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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."
"You could download a whole book series from Gnutella in a matter of SECONDS, text would fly through the electronic ether faster than music ever did."
It's already happened. Use your fav file sharing tool (or course, you only use it for legal reasons, ha ha ha ha) and search for e-books or ebook. Not enough? Try some ebook websites/ftps. Try alt.binaries.ebook. Lots of stuff there. I COULD (*cough* could I said) get:
everything Douglas Adams has written
almost every O'Reilly book
All the works of Poe and Shakespeare
Fear and Loathing is Las Vegas
Steal this Book (by Abbie Hoffman) (heh)
Army Manuals
Tons of Lovecraft
Everything by Stephen King and Clive Barker
and about 200 compressed MB of other fun stuff.
Is it legal or right?
Meh.
People have been trading ebooks for a long time. Longer than MP3 trading has been around. Who DID'NT get a copy of The Cucoo's Egg from a BBS?What has the impact been?
Maybe none?
I recommend you look up the word "proprietary". A format doesn't need to be proprietary to be secure (see encryption algorithms). What you seem to want are "bloated" formats that can't be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time. In my opinion, a more sensible approach would be to price books low enough that fewer people pirate them.
One last thing: the works of William Shakespeare are in the public domain. No amount of copying of his works could possibly be illegal.
I have done this as well -- my Palm IIIxe has carried some of the worlds best literature on it, and I've used iSilo to read it, and loved it. It's especially great to read in low-light (or even in the dark), because you can turn the backlight on and continue reading under the stars without a 400 watt sodium lamp spoiling the atmosphere.
But, I also like my well stocked and well-thumbed library, which I intend to keep adding to. When I'm looking for a book to read in bed, or in the tub, or indeed in the hammock on a lazy spring day, I browse better in the library than on a computer. Plus, I enjoy the feeling of knowing that on my shelves are dozens of friends that I can call on at anytime to whisk my brain away to another place, another time.
My thinking is, put your novel or text online, and let me try it on ebook for a buck or two. If it's particularly good, and worthy of being a long-time friend, give me the opportunity to buy a nice hardbound copy at a reasonable price. You'll get two sales from me! Winner!
Remember those books on demand machines? Here's the perfect opportuninty for authors -- put a better binding and stock in the machine, and I can take my e-book on my Palm to the local Borders and get it printed immediately for $10-15, maybe even with a credit for the ebook I already bought.
The opportunity is there, it will take a brave company to truly embrace the concept in order for it to work. I have no doubt that Random House will *not* be the company to do it. I doubt it will be some failing dot.bomb either -- but some visionary will do it, and will convice a real author to participate, and it will happen.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
- I can't flip through it.
- I can't dog-ear it, or use my bookmark collection.
- Books smell good and feel good (okay, this is nostalgia).
- Screens hurt my eyes, paper works fine.
- eBooks run out of power, books don't.
- eBooks might have access control, books don't.
- I own a book, not a license to it.
- Books are cheap - I can forget one at the beach and not lose too much cash on it.
- I'm unlikely to be mugged for a book, even on the NYC subway.
- Reading in bed doesn't get in the way of hot sex.
- And finally, with a book, no one can take away my right to read.
What did I miss?(Hold on honey, let me unplug my eBoo - bzzzzzzzzt aaaaaagh!)
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
The consumer loses too much fair use and convenience for the meager gains in search capability. eBooks are a move toward pay-per-veiw, which is a take-away for the consumer.
I used an eBook in a college course. Today, I have no reference for that course. I will avoid courses which rely on ebooks in the future.
It boils down to this. The book business was not broken. This "fixes" it. Most people know a raw deal when they see it.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I did this when Judge Jackson's findings of fact came out. Works like a charm!
Only if they're a good speller.
Well that leaves me out...
Of course there could be a spell check on the find command. Or wildcards. Or find similar. When I use my Franklin Spelling Ace and mispell a word I gives me a selection of correctly spelled words to choose from. I often use this feature to find out how to spell a word.
With paper, I can scan the previous and next hundred or so entries at a glance.
You're assuming an ebook won't do this. Or that there won't be a browse mode. I see no reason for there not to be, except maybe poor design. Even my aforementioned Franklin allows me to see previous and next dictionary entries. With a full screen ebook I would expect entire dictionary pages to be displayed. I'd also expect to be able to put in the first few letters of a word and go to the page of words beginning with those letters.
For me, ebooks will only work if they improve on the things paper books are good for. I expect that there will be some trade offs but overall ebooks will be better than paper books, in the same way word processing is an improvement over typing.
Steve M
Hell, your not even buying electrons, for the most part all the electrons in your computer stay there, when you download a book, its just their servers telling your electrons what configuration to take.
One disc to carry around 18 O'Reilly books! Now, thats ebooks done right.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I've heard the guy who started Book Club was born in an asylum and only sleeps for two hours a night.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
There's a real easy solution to this.
It's called use an open format!
If everyone published in PostScript, or even PDF, or just opened the reader so that different interpreters could be loaded onto the same platform, there wouldn't be this problem.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Holy smokes! That's cool. The Free Library actually had books I would like to read, and the Webscriptions deal is pretty cool too. Four books a month, in a plain text format, for $10. That's a deal.
I just went from e-book skeptical to very enthusiastic about the format. I think that it's time to get me a palm pilot so that I can read these away from my computer.
Thanks for the info.
We've gone from writing words on huge tablets of stone to etching microscopic paths on electrically charged (albeit purer) stones. Not all that far off, it's just that the infrastrucure they're putting in place is radically new. You have to really love books to bend that far over and give up your rights for the publishing industry. Somehow that goatse.cx guy is appropriate here.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Quite simply, reading a piece of text onscreen and reading words printed on a page are two *totally* different things. I have a eCopy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on my computer, aswell as a paperback version on my bookshelf, and 19 times out of 20 I'd rather go for the paperback. Why? Because reading a book isn't just putting information, words, descriptions etc, into your head, its an experience in and of itself. I can't wrap a blanket around myself and snuggle up with a good text file, can I? I can't *thumb* through a text file looking for my favourite paragraph and get distracted by another piece that can keep me enthralled for hours. I can't throw my text file into my gym bag to show my frields on the way back. What I'm trying to say is that a book isn't just words; its something which cannot be simply replaced by pixels on a computer screen; an actual real experience.
Yeah, too bad they don't look like real books.
Now, if only they were written in an easy-to-use, consistent, archiveable, open typesetting format like, oh, I don't know, could it be... TeX?
Seriously, they should set up some simple macros and produce documents in TeX format. Or maybe LaTeX, since there are exporters to make plain crApSCII text out of sweet, sweet LaTeX.
Ahem. My point: TeX r0x0rz.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Last summer, out in the woods with the new popup camper, it was very enjoyable to reread Huckleberry Finn (which I do every few years) whenever I could grab a few minutes. I carry it anyway (work, spreadsheets, phone #s, etc.) so I might as well load up a book or three for those spare moments.
I purchased and read all the installments of Stephen King's The Plant (first time I've ever read anything by him). I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the work (if he ever decides that the 6-figure _profit_ he made from the early portions justifies writing some more).
Specialized readers? NO! Useful and/or entertaining documents? SURE!
I carry around the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, FIFA Soccer Rules, Unleashing the Ideavirus!, and others ...
Having the exact quote at your fingertips is sometimes quite handy ...
For most purposes, 355/113 is close enough.
For some things perhaps. Not all. An ebook library would take up much less space. Which is a problem I currently face in my one bedroom condo.
It allows someone to move through the book faster (mainly reference books, like Java in a Nutshell), ...
