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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...
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.
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
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.
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.
Nah, a Palm makes a great ebook reader. And Palms are cheap like borscht, you can pick up a used Zire or Palm III/V for under $50. Hell, you can get a new Zire 21 for $99. Cost of the unit hasn't been an issue for a long time unless you're talking about one of those stupid only-reads-ebooks-and-costs-$300 devices like the Franklin Ebook reader.
Here's the problem I have had with the e-books as presented by the industry since day one. Cost of the books themselves. Why the hell does the ebook version cost only a buck less than the paperback version? It only costs a buck to print and ship to distributors? That's friggin news to me! If the Ebooks were reasonably priced for the lack of a physical thing that you can hold in your hands, like say around $2.50 per instead of $7 per, then there would have been a lot more interest than there has been so far.
In fact, there's been so little interest in Ebooks, I find the title of the article laughable. The bubble burst? What bubble? It was never there to begin with. The publishing industry is terrified of ebooks and never wanted them to succeed to begin with, which probably explains the asinine pricing model. A lot of the bigger publishers refused to even consider ebooks at all. A lot of the books I read on my palm come from either public domain sources like Project Gutenberg, or one of the few tree publishers that does seem to "get it", Baen Books. They even have a free library of a lot of their published stuff, a download from which of a book by David Weber eventually saw me going out and buying several of his books. They also have an interesting "webscription" system, which I am thinking about trying for a few months. Could be good. Unfortunately, they seem the exception rather than the rule when it comes to publishers and ebooks.
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).
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?
Advantages of e-books:
- they don't take space. You can take a few hundred books with you anywhere you go, and at home you don't need bookshelves to store them.
- they are easy to search - just type a word/phrase, no need to turn pages over and over
- they don't get worn out, no matter how many times you read them or how long you keep them.
- they are easy to quote, if you want to quote some phrases/passages in email or blog or essay, you can just copy/paste, no need to type.
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.