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Bezos: why books are like horses

10.06.08

Jeff Bezos, chairman, president and chief executive of Amazon.com, spoke to the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg about cloud computing, streaming movies and why books are like horses, with edited excerpts of the conversation published by the newspaper online.

In response to the question whether the physical book would disappear in time, Bezos told the WSJ: "Over some time horizon, books will be read on electronic devices. Physical books won't completely go away, just as horses haven't completely gone away... It's very hard to find a technology that has remained in mostly the same form for 500 years. And anything that has stubbornly resisted improvement for 500 years is going to be hard to improve. That is what we're trying to do with Kindle. We see this as an effort to improve upon the book, even though it's resisted change for 500 years."

He also talks about the competition with iTunes, the recent economic slowdown and the efficiency of Amazon's delivery system.

Wall Street Journal

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By JULIAN RIVERS

Owning and riding horses , is now a quirky and expensive minority activity, as will be the future ownership of physical books . Yes a beautiful illustrated glossy coffee table gardening book or an art book will continue, but the advantage of downloading text only , fiction or non fiction on a kindle is inescapable and will develop dramatically over the next 5 years and emulate the iPod's influence on the music retail market . It will incidentally transform the library industry.

10 Jun 08 09:52

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By Clive Keeble

As for the idea that the Kindle will become a serious viable frontrunner for e-book distribution, in racing parlance, I see it is an 'umble selling plater capable of gaining a place at Catterick but totally out of its depth at Ascot. There's no secret that my heartfelt desire is to see printing restart at the B&T works in Frome ; here in Zummerset we like our printed books and look forward to their profitable sales for many future generations.

10 Jun 08 11:04

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By Clive Keeble

Interesting PEIAC stats just released on PrintWeek : total 2007 turnover of Chin'a printing industry £32.5bn, employing 3.9m between 100,000 printing businesses (of course,not all printed books). An industry showing an 8%+ growth year on year. Rather than trying to foist Kindle on US customers, Jeff Bezos would probably be well advised to try and ensure survival for established North American printers - just my 5 cents, matey.

10 Jun 08 11:24

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By retired publisher

never tried reading a horse.....

10 Jun 08 15:11

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By fz

Horses were used as transport for (I guess) about 4000 years and were supplanted in 40 years once cars were invented. So books are not difficult to replace just because they've been around for 500 years. I still don't like Kindle though - it looks ugly and you can only books on Amazon for it. It's also too expensive at the moment. More importantly, we need to be able to buy readers from any manufacturer and books from any bookseller.

10 Jun 08 16:10

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By June Austin

Of course there is one other thing that Amazon and horses have in common - they produce lots of something beginning with s ....

10 Jun 08 21:15

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By Anon

Hmmm... certainly Bezos' comparison between books and horses is a poor one. One is manufactured. The other isn't. It's bizarre. Not least because it invites many a punchline, a lá June Austin. Something about both the book and horse industries being full of too many big @!#?s perhaps??

10 Jun 08 23:06

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By June Austin

Glad to see that humour is alive and well on The Bookseller !

11 Jun 08 21:42

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