Why Nobody Likes E-Books

CybrGuyRSB writes: "In today's Chicago Tribune, there is an interesting article about the total unpopularity of e-books. It seems to partly tie their failure into their copyright protection and briefly discusses the Skylarov case."

Comments

No more stereotypes

[The-Pheon]

There was one quote that i especially liked in this article.

"A Russian graduate student named Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested"

I was happy to see they used the term "graduate student" and not the ever to popular term "hacker" in their article.

Re:well duh

[KelsoLundeen]

Add to that this: the "book" as we know it has been around for over 500 years.

There's a reason for that. In fact, there's many reasons for that. Me, I've got 2000 books in my house. Sure, I've got a 40 gig hard drive, too -- in fact three 40 gig hard drives -- and could easily fit my books on one (probably less than 1) of those hard drives.

But why? Why would I want to sit and stare at a computer screen or Palm or PocketPC or iPaq or Rocket eBook reader or whatever is the gadget du jour?

I actually enjoy the physical book -- the paper, the way it smells, the way I can use it, abuse it, tote it, and carry it around. I also like the fact that I won't be arrested if, say, I decide to backwards engineer it -- if I take a peep at the binding, wonder if the leaves are glued, and even spot a couple pages that haven't been cut.

I can't do that with an eBook. I can't do that because Adobe and Microsoft will make sure I end up in jail. They'll claim that my "crime" is nearly as bad as murder -- more so, in fact, because I'm infringing on their "intellectual property" which, as we all know, is more important than anything else these days.

Yeah, eBooks rock, all right. Go ebooks. Wonderful.

And all these "screen reading" software that Microsoft is pioneering? Yeah, it's wonderful. Sit me down in front of a bigass monitor with Microsoft's Reader software. Software, by the way, which hasn't been updated in nearly a year. Software which is slow, buggy as hell, and won't even let me "register" more than twice.

Oh yeah, ebooks rock all right. Let's see. Don't get me started. How about the one time I decided to purchase an ebook? I filled out all the forms -- nearly had to give my driver's license number -- and then submitted all my credit card information only to -- get this! -- get a 500 Server Error when it came time to issue me the "digital verification" that I then had to "click" on then RESUBMIT just to prove that I'm who I said I was and that my reader was registered.

Love it! Let's see, now how does that compare with this:

Live in Ann Arbor (or any good college town with lots of bookstores). Go to Dawn Treader Books (or any good used bookstore piled high with thousands of books). Buy book. Buy another book. Bring book up to counter. Chat with clerk who says, "Hey, if you're into Thomas Pynchon, have you tried Gaddis?" "No," say I. "You recommend him?" "Oh yeah," says clerk who, within seconds, drops a copy of _The Recognitions_ and _JR_ on top of the nicely dog eared copies of _V_ and _Gravity's Rainbow_ that I'd already decided to purchase.

So exit I do, ambling down Liberty Street (or whatever street in your college town of choice that is lined with your used bookstores of choice) with my newly purchased used books. I can read these books anywhere. I can underline them. I can lend them to my friends. And -- imagine this! -- no matter what I do to these books -- read them, underline them, xerox a few pages from them for a presentation -- the FBI DOES NOT GET INVOLVED!

Now, compare that with digital books. Compare that with encryption, validation, verification. You tell me which is the better deal for readers?

Now, don't get me wrong. Maybe ebooks have their uses. You're Pre-Med, say, and can get a semester's worth of ebooks on a CDROM. Maybe that's a good deal. Or you're a law student and can get what you need a couple CDROMS and don't have to scout out estate sales of dead lawyers just so you can build a library of outdated law books. All right, fair enough.

But for book lovers -- and actual readers -- readers who like to discover an old Modern Library edition of Thackeray that was used by someone in 1941 who dated the book and even stuck a few interesting notes on the margin -- there's nothing to compare with actual, phsyical text.

My own opinion -- after years of haunting used bookstores and 'Friends of the Library' sales -- is this: that people who claim that ebooks are the best thing to come around since, er, the invention of the book are not readers. They simply don't read. They like to have the books. Or they like to have the electronic versions of books that they've read (I mean, really, how many copies of Joe Haldeman's 'Forever War' or Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation Trilogy' do you really need? If you check out the ebook groups on usenet, these are really the only books traded, posted, and pirated -- Haldeman, Asimov, some Sterling, Gibson (of course), and Heinlein. And the same pirated texts are posted day after day after day after day after day. But that's not the point, is it?)

well duh

[duncanIdaho.clone()]

People who read lots of book, those that would see the greatest benefits of a portable reader, actually love books themselves! They like personal libraries, the weight of a good book in their hand, and honestly have some kind of tactile fixation with page turning. Most everyone but the geeky fifteen year-olds (god bless their hearts) mentioned in an article below are actually trying to get away from the monitor at the end of the day.

Re:well duh

[SteveM]

Let's see if I've got this right ...

You don't like the current legal environment for intellectual propery, including ebooks. Me neither.

