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."

Comments

Easy answer

[mirko]

Good books that people want to read and which will only be ported to this medium.

Re:Easy answer

[PEdelman]

I would have probably bought an eBook reader by now if there was one reasonably priced which could display the content that I want. Most eBook readers allow you only to buy some pre-selected content in a propriety format, but what I'd really want is to read articles, essays and magazines I find or buy on the internet in a convenient matter and in bed or while travelling. If somebody made an eBook reader which could display my content instead of theirs (and which isn't particulary expensive), I'm all for it.

Re:Easy answer

[Lumpy]

No that really is not the answer.

Think about the one place where a person is required to have a large amount of very bulky books with them and they need to carry them from place to place.

That's right. textbooks. If I could at the beginning of a semester go and download the 12 600+ page texts I need for this semester so I can carry them easily in that small textbok sized reader/ annotator I'd do it in a second.

Here's the problem. Professors that write textbooks are asshats.

They are busy screwing the students already by "requireing" the latest edition that has no more real content but has things re-ordered a bit to eliminate the used textbook marketability.

I know of one as UofM that threatened a grad student with expulsion if he kept circulating a page that cross referenced the new edition's chapter numbers with the older version of the text.

Re:Easy answer

[pla]

If somebody made an eBook reader which could display my content instead of theirs (and which isn't particulary expensive), I'm all for it.

I think the problem here stems from the expectations of the eBook manufacturers...

They hope to get in on the start of a content distribution system similar to a modern video-game console - ie, total lock-in to their chosen format and "branded" titles. All via a hefty dose of two-way DRM (no unauthorized content, and unauthorized viewing of content on other devices).

I sincerely believe that, and that alone, has caused the failure thus far of the eBook.

Regarding the screen - An easy-on-the-eyes display would go a long way toward getting people to "snuggle up in bed" with an eBook. But merely creating a display that looks exactly like paper, with the same easiness on the eyes, will not make or kill eBooks. As an example, everyone I know with a Palm (or similar portable) stores at least a few books on it, reading them when they have to wait somewhere (airport, bathroom, boring meetings, etc). If you've ever used a handheld to read anything longer than notes to yourself, you realize they do not make your eyes happy. Yet people will still put in 10+ hours a week reading on one.

Book-like formats - Nope, these won't save eBooks either. Referring back to people I know who read books on their Palm, they don't use any fancy text layout (at best, HTML-like). They view plain text.


Overall, this boils down to basically one point... CONTENT! Exactly as you suggest, I require of any potential eBook that I can go and download the entire Project Guttenberg library, and instantly have access to thousands of classic texts. It should, at a minimum, have the ability to process plaintext and HTML, and PDF would help quite a bit as well (though I realize that might involve nasty licensing issues, and could live without it).

If the manufacturer wants to release their own content optimized for their reader, hey, cool, I have no problem with that. But if they restrict me to what they release, they can consider me a non-customer.


Two other, lesser points...

One, battery life. I can read for 8+ hours on an old Palm. If an eBook reader doesn't have a similar battery life, I would consider that a BIG negative.

And two, physical media... Ideally, an eBook reader would simply use either ISO9660-formatted CDs (and as a bonus, let me listen to music if I so desire it... No point in letting existing hardware go unused), or have the ability to see USB keychain-style drives. I could burn anything I want to CD and/or copy it to my keychain drive, and dump it over to the eBook. No special cartridges or proprietary cables to hook it up to my PC/vendor kiosks... Just keep it simple and well-known.

It will happen eventually

[erick99]

I have tried to read ebooks on my desktop, notebook, and Palm Vx. I have a hard time quantifying why I still strongly prefer a printed book. Perhaps part of it is that I find it far easier to flip back in a book to a passage that I want to reread. I also like having a small pile of books on my bed from which I can grab when I go to bed. It is one thing to look at a pile of books and grab one than to go through a directory of titles. However, all of these objections can be reasonably rebutted so perhaps I just have a preference for printed books because I am 46 and I am just too used to paper?

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

Re:It will happen eventually

[caswelmo]

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.

Re:It will happen eventually

[kieran]

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.

An answer

[JanneM]

Cory Doctorow (who reasonably knows a thing or two about electronic publishing) has a pretty good piece disassembling the Gizmodo article here: Ebook column that gets it all wrong

Pretty straightforward

[Otter]

It will take a new generation accustomed to living its life through handheld electronics and without the level of comfort with heavy paper books that we have.

I'm going to go to my grave preferring paper, regardless of what technology comes along between now and then.

Re:Pretty straightforward

[Em Emalb]

there is something to be said for "the old way" of doing things.

A book is an awesome medium for reading.

And just like that useless article on the segway, you can build the tech, but if it sucks people won't use it.

So that's the answer: build technology that doesn't suck.

