Slashdot Mirror
Bubble Bursts for e-Books
Reuters has a piece noting that ebooks haven't lived up to the hype. Give it a few years, and publishers willing to issue non-DRM ebooks, and reading devices that go for days without being recharged and are as light as a paperback, and then we'll see...
If I leave my book on the train I'm just upset about loosing my place. But if I left an e-book reader on the train I would morn the cost more...
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
I use my Palm as an ebook reader. It's great, but the fact is Joe Mainstream Consumer is never going to spend more on an ebook reader than he would on a book unless it offers benefits.
I know a few people who read an insane amount of books, and I know they'd need a lot of convincing to switch to an electronic format. It's just not as satifsying. It's not as tactile.
You've got to understand what makes people tick. Here's an example advertising campaign that would (based on the ad campaigns I see that are succesful) make eBook sales skyrocket.
"eBooks are reading, TO THE EXXXXXTREME!"
The advertisements would show well tanned 18 year olds on mountain bikes, skateboards, and rollerblades doing their sport with an eBook in one hand. The ad would tell the people that for ultimate smack talk, there's nothing like the classics, easilly accessible. "Dude, this is totally the winter of YOUR discontent! SCORE!"
The commercial I see would end with someone biking their mountain bike down a rocky slope, yelling "Call ME ISHMEALLLLLLLL!!!!!" and cut to their parachute opening as the BASE jumper disapears into the jungle below.
Fade to an eBook for a second (it now has a big X painted on the black case to make it extreme, maybe a Type-R sticker to get the car crowd too), then end.
Before ebooks become popular, I think they need to be dirt cheap, not just slightly less expensive than a normal book. I mean really, when you cut out manufacturing and physically distributing a product, your costs go way down. The cover price should reflect that.
will be unsurprised by the failure.
Equally, the solution described by Bova may be the only way to get ebooks made generally available.
They way I've always looked at e-books is that they are a good to have for reference (searching for names, quotes, etc), but lack the tactile interactivity of a printed work. I think that no matter how small or efficent your reader is, it still won't be the same thing as paper. Electronic paper? Sounds like a good idea, but how do you turn the page?
Maybe what they should start doing if they want people to get into reading e-books is including a copy of the book (like a lot of technical books do currently) on mini-cd or something. The more and more people are exposed to it, the more likely they will start to like reading books electronicaly. Or, you just wasted a lot of money and no one will ever like reading ebooks.
stuff
...and that I can take with me to the toilet without fear of damage, and that I can use as a coaster, and that costs $6.99 so I can give it away, and has that new-book-smell, and that gets that dog-eared look that all beloved reading material should get. Then maybe. Until then I'll stick with pulp thank you very much.
I can't help the fact that, for me, a book still feels better then an electronic piece to read from.
Nothing can beat the feeling I get from sitting in a corner of my livingroom with a little light and holding and reading a good book.
For one, the smell a book can have is something i'll never get out of a piece of electronics.
I remember reading about a newwspaper, printed on what feels like real paper, but is in fact something electronic that can be reused a couple of times.
How nice would it be to have an empty book of let's say 400 pages, you plug it your computer and download a couple of chapters of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on it. When done, download the next part.
42 + 1 = 42
I like to read lying down, to relax. It is difficult to do the same while watching tv because I have to keep my head propped up to see things right-side-up. I like to lay my head down and lay my hand down with the book on the bed or couch. It is a pain in the ass to turn pages, I have to roll over in order to see them, or hold the book up with my hand. I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about. What would be nice is something with the form factor of a book that had an easy way of changing pages so you could read it lying down just looking on one side. It may even work just to get like a mini swivel monitor stand (goddamnit, I should have thought of it earlier, before Apple's patent). I think that what needs to be done is they need to get the devices a lot lighter, and think of the ways that they will be held to make it more convenient.
will make it irrelevant.
Nobody is going to scan a book on a flatbed scanner. It's just not convenient. But OCR works great with a nice fat TIFF file taken instantly with a camera.
I've tried it and it works even with a one megapixel camera if you use a book with nice big print. It works, but the accuracy is about 70 percent and with small text like a magazing it drops to about twenty percent.
With a three megapixel things get much better. Go ahead and try it, but remember not to send a jpeg to the OCR. If it isn't TIFF, the OCR will probably ignore it. At least mine did and I understand most of them are based on one or two SDKs.
But at five megapixel, it's game over. As fast as you can turn the pages you can scan it to OCR. I think magazines are going to be blind sided by this even more than books.
These things are already in the consumer market, they're just a bit pricey, but I know from reading the industry rags that almost all the DSCs come from Taiwan these days and in the next generation we can expect 5MP even in the cheap no brand models.
And then you have the storage issue with those massive TIFF files you're clicking away at. No problem. The Sony Mavica started with a floppy, now they use mini-CDs. So how much you want to bet we're going to see mini-DVD format coming up real quick.
Sell those media stocks kids.
Everyone acts all surprised when they talk about eBook not being hugely popular. It is assumed that because it is a computerized version of a current media that it is superior. Arguably, most of current media has been improved using computers, but books aren't and probably won't ever be one of them.
Here is why:
1 - eBooks aren't cheap. The reader is expensive, and the electronic books aren't significantly cheaper than paper books.
2 - It is actually more difficult for most people to read off of a computer screen than it is to read printed text. (can anyone back this up with research?)
3 - Batteries die, books don't need batteries.
Granted, it's easier to carry around one eBook with 100 titles on it than 100 physical books, but realistically, who needs that many books in one sitting?
The makers of the eBook seem to be forgetting that in order for a product to succeed it must solve a problem and be cost efficient. The eBook is neither of those two things.
I wonder are there any iTunes/P2P-like plans for distributing ebooks? Something that could give the 'little guy' who wants to publish a book a chance to get his work seen without having to go through a publisher? It seems like most ebooks have to be distributed under a specific hardware platform, and not under something more general like a PDF.
I think people will always want printed books, as there is something much more real about them. They give you a much greater sense of ownership whan an e-book, and people will always want to feel that they got good value for their money.
They also are more flexible than e-books in some ways. They can be read anywhere, without needing any power source, they never expire, and no-one can remotely revoke your right to read a book you have in your hand.
In an increasingly virtual, complicated and digitized world, people more than ever want to hold on to something simple and tangible.
It's just not the same curling up in front of the fire with a palmtop.
Escoutaire
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
For manuals, step by step stuff and general how-to's ebooks are fine. Think "stuff you need for work"
For leisure reading - no way. A book is a great piece of technology as it is. Cheap,portable, nice to handle and easy to use and shareable/resuable. The advantage of an ebook is the indexing & update-ability, but they lose out in the other areas.
"The limitless euphoria of the beginning belongs to the past," said Arnoud de Kemp, a leading electronic publisher with the science and business media firm Springer.
Springer Media Firm added that de Kemp was 'not the least bit on drugs' when he made that comment.
Bout a year ago on an older Compaq handheld. Advantages: fun fun to download and install them for some perverse reason (prolly the newness of the thing to me), a lot easier to read in bed - could turn the lights off and my wife wouldn't wake up. Also kewl to have several books that fit into my pocket at the same time for beach trips, etc. Disadvantages - little pricey given the fact that Im not asking them to print, bind, use ink and paper etc - how bout passing on the savings to the customer? $5.00 or so if memory serves - I'm not a cheapskate, but why not drop the price a bit? Might bring some more people over. The titles - I grabbed some freebies - Dracula, Dickens, etc. I quickly realized that Dickens was fine when I had to read him in school - now that I don't have to, he's boring. Dracula sucked badly. the titles that I did wanna read of course didn't have a digital format as of yet. My verdict is that they will gain widespread usage - just in another couple of years :)
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
To me, it's quite obvious why eBooks are so unpopular. There are several very good reasons: 1. Lack of content. So few "big name" publishers distribute content through the eBook format that most electronics companies think it would be a bad investment to make a reader for them. 2. Cost. As has been mentioned, losing your eBook reader and the contents thereof would likely cost significantly more than losing a $10-$15 softcover book. Until there are enough special features in an eBook to offset the price of the reader, most people will refuse to buy them. The makers of DVD movies have realized this, and now tend to pack all sorts of special features onto DVDs to attract the customer to their product instead of cheaper, less content-rich VHS versions. 3. Lack of interest. Most people would much rather hold a solid book in their hands than stare at a computer screen, no matter how crisp the image may be. Reading a book is also easier on the eyes than an eBook, from a physiological standpoint. I'm sure there are more reasons than those I have listed, but for sake of space I'll leave you to discover them.
This is not part of my post. It's my signature. I bet you're disappointed.
There are quite a few E-books on kazaa, if you don't like paying for stuff. I've found most popular books I've looked for there (stephen king, crichton). Its a bit ackward to read on the screen but at least its free. Maybe this is technically even legal since I could just as easily go library and get a copy for free.
