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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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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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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