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New Sony E-Book Device To Debut This Year
Luke PiWalker writes "Sony hopes to pen a new chapter for e-books with a device set to debut later this year. The secret? A display based on E Ink technology that goes miles beyond LCDs and CRTs. From the article: 'Scheduled to go on sale this spring for between $300 and $400, the Reader is a compact slab about the size of a small paperback book (5-by-7 inches, and a half-inch thick). But it's the 3.5-by-4.8-inch display that made it the buzz of the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month in Las Vegas.'"
No more Sony in my house, sorry.
Sony may have a good marketing machine, but I make a note to always stay way clear of them.
* Sony products are usually 20% more expensive, with *less* features than the competitors.
* Sony products adhere strictly to DVD Region coding: corrupt racketeering of the DVD distribution.
* Sony products are simply not as competitive as other products.
* Sony products are slow to move to the marketplace, MP3 players were the most amusing addition to their product line, almost 4 years after the ipod.
Everytime I see some fashion crazy gumby tell me they just bought the top of the line Sony TV I sit back and have a quiet chuckle. They just spent 20% more than they needed too, and with probably only 50% of the features found in other leading products.
I want one too, but only if it can read HTML.
If it can't access Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ or the Baen free library (and subscriptions) http://www.baen.com/library/, well, what use is it?
But wouldn't RSS imply the ability to display HTML as well?
Although the new technology is attractive, the technology in the Rocket eBook or the Franklin eBookman was more than adequate. I still have my five-year-old Rocket and I still use it. I can bring ten books on a trip in a device that's smaller and lighter than a trade paperback and have a pleasurable, immersive reading experience.
What has prevented the eBook from taking off--killed it, at least for the moment--is not the devices. It is, in order of importance: limited title availability, limited title availability, limited title availability, excessive price, and DRM. Fix those problems and the eBook market will take off, even if you have to read them on a cell phone screen.
Of these, title availability is the most serious. At one point I checked, and at that time, of about 44 books on Oprah's Book Club list, something like 35 of them were available as audiobooks... and something like six of them were available as ebooks in ANY format. And no more than about four of them in any specific format.
TFA is entitled "Screening the Latest Bestseller," but unless something changes drastically, only a small fraction of the latest bestsellers will be screenable. Maybe you don't care for Barbara Kingsolver but I do, and none of her books has ever been available as an eBook.
Price. I've had about half-a-dozen conversations with strangers who saw me using my Rocket. They would be interested, I'd hand it to them so they could scroll pages, they'd be impressed, they'd ask about price and capacity and so forth. Then would come the question: "How much do the eBooks cost?" I'd answer "About the same as a hardbound for books that are not out in paper, about the same as a paperback for books that are in paperback." They'd give me a you-gotta-be-kidding look of disbelief and that would be that. End of story.
And, DRM. Look guys, don't you get it? One of the pleasures of books is lending them. Why do you think bookplates were invented? If I can't lend my son the latest Stephen King, don't bother. True story: just last year, my wife bought a copy of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." "Wow, this is really good," she says. "You'd probably like to read it when I'm done with it." Pregnant pause. "Uh, honey... I'm afraid I've already read it. I bought it for my Rocket eBook a couple of years ago." Phooey. Paid twice for the damn book. Not that it would have mattered, as my wife doesn't own a Rocket eBook, and even if she did the content was keyed to the serial number of the individual device and I couldn't have loaned it to her anyway.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
When they make things digitally restricted and quite literally "locked up in crypto bottles" (John Perry Barlow), the fallout (especially among all the tech-savvy that should be the earliest adopters at premium prices) tends to be the one that can be seen from the start of this discussion: an immediate association with practices perceived as "evil" (why would any company in their right mind want to match Microsoft on this one?!) that only billions in advertising (if anything) can make go away again...
Once they do get over their impulse to restrict and restrain, however, and simply sell the customer what the customer wants (cf. reprogrammable Aibos, MP3/4-capable players - and remember when everyone wanted a "Walkman(TM)"?), volume, clever additional applications, and the power of a premium brand more than make up for anything DRM (and lawsuits against tinkerers) could ever have earned them - and this improves rather than taints the image they enjoy in the public eye.