I think a lot of people want a hard copy when they buy something like this.. Something they can share in person, read when the power's out, take around wherever they go.. It's not always feasible to take an ebook reader or a laptop everywhere you go.. Plus, after spending money on a good book it's nice to actually have something to show for it.
Is it any wonder the market is dead? Who wants a book that only works on their desktop but not their palm pilot? Or on their pocketpc or not their Mac? Or works everywhere but has a dreadful selection of titles? Or only runs through a reader that is a piece of junk (e.g. MS Reader)?
But does that mean no one is interested? Of course not. Wander into a IRC book warez channel or a ebooks newsgroup and you'll find tens of thousands of books, lovingly hand scanned in for trading and available in formats such as
I do not believe that it is beyond the realms of probability that an XML format with some form of DRM could be produced. Until these vendors pull their fingers out of their arses and produce such an open format, they can look forward to their beloved market shrivelling on the vine.
Okay, the phrase, "reading devices that go for days without being recharged" makes me wonder if Michael has ever tried a pda running something other than windows. I've been using palms for 4 years and my batteries last for months. Literally. When I got my Toshiba Windows device I was thrilled to find that I didn't have to buy anymore batteries. Until I discovered that the damn thing couldn't even go a week without a recharge. Nice engineering. But at least it has colour. What a nice tradeoff. Colour for power. Whoopeee.
The problems with e-books are not the content restrictions or the "battery problems". It's the price. Why should I pay the same price as for a physical book? There may be infrastructure reasaons, but you know what? As a consumer it's just not worth it to me to pay the same price for an e-book as for a hardcopy! I don't care what the production costs are, if I don't see a discount I'm not going to even bother because I don't like to feel ripped off. Note that this is the way I feel about these things. The truth about productions costs? Screw that. I don't buy things based upon what the production costs are, I buy them on what things cost me. And if I don't like it I won't buy it.
...e-books would only be handy when dealing with other technical things. I'd rather have an e-book on Perl/Tk than a hard copy because I could have it side-by-side my programming. Or I could copy and paste certain parts for reference.
But, when it comes to fiction, nothing beats an actual hard-copy book. Something that can get tattered over time because you keep reading it, or something you can just veg out with on a lazy Sunday.
I think this is why e-books have "flopped" because most people want that lazy feeling with a paperback that draws you into it. (That and the fact that when you're sitting on the can, having a PDA just doesn't seem right. ^_^)
Gr@ve_Rose
!ekoj on si aixelsyD
Thanks for the midget porn.
I knew I can count on slashdot and adobe-pdf to quench all my midget lusts.
Imagine reading a book and coming across a word you don't understand - So you touch that word and instantly a definition of that word appears. An extension like this, coupled with others could prove to be great a learning aid for students.
The fact that it would be yet another backlit appliance that I stare at all day is my reason for having no desire to own one. I read even more than I stare at computer screens, and one huge bonus is that its not shining ta me saying, "I'm gonna give you a headache! bwahaha!"
Advantages of electronic text aside, I can't see why anyone would want one. Did I also mention I just love the feel of an actual book in my hands. On this matter, I'll stay in the paper world thanks.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I'm working on two 18" TFT's at the moment. Good ones and I can really feel that they put _much_ less strain on my eyes. But still, I would prefer something written on paper any day. Even if I read longer documents, I prefer to print them out...I dunno, maybe there is no difference in eye strain, but I definitely _believe_ there is and that may be the reason ...
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- William Steig, a prolific illustrator for The New Yorker known as the "King of Cartoons" for his award-winning, best-selling children's books including "Shrek," has died. He was 95.
... to do a job on order, even if the order comes from myself," he once said. "I go to my desk without any plans or ideas and wait there for inspiration. Which comes if you get in the right frame of mind."
Steig died of natural causes of Friday night at his home in the Back Bay section of Boston, said his agent, Holly McGhee.
Steig combined a child's innocent eye with idiosyncratic line to create a wonderful world of animal characters for his books and Edwardian-era dandies in his drawings.
His 1990 book about a green monster, "Shrek!," was made into the hit film that in 2002 became the first winner of an Oscar in the new category of best animated feature.
In a 1997 Boston Globe interview, he said he had helped the filmmakers on the script. "I gave them some ideas, because the book takes 10 minutes to read, and the movie's going to be 70 minutes," he said. "I wrote out a bunch of suggestions; thinking of ideas for a movie is fun."
He sold his first cartoon to New Yorker editor Harold Ross in 1930 and was hired as a staff cartoonist. The magazine was still publishing his work more than 70 years later.
He had produced more than 1,600 drawings as well as 117 covers for the magazine. A prolific author, he also wrote more than 30 children's books, inducing Newsweek to dub him the "King of Cartoons."
His cartoon style evolved from the straightforward worldly children he called "Small Fry" in the 1930s to the expressionist drawings of his later years that illuminated a word or phrase.
In the latter, clowns and princes and lovers came to life from Steig's imagination. It was a pastoral place "where you hear plenty of laughter and only an occasional shriek of pain," Lillian Ross once wrote.
He told the Globe he loved Rembrandt and Picasso and was "nuts about van Gogh." And he said his own drawings have a light, feathery line "because I'm having fun."
Steig did not begin writing children's books until he was 60. His third effort, "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble," was rewarded with the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1970.
Other notable children's books included "Roland, the Minstrel Pig," "Amos and Boris," "Dominic," "Abel's Island," "The Amazing Bone," "Caleb and Kate," "Doctor De Soto" and "Wizzil."
"I carry on a lot of the functions of an adult but I have to force myself," Steig said in a 1984 interview with People. "For some reason I've never felt grown up."
Steig was born November 14, 1907, in New York, the son of a house painter and a seamstress. He began cartooning for his high school newspaper, attended City College and the National Academy of Design.
"When I was an adolescent, Tahiti was a paradise. I made up my mind to settle there someday. I was going to be a seaman like Melville, but the Great Depression put me to work as a cartoonist to support the family," he said.
In the '30s he became fascinated with Freud and psychoanalysis, and his 1942 book "The Lonely Ones" was hailed for its symbolic drawings of human neuroses. It stayed in print for 25 years.
For many years he lived in a sprawling country house in Kent, Connecticut, where he took inspiration from the countryside.
"I find it hard
Steig, who was married four times, is survived by his wife, Jeanne, two daughters and a son.
Give it a few years, and publishers willing to issue non-DRM ebooks, and reading devices that go for days without being recharged and are as light as a paperback, and then we'll see...
...them in our FLYING CARS!!
Think about it. For the most part, I would guess that ebooks are mostly marketed toward technically inclined folks, like the /. crowd. How many of us are willing to put up with DRM. If we buy this product with DRM, we empower them to make more DRM crippled products!!!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Personally I'd love to see an antialiased-font cartridge for the Gameboy Advance SP which accepts SD cards. I know most of you think the GBA has too small a screen for book reading, but I think it'd be perfect, and the battery problem would already be solved.
- Cloud
If you like to read scifi or fantasy, one publisher already did all this.
Go here and check Baens webscription: http://webscription.net/
Or check their free library where you can read ebooks for FREE: http://www.baen.com/library/
All their books are DRM free and available in several different formats, including HTML (which obviously can't be DRM'ed).
I bought lots of ebooks there primary because it is so easy and I get the book instantly. I wont touch any ebook that has DRM as those always try to limit the number of devices I can read them on. Today I am reading those books on my iPAQ PDA, but in a year I have most likely retired that device for something better.
Contrary to what others seem to be saying here, ebooks really works for me. I almost completely stopped reading ordinary books, always prefering to use the light ipaq over a heavy real book. The display is clear, bright and does not strain my eyes. The battery lasts about 10 hours when reading. The only times where the battery live is a problem is when I am home, and there I just hook it up to power when it runs out.
It is not perfect, but it is more than good enough. At least for fiction reading anyway - I might not want to use it for a science text book, or any other book with tables, pictures and the like. Some of my ebooks contain maps, which are completely unreadable on the ipaq (but you can read them on the computer of course).
A while back I looked into getting a handheld device where all it did was read ordinary everyday text files and displayed them on a screen. I looked at some eBook readers. I was disappointed to discover that they were all overpriced and really did way more than I needed. If they would just make a device for like 20 dollars where all it did was store and display text (and used a simple and common interface like USB1 for data transfer) I would buy it in a second. It doesn't even have to come with memory built in if that would drive the price up too high, just provide a slot so that people can go find cheap SmartMedia cards in the size they need from wherever.
If such a product does exist and I just don't know it, please tell me about it.
The last two books that I have read, one of which was recently mentioned here on /. called A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge, were ebooks. Prior to that I had not read ebooks beyond what you can get off of gutenberg.net.
For a reader I used my old visor deluxe and weasel reader. I found the expierence very good.