I suspect that someone using the find or search command would more quickly locate info then someone using the index or table of contents on a paper book, with the discrepency increasing with the size of the book. Exceptions might be searching for illustrations.
That said I much prefer paper books to todays ebooks. The are numerous problems with the technology (poor screens, clunkly units), the software (limited catalog, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the lack of respect the companies have for the consumers (copy protection, greed, thinking everyone is a pirate).
But the problems all seem correctable. And I look forward to the day when book readers are as cheap as gameboys, my entire library is available to me where ever I go, and I can back up my books (ever drop one in a pool, leave one on a plane?).
Steve M
instead of every book me and my family has ever read taking up whole walls with shelves, I could have a microdrive about the size of a matchbox.
most of my reading is done from a computer monitor anyhow. But then again, I haven't tried reading a novel this way (unless you count How-Tos)
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
>
> This is an argument that courts will listen to (hopefully at least). EFF lawyers, write this down. It is the perfect analogy, as far as I can tell.
Agreed.
(And DMCA arguably goes so far as to criminalize plans for photocopiers...)
The tie-ins with Russia - the former USSR required licenses for posession of photocopiers and printing presses, with heavy fines and penalties for owners of such material - are not just ironic, but highly appropriate, given the First Amendment implications of DMCA.
But consider how many manuscripts are submitted to publishers. I'd guess there are at least 10 for every one that gets published. I'd also bet that at least half the rejected ones are utter garbage. Publishers hire many editors to deal with these. And they really do have to at least look at them all, since, otherwise, they'd never discover new authors.
In a world without publishers, would you want to have to start reading 10 books in order to find the one that's half-decent? Do you want to read 200 pages of a book, and then discover that one of the chapters is missing?
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
If while reading on the throne you run out of TP, the already-read pages of a cheap paperback are very handy. Your ebook display device is a little too expensive to be used that way.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
The article missed the boat by not looking at O'Reilly. They talked about horrible Amazon sales rankings. A more clueful reporter might have noticed that the unprotected Perl CD bookshelf has a sales ranking of under 1500.
The cake is a pie
Ebooks have failed primarily because they provide an inconvienent way to access content online as opposed to a convienent way to access the same information offline, without adding any value to the product.
People like books. I don't care how wired you are, a paperback book will keep you busy for hours without the need for batteries or rechargers or crashing operating systems. Its a medium that has stood the test of time and its unlikely to be replaced entirely for a long LONG time.
So offer to those people the option to read the exact same text on a screen thats hard on the eyes and needs batteries, then throw into that the fact that they're gonna have to read fast so they get it all in in their 10 hour limit and screw around with publishers so their can play their games to prevent any IP theft. They'll sooner go to a book faire and buy the damn thing for 50 cents and be done with it. And what have we accomplished?
Ebooks have an opportunity to offer a more fulfilling multimedia experience. I've seen fan fiction sites on the web that have pictures and play music while you're reading that matches the setting and mood of the story as you read through it. Publishers could have drawn quite a following from this, but instead they choose to quibble over how many people are going to steal their precious works to even bother noticing that nobody is reading them anyways.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I can agree with sentiments that ebooks with copy-control are lame. Thats why I really like Fictionwise (http://www.fictionwise.com). They offer all their etexts at extremely reasonable prices (most are around $1 to purchase). Additionally, and this is the biggest plus for me, all of their texts are downloadable in a ide variety of formats: .PDF, .PDB for Palm Readers, and more. I love the fact that I don't have to limit myself to one lame reader program that only runs on select platforms to read my books. Further, they allow me to download any of the formats at any time from the My Bookshelf section of their web site.
It's a quite convenient way to get some new short stories (my favorite form of fiction) or even something longer. I check back with them once a month or so to find new stories to put on my Visor Prism.
For anyone frustrated with the copy control and invasiveness of ebooks, I'd recommend checking out Fictionwise. Pretty much the only thing I dont like about them is they are mostly science fiction/fantasy. They have some other works on there, but by and large it is sci-fi or fantasy. They do have a lot of great stuff on there though, and they offer a wonderful selection of Hugo/Nebula award winners (including a selection that have won both awards).
"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.
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.
I personally think that this is the biggest point on the list. I own a Rocket E-Book (now owned by RCA) and am constantly put off on how expensive eBooks are. Dammit! If an eBook is going to cost me the same price as the hard cover, why the hell shouldn't I buy the hard cover? Worse yet, if I'm going to have to pay that much for that book, I'll probably just go check it out of the library instead. Then the book publisher will get no money from me. Currently there really is no incentive for me to purchase eBooks instead of regular books.
I do feel that I should mention that not all eBooks are outrageously priced. However, the majority of the books that are reasonably priced are usually the classics, many of which are freely available from Project Guttenburg.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
I consider myself someone who reads lots of books, and I completely disagree with this statement. I think the people who say they like the feel of a book in there hand have never tried any type of e-reader. They weight of enough books to last me for a two week trip is not pleasant. I would much rather put a few books on my Palmpilot, which I have with anyways, than carry around an extra few pounds of paper.
I have been reading books on my Palmpilot for several years now, and I am completely addicted to it. I even have a Palm III with the old low contrast screen, so I would probably like it more if I moved to a V or 500 with a proper display.
I think people who don't like reading e-books have never tried it. (This is making the assumption that the books these people want to read are available in an usable format. I can completely understand people not wanting to read e-books because they have no interest in 100+ year old stuff from the Gutenberg project or whatever annoying thing the publishers have decided to make available.)
Actually, I have a better idea......include a secured copy of the e-version with every book. Companies put all kinds of CD's, msot of which are useless. Why not put the exact same thign so if you want to carry 3 UNLEASHED! books you don't get a hernia! Plus you get the same experience, but you don't have to carry the freakin book around all day. OH, Microsoft Reader with clear type looks fuzzy to me.
Gorkman
"That's not a bug, it's a feature!"
- Some luzer marketroid who thinks copy control constitutes value-add.
we'll have to conform to a spelling standard! probably controlled by that power hungry church!
The spelling standard was much later....
The basic problem with the more modern ebooks is actually that they are tightly controlled. We are not including in this discussion Project Gutenberg, the whitepapers published by the NSA on network security, or freely available technical scecifications. These things do not have the same problems and can be printed out. We are only talking about ebooks published with the idea of making a profit by charging for the right to read them. This is the business that is dying, not the low-cost free distribution that some other entities have used.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
his little device...
It needs a light source. where am I going to get a light source thats always on?
we'll have to conform to a spelling standard! probably controlled by that power hungry church!
They're expensive!
they make my eyes hurt!
we'll have to pay a lot of money for one, and if I drop it in the mud it will be ruined!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The exact same article ran in the August 6 LA Times.
I've referenced it a couple times here already.
The Vonnegut comment at the end is great!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Pay $20 for an electronic book that:
Can only be read on the one device
Can't be loaned to a friend, unless you give them the device too
Can't be resold to a used book store
Won't necessarily be readable 5 years from now if the technology has changed.
Or Pay $20 for the hardcopy version of the book that:
Has none of those drawbacks and
Depending on the hardware, is probably lighter in weight
I would gladly pay $5-7 for the electronic version of a $20 hardcopy book, but I sure won't pay the same price for a 'limited license' version of the same material. It costs money to print, bind, pack, ship, unpack, sort and shelve a hardcopy book. It doesn't cost that much to run an ecommerce website (based on the roughly 2.836 x 10^9 SPAM mail messages I receive each month).
If the publishers would make ebooks affordable, then people wouldn't be so anxious to pirate them. I'm a voracious reader, I can go through 5 pocket novels in a week, easy. Since most new novels are at least $6 (and I've them seen as high as $8) I have to limit myself to shopping at used book stores, and whatever fiction e-books I can scrounge from the newsgroups, otherwise I'd have to turn to a life of crime to be able to afford my reading habit (ok, that's a slight exageration).
