H. Lapham. I wasn’t enough in the cognoscenti, I’m sorry to say, to get on board for the first issue, nevertheless I’d learned of the journal’s existence by the second issue, had subscribed by the third, and purchased a gift subscription for my parents by the fourth. Published quarterly, each issue covers a theme—thus far War, Money, Nature, Learning, Eros, and the current issue, Crimes and Punishments. Lapham mixes and mashes genres and primary sources in his investigation of each theme, from ancient to modern, employing excerpts of stories, essays, poetry, art, charts, and photography. Imagine Herodotus and Lazarillo de Tormes slapping high-fives to Franz Kafka and Raymond Chandler because they made it into the latest issue. Reading Lapham’s is like being an observer to the musings of an accomplished collector gripped by bibliomancy during an extended weekend visit to his abode.

Both of these works, at the apex of modern publishing, might cause one to wonder how they could possibly be improved upon in electronic form. Surely they prove the point that e-books could never fully replace print. And yet, and yet…

Jumping just a bit into the future, let’s grab our podkinfliptop, with its color touch screen and multimedia capabilities, and run. Placing the cursor next to an unfamiliar term in Cunliffe’s book, like Bosphorus, brings up its definition. Clicking on the place-name of Tyre deploys Google Earth. Maps of migrations or empires, instead of static, depict the spread and flow over time. Instead of a single picture depicting the ancient city of Miletos, or a bronze warrior god from the 12th century, a gallery of photos is embedded in the e-text. Links lead to further scholarship or modules about topics of particular interest to the reader. Cunliffe’s tome is a big book, nearly too hefty to curl up in bed with comfortably for a nice reading session, but in its e-format it poses no problem on the podkinfliptop, which you read while touring the Aegean region with your family. At the ruins of the Byzantine fortress in Anadolu Kavagi, you take a striking photo and instantly upload the photo to the book’s gallery.

With Lapham’s, the electronic version might explore the theme over the course of a few months with a daily or weekly segment, loaded automatically onto the device, instead of a quarterly publication. Links abound between and among volumes; users add links to other content in order to further illuminate the theme, sharing the links with other users. The podkinfliptop version includes old newsreels, film segments, Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” or Johnny Cash at Folsom, a poem read by its author.

All of these capabilities exist today, in one form or another. A central question is, of course, who pays for all of this? I’m not optimistic that many publishers can, with a positive ROI, create both a beautifully laid out print version and a link- and multimedia-rich electronic version, but nor is it yet clear that many electronic-only publications are financially viable. As I point out in my recent article, larger publishers like Cengage or Pearson certainly have the resources to create resource-rich electronic publications for higher education, and a number of non-profit initiatives, like Connexions or Yale Books Unbound, are underway. But while readers may not balk at forking over $35 for the beautiful hardcover Europe Between the Oceans, customers seem to expect a lower price for electronic versions. Perhaps instead of selling 20,000 copies at $30.00 each of the hardcover, and dealing with returns, YUP could sell 250,000 copies at $10.00 of the e-version. Lapham’s could get a larger number of subscribers at a lower price, or offer it free under a government grant, or corporate or foundation sponsorship. The “publisher” provides the platform and content, encouraging the community to contribute additional links and resources, building on the “book.” I have to remain optimistic that this type of publishing can survive and prosper in the digital age. The University of Michigan Press seems to be betting on it.

     The Kindle is a watershed event in electronic publishing.  It is not the first ebook device, and it may not ultimately be the one that will prevail (it could of course be one of several). But its appearance marks the point where ebooks move from theory to actuality.  Whether the leading device is the Kindle, the Sony electronic book, a cell phone platform, or some variant on an iPod, ebooks are here to stay.  In discussing the Kindle, then, I am thinking about ebooks in general.

     Not a few people have been waiting for “the ebook moment” for years.  The arguments in favor of ebooks are many and include: efficiency in the supply chain (because there are no atoms to move around); the ability to store multiple titles on one device (a boon to travelers); and the added value of links, bookmarks, and adjustable text size.  We should add to this a very important aspect of ebooks: the coolness factor.  I read a post recently by a woman who extolled the virtues of the Kindle, which she took to bed with her.  She could have taken a print book to bed, of course–she could have dragged into bed the entire Oxford English Dictionary (think of all the dirty words!)–but that would not have been as cool.  We love some gadgets precisely because they are gadgets.

     One of the unintended consequences of the Kindle and its brethren (desirable for readers, more woe for publishers) is that it will reduce the number of books that are actually sold. This will happen not because of piracy (with the proprietary Kindle, piracy may be a small problem, though ebooks built with open standards may pose larger problems for publishers), but because the architecture and business model for the Kindle support a “buy only when you need it” frame of mind, aka “just in time” inventory management.  In the hardcopy world, where many books (no one knows how many) are bought “just in case,” the number of books purchased exceeds the number of books read.  The Kindle will remove the excess, adding to the legions of misfortunes of publishers and authors.

     Let’s back up to the bricks-and-mortar world to see why this will be so.  When John Doe steps into a bookstore, he browses a bit.  He may buy a specific title that brought him to the store in the first place, but he also may buy something that happened to grab his attention. He buys that second book with the intention of reading it after book #1 is completed or perhaps for some future time–that upcoming vacation in Aruba–where, blessed with time, he will immerse himself in a book.  Book #1 is just in time, #2 is just in case.

     Prior to departing on that trip, however, something may have come up.  A friend recommended another book (worse: a friend wrote a book, signaling a requirement to read it), or something broke in the news that demanded attention in the form of a book, or Doe’s mood has changed, or any of dozens of other reasons.  The result: Doe now has in his hands book #3.  This is also just-in-case.  If Doe is compulsive, the number of just-in-case books grows and grows; if Doe’s house is like mine, the number of not-yet-read books greatly exceeds one’s life expectancy.

     With ebooks you don’t purchase a title to have it waiting for you when you get time to read it.  You purchase at the very moment you are going to read it.  There is no reason to purchase it sooner, because it is always available: there, in the Cloud, living 24/7 on Amazon’s servers.  What the Kindle does is introduce digital accountability to book publishing and purchasing.  It saves consumers money, but it does so at the expense of publishers, whose income statements for decades have been propped up with the sale of things that ultimately do not get used.

     Digital accountability has already reached into many corners of the publishing industry; in this respect, the nefarious implications (from a publisher’s point of view) of ebooks are nothing new.  Retailers have computerized inventory systems that, when they are working well and are properly managed, help to cull slow-selling stock.  Librarians review Web statistics for online journals, canceling those that are not used.  And publishers have always reviewed their own sales records in order to help determine what new properties to invest in. What’s different about the digital accountability brought about by ebooks is that it does not simply result in one title being chosen over another; it results in the wholesale reduction of the total number of books sold.  It is an industry-killer–or, if that language overstates the case, an industry-diminisher.

     What’s at issue here is that publishers who look to ebooks for grand sales opportunities are in fact taking steps that reduce the overall market.  There are exceptions to this, however.  College textbooks will likely sell more copies in electronic form, since many students currently fail to purchase expensive hardcopies at all.  And in the developing world, it is possible that digital texts may find markets that print never could (assuming the digital infrastructure can be put in place).  But for consumer books in the developed world, ebooks shrink the market.

     Not that publishers have any choice.  If consumers want their books in digital form, a publisher would be foolish not to satisfy the demand. After all, if HarperCollins decided to be print-only, it would lose sales to Simon & Schuster, if S&S decided to be both print and digital.  This is a fight for market share, however, not a strategy for growth.  Publishers who have hoped that ebooks could be a vehicle for growth will have to look elsewhere.