Of course there have been laws about paper books as well. Copyright was originally granted by the king to let you publish. The church had the list of forbidden books. In the US there are people that want Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter banded from school libraries.

Of course this has nothing to do with paper books or ebooks in and of themselves. But I could see story tellers arguing that they didn't need permission to tell their tales, so the hell with these new fanged paper things.

You don't like the current hardware. Me neither. Of course the first 'books' were done in stone (think rosetta stone, an early ASCII to EBCDIC type reference manual). Ok so mabye that is stretching it. But in the same fashion I don't think that computer screens or palm pilots deserve to be called ebooks. As far as I'm concerned the 'e' equivelant of a book hasn't been developed yet.

You don't like the current software. Me neither. But have you looked at old hand printed books? Yes some are gorgeous, clear text wonderful illustrations. But some are unreadable scribble.

You don't like poor service. Who does? But the experience of buying an ebook has little to do with the ebook itself. If I visited a book store with surly clerks, badly stocked shelves, damaged books I wouldn't shop there. But this has nothing to do with the books.

You don't like the current sales infrastructure. No browsing the stacks. No recommendations from clerks or fellow shoppers. I agree with you here. Amazon type user reviews just aren't the same. Is the trade off to be able to find any book ever published, download it, and start reading in minutes versus hours spent driving to the local bookstore and hoping they have it (I know, but I never call first) or days waiting for it to be delivered. I don't know, since we aren't there yet. I do like going to the bookstore. I also like the convenience of shopping on line.

So if you are arguing that the current state of the ebook leaves much to be desired I wholeheartedly agree. But we part company if you are saying that ebooks will never be as useful as paper books. Don't confuse the potential with the current implementation.

Of course, ebooks may not pan out. I think they will, but I've been wrong before.

Steve M

I love reading eBooks...

[sacherjj]

...unfortunately I have to "steal" them. Even though I can buy the paperback for $6, the companies wants me to pay hard cover prices for electronic copies. Forget that. I'll buy the paper back, then download a copy of the book from a newsgroup and iSilo it onto my Visor (which I feel that I have a right to use with my ownership of the paperback). It is great reading a part of a book anytime you have a free moment. With my Visor always with me, I always have 4+ books at my disposal. When I finish a book, I delete it and give the paper back to the library. Wouldn't it be much simpler to sell me the electronic copy for $6?

Well duh

[joshv]

Here is what an e-book reader needs to be to be successful:
1. Physical dimensions of a closed paperback.
2. >=200 dpi high contrast display.
3. Internet/wireless enabled. Should be able to plug in a phone line or ethernet cable, or use 802.11b at the book store to download new content.
4. E-Books should never 'expire'. I want to be able to re-read a book ten years from now. I can do it with printed books, why not an e-book.
5. Huge storage capacity - at least 1000 books.
6. Battery life in the 16 hours range (most people could read two average books in this amount of time).
7. Should function on it's own. I don't want to HAVE to use a PC to load books onto the damned thing, see #3 above.
8. Not neccessarily fully voice enabled, but it should be able to listen for something like 'bookmark', 'next page', etc...
9. The books should cost LESS than normal books. Why? Because it does cost less to make an e-book - you are just shoving bits, instead of printing, binding and distributing. Additionally people need a REASON to switch to E-books, making them cheaper might be a good incentive.

Only the legal E-book business is dying

[jandrese]

Take a look at any of the ebook usenet groups one day and you'll see that ebooks aren't dying, rather they are only viable as an underground were people digitize all of the greatest new releases (and older classics, and older not-so-classics) and distribute them in easily read formats. You can get nearly any modern book from these people in plain old text, which you can slap on a Palm or simliar device and read on the bus/train/whereever you want.

Contrast this with "official" ebooks, where you have to buy an expensive and proprietary reader for your expensive books from exceptionally obscure authors. Worse, these readers have all sorts of annoying "copy protection" built in that makes you a thief for even trying to give your book to a friend (like you can do with regular old paperbacks), and the publisers treat you like the enemy when you buy one of these.

I think the truth is in the article. Ebooks are the future, unfortunatly that's a future without publishers, so the publishers of today have every incentive to make ebooks look as bad as possible and makes sure that everybody knows that "everyone else prefers the tactile sensation of books over any of those crappy ebook things that you want to stay away from."

Of course the publishing industry is slow to change, so we probably won't see the publishing industry die anytime soon.

Should be able to buy for whichever format we want

[blang]

My idea of utilising the network for distributing literature involves getting the book in print as an option.

I would like to go into a book store, and ask for any book, which would be printed on demand.

Or, I would like to go into a book store, transfer my ebook token, for which I paid $4 for to the book store. Then for an additional $3, I would receive a cheap pulp/paperback print copy of the same book. Or I could add $11 for a original printed copy from the publisher/printer, which normally would have cost $15 withot the token.

30 years after, the print copy would still be functional, while all the other gadgets and content delivery schemes would long since have been obsolete and thrown away.