Speaking of which, this color scheme is giving me a headache. Seriously. Who's the butthead that thought this scheme up? Can we vote on this?

It will need good electronic paper

[wheany]

I will buy an ebook when I can read it as comfortably as a normal book. High contrast, high resolution, readable in daylight.

Re:It will need good electronic paper

[mblase]

I will buy an ebook when I can read it as comfortably as a normal book. High contrast, high resolution, readable in daylight.

Or at night. In addition, I'd like it to be lightweight, durable enough to stick in a backpack all day long, and be hinged with two screens on the inside so I can read it like it were a regular book.

The universal convenience of the long-established book user interface cannot be underestimated. In some strange, indescribable way, it's more natural for me to read a paper book than it is to read text on a flat screen, clicking a "next" button repeatedly.

Maybe it's just that a book is easier and more comfortable to hold in two hands than my Palm is to hold in one. But my point is: eBook readers aren't going to take off if they're confined to the tablet format. Give me a folding device with screens on both halves so I can hold it in my hand and "flip pages" instead of just scrolling text. Do this, make it cheap enough for consumers, and I'll be one of the first to buy it.

Readers and Books

[Mantrid]

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.

Cory Doctrow had a different take.

[Omegaunit]

And I agree with his interpretation from his article: " Ebook column that gets it all wrong Gizmodo has a new column called "Feature Creep," and they kicked it off with an editorial about the future of ebooks that is striking for its complete disregard for the actual marketplace experiences with ebooks. It's full of hoary chestnuts about ebooks that have been emptily mouthed for 10 years ("Call it digital paper or electronic ink, it's the future of eBooks.") and aside from the occassional iPod comparison, there's hardly a paragraph in there that couldn't have been written in 1997 -- nor one that takes note of any of the events since then (well, to be fair, there's also a lot of puffery stuck in there to promote an ebook company called Vertical that probably didn't exist in 1997, but that's beside the point). Take DRM. The author asserts on the one hand that DRM can work, and that it won't be so invasive that it turns readers (whom the author insists on calling "consumers," an odious buzzword that invokes Gibson's description in Idoru, "...a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed") off. This despite the actual marketplace fact that all DRM becomes invasive (ask any copyright policy maker in a country that allows parallel importing how he feels about the "lightweight" region-coding DRM on DVDs that reverses the laws he was elected to enact). This despite the actual marketplace fact that DRM is generally broken within a few days of engagement with the public, often by teenagers, grad students, or people with ready acccess to sophisticated DRM-cracking tools like Google and the sinister Shift key (for more on DRM, see my DRM talk)" http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/29/ebook_column_ that_ge.html

real books or ebooks?

[kingstalemuffins]

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.

the answer is what they do not want to hear.

[Lumpy]

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.

reading my first e-book

[Kevinv]

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.

Interesting.

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

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 ;)

I don't see eBooks having a huge uptake

[CFD339]

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

What I'd need

[JanneM]

* 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...

Grr, this article made me angry

[jandrese]

Check that: If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period. If you want to run a capitalist economy - many societies are hell-bent on it - and you want quality in your art and entertainment, your artists must be paid.

So without DRM the entire entertainment industry just up and quits right? I mean it's obviously reasonable to expect your books to delete themselves after 2 weeks (who here hasn't taken more than 2 weeks to read a book?). The author of this article is smoking a bit too much of what the industry is selling. Even the concept of Copyright is a recent invention, and there were certainly entertainers before Copyright came around. Here's a newsflash: people will still buy your stuff even if you don't have DRM on it. More people will pirate it, but most of those people will pirate it anyway if it is popular enough. This is kind of like saying that a few shoplifters are going to destroy civilization as we know it.

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.

What Will It Take For eBook Adoption?

[Andy_R]

Rampant piracy.

We're selling plenty of PDF's.

[AndyHunt]

The eBook industry may be stunted for some, but we're doing just fine selling PDF versions of our Pragmatic Bookshelf titles.

*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!

-- /\ndy

Well, ebooks work for me.

[Jaywalk]

I've been reading ebooks on my old Handspring Visor for years. I have two readers -- one for Palm Digital Media and one for Baen (including free scifi!) -- and don't see the problem. I've got a couple dozen books on my PDA now, including the complete Tarzan series and three or four scifi books I haven't read. Since I'm almost always carrying my PDA I can read any time I want and I don't have to wake my wife when I read in bed; I just turn on the backlighting. If I need room on my PDA I can just erase some books since I keep backups of the digital versions. I've also moved from one PDA to another and took my library with me.

Maybe I'm just a gadget freak but, frankly, I've never understood the problem. I read paper books and a few magazines as well, but don't much care how the words get in front of my eyeballs.

When will eBooks take over?

[jht]

- 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.

Re:Classic example of target audience

[robertjw]

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.