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What Will It Take For eBook Adoption?
zmcnulty writes "Gizmodo has a new weekly feature that appears to be off to a great start: their first 'Feature Creep' writeup (by Sanford May) is an excellent overview of some of the obstacles standing in the way of adoption of eBooks, and more importantly, a handheld device that supports them. We've probably all heard of the Sony Librie's lukewarm reception, but if you're not familiar with the somewhat stunted eBook market, this is an excellent essay to get you on your way."
Good books that people want to read and which will only be ported to this medium.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I'm going to go to my grave preferring paper, regardless of what technology comes along between now and then.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I will buy an ebook when I can read it as comfortably as a normal book. High contrast, high resolution, readable in daylight.
It needs to be as cheap, or cheaper than a book. Hardy, so it can survive getting wet/dropped. And readable, like a book, not a flickery CRT or expensive LCD. Let's face facts, it's not going to happen for a while. It's a materials problem, not a software or standard hardware one.
Although a good idea, I dont read e-books because I really cant stand reading large documents on a screen. It is much more comfortable for me to read on a page. Also, who thinks that e-books are such a good idea? We have paper documents going back 3000+ years (papyrus to be exact). But already disks from 10 years ago are obsolete. Electronic storage media is going obsolete so fast that I dont think I trust it to hold a record of humanity.
Openness.
I should be able to buy an E-book and used it on ANY reader, my palm, my Zaurus, My Wince device, I should be able to also read it on the PC,MAC,etc...
If e-books are not in a standard and universal format then they are absolutely doomed.
The best ebook reader I had was a Rocketbook. only because I had a program to create my own Ebooks for it from guttenberg texts or other ebooks I cracked so I could convert them.
Although the device has more technical books in it than anything else.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, nothing can match the tactile feel of pages in your hand. It's just something that i will always like.
;)
Now, for reading docs on a computer screen (ebooks included), i wouldn't have thought i'd ever like it much....until i got dual displays. One for holding whatever i was reading and one for doing whatever i was doing. It's made my life much easier. i still don't really enjoy reading a book on screen though. Just something about it i don't like.
Maybe it's just me, but when i get a really, really, really tough bug, i'll print out the code and go for a walk, reading the code with pen in hand. Dunno why that helps sometimes, but it sure has solved some very sticky stuff for me in the past. i might be just odd though
* A reader that is light, inexpensive, with excellent graphics, that can easily be read in the sun.
* The reader must allow me to upload any text, not just from its own selection. This includes raw text files, html files and pdf. If I can't use it for papers, references and public domain/copyright expired works, it's not much good for me.
* The books need to be _mine_, in the same way that dead-tree versions are today. I can keep the copy for as long as I want, I can make backups to my hearts content, and I can sell it on, or give it away if or when I tire of it. No tying it to a particular reader in other words. I would not appreciate having to rebuy my library, just because my reader up and died.
* Neither books nor reader is to require any kind of interaction with the manufacturer or seller in any way, once I purchased it. I on't want to feel tied down, and I don't want to feel like I'm just borrowing the thing, not owning it.
I'm waiting...
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
This is a little tainted because the inital DRM efforts, in addition to being almost completely useless, were also extrememly draconian. It's no wonder people weren't buying the readers if the industry is treating them with that much hostility.
One more thing I'd like to point out. I don't know how well it's doing in the grand scheme of things, but the Baen Webscription Service doesn't seem to have killed their paperback production, even though their books are completely without DRM.
I read the internet for the articles.
Rampant piracy.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I've always thought that if they could get school textbooks realeased on these things at reasonable prices ($20 instead of $90), there would be an instant market that would nearly guarantee success. It amazes me this hasn't been done yet. It's possibly the ideal market for these devices.
1) VERY SMOOTH scrolling with no blurs, no matter how complicated the diagrams.
2) The ability to control the content with just your hands - no keyboard, mouse or touchpad - you should be able to hold it like a book and read it - maybe a tap on the lower right corner to advance to the next page and on the lower left corner to go to the previous page.
3) Eliminate the need to sit facing a vertical screen.
4) Minimize the dialogs. A book doesn't ask you if you want to save the file.
5) Make the text search work through voice recognition.
6) Hardly any boot-up time.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I like RealBooks (you know the kind with PAPER, etc...) because...
*Major Reason: Looking at a monitor screen (any screen, LCD, CRT, whatever) for too long tends to make my eyes red and sore. My eyes dry out easily, and I find that I blink much less when looking at a computer screen, so that is going to always be a problem for me.
* I read VERY fast. (Approx 1,500 WPM). With a book, I can finish a page, switch to the next, turn the page, repeat, while ebooks generally need to be scrolled downwards, (or pageDown) which results in a slight delay while I find my place again.
