The publishing industry has been going through changes for centuries. In the East, woodblock printing can be traced back to the 7th century AD, Tang dynasty with movable typefaces coming into existence around 1040 AD. In the 15th century, Europeans adopted the methods goldsmiths used to record their engraved designs, collectively known as Intaglio processes, which is the exact opposite of relief printing processes. Around 1436, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg introduced the first-ever printing press and also used metal typeface. In 1731, The Gentleman’s Magazine, the first-ever general interest magazine was published in London.
One of the biggest changes came in 1796 when Alois Senefelder invented Lithography. Initially invented as a cheap way of printing theatrical work, this method is still used in printing, however with modifications. Limestone is replaced by plates with a photosensitive emulsion on its surface that are passed through a platesetter, which can print through a computer. A negative image is printed, the emulsion that remains is the positive image. The treatment and printing process remains the same except, in the modern version, rubber rollers transferring the ink from the plate to the paper. Modern-day lithography is commonly known as offset lithography.
The 19th century brings in the invention of hot metal typesetting with screen printing getting attention in the 20th century. Looking at the current circulation numbers of magazines in the United States, a lot of the top selling magazines were launched in this era – Good Housekeeping (1885), National Geographic Magazine (1888), Cosmopolitan (1886), Vogue (1892), Reader’s Digest (1922), Better Homes and Gardens (1922), Time (1923) and The New Yorker (1925) to name a few. Making important strides in book publishing, Penguin Books launched the first commercially successful series of paperbacks books in the UK in 1935. 1967 brings the advent of the International Standard Book Number – a numeric way to identify commercial books. The 1980s came around and with software like Adobe PostScript, Aldus PageMaker, desktop publishing was more accessible and affordable.
In 1995, Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen theorised the concept of Disruptive Innovations, which describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses (Bower and Christensen, 1995). This mainly happens because the incumbent focuses on creating and improving services and products based on what their customers already possess. This often leads to them ignoring a minority of the consumers and this minority is the target for the small companies to gain a foothold into the market.
Disruptive businesses are marked with certain striking characteristics, such as low profit margins, smaller target markets, simpler products and services that may not be as attractive as mainstream products (Christensen, n.d.). Initially, since they appear as a niche product or service, the established companies may not take too much notice of them, however, over time these innovations redefine the way a product is viewed in that market.
An example of one of the biggest disruptive innovations in publishing history started with the launch of Amazon’s Kindle. When it first released in late 2007, it was a bulky device, with a collection of only 90,000 books – missing the rosters of quite a few big publishing houses – and had a hefty price tag of $399. However, it sold out in less than six hours, with Amazon being able to replenish stock only in April of the following year. It was only after seeing this response to the launch of Kindle that major publishers started putting up their rosters on Amazon and Kindle. Amazon saw a gap in the market, created the product and launched it – regardless of the minimal roster of books, design drawbacks and high price – and it turned out to be a big success, changing the way books are consumed. After the initial launch, other versions with a sleeker design, crisper displays and lower price points started rolling out.
However ebooks have been around for decades, easily purchasable in floppy disk form in the 1980s, ebookstores available in the 1990s and the Sony Data Discman launching in 1992 (David Gaughran, 2017). What sets Kindle apart from the market was the Kindle Store. It allowed readers to browse books, discover new titles and gave access to a wide variety under one roof. Another major point in Kindle’s favour is the heavily reduced price of ebooks that it offers as compared to offline stores. This also goes for the online print sales as Amazon isn’t concerned with profit as much as it is with market share. This means that they can reduce the prices of the books they sell to a point where they may suffer a loss, but this reduced pricing means everyone will buy from Amazon, not an offline store.
The Guardian reported that by the end of 2009, Kindle sales overtook the of physical books for the first time, with people buying more ebooks than hardcovers and paperbacks combined, holding about 20% of total sales in books. In 2012, The Guardian reported that for every 100 hardback and paperback book sold on Amazon, customers downloaded 114 ebooks on Kindle. In fact, Amazon’s Kindle had such a major impact in the past decade, that it has caused Barnes and Nobles, one of the biggest American bookstore chains to downsize drastically. Their brick-and-mortar stores have been shutting down, sales and stock rates have been on a constant decline. In the past five years, the company had lost more than one billion dollars in value and had to let go of 1,800 employees at the beginning of 2018. Macmillan was one of the publishers who did not give their roster out to Kindle when it launched and the company started taking the digital market seriously a few years after Kindle launched, however it was already a little late for the company to make a lasting impression on the market.
Disruptive innovations don’t set out to make good products better or invent new technological breakthroughs. Rather, their innovations make products and services much more accessible and affordable. This is the case with the Kindle; after the initial investment to get one, the ebooks – on an average – don’t go upwards of the $10 price point, the newer versions are sleeker, making it easier to carry multiple books on-the-go. However, this has created a somewhat monopoly on the digital sphere, with big publishers, micro-publishers and even self-publishers relying on Kindle to distribute their product. Big bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble, Borders, Book World Inc have had to downsize massively with the latter two having to close doors in the past five years. Brick-and-mortar stores have taken the biggest impact in this period of change, next being publishing houses who now rely on Amazon to sell not only their print but also their digital books. Thus, in seeing that the digital market doesn’t have a common ‘bookstore’ for people to browse, Amazon launched Kindle as the ultimate ebookstore, inevitably phasing out actual bookstores in this digital world.