People want to pirate books for the same reason they pirate music or satellite TV, it's so damn expensive in the first place.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
What you seem to want are "bloated" formats that can't be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time.
That's a stupid design, I don't want that. I'm merely pointing out how small books are in comparison to the binary files we're used to. As for proprietary, that word may not be the best description, I merely used it because that's the reality of the situation. I highly doubt any publisher is going to accept an open solution, they'll buy it from a 3rd party company that will make certain assurances. The core of my argument is that this is not necessarly a bad thing.
One last thing: the works of William Shakespeare are in the public domain. No amount of copying of his works could possibly be illegal.
I know, I looked up the file sizes online to make sure that you could indeed fit the complete works in a file smaller than a standard mp3. With compression (16:1) you definately could. I just needed a suitably thick tome for my comparison.
They did. Problem was, thos "other business models" prominently included giving away free services.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
The problem with most e-books is that the format they are published in is quite literally a value subtracted format. You can't share them, you can't market them up, and the FBI is likely to show up at your door if you develop a tool to read them on your Linux box.
Plain text and its derivatives HTML, XML, etc. don't have any of these drawbacks, and they have considerable upside as well, like being able to use grep and find to search your collection of books. If e-books were in a text-based format then annotations, bookmarks, and a whole list of other physical book benefits would be taken care of automatically (Emacs, for example, would allow you to mark up your texts in ways you never dreamt of with a paper book). You would also maintain all of your fair use rights.
Publishers, on the other hand, would lose a fair amount of control.
Because of this most publishers (besides O'Reilly) are not interested in plain text e-books because they think that people will just steal them. Maybe they are right too. All I know is that e-books are not going to take off as long as these issues are not sorted out. People are not likely to purchase e-books as long as the format is closed, and publishers are unlikely to release more books in open formats for fear that people will just steal their work.
It sort of makes me wonder how well O'Reilly's electronic manuals sell.
As long as we have the right NOT to buy them (which we still do, last time I checked... *knocks on wood*) let people make all the stupid, encumbering, doomed to fail proprietary formats they want to make.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
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?)
I think this is silly. You know the same could be said of software and look what M$ turned into.
Companies have been building their software in recent years to make copying more difficult. They understand that copying is inevitable, but by using sophisticated install programs and liberal use of the Windows registry, they have made it tricky to simply copy a program. The software industry has been dealing with digital copying the longest, it makes sense that they would've gravitated toward some level of protection by now.
I'd like to expand on some points I made in the previous post. The first thing to consider about electronic books is how small they are. A single mp3 weighs in around 5 megs, which is quite a bit larger than a compressed version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This is the root of my concern, books take up so little space that someone could download hundreds of books and store them on their home system. You may point out that someone who does this probably won't actually read the books (and you'd probably be right), but a massive copyright violation did just take place.
I also understand that there are books currently being released in unsecured formats and there isn't a problem with copying. My response is that the distribution channels aren't really there yet for wide spread piracy. When someone thinks of music they think (or used to) Napster; when someone thinks of books, no Internet solution pops in their heads, yet. As more books become available in electronic format, more people will look into copying them because the selection will be there.
As I stated before, it's my opinion that a proprietary format is needed to "keep the honest people honest". I'm not saying Adobe is the best solution for that, I personally would prefer a more open design, but it makes a lot of sense to me to keep heading in this direction. Just my two cents.
Cheap, quick. I wish there were more titles.
Not true, you can make copies for personal use under "Fair Use" laws. It's not until you distribute those copies that it becomes a problem. -n
Also in college I double majored in English and Computer Science. I like being able to write in the margins of a book with a pen. I did that quite often in my English classes. I can then add my thoughts to the author's thoughts and thereby increase the value of the book, and the thoughts it contains.
How do you annotate an ebook?
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
My value in an e-book would be better left only to text books for college. I'd rather have all of my text books placed into a single portable. The whole market would be based on crazed college students with educards readily buying e-books so they don't have to walk out to their 120 degree car to swap books mid day. E-books, rather E-textbooks should be where the market plays out. I'd surely appreciate it rather than carrying a digital circuits book and a thousand page logic gate reference book to class.
As long as the reader for the format you have has a search feature. And provided the publisher didn't disable it.
My point being that with restricted-use formats, the features you get are precisely those that the reader manufacture thought you might like, limited by what the publisher decided to deny. And if you try to get a 3rd-party reader with the features you want, well, sorry, it's a circumvention device.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
I think the reason that eBooks are unpopular is that they are not books. Books are portable, easy to use, easy to store, last for a long time, and have a fantastic "Refresh rate". I can't stand reading large amounts of text on a computer monitor, or LCD screen. Teh screens are ether too bright, and glare and reflections, or are just plain too flickery. With a book you can read it in bright light, low light, and by flashlight. The batteries never go dead ether. It's just so nice having an actual physical book there to look at, and reference whenever you need it.
This brings up an interesting point. I've heard that the right to space shift (ie: coppying from CD to casette) is allowed, would the same principal apply to ebooks too?
(Probably not, given that it gets in the way of big business, but meh)
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
quote: Most publiers are releasing only older titles on e-books. I have yet to see a new hardcover edition be simultaneous released on e-books.
I do not care that Dmitry Sklyarov at one time made software to support the heinous practice of spamming. Mind you, I don't like it any more than you do. But his spam software-writing is not the issue here.
I do not care that Dmitry is a Russian citizen. Really, it doesn't matter WHO is in jail right now. What does matter is that our freedom of speech is being held hostage right now by a copyright act that infringes on our Constitutional rights.
Focus on the cause, and not the person.
I've said this before, but publishers are only hurting themselves with this insane obsession with spending millions on consumer-hostile "protection" schemes.
Look at Baen Books, which (in addition to dead trees) publishes books in electronic format, which uses good old documented and portable formats such as HTML and RTF with no passwords, encryption, "digital rights management", monitoring, locking the book to a single computer, or other nonsense, and which seems to be the only publusher of e-books that's actually making money at it.
I don't believe this is a coincidence. It may be time for other publishers to remove their heads from their asses, stop paying buckets of money to the concocters of baroque DRM schemes and various Congresscritters, observe Baen's experience, and learn. Imagine! A company that makes money, not by threatening its customers with legal action and hamstringing them with Evil Code, but by providing them a useful product at a reasonable price that yields a profit!
I went to the Baen books site and checked out the link to the Baen Free Library.
Jim Baen and Eric Flint get it when it comes to ebooks and intellectual property.
Check out the site, it's worth the read.
Steve M
When discussing E-Books, we should look at O'Reilly, and how they do E-Books. While true, it's just on a CD-ROM, it still very much applies. Yet O'Reilly doesnt encrypt it in any way. They make it very easy and portable to read the content, and they are successful. Then you look at why. They dont have to force stuff down our throat, or force us into submission, or tell us how we can read the book that we pay for. They just have good informative content, and give it at an acceptable price, and people respect them and buy the product. Now if all E-Books decided to work in this way, they would be much more successful.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
If libraries were routinely able to convert their collections to digital formats, and then offer their patrons remote access to that material, they would essentially become and maybe even replace publishers.
Sounds like a system that's a hell of a lot better than what we have.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I agree. I'm an avid reader, and typically read 3 or 4 books a week. I don't buy ebooks because they are locked into one device, and the ebook readers are way too heavy, bulky and expensive. I prefer ebooks on my Palm. I can fit in 7 or 8 book, and I can read them at any time, anywhere. Before I got my Palm III, I would usually carry a paper back around with me, now I just use my palm.
