Slashdot Mirror
When Will E-Books Become Mainstream?
An anonymous reader writes "IBM developerWorks is running an interesting article dicussing the difficulties faced by e-books and what it might take to help them to 'break out'. What are some other ways to give books a 21st-century facelift?"
real books require no power, are cheap, have excellent contrast, great form factor, are durable, and last a long time
why do we even need e-books?
seriously, i'm no luddite, i just fail to see any compelling reason to replace something that isn't broken
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is completely stupid. The reason I read books is to give my eyes a break FROM the screen, so I can sit outdoors and breath some fresh air. I read so that I'm not sitting in front of a monitor all day, bathing my eyes in radiation and making my eyeglass prescription worse by the second. I think THIS is the point e-book retailers are missing - most people would simply rather sit down outside on their front porch, or maybe just lie down in bed with a REAL book. That's why I never caught onto e-Books. Then again, you have the piracy protection issue. Most you can basically only download on ONE computer, and if something crashes, or you upgrade your mobo and have to reformat and reinstall - too bad. The e-book is tied to THAT particular computer, and you basically have built a new one. Theres $15 bucks down the drain. Theres another point - the price of e-books. You can't sell electronic data for the same price as a real physical object - albiet, prices HAVE gone down on them a bit, but not enough to entice me. Of course, it isn't the price that bothers me, its the first reason I listed.
"Potpourii doesn't taste as good as it smells." - Dark_Link2135
An e-book should;
Be light enough to read in bed.
have a built in dictionary(highlight word, get
def , in language of choice)
have built in pronunciation, (highlight word or phrase and hear it, in language of choice)
I've used e-books before, and if I ever go back to China to work then I'll probably have to convert to almost entirely e-books. It has a major advantage in the size - you can carry many books with you without having the size/weight being any sort of issue. While I prefer real, physical ones more, the system isn't bad... the only problem is that you don't have any price incentive for buying them - you're just giving the publishers a huge profit margin.
Well, beyond the fact that there aren't many companies putting out E-books as-yet...
- Exportability. Who wants to buy an E-book (that costs nearly as much as the paper version) when it's digitally signed/encrypted so that it can't be exported into other formats? It may not bother you now, but a few years down the line it'd really piss you off if that copy of Harry Potter in
.lit format couldn't be converted to a format that is still in existence. Hell, some E-books won't even let you print your copy out on paper. WTF is up with that...
Just my 2 cents. YMMV/dev/random
I think a huge factor is generational. My nephew is nine, and even he prefers reading paper books to ebooks on my IPAQ.
Books are integral to human learning and we're extremely familiar with them; our earliest memories have books in them.
When we start reading bedtime stories to our nieces and nephews from tablets and electronic paper, then children will grow up knowing that as the way to be.
Because children growing up now are still being taught from and are used to reading books, it's going to take a long time. Maybe their children, or their grandchildren.
The paradigm changes when your kid reads from an online textbook via a ruggedized tablet at school that allows him totake notes that are stored online. The same tablet allows him to record the entire lecture so that he can listen to it over and over, answering any questions he might have in absentia. That same textbook, with the same notes, is available to him everywhere and anywhere on the web... so he doesn't need a paper copy of the book.
Again, it sounds like its a couple of generations down.
That's one of the really cool things about Japan. They're on new tech yesterday. I think that's where we're headed.
un burrito me trampeó.
When we have nice portable epaper to read them on. If epaper really does require little power it could be solar powered.
Also the ebooks need to come in an open format, I personally think semantically correct (x)html would be perfect. Easily restyled to your personally preference.
Blind users would also benefit from that as they wouldn't need to wait ages for the book to come out on tape, assuming it does at all.
Firefox in my pocket is what i want.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I've always decided that the main problem with eBooks was the form-factor and display.
Give me an "eBook" that's about the size and weight of a standard paperback. Open it up, and there should be electronic paper on both sides. Visible in normal light and bright sunshine. Minimum 300dpi resolution. The two facing screens should display type much like a paperback does, with a nice mat finish (no shiny stuff). And it should be augmented by touch sensitivity, so I can "change pages" with "gestures"... by swiping across the right hand page (top corner down towards center) in the standard "turning the page" gesture. There should be touch sensitive spots along the bottom that allow me to call up the table of contents, an index (that also allows searches), and tools to allow me to highlight and bookmark passages. When I open the eBook it should open to right where I left off. It should be water resistent, shock resistent, and the screen should be flexible enough that I don't have to worry about breaking the damn thing.
New books should be just a pluggable memory cartridge away. The memory cartridges should also store the bookmarks and highlights and "current position" so I can flip through several books at any time without losing my place in any one of them.
Once an eBook experience is like THAT, then watch out, they'll actually start to catch on. Or at the very least, *I* would suddenly be interested in owning one.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I'd say that there are 2 hurdles to ebooks. An "ipod of ebook readers" won't fix either.
