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Barnes and Noble Drops Ebooks
computx writes "I just recieved an email from Barnes and Noble that they will no longer sell ebooks and I have 1 month to download the books I have purchased. Wow!"
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...Worst idea since...well, a bad idea anyway.
How much cost is associated w/ Ebook distribution?
With my Palm, yes! Must've read four books w/ it in locations ranging from subway to bed to toilet.
I wonder what's really going on at Barnes and Noble. My roomie is a manager there and she said they were reducing the size of the computer section big time. Now they're dropping eBooks. Is this just an odd coincidence or is B & N moving more toward a "traditional" bookstore and coffeeshop mix (meaning does management think computer related stuff isn't "traditional")? Does anyone know?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I don't think e-books are going to die. When offered for sale, e-books are great products for small businesses, and when given away gratis they're a great marketing vehicle. However the business dynamics of e-books are very different from paper-based books. Selling e-nooks does not make much business sense for a company like Barnes and Noble. Some other company will be kind of e-books. :-)
Greetings,
Norbert.
I wonder if the e-book site sold this book?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"potentially lucrative"
I've yet to meet anyone who ever payed for an eBook. But thats besides the point.
Even if sales are low, B and N still makes a profit because the author/pubisher is the only one they have to pay, and they only pay them if they sell ebooks.
No, they have to pay to own and operate a bunch of servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for staff, pay beancounters to do the books, pay all the other trappings of any business venture. The only thing they save is the couple of bucks the real books would cost them wholesale.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The basic problem is straightforward. The public believes that the prices that they charge for e-books are too high.
When you do not recieve a hardcopy of a book, you don't feel that it is of the same value. Just today, I was reviewing a book on Amazon that I was interested and found that it is available in electronic format for 2/3 the price. However, that is TOO MUCH MONEY for what you are getting. Without a physical book:
- you cannot read it elsewhere
- you can lose it with an accidental keystroke
- it is more difficult on your eyes (in most cases)
- At times, you are not in control of the media. In cases of some digital music, DRM allows another company to possibly "disable" your music at a later date, if they decided to change the purchase terms.
Those are major downfalls. If a book cost $20, I would be much more willing to purchase an e-book if it were $5 instead of the more likely $15. That, however, is probably below the cost of "manufacture" for the book, which is unacceptable to most publishers. However, the product they are selling is not equal in value to what they are trying to charge.
What I suggest is making the e-book an incentive 'add-on' to a physical book. Sell the physical book for $20, but then throw in the e-book as a bonus, or for around $2-$3 extra. That way you not only have the physical volume, but also a searchable e-book.
that's if you're even allowed to switch it on these days...
I have a Palm Zire 71... read a lot of e-books on it... the display is a heck of a lot better than that on my old M105... I'm still waiting for a cheap practical large display device though...
the only thing that worries me about companys deciding to close down selling e-books is that of books that have been locked against a user's particular device ID... how are those customers going to be able to change ID's so that they can enjoy their books on devices they purchase later???
At least with Mobipocket, I'm expecting them to have long term confidence in e-books considering their primary product is a book reader.. but my long term worry is if they fold leaving me without the means to transfer the books I've purchased against one palm device to another replacement device. It would leave me having to use dodgy hacking tools in order to frig the device ID of the new device in order to carry on using my existing books and software.
And what if i grow tired of one book and want to sell it to another palm user??? Surely I should be able to simply transfer ownership???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Barnes & Noble is rapidly falling down my list of "places I like". They're succumbing to all the same horseshit that companies like Music Warehouse, K-Mart did -- They spend less and less time being concerned with their core product (books & periodicals), and spend more and more time trying to sell me peripheral foo-foo shit like DVDs, Playstation games, and cotton candy in a bag.
About a year and a half ago, I went into a Music Warehouse looking for a Zeppelin CD.. A classic, an album that any place calling itself a "music warehouse" would be insane not to have. I walk inside, and what do I see?
A glass case on a pedistal, with a pair of Reebok shoes lovingly placed inside of it...like i'm supposed to fall to my knees and start jerking off to it. After walking through 6 of 7 aisles of DVDs and and *childrens backpacks* I get to the back of the store. What do I see? An entire *wall* stacked floor to ceiling with hundreds of copies of a single Britney Spears CD. At that point, I just walked out.
Pretty much the same goes for Barnes & Noble these days... I cant go in there and find books they *should* have. What I *do* find, is plenty of DVDs, backpacks, cake, Playstation games, and cotton candy..in a bag.
No doubt, they're getting rid of eBooks to make room for something else neither your or I need. Like some more glass pedistals with Reebok shoes inside.