I would buy ebooks if publishers would just market for palm, rather than for stupid formats such as adobe and microsoft that are bulky, stupid and ill-concieved, and limited to PC's.
For small paperbacks, however, I usually only read them once anyway, so E-books aren't that hot an Idea for them. But if I could get my full collection of perl/apache/mysql/linux/security, etc books on a single tablet with a nice crisp display, and that tablet was in the $100-$200 price range? Hell yeah, I'd buy into that!
I am a slow reader, maybe 30 pages an hour, thats 240 pages in 8 hours, which is somewhere near the average novel length, on the outside the 16 hours would get me through a 500 page behemoth which is about the max I will consider reading (short of Colleen McCollough's wonderful 'Ceasar' series, which has 5 books all in the 900+ page range, and I've read every one of them).
-josh
14. Open standard. I want to get an ebook from any vendor, and view it on any reader. I want to download from Gutenberg and read that. I want to create my own content, and let other people read it - if they want to. It should be the MP3 of the written word!
What will stifle ebooks more than anything else is a plethora of competing, closed, proprietary formats.
"Sorry, you can't buy Stephen King in Sony, only Adobe..."
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Anyway my main point was simply to refute somewhat the previous poster's statement that materials cost was irrelevant in the publishing industry.
I agree with those who feel that an eBook should cost a lot less than a paper back. I'm getting less in my opinion and there is no materials cost for an eBook, just the same type of prepwork that would go into a paper book and the bandwidth to download it.
Why does the electronic copy require more (inhibiting) protection than the paper? Of course, it's because the electronic copy is much more easily transmitted, changed and reformatted than the paper. But still, if you're going to charge a premium price, and only let me read it using propritary hardware/software... then I'll take the paper. Thanks anyway.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
I resell my paperbacks all the time. that why there are used book stores.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....
Uh, they did. The problem is that twice zero is still zero. So, it didn't help much.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
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.
feints within feints, wheels within wheels
people like to hold things
staring at a computer screen is strenuous
scrolling can be a bitch
it's much easier to keep your place on the page with paper
it doesn't take forever to download a book on paper
cover art is friendly
books on shelves are aesthetically and socially pleasing
closing a window on your browser is not as satisfying as replacing a book on the shelf
i can throw a book if it is frustrating- i'm not gonna fscking kick my computer or damage it in any other way
books are cheaper than computers
bending covers and dog-earing pages are therapeutic activities
i can go anywere with a book
i don't have to pay an electricity bill to read a book(except at night when i need light)
i can fall asleep in bed with a book, but not so easily a mouse and keyboard
if i spill my tea/coffee/soda/beer/water on a book, it's not the end of the world
the list goes on
If the publishers of books and music and software and movies would get ONE, just ONE, only ONE, point through their head, we'd all be better off.
If you publish something, anything, in digital format, it can and will be reproduced. PERIOD.
All this mess, all this money spent, all this pointless effort. Nothing you can do will stop it, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you have, no matter how many stupid laws you get passed. And I think that everyone who reads Slashdot knows that it's futile.
-jason
www.dangercrew.net
Mainstream society isn't even really aware of the copyright issues surrounding e-books. Put your 1337 weberati selves aside and think about the average mainstream consumer. E-books aren't catching on because people still like carrying dead trees around with them. They're familiar with the feel and sense of permanence that comes with a real book.
/. really a representative cross-section?
Sure, there are adequete electronic replacements for most typical real book functions, but people(who aren't geeks and comprise the majority of the mainstream) prefer being able to run highlighter pen over important passages and earmarking pages that interest them. If they can afford the good stuff, they want leather bound acid free pages with gold embossing. I doubt a similar e-book reader would convey the same sense of value.
I'm sure most of us agree that e-books or something like them are the way to go for replacing portable printed matter, but is
You can get 16:1 compression on text files? What compression program is that?
Oh yeah, nothing compresses better than text files. Grab a pure text file and compress it into a .zip file, you'll see what I mean.
The key is that most lossless compression algorithms generate a dictionary of common patterns, then replace the file with an ID representing the pattern. This is really easy to do with the english language, essentially you can replace each word with a binary number. More over, common words and patterns can be represented by smaller binary numbers. I don't want to get too technical (and at this point it gets harder to explain without drawing pictures) but you get the idea.
Text files are so small that we generally don't worry about compressing them, but it's certainly a viable thing to do. And if you're trying to send large amounts of text all over the place, it will certainly make things run faster for you.
...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?
Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I totally agree but authors (I am one BTW) need to make money or they will do something else with their time.
One company that seems to get it right is Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com). They sell popular books at a low price in a wide variety of formats and most books are not copy protected. They specialize in Science Fiction with many former Nebula and Hugo nominees. Almost all books are under $10 with many under $1. Many of the ebooks are also short stories, which are easy to read during spare moments.
This is probably why Fictionwise is thriving while other ebooks sellers are still trying to find a viable business model. They have found a way to deliver cheap, popular ebooks to the readers and still pay the authors for their work.
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Kurt Vonnegut is right in the article. The world won't accept e-books because they just aren't as comforting and nice as real paper.
That's why I think e-books will have to wait until digital paper becomes cheap and easy to use to become popular.
Imagine plugging in a book made with digital paper (that looks and feels like your favorite physical books) and downloading any book in the Library of Congress to read in the comfort of your reading chair, or the beach, etc. Until this happens, e-books will be nothing more than a lark, a curiosity.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Online publishing is only dead if you're a publisher.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The tactile pleasure of a book is being able to make it look and feel well read.
The content rarely merits the respect due learned tomes kept in archives and handled with white cotton gloves. Face it, with the acid washed paper used by publishers now, the books will all be dust in 50 years anyway.
I buy paperbacks because I can afford them and don't want to pay much because I know they're going into the land-fill eventually when I'm done with them unless the author is particularly entertaining.
I have kept my Terry Pratchett books and have reread these because I liked them. But Border's charging US$11.95 for a re-issue of "Dark Side of the Sun" was sheer exploitation. When the price goes too high, I don't buy.
What the publishers are trying to do is change the medium to something that is evanescent, hang on to the content and charge us for every time we look at something we thought we'd bought.
I can reread a book wherever, whenever and why-ever I want to. I'm not going to trust an e-book to let me finish a book unless I've got enough batteries. The technological dependency is too high.
Its the barely veiled attempts to dig craters into our already depleted bank accounts that are really insulting.
Do they honestly think we're that dumb? We've seen what happens to content with television. Fear of the cost of talent development why they stay the safe course of Seinfeld reruns rather than giving somebody else a crack at entertaining us.
That's why I'm only buying the hard copy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I used SmartDoc, but now I've been using gutenpalm a lot more. I like it because I can get a more compression with books. It's at http://gutenpalm.sourceforge.net/
It uses it's own format currently, but it should start supporting palmdoc soon. It's opensource, and it's pretty good.
Sklyarov's software "facilitates theft, and makes it less likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format."
Heartily disagree with the American Association of Publishers here. Sklyarov's software facilitates theft and makes it MORE likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format.
Compare with print for a second:
Publishers are under mistaken impression that people LIKE the way book prices have been increasing and WANT to pay for it. Have you seen the prices on that new, larger paperback format? It's scarcely cheaper than the hardcover verison. And unfortunately, many of my favourite authors' books are exclusively published in this format -- sure, it make a nice-looking book, but it's often 2-3 times the price of the old paperback format. I really don't care about the pretty cover -- I just want the read the words inside.