1) It needs to work everywhere. No proprietary devices, software, or code. Like HTML... or the printing press. Just print out the book if you like.
2) No DRM. That crap is killing everything, and making me consider moving to the bahamas or something. I wish I'd never heard of it. Well, it is hard to kill music with DRM, but easy to kill books. So we need something like HTML... or the printing press. Just print out the book if you like.
Basically, You're using the best eBook reader in the world right now. HTML is the best format for it. No DRM. No "serious" compatibility issues (ignoring FF/IE/Opera/Etc arguments). It is supported on more devices than I could possibly list. Tons of devices are capable of serving up HTML, even when they have no good reason to.
Oh, and I read about 3 ebooks a week. I use Project Gutenberg and HTML, or PDF when I have to. PDF sucks, but it has the best DRM/Useability tradeoff.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Most books are printed on wood pulp paper. Wood pulp paper is slightly acid (the process uses sulphur dioxide) so the book will start to crumble appart after a few years of usage, I'm not quite sure how quickly they degrade, but from some experience 75 years seems to be pushing it. (I've had books a lot younger fall appart like they were moth eaten).
Older books (pre UN drug treaty) were printed on hemp paper and can last hundreds of years without too many problems.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I had thought that being on an IBM site, it would actually have some insightful commentary and discussion on the issues facing ebooks.
Instead, it reiterated the same tired old points pro and con, totally missed the point of the Baen Free Library (and also didn't recognize that Webscriptions, its commercial counterpart, has been doing quite well for itself in e-sales alone), and went on to snark at the very notion of commercially-viable ebooks and talk about various things that don't have a darned thing to do with ebooks, like RFID tagging library books. Um, what?
And the discussion is the Standard Slashdot Ebook Advocacy Debate, whereupon people mostly or totally ignore the content of the article and instead argue about how ebooks suxx0r or r0xx0r.
And here I'd hoped I'd read something interesting. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
How about taking ADVANTAGE of the digital form
The biggest is the cost shift issue.
Only when ebooks are priced such that it reflects the fact that the costs are a lot lower to make them. That and there is an affordable large transflective display so I don't have to read on an emissive screen.
As it is, it costs more to buy 50 ebooks + some sort of reader than it does to just buy the 50 books. And those books are re-sellable. The ebook reader is too risky from a damage perspective, I can drop a book on concrete 2m up (or higher) and still read it, do you know anyone that is willing to drop their PDA from that height? So the low cost and durability of the e-book reader is important.
If an ebook costed 10% that of a paper book to reflect the significantly lowered costs, then I wouldn't be worried about resellability. I won't pay 90% of the cost of a paper book, in reality, that's a lot more expensive than the paper book because of the inability to resell it, and the requirement to own a reader. Searchability is nice but not worth the expense, the way things are currently priced.
The above is mostly for entertainment. For reference information, I currently just use the internet whenever possible.
All the earlier observations in this thread are correct.
Really, the only reasons for electronic books (not e-books specifically) are the reasons software vendors offer them as free downloads: to reduce expense and speed up delivery. It makes sense for me to download the manual for a piece of hardware, or download developer documentation from Oracle. It's free, and it saves me the trouble of lugging a lot of heavy books.
For smaller books, fiction or books I'll want to read away from my computer, the advantages are almost all on the vendor's side of the transaction. They aren't much cheaper, and the problems of utility have already been noted.
So the question "when will e-books become mainstream" becomes "when will e-books offer the -utility- of paperbacks." And the answer becomes, "when various relatively small technical problems are solved, and when larger licensing and economic problems with the e-book business model are solved, so we can have cheaper e-books and -dirt- cheap readers."
Frankly, I see no way they will become mainstream until they can give away the readers like mousepads.
I used to do the dead tree thing. However, this all changed when I got a cheap small (486/75) laptop, weighing in at about 1Kg, and with a 8" screen. Before that I would occasionally read a book on a monitor, but it was rare. The laptop (now upgraded to a PII300 10" 1.1Kg) was light enough to hold in one hand while reading, and easy to read from in most lights. 80x25 suits for most occasions, whether I'm lying down with the laptop open on my cnest, or the laptop is lying on its side on the bed. Combined with a trivial script to take any format of ebook and throw out a html document hyperlinked so that names not occurring in the last 50 lines link back to the first definition, this makes it vastly easier for me to read than trees. I don't have to worry about storing the books. I can take the next book in a series, and use the back referencing hyperlinks to refresh memory. There is no hand strain due to the compromise between breaking the spine and reading easily. If I want to read at a greater distance, I just bump up the text size. Combined with a wireless mouse with a scrollwheel, this makes it easy to read in bed without having to have a hand outside the covers, or to read while excersizing. Oddly, a tablet might not suit quite so well. I find the keyboard at a right angle to the display to be very convenient when it comes to resting it on things. Power is an issue of course. If I was without power in many locations, my attitude may be different.