Being able to store multiple books on a device that I would have been carrying with me anyway was definately convenient. The pda itself is also smaller than most books but the text was just as large (and it could be resized). So visibility was never a problem. And if I was in an area where there was low light I could always just turn on the back light.
My one complaint is cost. I expect ebooks to be cheaper than the their paper back counterparts. Especially since it doesn't feel like you are buying a tangible product that you can let friends borrow or stick on a shelf when you are done.
Here are some things that would appeal to me about an e-book once they solve the E-Paper problem as reported in slashdot here:
Electronic Paper Advances
E-Paper Moves Closer
Electronic Ink
Having a chip or download that plugs in to the book, but the concept of pages is retained.
Having the possibility of archiving the e-book contents wirelessly, so a book shelf becomes a fileserver.
Animation.
Touchscreen-like interaction.
But until the book feel can be achieved, I will be hesitant to purchase them. If I could argue for continuing with e-books anyway, I'd say keep developing the other features -- it really is a whole new medium and wait for the arrival of E-Ink for profitability.
Don't expect DRM to go away. It represents the future of selling content. The only thing that will make people want to get off their butts and create a more practical ebook reader device is the idea that if they do publishers will want to release content for it. Publishers will only do this if they can prevent theft through measures such as DRM.
Amazing magic tricks
I've often wondered why nobody has come up with an ebook reader that is based on the original Palm V (or Vx). Just make the screen 5x larger but keep the same thickness. The device could probably sell for less than $150 these days, and it could have basic PDA features. The idea here is to embrace the KISS strengths of a Palm, the thinness of the Palm V, and add a larger screen so that it's possible to read an e-book on the thing w/o constantly scrolling.
Amazing magic tricks
It is too early; the technology has in no way come about nor settled. There was no bubble to even burst. It'll be a few more years before the right technologies get into place (e.g. displayable ink).
Same problem occurred with virtual reality. It's possible to create VR systems, but everything about them is too immature (price, performance, bandwidth for multi-site, economics, etc). Again, there was no bubble - just an early stage technology.
Ah yes... but I can change the fontsize and typeface to something I have less trouble with... you can't with a paper book... you're stuck with having to find your title in the large print specialist section... and with having to wait several months or years after the original version came out
Also a paper book is useless for a blind person... whereas an open format e-book can be fed through a text to speech synthesizer
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It's weird, My security prof was just talking about this yesterday. He basically said what I have believed for a long time. Books generally don't fall victim to copyright infringement, because it takes too long, and costs too much to make photocopies, or print them out, and because, nobody wants to curl up in bed with their laptop, and i don't believe they ever will.
Maybe i'm just and old timer, but I think there's something bred into us that likes the feel of paper.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Hard to read the screen I'd say. IPAQ - got it. Glasses - got them to. I just don't use the two together.
From now on I will drink a gallon of beer every time I get moderated down. I will do it until you stop moderating me down or I die (which will be your fault then).
<opinion>
Personally I think ebooks are handy, but not for everyone. For example, for the geek crowd, I know I've been a lot happier carrying around 1 or 2 CD's as opposed to 1 Routing TCP/IP vols 1 & 2, Metadata Management, Advance Programming in Perl, and my Stuff magazines. It keeps my spine happier, and shoulders from being iced on the weekends.
For the college kids, when I was in school, I would have preferred having ebooks as opposed to lugging around a bagful of books. Ever run into the same situation I do when reading a book and you just wish you could find / -name *whatever*. Try doing that with a hardcover in less than a second.
They had no marketing but their concept wasn't bad.
<./opinion>
MoFscker
> as light as a paperback, and then we'll see...
Consider that the ebook can potentially hold HUNDREDS of books. So if it's as light as 3 or 4
paperback books, I say it's doing pretty good.
I think an earlier poster raised a valid point, how much can they lower the price. True, they don't have manufacturing costs of printing. But I'll be willing to bet that actual printing costs are a small part of the actual cost of a book. My experience is that labor is the biggest single cost in a product. So I imagine paying the author, advertising, editors, cover artists, etc. cost more than the actual printing of the book. Since those costs are the same regardless of whether a book is dead tree or digital, I doubt they can reduce the price by a factor of 10. I guessing a factor of 2 at best.
Mike Hunt, a spokesperson for the Book Industry Assocoiation of America (BIAA) blames the decline in sales of e-books on rampant piracy. In a media conference, he said that "on average, twelve people read every book sold, that's eleven people *stealing* the content and depriving artists like Geoffrey Chaucer of their intellectual property". He also lambasted local governments and schools for supporting organised book sharing systems called "libraries", "who the hell is going to *buy* books when they are being handed out for free?". In closing, he outlined a plan where the BIAA would impose a sliding scale of royalties on anyone teaching how to read their products, "we acknowledge that some people read as a hobby, so 'Run Spot Run' will be quite inexpensive, but all technical literature will be written in Swahili so that a higher rate can be charged for specialist knowledge, kind of like how the bible used only be available in Latin".
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
People seem to think that reproduction, shipping & handling is such a big piece of the retail price. It isn't. The primary costs are a) compensation to those creating the work and b) promoting the work (and in some cases c) profit). And yes, retail stores are part of the promotion bit too, shelf space, posters etc. matters. So if you stop real-world stores, you have to make up for that as well.
Ask a professional reprinter how much they charge to reproduce a book in a "normal" printing run. Or a professional CD reprinter, for pressed CDs in volume. Even including shipping, it is a small fraction of the total cost. And considering you have to add a little to accomodate for electronic delivery (server & bandwidth) the small fraction becomes even smaller.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We'll see nothing. Who's going to write books that are instant bit-torrents? When everyone's read your book but you have sales of 3 copies where does the money come from, you stupid, stupid man?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
>Give it a few years, and publishers willing to issue non-DRM ebooks,
>and reading devices that go for days without being recharged and are
>as light as a paperback, and then we'll see...
>
>
The *ONLY* practical e-book reader design will be one that's based solar-recharging similar to those L.E.D yard lamps you see for sale at Kmart and Walmart and going for the same price ($20-$30 dollars) Anything else is a joke.
A quick google search turned up a study on the costs of printing scholarly books. The numbers are a few years old, but things probably haven't changed much. About halfway through the article they give production costs for various size runs of handcover and paperback books. A production run is about 1-3 cents per page for paperbacks. They estimate the per book cost for a typical 2,000 book run with a 3-color cover to be $1.50 per paperback. A 3,000 book run to be $1.20. Both costs are well under half of the price a a typical paperback. This supports the argument that other costs such as editting, advertising, author pay, etc. drive the cost of a book, not the cost of printing.
... but due to sales, since it was an early starter, it's since been discontinued.
.rb format. (Gemstar killed this concept with the GEB1150)
I'm talking about the REB1100. The successor to the original Rocket, precursor to Gemstar's now also discontinued travesty of a version, the GEB1150.
Why's the 1100 great? Lessee.
1. I routinely get 30+ hours of battery life out of it. It goes for days.
2. I can almost drive by the light of the backlight. I sure as hell could read a paper book with it as a light source, and it could be indirect when the brightness was cranked. (caveat, cranking the brightness like that will cut battery life to 10-15 hours tops.)
3. Weighs noticeably less than a hardcover, about the same as a thick paperback - think The Stand (unabridged). Unit is molded to fit fairly naturally in your hand, with the page advance button under your thumb, just as a curled-over paperback would.
4. Screen size is that of a normal paperback, give or take.
5. Could add your own content via USB port, and there's a project on Sourceforge for converting docs to Rocket's
Things it lacks: Could always do with more battery life (what can't?), was a black & white monochrome screen (GEB1150 did have greyscale 256, but...), and uses the now virtually defunct SmartMedia card for memory expansion - would've preferred Compact Flash. Could also use a bit more internal memory, as it only had 8 Megs - still enough for around 8,000 pages.
It's fairly durable, but the screens can crack on you if you drop it at the right angle. Mine's cracked in the corner (after 4 or 5 drops) but the crack isn't getting any worse, and there's a plastic sheet of some sort over it so nothing's getting in there either. What's more, the crack is around the non-active border, so it doesn't even affect reading/viewing.
You can find them on eBay, and I have stumbled across them as display models in a few stores, notably OfficeMax. I also found one in a Best Buy.
If anyone wants to build the ultimate eBook reader, that's a good place to start.
As for content, someone's already mentioned Baen. To note, last I checked they released in RTF, Mobipocket, Rocket, Microsoft, and plain-duck HTML. (The interface for HTML is nice as well; it will keep track of the paragraph you last had the mouse cursor hovering over in whichever chapter, I think by cookie, and when you close, then reload the main book page, it brings you directly to that point. It also has a chapter list in a frame, and allows you to set the font.)
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
Where's Apple with an eBook solution. Once they do something, their Mac faithful will at least try it out, exposing a lot of potential customers to something new. Apple would probably figure out a good way to do eBooks, make some money at and keep it from being a pain in the ass, they way they did for music files.