I'm a book lover. I have a hard time entering a bookstore without blowing my book-buying budget. I spend more on novels than food. I spend more on books than computer components. (I spend more on books than I can really afford.) As much as I believe the authors of books should be compensated, if I could get copies to keep for life for free I'd probably go for it.
Look at software -- few private individual users have legal copies of all their software. Most often, it was copied or installed off a friend's CD. Yes, it's illegal, but it's unlikely that home users will be caught, so people do it because software is expensive. If this was true with paper books (prefer to read off paper than a screen) I would do it. I'd still buy books, but not as many.
I imagine that the same is true for e-books -- after all the tech issues are resolved satisfactorily.
I can spell. I just can't type.
yeah, exactly...
One of the big difference I see between normal books and ebooks is that for eBooks you need software and hardware to read it, that means you are locking yourself into a certain system. If this system is non-standardized or proprietary you basically are at the mercy of the availability of hardware and software to continue reading your books. One of the nice things about real books is that I can pick up a 100 year old book and I'll still be able to read it. With eBooks I can see how soft/hardware manufacturers will make my ebook collection obsolete by 'upgrading'/'versioning' and stuff like that which forces me to buy the same books over and over.
I've been working primarily on computers for the last 12 years and I'm just done with reading from the monitor. I find that I'm more likely now to print off my email, PDF files or other things requiring lots of reading. It's not about the love of paper, but more that my eyes get blurry and tired after looking at the screen for too long. So what would tempt me to get an eBook? I thought Stephen King's idea of the eBook-only release was pretty compelling, but I don't want to read every page off the monitor.
Maybe I'm different from most people...but we've got a ways to go before staring at the piece of glass beats the old tried and true.
Besides, doesn't it bother anyone else that we've got a ray-gun pointing at our heads all day?
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
Not quite so.
The Rocket ebook I have is slightly larger then a paperback. Not much so. You can also use a Palm, which is much smaller then a paperback.
Memory is cheap. I have a (nowadays) scant 16 meg in my Rocketbook. That can accomodate 20+ books. So, if I run to the bathroom, I can actually choose what book I want to read out of many. This is great on trips. You can go on vacation, and in the space of one book, bring 30.
As for my Visor, I have 72 meg of memory in that. I can store more books then I could read in there. Keep in mind that readers (at least the ones that I have seen) store books compressed. Text is very easy to compress, so, you can fit quite alot in there. If the reader comes with a memory card slot, forget it. You could practically store a whole library with the larger cards nowadays (ok, not quite, but you know what I mean.)
As for uploading stuff to your book, with space like that, chances are you dont have to do it often. Its been a couple of months since Ive uploaded stuff to my Rocket. I have The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings series, the whole Wheel of Time series, and some other stuff I havent gotten to on there. Thats about a good 10,000 pages of text, easily.
There are plenty of converters for different formats, so, whether you have a book in pdf, lit, rb, html, doc, pdb, or text, its not a problem to swtich from one to another.
Its not as much of a problem as you would think.
I was wary of all this when I first decided to spend 250 bucks on an electronic book, but Im quite happy I did now.
- The encyclopediaes, dictionaries and maps of this world. Here people are making lot of money from selling these. All are reference works, so the computer adds a lot of value from better search capabilities and more up-to-date material. On the other hand we do not look long the text, so the panalty from inferior screens does not count.
- Newspapers. The publishers have not yet learned how to make money, but for many people the web has become their premier news source. Here the advantage is timely delivery.
When in five years time we have readers that provide 300dpi resolution, a complete day of battery life and are robust enough to be taken outside, a lot of material will go electronic. But this requires the publishers to loose their fears. Unless you need the search capabilities of a computer, you will only accept an electronic version when the price/performance ratio is at least as good as that of a book. A book allows me to- make notes
- copy individual pages
- lend it to someone else
- share the notes with someone else
- and it can be used along side any other book
If I cannot do one of these things, I need to be compensated by the price. If I got The Art of Computer Programming for 5 dollar without the ability to copy it, that would be OK. But not for 100 dollar. Also, when will the page paradigm for e-books die? It is interesting that all the good e-books I know do not regard themselves as books, but are modelled on the browser interface....including the fact that they are more expensive than a cheap paperback novel usually, they usually hurt your eyes more and are more difficult to read. Until digital paper becomes much more widespread, I don't see many people buying ebooks. Aside from all the normal drawbacks, there is the fact that they typically lock the book onto one device, which is probably the biggest drawback to Ebooks...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
To quote zpengo:
"The biggest problem with [eBooks] is the same one that affects [online comics] and other online reading -- Monitors on which reading and viewing are actually comfortable have not yet filtered down to the masses. Joe Sixpack won't read lengthy [eBooks] because it makes his head hurt after a while.
Paper is still a beautiful medium."
Right on.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
It is a terrible injustice, and the DCMA just may be the pinnacle of corporate interests taking away personal rights, but I don't really care if Skylarov never gets out of jail. I wish that the charges would be dropped against him and that people would realize he is being persecuted for sharing information, but he is an author of many SPAM tools, and is one of the people that makes hiding your email address on slashdot necessary. I just don't feel good about making him the martyr for the DCMA because I want him to be put away and heavily fined, just not for this.
Onto e-books. I think they are a great idea, mainly because they have so much potential, which isn't being used because publishers seem so greedy and intent on making huge profits off of them. No one is going to pay the same price for an e-book, they just aren't. I am reading Advanced Renderman right now, and it cost $55. That's pretty fucking steep for paper and ink, but is well worth it in this case. I would have bought it in some kind of e-book format if I could have had it for $10-$15. That is still practically all profit once the system gets going, but publishers seem so intent on selling e-book for only slightly less than their paper counterparts, and that just isn't going to happen. Book piracy has already been happening for quite some time, and if they keep this shit up, the only reason anyone will buy an e-book is to crack it and distribute it.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Why? Because I can stick the paper in my pocket, I can scribble on it, I can read it in an elevator, I don't have the change the batteries...
I can do a lot of that with my HP Jornada too, but it's just not as convenient and it's just not as easy on the eyes to try and read a lengthy document (or annotate it) on the little screen.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Most publiers are releasing only older titles on e-books. I have yet to see a new hardcover edition be simultaneous released on e-books.
I can buy the book for $14.95... or the reader and the material for $200... pure economics... all geek factor aside... I cant photo copy out of an reader electronic reader either
I personally have never liked reading online content. I prefer printed materials for several reasons. (Yes, this includes computer related books.) I print out man pages when I am going to be reading them at length. I print out software manuals. Hell, I even print out web pages sometimes. I give you a few good reasons for this behavior.
1) Eye strain. I get eye strain easily from monitors, but not from printed pages.
2) I like to be able to read while laying in bed. It is kinda hard to do that with my desktop computer. No, I am not going to buy a laptop or PDA with ebook software just so that I can use technology in bed.
3) I don't have to worry about a hard drive crash destroying my library.
4) I like being able to put my finger between two pages to hold my place and filp around through other parts of the book.
5) No batteries required!
6) I can actually exercise ownership and fair use rights.
7) I like going to Barnes and Noble, grabbing a few books and sitting in their comfy chairs to read a little before making my purchasing decision.
Let's face it, the PUI (Printed User Interface) is simply more elegant, useful, and comfortable.
I own hundreds of books, perhaps over a thosand by now. I love the paper smell. I like fliping pages. I love going to the bookstore and being surrounded by millions of words and ideas. Ebooks will never have a place with me because they can not provide the same experience.
-LN
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
Yes, this means that "new" books won't be distributed that way. So what? We'll have some paper books, some e-books, all will be happy - except the Adobes of the world, who will waste $millions on a technology that will turn out to be useless.
sulli
RTFJ.