Bowie J. Poag
I see a lot of posts complaining about how eBooks aren't so great. I've put close to $400 into eBooks in the past couple years which is a lot more than I've put into dead trees. Perhaps I can explain why.
You see, I read a lot and I go different places. 50 books is a lot to haul around if I'm not sure what I want to read next. A laptop is a lot less so. An Internet-enabled computer at the other location where I can get back to the secured section of my home page is even less cumbersome.
"Ah ha!" some of you are now saying. "Most eBooks are locked down so you can't just pick them up from the password-protected part of your web page!" Well, that was true of Barnes and Noble's offerings. That's why I spent very little money there.
I spent quite a bit of money at places like Fictionwise and Baen's webscription service. All of Baen's stuff comes wrapped in a pleasant HTML format that's easy to use. Some of Fictionwise's stuff is still locked down, but you know what? Most of that is available in the Microsoft Reader format, and the cracking program discussed on Slashdot a while ago is easy and quick to use and it does a reasonably competent job of converting to HTML.
So, while I am sorry to see Barnes and Noble drop out, I want the folks at Baen and Fictionwise to know that they can expect more cash from me. A lot more.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
black background with light text. Much easier to read.
Except of course that studies show just the opposite. I wasn't sure what to google on but take a look at any of the Nielsen books or other web usability guides. There's a very good reason why most professional websites use black letters on white background.
How odd to see so many posts from the /. community railing against what is clearly a prototype technology.
Yes, ebooks are sucky. Yes, the nicest fonts on the most optically undemanding monitors are still no substitute for the feel of the dead-tree edition in our hands. But isn't this just a thinly disguised cousin to the decades-old analogue/digital debate? Am I the only one who is sick of vinyl die-hards and their "CDs have no warmth" rhetoric?
The current problems with ebooks, as Cory Doctorow says, is the ever-present spectre of DRM.
"I believe that the electronic publishing models that have been tried -- especially those that rely on restricting readers' freedom with "Digital Rights Management" software -- are dead ends. There are lots of ways that electronic texts are inferior to paper (every discussion of "e-books" has to involve at least one paen to the smell of old books and another to the wonder of reading a book in the tub), but there are also lots of ways in which they are superior. You can carry a lot of them around in a small device. You can back them up. You can email them to friends. You can convert them to your favorite file-formats, you can search them, you can copy-and-paste them. When we turn to use-restriction technology, we foreclose the possibilities that make electronic text superior to printed text." (source)
Ebooks, once sites like this one go the way of napster et alia, will become as common as MP3.Some journalistic follow-ups from this article:
"Demand for e-books has been growing quickly, but remains relatively tiny. According to the Open eBook Forum, a trade organization, e-book sales totaled about $5 million in the first half of 2003, compared to $3.8 million in the first half of 2002.
"One bookseller dropping out will have no impact on Random House's commitment to e-books," said Random House Inc. spokesman Stuart Appelbaum.
Open eBook Forum executive director Nick Bogaty said he has no individual corporate statistics, but believes Barnes & Noble.com had just a small percentage of sales. Palm Digital Media, OverDrive, Inc., and Amazon.com are among the leading e-book competitors, Bogaty says.
Barnes & Noble.com had been quite active in the market, even starting its own digital imprint in 2001 and releasing an original work by Dean Koontz.
"We all believe there is a future for e-books," Goldman said. "It's just not here yet."
I also use a "Palm" device (Sony Clie). I have over 90 books stored on one memory stick, including a full dictionary and NIV Bible, and the chip is just over half full.
Having the ability to read the unabridged text of these books without having to drag a bookcase around is VERY COOL.
-- This space for rent.
I've looked into it seriously for the last couple of years, and so have other authors of my acquaintance; with a few exceptions, eBooks just don't pay the bills.
From the consumer standpoint, reading an eBooks is unpleasant. I get a nasty headache reading for sustained periods from even the best displays. Handheld devices are too small, large screens aren't portable -- and an "old fashioned" paper book doesn't require power, nor will a "real" book become unreadable because of changing formats and hardware standards.
I see ebooks as a suplement to -- and not a replacement for -- paper books. Audio books have found a very comfortable place in the market; ebooks, I'm sure, will find their own niche.
All about me
I've downloaded several novels from Baen Books, as well as numerous text files from Project Gutengberg. While I appreciate the work that goes into Project Gutenberg, I really do prefer to read pages that have a bit of formatting as per Baen. Hyperlinking the TOC to individual chapters is a nice touch too.