They already have an iBook so I can't imagine what they'd call such a service.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I would buy ebooks if:
1. The ebook readers looked and felt like a book. Meaning they would have the same shape, size, and weight of a book (perhaps with different sizes ranging from small paperback size to 8x11 hardcover size, depending on the preference of the customer), with a cover that looks like a book. When I open the cover, I should see two screens, similar to how I would see two pages when I open a book. That way I'll be able to relax and read it on the sofa just like reading a regular book.
2. Ebooks would cost at least 30% less than their paper counterparts. They aren't going to sell much if the savings in printing and distribution aren't passed on to consumers.
3. Ebook readers would cost less than $150.
4. Ebook readers could hold over 100 average books. I really wish I didn't have to have bookcases that took up so much space. When I was in school I would have really preferred to carry one ebook reader instead of lugging around a backpack with 40 pounds of books.
5. You could highlight a segment or page(s) of text and transmit it to your computer or a standard printer.
6. An industry standard format existed for ebooks or at least a small number of standards that could be implemented by every ebook reader.
There are a few readers that do satisfy one or more of the above, but I don't find ebooks worth it unless all the conditions are met.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I love books. I've got hundreds of them. When they sell an ebook that I can hand down to my great-great-great grandchildren without worrying about DRM, formats, and ease of use, I may buy one.
I just bought a bunch of books to give as Christmas presents. Can I do that with ebooks? Will my 68 year old mother read one? Can I give a 3 year old grandson an ebook that he can color in, put stickers on, and possibly chew on?
I have books that are over 150 years old. Some of them have notes that were written that long ago. Where will today's ebooks be in 150 years? Can I highlight in an ebook, underline text, and make notes that will still be there in 150 years?
Yeah, eBooks suck. I read exactly one eBook I bought from Amazon when I had an iPaq handheld. It wasn't worth the trouble.
eJournals, OTOH, are likely the most important thing to happen to research since email. The simple fact that one can read an academic journal article in one window, then pull up the original text of a citation in another, changes everything.
As an undergrad 93-97, I spent some serious hours in the library waiting in line, photocopying, and fucking around with microfiche machines. I hated it and did as little as possible.
As a grad student today, I spend some serious hours with my wifi laptop, using Proquest from UMI, formerly known as University Microfilm, to get the content fast.
And Proquest sucks, in comparison to other services - it's just low-quality images of journal articles. When I use the ACM Portal, or Emerald, JStore, or any number of other services I get press-ready PDF files. I get citations I can copy and paste straight into my bibliography. It completely changes the experience.
And the great thing is, there's no lack of a market. eJournals are not going anywhere. It's cheaper for a University to pay for subscriptions to eJournal servicesthan it is to keep paper copies or maintain microfilm hardware.
eJournals are definitely where it's at, and I see most nonfiction and reference going that way in the near future. Pleasure reading - eBooks? Maybe next year, maybe never.
Isaac Asimov in a speech to the 1989 American Booksellers Association had a word of comfort for the traditionalists among us. He made a passionate defense of the survival of the book when he asked his audience to imagine a device that "can go anywhere, is totally portable. . . . Something that can be started and stopped at will [and] requires no electric energy to operate." This dream device is, of course, the book. "It will never be surpassed because it represents the minimum technology with the maximum interaction you can have."
(Quoted from Libraries in Science Fiction)
Mark
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It came with "Microsoft Reader" installed and the included book was Michael Crichton's "Timeline".
I truly enjoyed using it, and found it easy to read, especially indoors or in low light, but impossible outdoors.
I looked for more books at bn.com and few were available in the MSR format. Worse yet, the DRM element made portability not quite impossible, but certainly excruciating.
Availability would be a simple hurdle to overcome; just render the existing source file in the appropriate format.
The DRM is again a GREED-DRIVEN issue. Even though there are many fewer e-Book readers than print book readers, publishers fear sharing and thus limit availability and price the things right up with paper books.
Since paperbacks are now usually $7.99 ($4.49 at Costco-limited selection), I buy fewer than I would like, but for $2.00-$4.00 per downloadable e-Book, or the ability to buy bundles of an author's entire catalog, it would be great.
Also books out of print would be much easier to source in an eBook format.
The devices will continue to evolve, but the major impediment to eBooks remains that the publishing houses are even further behind the music labels when it comes to technology. (fortunately, they appear to be less rabid than RIAA/MPAA too)
Maybe also do some value-added stuff for PURCHASERS who register their book? Collect points toward free books? Win autographed new releases? New reader device with subscription ala Cell Phone revenue model?
GIVE ME PORTABLE, INEXPENSIVE EBOOKS OF CURRENT RELEASES AND I'LL BUY THEM.
Check out the prices on Al Franken's latest book at Amazon.com.
Lying Liars (hardcover): $14.97
Lying Liars (adobe ebook): $24.95
Gee, wonder why the ebooks aren't selling?
Particularly when reading foreign language books. I know basic German and French, but my vocabulary in those languages is so small that reading books not written for children means that I'm constantly consulting a dictionary. Clicking on a word and getting the definition is much nicer.
Like you all, I've put in my dues in the programming and unix thing. when i was out of highschool in america i was working for the department of energy programming industrial process controls. unlike most of you, i gave it all up and whent back to my frist love, which is literature and the art of language. Now i'm back in Ireland reading English.
I must say that I do love books. Having something printed and tangeble just sort of lends a validity to the words. It gives a sence of a piece of mind taht it is on the paper, as opposed to say, what is written on websites and the like. aesthetically, the book or parchment has a much warmer, lively, and human feeling to it. The parts of the book were alive once not too long ago. It's innate organic feel is part of the pleasure of reading, especially real literature (ie, what is not sold in super markets or most airport 'book shoppes' as well as that which has never instigated a USA Network made-for-tv movie).
Can one immagine reading Beowulf (no cluster jokes, please) or An Tain bo Coolighe off of a computer monitor? Sure it is possible, but the whole experience is cheepened. I have here a copy of Beowulf, in Anglo-Saxon, leather-bouned on parchment. The experience of touching the cover and the pages, smelling the book, the actual turning of the pages, et cetera, are part of the experience, every bit as much as the art of the language or the story being told.
Immagine if The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings had been put out on some cold, digital pad. When your parents read it to you as children, would it have had the same impact? sitting around the fire, drinking tea or hot whiskey, with your da looking at a little flat black box as opposed to some nice old-looking book?
What about going to Barnes and Nobel or some nicer, local shoppe, trying to figure out what book to buy? You can browse the section, find one taht looks interesting, pop it open and check out a few pages. How is this going to work with some digital pad book? or if you have just the one pad. then you have to pay to download the book file. what if you don't like it? reviewers often lie. the NY Tmes best seller list is usually chaulked-full of artless crap, or even worse, pseudo-artful, neo-dadist, purposfully obscure shite (keep in mind, I am a Joyce fan). So now you've paid whatever it is for this piece of crap on the advice of someone you don't know.
"oh, but it won't be so much to cost!" i hear you saying now. "what about micro payments? maybe just a few quid a pop?" True, art isn't about money (atleast it shouldn't be), however if I pay 0,25 for a book by some sort of modernist feminazi like Virginia Woolfe, I am going to feel more ripped off than if I paid 13,50 and got an actual book. Why? because the experience of reading the "dead tree" version is going to be enhanced by that mere fact. Not to mention that i'll feel as if i can spend more time on a section and whatnot, and get more out of the book from a critical standpoint , even if the story is complete bullshite or i find the style to be wretched (just like a certain 'Mrs. Dalloway', although 'A Room of One's Own' was a decent, and fairly important work).
Look at Charles Dickens who's work shows us the dangers inherrant in an overly capitalistic, industrial-revolution. Look at Tolkien, who clearly showes us a battle between good and evil, the likes of which are also drawn on a line of art v. technology. Elves lovingly hand craft things. Orcs bang them out in mass produced, ugly, artless hoards. Can we then honestly do a diservice to these authors and the messages they delivered to us by sticking them on a cold, lifeless, lump of silicon? I for one would think it to be the greatest travisty of the 21st century (even more so than arnold's gubinatorial election).
Then there are the matters of practicality. Surely it would allow more people to get published as the cost to the publisher would be reduced (especially if they are not responsible for manufacturing the hardware). Then again, the market would
Blackstone Audiobooks offers a hell of a lot of titles on mp3 cd's, and get this, they're cheaper than their traditional multi-cd sets. This company actually gets it. Books on Tape seems to be following their lead lately...
First Reading an ebook is not as relaxing because you have to worry about batteries or a nearby plug.
Impressive personal library having a lot of real books just looks cool especially the old ones with the gold lettering
Most leisure books are read from start to finish. So people don't need all the extra features. For the material that do need the features such as manuals and the like are almost all now in other non or less DRM formats.
Easier on the eyes. Digital screens are harder on the eyes because we were not adapted over millions of years to read from light sources but from refracted light.