I've been reading eBooks since I owned a Newton 100 (The Hacker Crackdown was my first). It's extremely handy, for several reasons:
1) I can carry around many books in the space of a PDA (currently a Palm);
2) You can read the book with one hand (get your mind out of the gutter) - I can hold the palm in one hand and turn the pages with my thumb on the scroll button. Sure, it's not much, but that's just that little bit of convenience that paperbacks don't have;
3) Low light conditions - I can just turn on the backlight, and I have an instant built-in reading light;
4) It goes where I do - since I keep the Palm with me, it's always right there if I happen to have a few minutes or more free and I didn't think (or feel like) bringing my book.
However, I have no need of a specialized eBook reader nor Adobe's format. I buy my books and magazines from Palm Digital Media (used to be Peanut Press) at http://www.peanutpress.com/ They have a decent if not overwhelmingly complete selection, they don't overcharge, and everything's quick and easy. I'm not going to give up on paper books any time soon, if ever, but I have easily integrated eBooks into my life.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
The DMCA seems to be *discouraging* the adoptance and use digital technology rather than protecting it or making no impact at all.
/. in the last few days noted how big a PR disaster the new wave of copy-protected CD's is shaping up to be. Despite the fact that people hate copy protection, I have personally heard the rumour repeated that there is a possibility these copy-protected CD's have the potential to destroy your speakers or audio equipment. This kind of rumour is like slow poison to the record industry, who is starting to lose sales now that Napster's offline, because who in their right mind would even consider buying a CD that might explode your walkman?
Of course this has been noted before, but how many times does the idea that 'this product is unpopular with consumers because of the copy protection it contains' before the marketroids at the companies who are pushing take the hint and realize that the DMCA is hurting their bottom line and start arguing against it?
The publishers are the best, most prominent example right now. Random house and the others have invested millions into different E-Book technologies, most of the money going into making sure that nobody 'rips them off'.
As with the RIAA and Napster, however, the publishers have failed to recognize that broader exposure, even in the form of fair-use 'piracy', increases sales.
Case in point: I thought that the Harry Potter books were for kids only and couldn't possibly have any value until I stumbled across the first three in 'ripped' versions online. After reading them, I went to the bookstore to buy the fourth. Scholastic publisher gained a customer because of Piracy. Since, I've bought paper copies of the first three.
The record industry is next. One of the articles linke to on
It's not going to be very long at all before there is enough documentation and public opinion to indicate that copy control and DMCA restrictions are bad for business. Shareholders will start clamoring. The question I see is this: Will the companies involved listen or start to go under?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I still don't see any reason to have a separate format for eBooks, when HTML would work just fine. Then any eBook reader with a modem or wireless data connection would double as a web browser, and you could read the "book" of anyone who wanted to post text, instead of just the ones "published" by some commercial entity.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Well, lets see.... books are portable, easy to read (and make notes on if you want), permanent storage of masses of data. And you can keep it forever or pass it on to a friend (unless you borrowed it from the libary for free). When someone can explain what is so great about an ebook that overcomes all that I might look at them. Its another technical solution to a problem that is already solved better, cheaper, etc.
When the day comes (hah) that I can go into a bookstore and purchase both a 'real book' and an 'E-Book' at the same time, I will be happy.
E-Books are nice when you need to search for something, or you need a quick reference. I think it is quite handy that most of my $60 programming books come with the entire text and examples on CD. Yes, I could copy that cd and give the information away, but nobody wants it because it is asthetically worthless in non-paper form.
Paper books will always rule. We all function with a linear mindset. If you read something in a real book and later need to find it, you don't have to page through the entire thing. *Oh, it was about 1/3 through the second chapter* You flip to about where you thought it was, and find it. I hate searching EBooks by clicking or paging. I haven't seen any ebook devices yet that have any decent search interfaces.
The E-Book is a good idea for publishing companies, it eliminates the only major contribution they make to a book. (aside from editing) It is quite sad that their goal now is to find the most secure format to restrict access to a book. Any system based on mass distribution and individual 'licenses' for something as trivial as a book seems like a waste of time.
And has anybody thought about how, once E-Books take over the world, a person would check a book out from a library? I would hate to even imagine. Since it would be easy for you to make a copy of the electronic book (we are all inherently evil), you probably would not be allowed to leave the library with it.
Bah, humbug. Give me paper or give me death. I'm sick of this computers are taking over the world crap.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
I didn't used to care for them much, but lately, I've been reading them on my Palm PDA a lot and I've really grown to like them.
.lit format is useless (especially on Palms), and I don't want to use a proprieatary reader to read $PUBLISHER's book.
The problem with e-books as I see it is the same as the problem with music. The publishers don't release new material in an open format.
MS's
When publishers quit trying to over-control the format, they'll make money at it. Look at Stephen King's book. He made like $500,000 off it, even though it was heavily pirated, but aside from bandwidth, there were no publishing costs.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I've read a bunch of the Gutenberg texts in my iPAQ, and have really enjoyed them. So far:
_Life Among the Lowly_ (Uncle Tom's Cabin)
_Hound of the Baskervilles_
_Pilgrims Progress_
a bunch of shorter Sherlock Holmes stories
etc.
I've found that the format is very nice, since I'm already carrying my iPAQ, and I can get some reading done wherever I'm at (Taxi cab, subway, etc.)
I must admit that I don't like the copyright "features" that companies are trying to peddle, but I've only really read stuff from Gutenberg.
And the reader is very nice for travelling, since it holds a number of books, and ends up taking up far less room and weight than the equivalent paper copies.
I can't see paper vanishing any time soon, and I think the download to PC style of ebook is a pain, but the dedicated reader devices are really good, and have their place in the market. And if nobody likes ebooks, why does a Google search turn up more than ten pages of ebook sites?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
These guys sum up pretty much every bitch or moan you're likely to read here on Slashdot, and offer som REALLY interesting solutions, not to mention some freely downloadable books!
Click here.
**>>BELCH
The motherboard manuals that come in the box are frequently available (I know Abit does this) online in spiffy full-color PDF versions... I know, motherboards aren't cars, but it's a start.
I swear, making a PS/PDF interpreter for an eBook reader would instantly make available a gargantual pre-existing library. So why don't they do it?
They're all useless bloody morons! Ah yes, *that* was the reason.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Hm.. I can read ebooks on my iPaq, and the problem there is not that the reader is huge, its nice and tiny.. maybe a bit too tiny, and though I appreciate the screen technology it's still not paper. It's fragile, expensive and won't last as long as a ten dollar book..
Your second point is just true. Ebooks should cost less than a buck, or cost ten and allow you to pass them on like a 'real book'.. untill then, I don't see them getting popular real quick.
air and light and time and space
Personally, I like the simultaneous release of the book AND an accompanying CD with an electronic copy of the book. Programming books are the most commonly found dual-release books available, and it makes the book so much more useful. I keep the book on in my office, and can tote a copy on my laptop to client sites: the best of both worlds.
I don't have a problem with this sort of release, and the publisher can lock down the electronic copy in any way they see fit, as my right of access to the book is not really affected, and I can still lend the hard copy out at will. It's just when you buy an electronic-only version that weird shit happens, and it's such a freaking pain to read, that I don't want it anyway.
I love this article, because it reinforces what I've thought all along: take the e-book and shove it if you don't want to give us the right of fair use.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
There should be no proprietary text formatting options.
I disagree. If the publishers released their books in plaintext or HTML, the effects would be disastrous. You could download a whole book series from Gnutella in a matter of SECONDS, text would fly through the electronic ether faster than music ever did.
It's obvious to me that the publishing industry does need a proprietary and relatively secure format for sending out their books. They also need to grit their teeth and accept the fact that people are going to copy their stuff. Really you don't have to do much to "keep the honest people honest".