This is why I've never bought an eBook reader. I've managed to find enough reading material through openly available sources that don't try to lock me into a proprietary format. And yes, that includes the dead-tree variety as well. For electronic reading, my laptop works great while my wife is driving or I'm sitting in the hammock in the back yard, or whatever.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
This is yet another shining example of how attempting to sell a product you can never hope to control the distribution of is fataly flawed.
At the very least you can't hope to sell it at the same price you would for something you can actually touch and claim possesion of.
Apples Itunes is the right way to run this setup (and the sales figures back that up).
Another nail in this ideas coffin was the fact that books are more than just the words within them. Theres something exciting about having a 1st edition print, or the cover art, or the binding. People like to hold books, and carry them around, and look at them, and show them to thier friends, etc, etc. Its just not the same with a PDF, or an "encrypted PDF" (ebook).
/* * pope1 */
I can say that I've found a great use for e-books. I have pdf's of several very large and obscure books like the Lesser Key of Solomon, Crowley's Equinox, 777, The Golden Dawn, and other books (whose names I won't mention since few people would recognize the names). I've found this to be very useful, since these books are expensive, mostly available only as hard back, and a pain in the ass to carry around or store. Having them as e-books saves a ton of space and time, especially when looking for something in them.
I think the best market for e-books are libraries. Imagine going to the library and being able to grep the entire contents of the library to find books related to the subject you're looking for. Libraries have been lacking any really effective way of indexing since the concept of library came about. If they used e-books it would eliminate the problems almost entirely. Honestly, use grep, sed, awk, and a sql database and there you go. That's what I do for the books I have.
I downloaded it in seconds without having to go to the store, in fact I wouldn't be likely to find it in a store (Old H.L. Mencken stuff. I'm sure I could find it but I'd have to do some serious hunting around, or "special" order). It runs under Linux with my existing choice of "reader" (vim, so sue me) because it's in a standard format (ASCII). White text against a black background is easy on the eyes with a decent monitor and high refresh rate. I can grep it. It'll be easy on my back when I move and I didn't have to build more shelf space to house it. If it lose it somehow I'll just get it again.
Ain't Project Gutenberg great?
Keep your damned propriatary stuff.
Downsides? Yeah, you know. I can't curl up in bed with it. That part does suck. If I really want I can print it though, then give the printed version to a friend ( or even sell it, legally) when I'm through with it.
E-books are just spiffy when they're the right book, in the right format, for the right price and for the right usage.
It's just that B&N can't deliver that kind of e-book.
KFG
Naturally, I whipped out my Zire 71, did a full text NASB search and found and quoted the verse. In about 10 seconds. While we were walking. In the dark.
I'm sure people resisted the move away from rolled-up animal skins, too...
I agree, white is not the best color for reading on a computer, but black is not the solution.
Try this out: 255 255 240 or #FFFFF0
It's close enough to white that it looks "normal" but doesn't cause as much strain. Also, with the way our eye work, when it's the closest color to white on the screen our eyes fool us into thinking it's acctually white.
Try it sometime. Works best to make your document editor paper this color and then place a white picture farther into the doc. On a blank page let your eyes get used to the color then scroll down to the white pic. You'll be amazed at how the colors seem to shift though you know they didn't change.
------
I have to wonder if the problem isn't pretty much the same thing as the RIAA's - they are attempting to apply 19th-century business logic ("Business=Sell Things") to 21st century business, where a lot of the things being sold aren't, uh, "things".
A number of posters have pointed out that people selling E-Books are having trouble "because they can't control distribution". Fundamentally, that's because an "E-Book" isn't really a "thing" in the traditional sense of the word.
While the market of internet users seems primed to jump for a RATIONAL commercial venture (I think Apple's music service is a step in the right direction, though not QUITE there yet), this is because of the advantages involved in digital media (such as "being able to easily make a lossless copy to bring with me on a trip", or "seeing music/writing/etc. that I want and being able to get it for myself in a matter of minutes"). "Old Media"'s obsession with only selling "things" gets in the way. The purpose of DRM, after all, is really just to make an awkward 'wrapper' around intangible digital data to make it behave like a real "thing". Sorta. But in so doing, you lose the benefits that make digital media interesting to people - I suppose cement-headed executives are still clinging to the notion that they can force the public back to physical CD's and such regardless of the public market's desires.