No worries about futures or upgraded. A book is a book is a book.
Easy to put down and pick right up.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As far as I'm concerned, ebooks have no future unless they look and feel like a real book and cost less.
Give me an ebook with a flexible reading surface that's at least 5x8 inches, that allows me to put my own notes in the margins, features crisp black-on-white text, and the ability to function without a power source and independently of some sort of reader hardware, and I might change my mind.
Right now, though, reading an ebook is just too unpleasant to be worth it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
People are making too much of B&N's dropping of ebooks. Of course they didn't sell very many of them - they started out offering nothing but Microsoft stuff. Who wants to read books on a PC? Short battery life on laptops (if you have one) and a lot of bulk makes that a terrible experience. And Microsoft's palmtops don't have enough market to give much of a market to sell to. That was a losing proposition from day one.
The only viable "ebook" readers out there are palmtops. The form factor is the closest to a real book. And if you're talking about palmtops, the biggest market by far is PalmOS devices. It's like seven times bigger than the nearest competitor. Yet B&N didn't really even try to support them.
Eventually they also started offering stuff in Adobe format. DRM issues aside, have you tried to use the Adobe reader on a Palm? It's a complete piece of junk. First you've got to download a bunch of software on the PC side so it can format the book for you. Ok, fair enough. It took 20 minutes (!) to format the last book I bought -- this on a very nice Athlon 1900+ box. 20 minutes! That's ridiculous. And when it got done it had done page breaks right in the middle of words. If you're going to spend that much time formatting stuff to look good on my device, you can at least get word breaks right! On top of that their reader on the palm device poorly uses screen real-estate, doesn't make use of the larger screen of my Clie either, and for some moronic reason the "pages" it shows are larger than the physical screen so every two or three page-downs you do you get half a screen of text.
The user experience for the Adobe reader blows so bad that I will actively avoid that format in the future. Whoever thought that was acceptable should not only be fired, they should be locked up so they can never be involved in technology again.
I contrast that to using the PalmReader. I've been using it since 1998, back when it was the PeanutReader. This is a simple little reader that makes excellent use of screen real-estate, including enhanced displays like my Clie. It's fast. The books are just normal PRC files on the palm so it's really easy to get them on there. It has DRM too, in the form of typing the credit card # you used to purchase the book, but this is not terribly intrusive.
I keep buying PalmReader books. And two of the companies that are selling them, Palm Digital Media and Fictionwise, are managing substantial year-over-year growth.
Maybe that's because they offer a pretty good user experience.
For all the faults of ebooks, there are some really nice things about them. Key among them for me is that since I already carry my palmtop almost everywhere, I always have a book in hand. That means I can read something I like rather than the Enquirer standing in line at the grocery store, for instance. Since I can easily load half a dozen novels onto even a small PalmOS device I can pick and choose my reading material according to mood rather than availability, and I don't get stuck being bored on the train because I finished one. And with backlighting I can read the things in bed without the light bugging my wife.
I'd like a little bit larger screen. I'd like to not have to worry about battery life (a significant issue on the Clie, less so on the old monochrome Palms). I suspect we'll have good solutions to both of these as electronic paper hits the streets over the next couple of years.
But if you want me to go out and pay $300 for an ebook reader, or you want to force the books down my throat in some gawdawfully difficult to use format, then you can forget it.
Ebooks are going to win in the long term, that's simple economics. It's going to be cheaper, a lot cheaper, for the publishers to subsidize the readers and save on warehousing and shipping and recycling the physical books.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
I think everyone already knows that they are going to have to do away with DRM before ebooks will be successful, but that's not all.
What eBooks need, is a decent eBook reader. The few I've seen try to look like a book, by having black text on a white background, which is the ultimate mistake. There's an infinite difference between the passively lit white color of a sheet of paper, and the blinding, bright, white glow of a white screen.
Just think, all they need to do to make it better, is to use a low-powered, incredibly cheap, black LCD screen. In direct sunlight, it would seem about the same as a book. You could run the thing for many hours on a single tiny battery, and people wouldn't have migraines while reading.
Personally, I would be perfectly willing to have ALL my books on it. Reading them would be easier than physical books (no need to hold back pages, pages getting stuck, loosing your place, etc.). When I'm finished with most books, I just keep them around for reference, and being able to search through them would be many many times more effecient than looking up words in the index, and reading through 10 pages to try and find the reference I am looking for.
And back to DRM. Once they make these things plain ASCII, or something similarly simple, they could use the cheapest, lowest powered processors you could find. That would make the devices far cheaper, and the batteries lasting much longer.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Who here feels more comfortable buying digital data than buying a "real" physical object? Personally i just dont feel right paying money for anything thats not physical so i dont. Whatever people say about copying digital content is still stealing or whatever companies try and do to push this new business model it wont change me and (i hope) other people feel the same? I know its stupid but if thats the way people feel then its not a good idea to go down that line of business.
I cant really see an advantage for most books to be digital? Its unlikely that you'll want a search feature for most books, and if you do it could always be done on the net with a digital version. Ok it saves paper, but then hybrid cars save oil and people still drive their hungry SUVs. It saves space too, but most books are only slightly bigger than a dvd case and you still take them around with you. To make an ebook reader work it will have to have a damn good interface because people are fussy over what they sit for hours reading on.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
CSpotRun. Very lightweight and efficient -- great for reading doc format stuff.
Thanks for the description of PalmReader. So far I've only been reading public domain or Baen free library books. Maybe I'll try dipping my toe in the pool of DRM.
I get headaches from NOT looking at computer screens.
As a qualifier, I read ~5-10k 'pages' per year of internet based information. So I have no qualms with reading from a computer interface.
However, I've loathed every ebook I've had to deal with. After several discussions with like minded geeks, we've come up with a plausible theory: It's all in the physical layout of a book, or the complete inability to mimic it. Even if you don't leave a marker in a book, some part of your head logs the approximate thickness of where you left off or where interesting information is, and you can easily scan your way back. Glare is also a big issue that no one has successfully dealt with. When was the last time you had to squint at a book in broad daylight? Highlighting and dog earing books is likewise quintessential to their utility.
When ebooks can successfully spoof these, they will actually be a considerable distance above books, because bindings are entirely annoying. Until then, dump 'em to plain ascii, give me a terminal with less on the shell, and maybe I'll buy it.
And please, stop giving us shit about proprietary ownership. You guys are all going broke anyway, and I can buy used books for a quarter @ the local garage sale. Sell 'em HTML formatted for a buck a pop, and I'll buy $400 bucks worth every year. (This would be a real break for me because I spend @ least $1,000 at brick and mortar yearly--so at least one dork will support it.)
So, I think I'm one of the few people who actually read a good number of books in digital format and quite enjoyed the process. They may have come from Bearshare or Kazaa, I admit, but the ability to carry five or six books around with me all the time on my old Visor Edge (thinest PDA I've ever seen) was wonderful. Sure, you had to scroll a lot, but you get used to that very quickly. And sometimes the text of the book is a little bit garbled due to some monkey OCRing it poorly, or formatting it differently than you would have preffered.
But all in all, you really can't beat the convenience. Ever since my Visor broke a few weeks ago I've been going through withdrawal. I was reading one or two books a week, and now I've dropped back down to one a month. Paper books just aren't convenient to carry around all the time. I can't read for ten minutes waiting for the bus, or in between meetings. I miss it.
Also, I'm not really sure who's behind all the effort, but the number and variety of books avaiable on the P2P networks was pretty strong. Strong enough that I wasn't going to run out of books that I was interested in reading for a long time. Sure, they're clearly Sci-Fi/Fantasy heavy, but if you are at all interested in either of those genres, you'll be able to keep yourself satisfied for a long time. And even new books get up there fairly quickly. I got the most recent Harry Potter within two days of its release. Someone out there was working overtime.
--
RumorsDaily
with an online business, that online business can service THE WHOLE WORLD! So you don't need to pay shipping (books are mostly just processed wood after all so they are heavy), warehouseing, people to put them on the shelves, costs of removing them from the shelves and disposing of them if they don't sell well, the cost of a building lease and alot of this money is captial that is tied-up while it sits on a shelf. I just asked my wife (who runs a small bookstore) and she says the typical mark-up for a paperback is about 40%. So factor in the 40% off the top and then tiny cost to reproduce it (typical website type cost- most of which can be sent overseas to make it really cheap - except for maybe the actual distribution servers) and it seems like these things SHOULD be much cheaper. What would be really cool would be if they coupled it with a on request printing system so that if you wanted to have a paper copy (for your library or to loan to a frined or whatever) and someone should be able to get this thing going.
One thing that really makes me wonder is: why haven't magazines gone this route? I mean they can offer short stories and articles for dirt cheap and don't have to use big name authors who are tied to huge contracts.
The "bubble" burst on eBooks. Right. How about we take "What did DRM kill before it got started?" for $500?
