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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."
The common wisdom is that eBooks will have a hard time for two reasons: bad reader devices and book junkies opting only for the hard stuff, the dead-tree form factor.
There will come a day when there is a generation of folks who use ebooks and consider printed books cumbersome and an anachronism. I'm not part of that generation but I see it coming.
I do remember doing some research back in the early 80's with kids that had reading disabilities and we found that there was a difference in comprehension when reading from a monitor (more or less direct light) versus a printed page (reflected light). Direct light seemed to yield better comprehension. We controlled for a lot, but not all, contravening variables so I don't know if this is cogent to the ebook debate.
Cheers!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
If there was a truly comfortable, intuitive, and usable reader with a wide selection of books then I might be interested. You need to be able to read under any light, and it can't be any more cumbersome than your standard novel. The graphics would have to be print quality.
And obviously the price would have to be reasonable, probably less than $100.
Personally, I prefer having a physical book in my hand to page through rather then trying to read something on a screen. An actual book just feels more "solid" and "real" to me. But, there are some advantages to ebooks, especially when used as a reference document. The good old ctrl-F makes finding specific information much faster then looking in an index or table of contents. Also, If you forget your ebook somewhere, it is just a matter of connecting to your home computer to download it wherever you may happen to be.
I'm reading Andre Norton's Time Traders from the Baen Free Library using Mobireader on a Palm Zaire 72.
I'm not thrilled with it, preferring a real book, but it is readable and the ability (if I actually bought a dictionary for my palm) to look up words right there and make annotations is pretty cool.
Tech books seem more likely, but the convience of having a number of books at no additional weight is really nice, especially when I travel.
The biggest thing killing ebooks right now? High cost and DRM. I don't want to pay more (or even the same) for an e-book and I want to be able to read it on several devices.
Audible.com has better pricing (and they have to pay someone to read the thing) so I'm not sure why e-books don't.
The media is wrong for books.
What I do see happening with extreme speed is on demand paperback publishing.
The big publishing companies are presently not in the business of book creation. They are in the business of manufacture and distribution of wood products. Instead of varnish, they cover theirs in ink.
It makes MUCH more sense store the books electronic at a site, and use a credit card (or cell phone) operated printer that can produce a good quality bound paperback in a matter of ten minutes or so.
"Bookstore" will be the place you go to get the book. They'll be able to have one or two on the shelves of popular books for browsing and tens of thousands of browseable book jackets as well. You'll also be able to go online and decide what book you want and have it "sent" to that printer or possibly even bring your own home-made or open source book on flash or thumb drive or something and have it printed.
Wired: Kinkos
Tired: Borders
Expired: Using Wired Magazine to sound hip.
--AP
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
The eBook industry may be stunted for some, but we're doing just fine selling PDF versions of our Pragmatic Bookshelf titles.
/\ndy
*Many* of our customers choose to buy what we call a "combo pack", that gives them both the dead-tree version and a searchable, non-DRM restricted PDF file. While I think the dead-tree form has the best ergonomics, the PDF is really handy for reading on airplanes, etc.
Paper is better in some ways and eBooks are better in others. Use the right tool for the job!
--
Personally, I own two PDA's, including the new Dell Axim X30 high.
.html, which sucks for some reason. (I can play quake 2, but not read a html page > 500kb?)
I was shocked at the lack of simple software for e-Books. I tried loading a html book into it. IE slows down more than a sunday driver at a crossing.
It was painful to use. A pda is not much smaller than a flimsy paperback. I am talking about travel reading, making the most of those flights, taxis, trains.
We can get content from the web - that is fine. We can read enough news - but some good books wouldn't go amiss.
I downloaded copies of Terry Pratchets Discworld, all of them. I guess this is legitimate since I have all of them in hard/paperback at home.
Some are TXT, they read best. Some are
I think the real problem is, book reader costs. The cost of that little LCD. Lets get the market adoption of those to a critical mass. People who have them now might not appreciate reading a book via it, and see it as a reminder / toy.
Common format - I installed Acrobat reader on my PDA, blam, half the screen lines faded out wierd, froze, adn I had to soft reset. Thanks Adobe. *cough*wankers*cough*
Sorry that was for them handling their PDF encryption the way they did.
So, I would happily pay money for a book. I am writing my own eBook reader for simple txt and html files. I want 'next page' that cleanly replaces the page. I want to move my eyes to the top, like a book, not fix them at one point (scrolling) and jitter as I 'page down'
I think moving your eyes as you read is less stressful.
Also, a simple 'dog ear' function that remembers where you were.
Oh, and when I read a book, and it makes a reference to a clue before, a quick 'find last reference' of a word might be nice.
I think footnotes should be placed inside and then replaced with a *, which you can tap to view. (since they are no longer footnotes, we can call them annotations?)
Of course, when we effectively zero the costs of publishing, what are publishers good for? Of course, they can tie thier writers into thier e-Books if they publish the hardcopies also.
They could get a small fee for supporting thier site and download bandwidth. But as I see it, 95% at least of the price I pay should go to the Author.
Then we can see eBooks at very low prices. And the only ones who will loose out are the publishers. Who cares about them?
Now we need some way of moving music into a computer so we can listen to it on the move... that woudl rule, then we could... no it sounds like a silly idea. You cannot get rid of music publishers.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I would contest that the exact opposite is true.
It's not 'good books' that are needed but good ol'fashioned pulp books. The one dollar, cheesy plot, mass produced, scantily clad hero and heroine, trash books that helped push romance and sci-fi as genre's until real writers and stories could be established.
If I have a "good" book, I'm more likely to buy it in paper format, because it's a GOOD book. I'll want to make sure that in 10 years, I can still read it. I'll want the 'collectors' version. It's the difference between buying the DVD and or the VHS tape, for the good stuff, I want the quality presentation. eBooks, are not quality presentation.
What really needs to happen is for one of the publishers of those trash novels you find in the "book" section of Wal-Mart or displayed as "impulse" items in dollar stores to decide to start including eBook versions of their works with the pulp version. Once people have eBooks, they'll start considering eBook readers an actual reasonable investment rather than a geek toy.