If the **AA can get it through their evidently thick skulls that when online, they should quit trying to "sell songs" or "sell books" or "sell movies", but instead try selling "song/book/movie access service" at a REASONABLE price, I think they'd be a lot more successful at making money and reducing copyright violations ("piracy"). WIthout obnoxious DRM restrictions, I'd be quite happy to pay roughly the same as video rental costs to download a 'moderate quality', unrestricted-for-personal-use movie (say, $3.00-$5.00 for 'new releases', $1.00 for older movies, $0.50 for TV show episodes, $0.25 for a good-quality MP3/Ogg song, $0.50 for a typical fiction paperback novel in electronic form, etc.). Sure, that's somewhat less than I'd pay for pre-made physical media, but without the cost of physical media and shipping, that ought to STILL be quite profitable, not to mention being sold at a rate that would make 'pirating' the material about as "profitable" as getting a free gumball out of a gumball machine...
This is not to say that I think people should be ALLOWED to re-distribute materials still protected by reasonable copyright (what's "reasonable" is, of course, a whole other issue) without permission. I just think the "Old School" industries need to quit obsessing about it and get on with adapting to the market, and things will be a lot more tolerable for both them AND us. (Why dredge through a P2P application looking for a bad-quality copy of a movie 'for free', which may or may not turn out to be a 'fake' planted by the **AA when one can get a decent quality version for a few dollars or less direct from the copyright owners?)
And I still think the legislature needs to grep through the laws on copyright and simply replace every single "copy" with "distribute" or "distribution" as appropriate, since the doctrine of "fair use" implies that the problem isn't really 'copying' but the distribution of those copies...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Granted, I usually just get the ones from peanutpress.com (I'll forgo the link - you guys can cut 'n paste).
/. come from peanutpress.com libraries. And they're usually a few bucks cheaper than the meatspace versions anyway - and I don't waste a tree.
They fit on a Palm, I think Windows CE devices, and can even be read on a windows/OS X box. (No idea if Linux support is even offered, though I doubt it for some reason.)
My previous Palm Vx was a great eBook, and my Tungsten is even better. I can put it in a pocket, read on the train, toilet, and the rest. And they tend to have modern books (I'm about to break down and get Tad Williams "War of the Flowers".)
Most of the book reviews I've written for
Just my $0.02.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
This posting reminded me that I wanted to try downloading a book in audio electronic format sometime soon. My buddy lent it to me on tape but I would much rather have it in
I could have just grabbed a walkman and some cables and ripped it, but I figured I'd be a nice guy and buy the CD copy.
Lo and behold they offer a downloadable version for less than the CD! Great googely moogely! Their matrix even says "MP3" in their quality vs size matrix. I can play MP3 on my Linux box -- this sounds good! They even say I can push it to my old-ass RIO 500 which supports mp3 and Windows Media -- and I'm pretty sure the DRM in something this old doesn't exist. We'll see.
Anyway, I get to the download area after doing a cursory check to make sure I don't see any flaming banners saying that you must be running Windows or a Mac to get their stuff. Apparently it requires custom software to download their proprietary format that only their stuff can play. My guess is if it gets to the Rio 500 it's in WMA and that's somehow DRMed.
I could have pirated it. Easily. If I bought the CD I would have ripped it into
So, how does this end up? I've now paid for an audio file that I cannot use w/out busting out Wintel machines (that I don't own) and trying to nab thins thing -- even though I have the tape sitting in my car. I can burn it to CD w/the Wintel platform even and then re-rip it into
No, thank you very much but I'll try and hack a perl script up to nab your custom format from the web. After that I'll do my damnedest to get that format into something standardized so I can do this in an automated platform of my choice.
If they had just advertised up front (before CC information was even taken) that: "We think you're a criminal by nature so we're going to make you jump through hoops to actually get this shit into a playable format" I'd have just given up then.
Expect full disclosure postings about weak encryption sometime between beers 6-8 tonight. I'm on #2 and the hacking looks good.
Once upon a time, there was a place to buy books called Fatbrain. Fatbrain had books for geeks, so lots of you remember it. After a while the Fatbrain folks decided to try electronic publishing as well, they called it eMatter. Then the big Giant (Barnes and Noble) came along and gobbled up Fatbrain. But in doing so, it allowed the original Fatbrain folks to go forth and try the eMatter solo. Thus MightyWords was born. And MightyWords tried to figure out this whole epublishing thing, and was generating revenue.
But the evil giant began to make FatBrain suck, (and just a branding concept) also decided that it would like to mess with the FatBrain/MightyWords founders again, and said they wanted to cash out their 51% interest in MightyWords because...(well there really was NO because).
So all the happy people at MightyWords became un-employed dotcommers, Epublishing was set back five years, and Barnes and Noble continued their feeble attempts at e publishing.
Now, Twenty Months later, B-N is giving up again. Why should we not be suprised?
By the way, SCREW BARNES AND NOBLE
Anonymous
(former MightyWords Employee)