The cost of entry for eBooks is simply too high to make even the geekiest of geek want to use them. You cannot simply buy the right eBook reader. Out of a number of available titles you would want to buy at least one will be in a format incompatible with your software or hardware reader. That one book will defy the logic of all your previous purchase decisions.
This is the eBook concept's fatal flaw. From the get go there was no one all emcompassing standard vendors could use to hoc their wares. Besides the format problem there's the DRM problem. A paper book I can loan to my friend without much hassle. Just last week I loaned Candide to my friend. With a DRM book, even if we had the same reader product would I be able to share my copy of the book? Maybe maybe not, depending on the format's DRM scheme.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I agree. eBooks have all the advantages of an electronic format, but reading any lengthy document off a screen gives most people a headache. (Slashdot sample not typical.)
Once digital ink or some other ambient light display with a fine pitch is realized, more people will be comfortable with reading an electronic novel. Of cours, this will have to married to a durable, lightweight, long-lasting frame that has all the same ergonomic benefits of a paperback.
I just use my palm m105 with the weasel ereading program, and can convert nearly any file format into it's drm-less ztxt.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
In order for a bubble to burst, there would have had to have been some inflation to begin with.
/. instead of reading my book. This would never happen with a real book, as my reading area is downstairs from the computer.
Aside from a few companies hyping up and releasing products that nobody bought several years ago, there was no 'bubble' to pop concerning E-books.
It would have been a 'bubble' had authors come in droves to dump their works into digital form expecting people to buy them. This never happened, as most authors had the common sense to see there would be free copies of their books sailing all over P2P networks. Not that this doesn't happen already, but any action by the author would have contributed to the potential mess.
So far, when it comes to DRM controlled products, I don't see any growth at all. Perhaps companies will realize customers don't like being treated like thieves.
Anyhow, who wants to read a book on a laptop sized device? Every time I've sat down to read a book I downloaded, that browser icon ends up getting clicked and I find myself posting derogatory flames on
I've always thought that the discussion of the success or failure of ebooks turns on a false premise -- namely that an ebook is some fairly exact electronic simulacrum of a printed book. In fact, any time you move to a new medium, the possibilities expand and morph. A movie is not a camera pointed at a stage play. Once you have that perspective, you might categorize EverQuest as an electronic fantasy novel? It's far more an "ebook" to my mind than a copy of Lord of the Rings reproduced in PDF on screen. Take advantage of the medium.
Moving to my own field of reference works, I've always argued that successful ebooks will be larger or smaller than printed books, with the "ebook" an interface to a back end database that lets you get bits or buckets as you need them. For example, O'Reilly's online publishing efforts have focused on creating short articles (viz. www.oreillynet.com and affiliated sites), and a large database of technical content (safari.oreilly.com). Safari now contains more than 3000 titles from O'Reilly, Pearson (AW, Peachpit, et al), and Microsoft Press. Advantages of the database approach include searching across the complete corpus, annotation, and the like. But that's just the beginning. The kinds of services that you can start to build when you have that database in place start to get really interesting. We're planning on launching some of those services next year.
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 http://www.oreilly.com
Until the print display on ebook readers is at least 600 DPI, forget it. The print you read on a cheap paperback is 1200 DPI. The text displayed on your ebook reader is about 96 dpi, or the quality of a poor dotmatrix printout.
Studies have shown that difference in resolution slows reading by about 30% and causes eyestrain and headache.
The interesting thing is, most people will not identify these problems, rather just express a dissastisfaction with the overall experience.
a 600 DPI reflective display for an ebook reader is essential for the technology to take off.
Digital ink may be the answer. It will be interesting to find out.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Give it a few years, and publishers willing to issue non-DRM ebooks
So basically what you're saying is that ebooks can only succeed if they're pirated like crazy?
Yeah. Down is up. Evil is good. Slavery is freedom.
I don't know when you stupid Slashdot drones are going to finally get it: intellectual property is more important than your personal convenience. If the choice is between releasing a book (or a movie, or an album) in an unprotected format or no format at all, the authors and publishers are going to choose not to release them at all. Why would anybody invest the time and money in creating a work when there's absolutely no way they can recoup their investment from it?
You stupid kids just don't fucking get it. You think you're so smart, but this basic concept completely escapes you.
Only room for the words "Mostly Harmless"? I'll pass on that, thank you very much. Now where's my towel...
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
BarnesAndNoble.com and Amazon.com already maintain low prices in the face of all the costs you mentioned plus shipping the books from the publisher and re-shipping them to the customer, except for "Digital editoring(sic) people who take the book and put it into the proper format for an e-book that is convenient to the user." I'm assuming that this wouldn't cost the publisher more than digitally typesetting the print edition does.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just export it to PDF at that point and be happy with it.
The handheld readers would have to scroll horizontally to read most PDFs that I've encountered. Scrolling horizontally over a column of text is a Very Bad Thing(tm). Yes, there would be an extra step to typeset the work in a format designed for handheld electronic reader devices, but I agree that this step probably wouldn't cost very much.
Will I retire or break 10K?
My experience is that labor is the biggest single cost in a product.
Labor is the entire cost of a product; supply and demand determine the value of the labor used to develop, replicate, and deliver a given product. You're still correct in that Amdahl's Law limits the effect that labor reductions in replication and delivery can have on the product's final price.
Will I retire or break 10K?
with an online business, that online business can service THE WHOLE WORLD!
No it can't. Taxation is national. Payment services are often national. Book content regulation is definitely national; what some countries consider acceptable others consider pornographic or seditious. Other business rules are national as well. Unless the EU manages to expand into a global corporate government, economic borders will always exist.
it seems like these things SHOULD be much cheaper.
Who feeds the mouths of the author's children? Who reimburses the publisher for editing and promoting books that sell poorly? Remember that publishers fill the role of a venture capitalist in taking gambles on works.
why haven't magazines gone this route?
Many magazines' web sites already offer subscription sections, and Slashdot users female-dog about having to subscribe for a whole year just to read one article for fifteen minutes. The web sites can't easily do transactions for under a dollar until decipayment services such as BitPass become more popular. (Here, I use "decipayment" to refer to payments on the order of 0.10-0.25 EUR or USD, as opposed to sub-penny "micropayments.") Yes, it's a Catch-22, and only a publisher offering a large selection of works that takes a particular decipayment service can make that service popular.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I can read any time. Waiting in line in Safeway, in boring meetings, while wolfing down a quick salad in Togo's, when I wake restless in the middle of the night or sitting relaxed in my armchair.
To me ebooks are a dream technology that have arrived. Pity I'm the only one who thinks that!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If you read classics ebooks are already free
Though Project Gutenberg continues to add public domain classics to its collection, the number of public domain classics in existence is now fixed, and it will never grow as long as The Walt Disney Company continues to exist, unless you back the Eldred Act (or its equivalent outside the States).
Will I retire or break 10K?
has done fairly well, and there are a lot of books available.
Until the DRM is as transparent and prices are as good as the Apple music store, I don't think they they will get much market share.
Right now I often do audiobook rentals. I can even load the CD versions into my iPod and take it with me (and yes, I do delete them after listening).
I don't need another thing to carry around beyond my Zaurus and/or iPod, but most e-books aren't available for my Zaurus (the C760 with the good screen) - and are only available for something I wouldn't use to read them. PDFs aren't the answer until there is an 8.5x11 pda (and pockets to put it in). Not-too-fancy HTML would be best. But theres no place for DRM.
For me the pdf format is the main turnoff when it comes to reading ebooks. Acrobat is notoriously slow when it comes to turning pages or even scrolling, especially on older machines.
I would very much prefer flash or some other format which responds much quicker to mouse commands. I do most of my reading online these days, so I don't see any reason not to buy an ebook. Convenience of browsing is the bottleneck.
To use an analogy, this article is like saying because the bottom fell out of the dot-com market, the idea of doing business on the Internet is doomed.
Of course ebooks aren't selling in the same scale as paperbacks! We're still in the age of the early adopter. The tech isn't yet mature enough to attract the average reader. That doesn't mean it won't ever be. The article itself admits that the number of buyers of ebooks is increasing, just not as fast as they'd hoped.
Just let the price of reading solutions fall by a factor of ten or so while the resolution and clarity of available screens approach that of paper and the same sources that are bemoaning how few people buy ebooks will be stunned at how many people are.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
even ebook advocates tend to forget (or didn't even realized?!) the hidden pros of ebooks:
;)
- taking books on a trip
i remeber spending some time in irland some five years ago. i had 20 kg of books with me, after arrival i had to spend a day in bed - my back ached like hell - and i read maybe just 5 kg of them! this year i spend a whole month in ireland with some 20 books on my clie - ok, i just read 3 of them, but without any of the problems five years ago..
- reading in the darkness:
it's just a total difference (at least for me) between reading in the darkness without any distractions like even a bird flying by or my cat entering the room - i get much more sucked into a book when reading in the darkness..