*Spacial recognition: Partly due to the fast reading, I don't read word-at-a-time, I read paragraphs at a time, and the screens on handheld readers don't show ENOUGH text- I generally finish the entire window in less time than it takes to tell it.
*it's so much easier to just flip to where I was- I tend to remember that the bit I wanted to reread was "about halfway through, on the left hand side..." while ebooks make it hard to do the same... "my slider bar was about 2/3 down" can change depending on the size of the window you're reading it in...
All very personal reasons. I have a few ebooks on my PC, but unless I cannot find the same book in tangible form, I won't sit down and read them.
> There will come a day when there is a generation of folks who use ebooks and consider printed books cumbersome and an anachronism.
Dear God, I hope not. I think the loss of the book would be a giant leap backwards for civilization. Call me nostalgic, call me romantic, call me old-fashioned, but I think there's something soul-satisfyingly and fundamentally *right* about books. E-books and text files are fine and wonderful for random mail, documentation, technical info, you know - just data. But there's something about writing (and I mean "writing" as opposed to "just typing," to paraphrase Truman Capote) that I think demands the container of a book. It's a statement, I think. It's the physical manifestation of the words inside that somehow says "this is important stuff! Worth killing a tree for, even!" I think that making a book is what sets literature apart from just being data, the same way that a handwritten letter will always mean more than an email.
E-books mean the loss of the inside cover, which means never opening an old book and seeing a note from that girl you dated in college. And that, my friends, is a vast loss for mankind.
My problem with eBooks is that it is blaringly obvious when you are using them. When I grab a book & start to read, I want to get lost in the story. When I grab my PDA & start to read, I tend to get lost in the tech. I find myself thinking about scrolling correctly, wishing there was more screen, screen brightness settings, etc. In short, I find myself thinking about everything except the story.
A traditional book is the simplest technology available to get the job done. It's cheap & "platform" independent. There's nothing to think about. You just pick it up and read.
The only way I see eBooks taking off, at least for myself, is if my life somehow makes it nice to always have a book available (or multiple books). Say I take a lot of short trips in taxis or I have lots of 5-minutes breaks before meetings. Then it would be great to have a book on my PDA to fill that time.
Given that situation, I would see eBooks more as an addition than a replacement. For example, right now I'm reading two books. One at home & one at work. If I could add another "anywhere" book on my PDA that might not be a bad idea. But I still wouldn't want to replace the other two because a paper book just works so darn well.
- When the display resolution is as good as paper.
- When the contrast of a display in all lighted conditions is as good as paper (current displays are better in total darkness).
- When battery life is not an issue at all - 24 or more hours on a charge, and less than 30 minutes to recharge.
- When you don't have to worry about breaking an eBook by dropping it or sitting on it.
- When replacement cost isn't an issue for your eBook reader.
- When using an eBook is as easy as grabbing a dead tree book off the bookshelf.
- When an eBook can be folded up or rolled up and stuffed in a pocket - like a paperback or magazine.
- When the pricing of eBook content reflects the significantly lower production and distribution costs involved.
And to sum it up with a simple, one-sentence rule:
eBooks will dominate the market as soon as a typical user doesn't hesitate to swat a fly with the eBook instead of the paper version.
That will indicate that eBook readers have finally met most of (if not all of) the criteria I set above.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You're old-fashioned.
What you say about books/e-books could easily be said about letters/e-mails. Now obviously letters still have their place, but that place is shrinking - and rightly so.
The e-book generation will never miss that romantic note on the inside cover, but they will think it sad that their grandparents now have to rely on a couple of dusty letters and photos of the girl they dated in college, whereas they have video clips to do their sighing over.
The problem isn't so much the asshat professors as it is the publishing company. Lets remember these asshat professors are some of the same people that have given us so much open source code and other benevolent contributions to society.
Textbook publishing is big business, the publishing companies just have to learn how to move to electronic publishing and make it work. It's just like the RIAA, their business model will NOT last forever. Sooner or later someone will provide electronic books, asshat professors and other authors will figure out that there is no need to pay publishing houses huge amounts of money, proofreaders and editors will become independant contracters that just get emailed copy, and the publishing industry as we know it will come to an end.
It's amazing to me how so many of the issues here on slashdot boil down to the same thing. The recording industry, movie industry, publishing industry and software industry have all sprung up over the last 100 or so years as middle men between the musicians, actors, authors, coders and the consumer. They server very little purpose. Now with the massive influence of the Internet all of these creative people are beginning to have no use for all of the managers and marketing people that are just taking a cut of the profits. Eventually, I expect most creative/IP type of products to be available on the net by the creators for a minimal fee.
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