Anyway, the geek crowd who knows how to bypass this stuff is the same geek crowd that will wait in line to get their book signed by the author. I don't think too much worry is warranted.
The Paper copy is better than the E-Book nowdays for quite a few reasons, for one, you can finish the paper copy and pass it on to a friend to read also without worrying that you're going to infringe on a copyright. Paper copy is YOURs to use and is freely distributable by YOU since you bought it, you just cant resell it but you can give it to a friend to use, you can copy a section to stick on your wall. With all that said, why the heck would you want to buy a E-book and get all the troubles that come with it, you cant copy it, you cant pass it on to another friend to read, you cant ( as far as I know ) donate it to the library..
Until the people who make these E-Books face up to the fact that people want the same rights that they get with their paper copy, the E-book is never going to be as popular. I sure as hell want my book to be mine and I want to be able to give it to a friend to read and enjoy too!
I've been using Gutenpalm, a GPL'd book reader that stores text files in zipped form on the palm.
You get the text (from project gutenberg typically) and use a desktop java program to compress it and put it into a palm db file, then just install it on your palm.
Since I spend a lot of time on the road, I can take a dozen or more books with me if I'm going on a trip without the weight. The palm's battery life means I have days of reading at a time without charging up (one reason I turned down a color palm from my employer).
I'v used fancier doc readers, but Gutenpalm is good enough and it compresses the content so I can carry a pretty good sized library around on my Palm. With a 16MB memory module, I could have literally dozens of books handy.
With respect to the issue of paper vs. e-book, I see absolutely no reason to prefer a paperback over a Gutenpalm book, except if you find looking at the palm's screen tiring, which I don't. The autoscroll feature is kind of useless, so if you like that sort of thing, I'd recommend the free readre "ReadThemAll", which does not scroll the text but "wipes down" the new page over the old one. However you'll have to use doc format books instead of zipped Gutenpalm format books.
So -- I'm basically a fan of e-books.
That said, I'll never read a non public domain e-book.
The reason is I don't want publishers to start treating books as "software" and to put the kind of onerous "licensing" agreements. That would be the beginning of the end of intellectual freedom.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Online publishing is only dead if you're a publisher.
Well, the really interesting question isn't whether online publishing is dead, it's whether the publishing business in general will be recognizable in 20 years.
Publishers will probably continue to fill some useful functions. For example, some people have wonderful thoughts to express, but their grammar and spelling are horrible; they're still going to need copy editors.
On the other hand, print encyclopedias for home use are pretty much dead already, and academic journals are probably going to go electronic-only within the next generation.
The really huge change would be if print-to-order ever became really viable. So far it seems to be mostly vaporware, or too uneconomical for the author and/or reader. The biggest single remaining justification for the traditional publishing model is that the setup costs for publishing an edition of a book are very high, so you need lots of professional filtering and editing before you make the investment.
Find free books.
I an a voracious reader. I also have a personal library totaling several thousand volumes. I've read a few ebooks.
I much prefer paper books. No doubt much of this is because of familiarity of the format. But it is mostly because of problems with the technology (poor screens, clunky or small readers), the lack of software (limited titles, lack of standards), the legal environment (DMCA), and the way publishers treat readers (everyone is a pirate).
But I see myself as a reader not a collector. I would gladly trade all my paper books for ebooks if I could find a reader I liked, if there were standard formats so that all books published could be read on that reader, and if I could back up my books.
It would also be nice to be able to access my entire library remotely.
I suspect that there will be some people who will always prefer paper, just as there are those that prefer LPs to CDs. And there will always be collectors, those who view the book as an object worth owning in and of itself.
But I'm mainly interested in the content. And ebooks have the potential to make the content much more accessible. I hope that happens sooner than later.
Steve M
This whole ebook/sklyarov/adobe thing reminds me of Ray Bradburys novel about the authorities trying to ban books, and forcing people to use different ways to ensure the survival of litrature.
Maybe another sci-fi story may become reality...
Well, apparently, the publisher and authors at www.webscription.net disagree with you. New Books published in html on a subscription basis. Really cool, and some execellent books can even be had for free (donated by the authors). Don't forget to read the FAQ, that explains the whole project.
Using the franklin ebookman- its got a nice screen. But the point is - I refuse to pay hard
cover prices for an ebook. The costs of mfg and
distribution are minimal. Ebooks should be priced
based upon the royalty to author + a very nominal
distribution charge + a fair (ie 10 or 15%) mark
up to publisher. If they were all priced in
the $3-5 range I'd gladly pay.
Ahh-- the joys of ASCII text. The PG "small text license" is interesting-- either distribute the PG provided text with no alterations, honor various refund provisions and pay 20% royalties to PG, or distribute the text with no mention of "Project Gutenberg"...
I'd like to see more etexts distributed as LaTeX files, although support might be a nightmare. Instant conversion, on demand, to text, HTML, PS, (or PDF, if you can stomach it.)
A) Because I want to quit my day job.
B) Because I PREFER reading off a screen.
Why quit my day job? I'm an author by night and a webmonkey by day. I publish online, distributing my work for free in text or HTML format (even though my peers balk at HTML, it's infinitely more flexible than 72 column formatted ASCII). I have little interest in traditional publishing models and all the rigamarole that comes with them; if I could self-publish, go indie with it online and make my work a complete user experience rather than just a long text string, I would. (And I do. But I can't do it for money beyond donations, because the tech and business methods haven't clicked yet.)
Why do I prefer reading off a screen? I don't care about the tactile paper and holding-a-real-object and such. It smacks of meaningless nostalgia to me. The refresh rate of reality and all the usual stuff people toss up to attack the idea of digital reading becomes a tired arguement with the same catch-phrase dismissals. The advantages to having books in digital form outweigh these conventions. I'd like to think I'm not the only person on earth who PREFERS reading from a screen, even if it seems that way at times.
If anything, online reading is far easier for me than normal reading; I have a physical disability (diastrophic dwarfism) which results in some hand deformity, making the act of holding up a book for a long period of time and reading from it very difficult. If I could download a small library to my PocketPC and browse it there nice and portable, I'd be in hog heaven. Instead, I have to handle huge, clunky hardbound books if I want to read the latest releases, which strain more than my eyes.
I've done my best to support eBooks, and support them the right way (no draconican digital rights management books exist on my computer, and yes, I want Dimitri free.) I've purchased and downloaded copies of Harlan Ellison's work and a few of the thousands of Star Trek books dumped to .LIT. I really want this to work; if I was a coder I'd lend a hand, if I was an economist I'd figure something out, but being an author the best I can do is hope for a good system to come along and keep an eye on things.
The E-book companies would end up selling a lot more if they removed the security because more people would use e-books and even if a certain percentage of e-books were illegally obtained, there would still be a great increase in the number sold legally.
There should be no proprietary text formatting options.
They just limit ease of use and make the world a crappier place.
hrrm.
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.
Hmmmmm... I remember burning through Crichton novels in a bit over 4 hours when I was 10 or 11. I may have not read them as in-depth as possible, but really, what can you glean from a Crichton novel? 8 hours isn't an underestimate. You'd be suprised how much you can read if you actually sit down for 8 hours without distractions.
The author of the book cited in the article is missing the point as well. People want to read best-sellers. If there had been some publicity about his book, maybe it would have sold some as an e- or p-book. Chances are it would have sold just as badly if he hadn't listed it electronically.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
...but you have my OFFICIAL permission to correct spelling errors (Sklyarov) for the sake of accuracy in reporting. Spelling the guys name right shows that you care enough about the issue to at least spell his name correctly.