- reading one-handed
if you like to read a book in bed you know what it means! you read on the left side, you left arm begins to hurt, the right gets stiff, you turn right.. - reading on my clie the problem suddenly completely disappeared!
- reading in the cold
if you ever read in a cold bedroom, you must know about the uncomfortable situation. after 10 minutes, both arms are cold. ok, you put them under the blanket - you hands get cold. nowadays i just crawl completely under the blanket and read in the darkness - and my cat loves that!
all thes sounds a bit silly - but for me it's such a difference!
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
I only paid like $50 on ebay and the battery lasts for weeks between recharges. Unfortunately, I can't buy ebooks for it because every manufacturer uses their own DRM format. Because all the DRM formats were mutually incompatible, even though all of them basically presented the text in an HTML way to the renderer. Ironic - once again DRM killed a perfectly good product. When are these idiots going to learn that DRM means death to their products.
what is the primary business of a publisher? content creation? no! distribution platform development? no! product distribution? bingo. most publishers are primarily distribution mechanisms with most of their assets in warehousing, sales/marketing, and by extension editorial to massage the products into saleable form. content creation and management is negligible. you want to kill the existing publisher's business models and expect them to collaborate.
what is required for ebooks to succeed is a market willing to pay a reasonable amount for the product or sufficient financial returns--subscriptions... and a good selection of content. this is still some years off. witness the music business. the new economy is still a decade out--epaper, mobile devices powerfull enough to be pc's, a decent cellular network in the us. voip and ethernet to the home. database driven content management within the publishing system as the norm. lots of infrastructure needs to be built as this is a seiemic shift in the valuation of products.
available in formats such as .txt, .doc or .html
.ps or .pdf and you're done, unless it's chm and you can't open them on linux (first transform them to html using a windows machine)
Just print them to
Apple music can be easily converted into an open format that works with windows, stereos and many portable players. Just click on a playlist and hit the "Burn Disc" icon.
Everyone has the right to his own opinion, of course, but it's a shame that you feel that way.
In my experience, I've found that books of whatever form are like...hmm...cartoons or movies. When they play them real slow, you can't help but notice that they're just sheets of celluloid with still images printed on them. But...if you play it fast enough, thanks to persistence of vision, that image starts moving, and you don't see the celluloid anymore, just the motion of the picture.
Books are like that with me, whether paper or electronic. Once the words start flowing and I'm sucked into the fantasy world lurking behind the words, it doesn't matter to me anymore what I'm reading it from...the physical format vanishes (along with the outside world, and whatever sense of time I might have had).
Ebooks let me carry a whole lot more of that fantasy world experience with me: hundreds of books in the amount of space that would be taken up by one Gideon New Testament. For that kind of literary portability, I'll gladly sacrifice some of the reliability of a paper book...I read very fast, and I'd just as soon not run out of reading.
And that doesn't even get into the fact that, thanks to Blackmask, I can electronically read a whole bunch of out-of-copyright stuff that I couldn't even find in paper format. Dozens of Doc Savage pulp novels. Hundreds of The Shadow.
To each his own, I suppose...but I can't help feeling like you're missing out.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
or a blind person could get someone (say... a friend?) to read it to him. but wait! you can do that with paper books too.
maybe not so useless, then?
It might look like I'm standing motionless, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away
I run a small e-book publishing company (www.hidden-knowledge.com) and would say that everything people have written here is approximately correct. Printed books are easier to read, but e-books are easier to carry; e-books are too expensive (but I hate paying $6.95 for a disposable paperback); DRM is a fraud as well as an inconvenience (or worse); and so on.
e-books will grow because they DO have advantages over printed books: size, weight, shipping cost, built-in index and search, audio read for the blind, read in the bathtub (inside a ziploc bag), read in bed with backlighting, etc.
They're not replacing printed books; they're growing alongside them, as one more instance class.
And also i think is a waste of resources to spend 70 Watts (a 17" crt) to read them or paper and ($) ink, to something i'll use only for 10 minutes.
I want a read device not a handheld because i just need (and can afford) reading device funcionalities, 256KB memory (10 or 15 pages) and a "half A4" black and white screen (no grayscale or color).
for another article about why micropayments haven't caught on?
Another one for the technological dustbin of history...
Found on the Yahoogroups ebook mailing list...there are other articles that suggest ebooks might not be quite as dead as is thought.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The internet, in fact, even Unix, is a way of distributing, managing and manipulating text. Every book these days is produced via computers. Why isn't it available as easily as such? One word. GREED. We don't share, we hoard. Publishers are no better than the RIAA or the MPAA. They are all self serving parasites. Of course they don't want to give up their free ride. Ebooks are a copy protection scheme, nothing more. If we could "rip" books as easy as somgs or movies, the publishing industry would be in the same quandry as all the other corporate thieves. Thank god for OCR and XML. It will free authors as much as musicians and other artists. I personally can't wait for the future as it promises to be an interesting battle between the good and evil. Thank god for geeks! Take a bow all you freedom fighters. As for the overly affluent, you suck big time. But no worries, you'll get exactly what you deserve in the end. Cosmic justice always prevails eventually.
Words to men, as air to birds.
The most reading I see done at once is on airplanes, but here is a period during takeoff and landing that you can use no "electronic devices". I carry several books (audio, text & html) in my PDA at all times, but have to resort to the good ol' paperback for my weekly flights.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
multiple formats for videotapes - market grows but slowly.
VHS wins - market explodes.
multiple competing OS's, systems - market grows slowly.
Wintel becomes a dominant share of the market, ensuring wide compatibility - market explodes.
Matrox/Nvidia/ATI/Diamond/3dfx all fight over 3d video implementation - market grows slowly
DirectX finally grows up to the point where it's a usable 3d API - 3d-accelerated games are everywhere.
Any lessons in this for the eBook guys?
-Styopa
I am a theoretical physicist, 51 years old, nearsighted, and do not read any books on paper anymore.
I purchased a sony picturebook for $750 (727MHZ, 384MB RAM). I put an 80 GB drive in it, installed SuSE Linux 8.2 and made it my main reading tool. I read everything on it, novels, science books, etc. My 14 year old son scans whatever I want to read, it is a great way for him to make money, sometimes he hires some of his friends, probably for half the price and keeps what is left for himself. In addition all scientific articles from Phys Rev, PRL, etc are available in pdf format for free. I have a huge collection with these things, over 40GB, I can carry it with me wherever I go (try do that with paper!)
For a person with bad eyes, a sony picturebook is a great reading tool much better than any printed book. The weight of the laptop is a little bit more than that of a paperback, but it holds 10^6 times more information, and, more importantly, IT IS MUCH EASIER TO READ THAN A BOOK. The screen is very bright, I can make the text huge (try change the text size of a paper book!) The panoramic screen (1280x600 pixels) of the picturebook helps a lot.
I dont understand why people keep using paper books.
Personally I love ebooks. I have a pocket PC and I do as much reading as I can on it. The two hurdles I've found are this (other than the price of a pocket pc): 1) The selection is still limited. What's more, is that some books that would really benifit from the ebook format, like textbooks, aren't put into that format at all. I assume this is because the publishers are afraid the books will be copied instead of bought. They're probably right too, because the prices they force students to pay is second to theft. $500 a semester for books is ridiculous. 2) The formats suck. I actually prefer just plain text files when I can get them, since I can use mobipocket on those. Then there are LIT files, which I loath because it is SO HARD to get them to work. You have to get a MS passport, then you have to "activate" your pocket pc, which very often gets confused with your PC, and I've almost never been able to get the damn things to work. I actually had to go out and find a program called CLIT (C-LIT is the nice way to pronouce that) that would remove the copyright protection, just so I could read the ebook I bought from amazon. WTF? PDF is better in that you can get it to work, but it is still a bit slow on my pocketpc, and I don't like the PDF reader nearly as good as mobipocket or even MS's reader.
When does it show up for Linux? xxxBSD?
Other than Wintel (where Wine could possibly run iTunes) and Mac (which comes bundled with Mac OS X and iTunes), what desktop computer hardware platform promoted for use in homes is popular?
Palm? WinCE? Symbian?
Are those devices able to decode popular lossy audio compression formats with acceptable battery performance?
With DRM, it becomes even worse, as you can't get the content from a sanctioned device
Remember that nothing but a little generation loss and possibly the MP3 patents are keeping you from burning your recordings purchased from iTunes Music Store to CD-RW in Red Book format, ripping them with digital audio extraction software, and re-encoding them with the best MP3 encoder technology available. If you're encoding for a pocket sized MP3 player that you're planning on carrying into a public place, you don't even need to encode the distraction of stereo separation. Mono MP3 actually sounds pretty good at 96 kbps.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I surprised that you didn't mention the Gutenberg project.
I've wondered: What happens once Project Gutenberg has encoded 99 percent of all extant books written in the English language and published before 1923?
