巴诺：电子书马上将超越纸质书

    上周，科技博客GigaOm在纽约举办了Big Data大会。在会上，巴诺公司（Barnes & Noble）高管马克•帕里什登台与大家探讨了图书出版行业正在经历的剧烈变化。

    帕里什表示：“相对于电影、音乐以及报纸行业，图书行业现在的变化更加彻底而迅速。因为我们经历的时间不过几个月左右。未来24个月里，整个行业将完全改变。”帕里什此言暗示电子书今后将主导市场。（不过在会后的跟进采访中，帕里什表示自己并无意给出精确的时间表。）

    帕里什列举了来自Codex Forrester和高德纳咨询（Gartner Research）的数据作为佐证：在某种程度上，30%的读者同时购买了电子书和实体书。巴诺公司预计2011年电子阅读器的销量将达到1800万部，35%的读者将会拥有一部电子书阅读器。而2009年，电子书阅读器的销量还仅为90万部。就实际图书销量而言，据美国出版商协会（Association of American Publishers）报道，今年1月，美国电子书销售额达到7000万美元，与去年同期相比暴涨116%。相比之下，今年1月份的成人平装书销量则从去年同期的1.042亿美元下滑至8360万美元。

    考虑到上文的数据，再结合电子书的飞速普及，帕里什暗示，出版业马上将面临“拐点”——相对于纸质书，越来越多的读者将会更倾向于电子书。

    音乐业和电影业的转型遇到了很多困难，图书出版业也一样，它的转型也一波三折。当然，占据了有利地位的亚马逊（Amazon）和苹果（Apple）将从中受益。亚马逊今年1月份表示，其电子书销量已超过平装书；而苹果也表示，从去年4月至今，iBooks商店的电子书下载量已达到1亿次。不过像巴诺、Borders这样的传统实体书店则还在苦苦挣扎。后者在上月根据美国联邦破产法第11章向法院申请了破产保护。

    即便是谷歌（Google）这种没有实体书店束缚的互联网巨头也遇到了麻烦。上周早些时候，法院驳回了谷歌和众多出版商及作者在2008年达成的一份价值1.25亿美元的协议。该协议允许谷歌将数以百万计的书籍在线数字化。

    如果帕里什的预言是准确的，电子书将在2013年3月主导图书市场。那么问题将不再是谁会成为领头羊，而是谁会因为无法跟上最新的科技步伐而被淘汰出局。

    译者：项航

    At the GigaOm Big Data conference in New York City this week, Barnes & Noble (BKS) executive Marc Parrish took the stage to discuss rapid changes in the book publishing industry.

    "The book business is changing more radically now, and quicker, than movies or music or newspapers have, because we're doing it in a matter of months," he said. "In [the] next 24 months is when this business will totally shift," implying that eBooks will dominate sales. (Note: In a post-conference follow-up, Parrish now says he didn't mean to put a specific timeline on the shift.)

    As evidence, he pointed to numbers from Codex Forrester and Gartner Research: 30% of all readers consume both ebooks and print books to some degree. For 2011, the company predicts 18 million ereaders will be sold -- compared with just 900,000 sold in 2009 -- and 35% of readers will own come to own one. As for actual book sales, the Association of American Publishers reported ebooks in the U.S. brought in $70 million last January, a 116% increase from the same month last year, while adult paperback sales fell from$104.2 million to $83.6 million during the same period.

    Given those numbers, and the rapid pace of adoption, Parrish implies the industry will soon reach a point where more readers will prefer ebooks than print.

    Just as the transformation in music and movies was rough, the shift in the book industry has been anything but smooth. Sure, Amazon and Apple are well-poised to benefit -- Amazon (AMZN) reported in January that ebook sales passed paperback sales, and Apple (AAPL) has said 100 million ebooks have been downloaded via its iBooks store since last April -- but traditional brick and mortar stores, including Barnes and Noble and Borders, the latter of which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection last month, continue to struggle.

    Even Google (GOOG), an Internet giant with no brick and mortar legacy to tie it down, is running into trouble. Earlier this week, a judge struck down a 2008 deal between Google and various author and publisher groups worth $125 million that allows the company to make millions of books available online.

    If Parrish's predictions are right and ebooks become the dominant book medium by March 2013, the question changes from who will come out on top, but who will get left behind in the newest race of technological relevancy.