I don't know why this doesn't happen, since some of the editors have no problem with introducing their own spelling and grammatical errors as commentary.
The Association of American Publishers, however, continues to hail the government's action, saying Sklyarov's software "facilitates theft, and makes it less likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format."
According to that logic, Napster prevented MP3s from becoming a popular format.
Why would I want to buy an E-book that could lock me out of the book I want to read at the publisher's whim when I can buy a paper copy that I can always read?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
-NeoTomba
With paper books, I can look smart by filling a whole bookshelf with stuff I haven't read. With one trip to the used bookstore, I can cheaply purchase a whole 6 feet of classics from the past, and look like a well rounded person. Ebooks need to include some sort of packaging that fills bookshelf space, like the computer game boxes.
Technical references are too easy to use in a well-implemented electronic format. Why would I want to search text electronically when I could visually scan for it, page by page? There should be three ways to find something - Table of Contents, Index, and post-it-notes. Oh - and you shouldn't be able to click on the index entry to jump to the page, you lazy bastard. Navigate there yourself.
It's also too easy to correct errors in electronic books. I have fond memories of spending the first day in class fixing the errors introduced in the 11th edition. Errata should be sent on paper, by mail, so you can make the changes by hand. Think what the children are missing!
One thing that should be implemented is textbooks that change every year, in such a way that they can't be upgraded. This encourages students to keep their textbooks, since they can't sell them to next year's students. My shelf has many inches taken up with important sounding books like "Elements of Style", "Thermodynamics, 3rd Edition", "Calculus Made Easy", and "Learning Programming (with C)", that protects my shelf from getting dusty.
The best thing about reading the newspaper is the feeling of getting up, throwing on a bathrobe, getting your slippers wet with dew, and retrieving the daily paper from your neighbor's yard. All ebook media should be delivered by throwing it on your lawn, preferably at 5 AM, so that the dogs can tell you the moment it arrives. Or shipped in two weeks, the way Amazon does it. Again, don't forget the packaging - I want evidence that I've been getting the daily paper in my trash.
Size is also important - how will the folks across from me on the bus know whether I'm reading Dostoyevsky, Hacking Exposed, Playboy, or Harry Potter? The e-book should be huge, so that it requires a backpack, and should include, in a bright red LCD display on the back, what you are reading. The back-pocket is an unreasonale design goal. Weight is also a good thing - you need a counterweight when you are taking a dump.
Also, current ebooks are a bit too waterproof, and a bit to easy to backup. If I spill a little liquid on the display, I should see the waterspot five years from now. If I lend it to a friend, I want the electronic equivalent of a marked cover and bent spine. Books are a precious thing, and should be fragile, easily transferable, and should age with an old-book smell. Or, just put mold in a aeresol can, I don't care which way you go.
Are any design engineers listening?
But it will never serve for me the real function of my library: my trophy room.
That's what it's all about for many who love reading. Remind ourselves of all that we've learned, read, understood. Show any visitors what makes us tick, what we're interested in - and by absence what we're not. I'll admit it's even slightly arrogant: "See what I've read." For music lovers, it's their CD collections or Vinyl, for art lovers their walls or sculptures, for geeks their collections of totally obsolete computers and tech manuals. The trophy room.
Now, sell me a paperback that includes a free download of the text for the book, or let me download a book and have a copy shipped along later, and I'll pay more, happily. But an ebook on its own? For reference use only.
--Any sufficiently reliable magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
Every E-book I have seen will not let me upload guttenberg texts to it.. I have to use "special" texts from "special" sources. This is what is killing it. How about my technical manuals? not availabie, a haynes manual for my Pontiac fiero? not available, how about some decent science fiction? not available.
So I can buy a E-book, and it can sit on the shelf with my ever useful sony data-discman... the Ebook of 1987.
No thanks. Until the solve all the above problems, an Ebook is just a joke.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If a drop a book, its unlikley that it will be un-usabele, and if it is I can buy another for 25 bucks (obviously less if its a paperback). If a drop an e-book, I'm out hundreds of dollars PLUS the cost of the written material.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've held in my hands a book printed before 1500. Turned the pages, smelled the paper, looked at the illustrations, picked out a few words in latin. I've seen (in Hereford) a manuscript in use in 800. How worthless the old IBM punch cards, 8 inch floppies, disk-packs, etc. seem in comparison. ebooks might have a place, but they seem like the end of literacy to me.
I don't know what world you live in, but in this one, artists, musicians, and writers are biological beings and need to eat among other things. While it's true that if the creator of a particular piece of art is only interested in making money, the work is probably going to suck. But that will also be true if the art is only done to send a message, or only as a hobby that they can afford to give away for free.
To say only art that's free is worth anything is ignorant at best. Making good art takes time and effort. I should certainly hope that any ethical person who enjoys another person's art would not only not shirk, but indeed want to do their part to help support that artist so that they'll have the time and resources to continue producing the art you enjoy.
It's one thing to rebel against price gouging and unfair controls the publishing industries try and get away with, but to thumb your nose at the artists creating the content you're enjoying is just contemptible.
Bingo! The library.
. ps
What if getting an e-book was as easy as going to the library and plugging in your Universal E-paperback? Or better yet, going to
book://local.lib/By_Author/M/Melville/Moby_Dick
or somesuch? Hell, it's not like the publishers get kickbacks from the library for every person who rents their books. And better yet, they'd have no reason to worry about everyone pirating a copy---there'd be no reason to, when you could just fetch it from the local (or not so local) library.
Ah, bliss. Probably never happen, but it would be *very* cool if it did.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
First clay tablets, then pressed plant leaves,
then animal skins. Then tables and scrolls.
Even Gutenburg spent 30 years trying to get the
printed book right, but his was bulky.
And his secrets were immediatedly pirated.
(Story in Boostin's Discoverers)
...on college campuses. If the academic presses would wake up (they won't - they're academic, after all), and align with a couple of large universities, maybe Barnes & Noble's campus stores, and maybe RCA they could deliver an eBook reader to an incoming freshman for $400 and, each sememster, the freshman would pay $100-$150 for their course materials, which they could download at B&N (which would keep a record of the download so, in the case of loss, malfunction or theft, the student could redownload for free). B&N could also have a secure website where studffents could download patches - addendum, errata, etc. In the end, time, backpack space, paper and money, etc. is saved and the technology is used to a good end - as opposed to publishing Michael Crichton novels...
People go on and on about the features they lose by switching to e-books, but I don't find that relevant. Imagine a perfect e-book--it looks, smells, feels and acts like a book, including writable, foldable pages. But there's a little port on it for uploading content. Even in this "perfect" world I wouldn't want one. Why? Because it adds no features that are practically useful.
AFAICT, there are only two features that e-books have over regular books:
1) You can use the same physical device for multiple content. Unless you are on the space shuttle, who cares?
2) You can download books from the Internet. Great, except has anybody here tried to use Napster/Gnutella recently? From the moment you first start looking to the moment you are able to use the (correct) file how much time elapses? For me the average for even mildly popular titles is probably a week, assuming I ever DO get it. I can go the library and back in 30 minutes. I can get an InterLibrary Loan in 2 days.
324006
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.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Notice how the Chicago Tribune refers to Dmitri as a "Russian Graduate Student", as opposed to what we see at CNN and all the other 3l33t media organizations calling him, the "Russian hacker"?
Sure, you and I may know that we're all "hackers" (people having fun writing code and solving problems), but to everyone else in the world, it's the colloquial form of "online criminal" who steals their credit card numbers and attack people's computers.
The long-standing uncorrected issue with the Media's use of the term "hacker" is causing a real world problem, preventing the common people from getting an unbiased view.