Will I retire or break 10K?
an open format e-book can be fed through a text to speech synthesizer
Major book publishers are too scared of mass electronic copyright infringement to publish in open formats. Instead, you get $#!+ like this: This book can not be read aloud".
Will I retire or break 10K?
I believe that e-books were introduced to a market which is not ready for them. A better suited market is the education market. Parents buy tons of educational toys for their children each year. You can imagine the advantages of an e-book over a paper book. There can be animation and audio in e-books and the interactivity will keep the kids involve. Wouldn't it be cool to have a book tailored to your child? Have your name on the main character and put your face on a character. Also, this technology makes the choose-your-fate genre more interesting. Additionally, these books can read themselves or help kids with their pronounciation. A quick touch on a word brings up a difinition or a picture. Parents will eventually pressure schools to buy e-books to help students. Targeting adults who can be nostalgic and stubborn is the wrong way to go.
With a digital medium of distribution, why would you need publishers? It cuts them out of the loop and therefore threatens their existance. Much like how the internet threatens the RIAA's existance with their current buisness model.
With a website, there is no risk in selling anyone's ebook. You can add any author. If they are unpopular, then they do not consume much bandwith and only consume a few penny's in storage space. With a publisher, you must be choosy and an unpopular author results in at least several thousand dollar profit loss.
But publishers can convert to this buisness model if they want to, much like the RIAA can. But this puts the artists in control, and not the publishers, as it allows an author to pick and choose which-ever publisher they want without lock in (unless the website enjoys some sort of monopoly status).
Also, I notice this resistance by people to reading on a computer screen. But you never see any resistance by people to listening on headphones and stereo's, so there is a differential advantage to paper and digital.
But paper-based displays may change this, allowing screens without any refresh rates (therefore allowing static text that is not updated when displayed and removing the eye strain problem)
Nor do I get eyestrain or headache, even after hours of reading. Even in the near-dark (which I would get with a paperback, mind you).
Not only am I satisfied with the overall experience, but my wife almost bought a P800 herself, just to read her books on, instead of the same book on paperback. She, like me, quickly came to prefer the experience & convenience of a decent ebook reader. (She didn't buy a second P800 in the end, she just borrows mine on the rare occasions when I'm not using it myself).
I would be delighted in a 600 dpi screen, especially one that was readable in moderately-low light without requiring a backlight (for better battery life), but it's a minor issue at most. The higher resolution of a book is outweighed most of the time by the flexibility & convenience of having all my current books always available, in any circumstances.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Here's a couple of other big points for me:
Reading in the car at night.
The backlight makes all the difference. My wife can read her book while I'm driving, or vice versa. Great for long trips, and far less distracting than a maplight.
Reading anywhere, any time.
Since I use my phone (Sony Ericsson P800) as an ebook reader (+ organiser etc), I virtually always have it with me. So if I'm waiting for 10 minutes for someone, I can read a few more pages, instead of looking bored. I also carry a book or two for my wife, and even a few kids stories, so I have something to read them at a moment's notice.
Easier paging
It's true that most ebook readers have less text per page on their smaller screens (especially a phone, even a relatively large one like the P800's), but this is compensated by using the P800's scrollwheel to page up & down. It's so easy to advance a page, or flip back a few pages to check something that it more than makes up for the smaller format. Especially when the smaller format means it also fits in my pocket. Oh, and searching back for the first reference to a character is so much easier too.
A convenient online library
OK, admittedly this is slightly dodgier, but it shouldn't have to be. I look forward to the time when you can borrow ebooks from a real online library, just like their dead-tree counterparts only easier.
I recently lived for a while in Toronto, Canada, and whatever else you can say about them, their library system is excellent. I could go to their website & reserve any book in any of the city's libraries, and in a day or two (if there wasn't a queue) I'd get a phone call from their computer telling me it had arrived at my local branch. I'd stop in while walking to work & pick it up. It was so damn convenient, I read heaps of books without the risk of shelling out good money for a bad read (also some of my favourite books I'd left in storage in Australia).
Moving back to Sydney, Australia, the library system here feels like the dark ages. Each library branch has their own website (a few do form mini-networks, so you can search 3 or 4 branches at once), so you're limited to whatever's available in the branch at the current time. I can reserve a book online - if I pay a dollar for the privilege - but they still won't ship books from other branches to my local branch for me.
So now, if I hear about a book that might be interesting, I go to IRC & download a scanned copy. The occasional OCR error aside (fine in most books, annoying in a few), the convenience over my local library system - combined with the other ebook advantages - makes it the way I read everything now, except for the few new releases I know I'm going to enjoy & keep (which I buy in paperback).
But even those, and for my current library, I download the electronic text as soon as I can, for the sheer convenience of having it always with me, readable anywhere, any time, any circumstances.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I'd rather read a copy of tolkien or dickens that some fan transcribed into a digital form and shared with me than some mass produced paperback edition i picked up at some chain store. If ebooks help kill the printing industry and it's mass produced ugly artless hordes then i think it would make things easier for people making lovingly hand crafted things, out of paper or bits of data or goat hides or what have you.
A)Although I speak from ignorance, it still seem s possible that one site can service the world (even though this is not really necessary just serving a big market like the US should generate some good revenue.) What would prevent them from just having you enter your country and then adjust (localising) based on this? .NET to take hold) and I don't want their fingers this deep in everything. However, you missed my idea about just downloading the copies you want for reading on the plane/in the restroom/on the subway or maybe getting a voice version to be played in your car via a bluetooth enabled radio!
B)You missed my point here: about 40% is just profit for the store you buy it at. This should instantly disappear in an online purchase along with the reduced cost of not having to create a hunk of processed wood to store it and then ship that wood to 50 zillion sites (not to mention market/schmooze to even get it to those sites!) I think that if they can get the price of an electronic novel down low enough, they will increase the volume to the point that their profit will actually increase too so there will be no issue with reimursing authors or even reimbursing the good people at the publishing companies.
C) OK. Here I agree with you that a system for enabling/securing/simplifying less than a buck (they could name it the "buck-less" in the US and "ewe-less" in the EU) will help not only this but many other online transactions. Problem is the only company I know of who is trying this is MS (I think this is part of why they want
I don't have any of the problems of "incompatible formats" - if it's in HTML (or ASCII text), which is true for a lot of documents, then I can read it. And unlike these here today, gone tomorrow formats, I expect HTML to be around next year too.
It is true that you can read paper much faster and more comfortably than today's computer screens (even full monitors, never mind puny PDA screens). But when standing in line, etc., I can pull out my PDA in places where I probably wouldn't have been carrying the book around. So for casual reading, there's a trade-off: paper books are easier to read, but not as easy to carry. For reference material there's no contest: ebooks are much lighter and permit searching.
True, I can't get the latest top-ten book this way, since they're not available as HTML. But they're usually not available in any electronic format either, so it's generally no loss. Even in the rare cases where a major book I want to read is available electronically, it's usually only available in some almost-as-expensive non-standard format that will disappear next year. Why should I invest in a book when I can't be certain I can read it years from now? (Any book purchase is an investment - a book is a far safer investment, since there's no worry that its "format" will become impossible to use). And I can't even give or sell the electronic version to someone else - something I can do with a book.
This article was really talking about the "nonstandard, special-purpose" readers and formats - and yes, they're dying. That's not surprising. They're dying because they not only fail to be competitive with books; they also fail to be competitive with the sweet simplicity of HTML readers on ordinary PDAs.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
What would prevent them from just having you enter your country and then adjust (localising) based on this?
How about labor to handle localization for all 200 or so countries? This is a big job.
I think that if they can get the price of an electronic novel down low enough, they will increase the volume to the point that their profit will actually increase
That's a big "if" that may not be realizable. There comes a point on the demand curve, however, below which demand is not elastic enough to increase marginal revenue. Whether this point is above costs plus royalties, even with economies of scale, is not yet known.
However, you missed my idea about just downloading the copies you want for reading on the plane/in the restroom/on the subway
Did this have anything to do with the "on request printing system" you mentioned? I'm not sure that will be viable either, especially because it lacks economy of scale in replication.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It might have been illegal but now it contains no proprietary code
Though LAME has excised all of the ISO MP3 encoder code, LAME still implements a patented process, namely that of encoding a conforming MP3 bitstream. Because of this, U.S. patent law considers "mak[ing], us[ing], offer[ing] for sale, or sell[ing]" LAME software without Fraunhofer's permission unlawful.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But if RIAA hasn't figured it out yet, what makes you think the book publishers are any more likely to do so? Okay, so the book publishers know how to read, but that doesn't appear to have affected their inability to reason.
Like Baen's WebScriptions. So, perhaps, the problem is people trying to sell an "e-book" like it was another binding of a paper book?
I think the problem is not with the e-book, but with the way they are trying to sell it.
(8-DCS)
I have read hundreds of popular sci-fi novels on a tiny palm (b/w sony clie with 64mb memory stick).