"Only when you can write notes and deface them. When they're not copy-protected, for sure. When you can lend them to your friends."
Wow, I can't believe the lists of demands. It's like a hostage negotiation, heh.
Several years ago, I had a PocketPC. I downloaded a couple of e-books and found the experience quite enjoyable. The display and form factor were nice. It was so nice that I could hold the unit in one hand instead of using both to force it to stay open. The scroll wheel made page turning nice and easy. The backlit display killed the problem I have with orienting to the light. (i.e. my head casting a shadow over the book...) I could even highlight sentences of the book and bookmark them. (I like to go look up terms I don't understand, particularly when I read books written in other countries.) I was really intrigued by the idea of having a library of books in that unit. No more storage area for books.
What held me back was that there wasn't much selection. Today, well I'm PocketPC-less, but I've done a little rooting around for ebooks I'd be interested. I found more than I found a few years ago, but I'm not impressed. Maybe it's because I'm too picky, who knows? In any event, I think it's pretty sad.
For all the complaints about DRM and all that other crap, I think the problem is simply supply. Although I'd be willing to bet that the supply problem would ease if more people had palm devices. I don't see that getting rectified any time soon unless wireless internet becomes ubiquitous. Even then, it's a bit of hard sell to anybody who hasn't sat down and read an e-Book. I thought the idea was silly until I found a free one that I was interested in reading. Today I read books thinking "Dammit, I wish I still had my Pocket PC."
"Derp de derp."
First, the article highlight a few common points about the current state of e-books, but then it degenerates into some kind of rant (although it has some good points too).
First, I have a few things to say about the "properties" of e-books.
Fine, that's true. That does not mean they are destined to be a failure. One just has to know the consequences of using one technology (ebooks) or another (paper).
I can carry more e-books in my PDA than I could possibly do with paper (about 20 books). I know perfectly that I'm forced to read from a tiny little screen, but that's something I know, that's the price I pay. If some day I wanted to read from a more "comfortable" medium, I could easily take a paper book from my home library. It's a matter of choices. It might be better for reading reference material, but that doesn't mean it's not workable.
This is related to the point above. You have to keep in mind that you cannot read a paper book either without power (cannot read in the dark). Okay, in the case of ebooks, you need TWO power sources.
He's right about that. That's why standards are important. We've got ASCII text as a las resort, though.
Cory Doctorow already talked about that. He's right on target. Most of the e-books I read are either:
No need to say anything else.
About books and readers, even if there are no commercially available readers, that does not mean people wouldn't use one. People do read their reference material from somewhere. It would be great if they made that "electronic paper" cheap enough, but even if that level cannot be achieved that doesn't mean ebooks are not good.
Then he proceeds to bash some (IMHO stupid) ideas from marketing people. The author's right about this. Most of these ideas are about trying to sell books to people that wouldn't want to read them (like a video-game-in-a-book).
E-books are probably not successful because of the points mentioned in the first part, especially the DRM stuff. I think they would be a success, even with mediocre reader devices if people realised they have a place, not exactly as the paper versions, but as something not quite the same, more versatile (I'm starting to sound like Mr. Doctorow...).
I think the show stopper is the DRM, that causes that more versatile, yet inferior thing to lose its versatility (thus making it an overall loser), with lack of good reader devices a not so important cause.
GPG 0x1B479C78
I've heard plenty of reasons why e-books "don't work."
Me, I don't think the e-book is a good format for fiction. If I want to read Lord of The Rings I don't want to be sitting at a PC or holding some device.
How about the positives:
-They can be published very fast.
I wrote an e-book, made the first sale within a week. In the traditional publishing world that doesn't happen.
-They have high profit margins for the writers:
The only middleman is the billing processor. Whats that, 3% or 4%? High profit margins for writers mean you can write a book that has a small audience and still pay your bills at the end of the month -- and maybe even write another.
-The can be easily updated
Forget 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions being measured in years. In the e-book world it can be a matter of days.
-Easier to make an interactive experience
In the e-book world the author can personally work with readers. For example, he or she could charge a price that would sound outrageous on Amazon or in Borders, but makes sense for a reader who needs in-depth and personal support. The author can tie the e-book into a premium/subscription website.
When I hear "e-book" I think positive. Very positive.
Many people, myself included, now offer free electronic versions of their books in an attempt to spread readership and increase hard-copy sales.
The intent is that many book lovers will buy the print version of a story they enjoyed, as well as reccommend the book to their non-Ebook friends to read.
To download a free copy my book, CYBERCHILD, go to www.smartalix.com/cyberchild.htm. A preview is also on that page so you can decide if it is your cup of tea.
It is available there in both PDF for Windows and Mobipocket PRC for Palm devices, so you can read it on your computer or your Palm-based PDA.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild