Sony Reader Now Available

Yaksha42 writes "The Sony Reader, which debuted at CES in January, is now available for purchase on the Sony website. The six inch screen uses E Ink, rather than an LCD, to display the text, reducing strain on the eye while reading. While you can buy books on Sony's Connect site, you can also load eBooks and other text onto the Reader in a variety of formats, including PDF and TXT files. It also comes with the ability to receive newsfeeds, display JPG images, and can play unsecured MP3 and AAC music files. Additional information can also be found on the Learning Center site."

Comments

The bookstore has more than just "regular" books

[antifoidulus]

For example they have manga too(albeit a small selection right now). If Sony doesn't fuck it up totally it could be an interesting distribution model. But given their history in this type of thing, I don't have too much confidence.

PG

[vonFinkelstien]

Imagine a Project Gutenburg DVD loaded on one of these.

Re:PG

[rbochan]

Yeah, complete with a free rootkit bult into the hardware. Sorry, but Sony's got a god damn long way to go before they can earn my trust again, if at all.

eBooks still to expensive!

[Trillian_1138]

See, I love the idea. I even might be willing to pay $350(!!!) for the damn thing. But the eBooks are still too damn expensive! Looking at Sony Connect shows, for example, "Marley and Me," "I Feel Bad About My Neck," and "Ricochet" as a 'bundle' for $42.03 as opposed to the list price of $53.89. *WHAT*?! With music I still think iTunes et al are often overcharging, but at least music has an inherent production cost, even if digital distrobution becomes cheaper. Don't lie to me and say books have the same production cost when distributed digitally and I should save a 'whopping' 11 bucks and change. Books distributed digitally become (almost) pure profit in a way music or movies can't, simply due to the nature of having to produce the damn things.

Even the 'better' deals (Angels and Demons for $5.59) still seem absured.

Jeeze, Sony. It's so like you! Create a really cool product, technologically, then have shit media for sale. And I want so hard to like e-readers...

-Trillian

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Danathar]

Then buy your ebooks as PDF's.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Trillian_1138]

Where can you do that?
-Trillian

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Nik13]

Same thing here in Canada. Last book I checked I wasn't saving 10%.

But that alone wouldn't be too bad, as one can likely find some other stuff to load it up with.

What I'm worried about is how good the software will be to read PDFs and such (not like the whole page can fit on the tiny screen, and what about graphics? etc). They say you should resize them yourself if you want them to look better on the tiny screen - not something I like to do. And if there is conversion required, how good will that be (for say, CHM files perhaps - which are used by many publishers). If it doesn't display the PDF & CHM files in a readable/useful format, then I really have no use for it.

Battery life seems OK, build quality might be good(?), but memory? I'd expect more than 64MB at 350$ - I have some PDF files bigger than this! One will need to spend more on a memory card for it to be useful. And like they say, it plays music, but it's not like there's much space for that either along with your book(s). I'm only hoping it's not their own weird memory card format, but this is Sony we're talking about... And seemingly it uses it's own proprietary/closed BBeB format for some things (and can be DRM'ed) - I like my information to be Free (as in speech).

Anyhow. I really wanted one of those a couple years ago, but at 350$ + memory card + shipping + tax (over 500$ Canadian), and coming from Sony - the rootkit guys, I think I'll skip. Hopefully someone else comes up with a similar device.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

BOOKS are too expensive. New ones, anyway.

You know those Barnes and Noble hardback classics? The ones that are often in the $6-$10 range? Dostoevsky, Melville, that kind of thing?

They are still making a profit on those!

Now, think about the paperback classics you see around sometimes. Not uncommon to get one for $2 or $3, not on sale. And they're still making money at that price!

Think about that the next time you're about to pay $14 for a trade paperback, or $9 for a normal one. Hell, I saw a shitty, mass-market paperback of Thucycides "History of the Pelleponesian War" that was selling for $14. Not even a trade, printed on awful paper, and with print so tiny as to be headache inducing. But it's a new(ish) translation, so they charge that much.

WTF?

I've completely stopped buying new books, except out of clearance bins and off of bargain shelves. I can get a standard hardback of almost any book for as much or less than it'd have cost me to buy the mass market paperback, and I often get super-nice hardback versions of classics for what I might have paid for a new trade. The new book market is ridiculous.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

rpgnow.com and many, many others.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

Haha, butchered the spelling of "Peloponnesian". Sorry. Heh.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[dan828]

alt.binaries.e-book might have content. I've heard. But don't download it.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are really paying for in a sense are the ones that don't sell well. It's easy to say just print the ones that sell well but that's often determined by the reader. A fair percentage loose money. The film industry has been trying to cut out loosing films so we get remakes and sequels. I'd hate to see publishing go through the same process. Actual printing isn't that expensive if you are printing large volumes. Transportation and archaic things like taxes on inventory eat up a lot of the costs. Ebooks are cheaper to distribute and avoid the inventory and transport expenses but there is some greed obviously involved. If they can get people to pay list prices for ebooks there's a nice profit to be had. Are they getting rich off ebooks? No, for the simple reason so far the sales had been so poor most are loosing money on them. If they were selling like hotcakes traditional print would be fading like CD sales or worse. Publishing has a much narrower margin than you might think on most books. They'd love a way that would avoid the risk of printing books. Printing 10,000 hard covers is a big investment and a huge risk. Ebooks scare me in a sense because printed books can last hundreds even thousands of years if they are on archival paper and stored properly. Ebooks will have a short life span simply because formats and readers change. Vinyl records can still be played decades later but several intermediate formats are already gone and getting hard to play. A glass cylinder recording might be playable ten thousand years from now. How long do you think your MP3s will be good for? If you care for a 35mm print it'll still be in playable shape a hundred years from now. A good share of my DVD collection is already dodgy on some players. All my VHS with Macrovision are trash. Several died after the first time or two I played them. A lot of history is being lost to shortlived formats.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[eviljav]

Try fictionwise for pdf versions of (some) books: http://www.fictionwise.com/, and select "multiformat". I've bought a lot of books through there.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Knothere]

Check out places like baen.com. I've bought quite a few of thier ebooks the day the hardback was released 5-6$. Seems like the old publisher, may he rest in peace, really wanted ebooks to take off. They also have a free library with a lot of titles. Go, read, feed the addiction.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[CronoCloud]

Did you RTFA? The thing has SD and MS slots.

And as for DRM, the PSP can play DRM'd atrac, but it also plays mp3, aac, and wma. This e-book is the same sort of deal. Yes, you can buy DRM'd books from Sony, but you don't have to and can put your own stuff on there.

It was also an outside company that created the infamous rootkit, Sony contracted for CD "protection" software from a third party. Blame them for the rootkit, blame sony for just being anal about protecting it's CD business.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[coyotecult]

Those authors you listed don't need royalties anymore. Because they're, y'know, DEAD. Not only are they dead, but their works are out of copyright (Right now copyright does extend a tad too long after the author's death, but that's neither here nor there for new books.)

I'm sure that the publishers mark up some beyond what royalties and distribution costs plus the old-book profit margin, but they're also producing books with an uncertain market. Whereas the classics you listed are probably safe bets to publish; little risk involved. Not many new books published earn out their advances. (And you could say that's because they're publishing trash, but that's neither here nor there, either.)

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

Yeah, I know. I'm saying that those prices are about as low as the store and printing company can go and still make a profit. It's the cost of manufacturing and distrubing, plus a small amount.

This means that a new book sells for about 400% to 600% of the cost of manufacturing the book. That extra is what goes to the publishing company and the author, mostly. So over 75% of a book sale is profit, in one form or another.

I maintain that this is ridiculous, especially for "trade paperbacks" which are all that some authors put out these days. I'd wager that the markup on those over manufacturing cost is more like 900%-1000%. 14-18 dollars for a fucking paperback, usually bound and printed no better than a mass-market, but in a slightly larger format so they can maintain the fiction that it's a different class and quality of book. Insane.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Pullman]

When you say that music has to be produced, maybe you don't realise that books have a simliar process called editing. As a musician, I know how much work is done in the prouction box and how much in the studio, but knowing writers, I also know how much can be contributed by a good editor. They both cost money, as does the marketing to get people like you to know that the book even exists. I think I'm right that Stephen King's attempts to sell a book online only, chapter by chapter, failed because people weren't paying for it. If a blockbusting seller like him can't do it, why should other writers and their publishers be forced to make an even smaller profit from what is a lot of hard work?

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Technician]

Don't lie to me and say books have the same production cost when distributed digitally and I should save a 'whopping' 11 bucks and change.

The publishers love it. Low production costs and you get to lose the right of first sale. In otherwords, you can resell the dead tree edition when you are done with it, or exchange it at your favorite used book store.

Your eBook? How are you going to sell the copy or even give it away? Isn't it DRM'ed to your registered display device?

DRM, Right of first sale, etc. Don't expect me to buy the DRM content. However the electronic gadget may be useful for other uses such as stuffing a slashdot article as text so you can read it while riding public transportation to your emplyment location.

This thing has the Apple I-pod business model. It will display non DRM content and they hope you will buy some DRM content, but the main use will not be for DRM content.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[jabuzz]

Not only that you could have high quality PDF versions of all the Harry Potter novels in less than 3MB for example. Though I guess the standard measure is probably Complete Works of Shakesphere or perhaps Libraries of Congress :-)

I agree however the price for ebooks is all wrong. You can produce high quality typeset PDF's on the cheapest computer you can buy from Dell using entirely free software, they are a total rip off.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[CastrTroy]

You can get lots of cheap books from project gutenburg. Sure they don't have new titles, but there's enough old titles to last you until you are dead. Most of these out of copyright books cost around $10 in paperback, but the are free to download. If enough people start reading free books and stop reading the new stuff, then the publishers will have to come up with a better way to reach the readers. Here's the problem though. Most publishers make money by selling the hard cover edition for $30 (which is only marginally more expensive to make than the paperback) for the first year, and then a year later releasing the paper back. They won't be able to do stuff like this with ebooks. Since there's no such thing as a hardcover book.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[TheRaven64]

Another poster gave you an answer for fiction. For reference books, Safari Books Online has books from most of the major computing / IT related publishers. PTG are now launch a line of 'short cuts,' which are shorter than full-length books (30-200 pages) and will only be available in PDF form - no dead-tree editions at all - which can be bought via Safari or directly from the publisher.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[TheRaven64]

You can produce high quality typeset PDF's on the cheapest computer you can buy from Dell using entirely free software, they are a total rip off.

Sure, if all you want is a book full of loren ipsum. Otherwise you need to employ a writer full time for several months (sometimes over a year). You then need to employ an sub-editor to check factual accuracy, another to check spelling etc. The cost of producing a paper book is tiny per unit if you are selling more than about 3-5,000 copies. The other things are what make up the price of the book.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[bilbravo]

Absolutely right. I'm amazed even at the amount of classics which are in some not-mass-market paperback print, and cost $14. The author is dead, so who's the money going to? Myself, I search out the Signet Classics for $4.95.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[TheRaven64]

By the time a book is out of copyright, the initial costs of paying the author, sub-editors, typesetters, and editor for their time have all been covered. Anything beyond that is pure profit. In order to sell a book that cheaply, however, you do need to recoup those initial costs. If you are selling something that is only going to have a low circulation, a much higher proportion of these costs goes into each sale. My publisher, for example, won't touch anything where they're not confident of a minimum of 3,000 sales, because otherwise they are going to make a loss. Beyond about 3,000 they start to make a profit, and beyond 5,000 they start making a large profit.

For a computing analogy, think how much it costs to make a new Core 2 CPU. Maybe $10? Of course, that's not taking into account the fact that you have to pay a team of 250 designers for five years to design it, and you need an enormous investment in fabs etc. to actually manufacture them. The fixed costs are more for a CPU, but then the average CPU sells a lot more copies than the average paperback (and at a much higher cost).

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[safXmal]

This thing has the Apple I-pod business model

Except they forgot to create a bookstore. Apple created iTunes together with the iPod and the combination is what made it sell.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[LWATCDR]

"Sony contracted for CD "protection" software from a third party. Blame them for the rootkit, blame sony for just being anal about protecting it's CD business."
No You can blame Sony for the root kit. Even if they where totally ignorant of the security problems when they stuck it on the CD the way the behaved after it was discovered was criminal. The way they treated their customers was also horrible.
SD and MS slots? Nice but only 64 MB for $350 is just nuts.
You can get a 2 GB ipod for $199. Even if the screen adds $100 to the cost it seems insane to limit it to only 64Megs.
I see this being used a lot more by people wanting to keep technical documents on it than novels. I would want to keep all of my ebooks on it and not just a limited number.
Looks like another clean miss by Sony. Wonder when Apple will come out with the IReader and offer text books for $1.99 on IBooks.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[jaysones]

Your cost model is wrong. A hardcover costs about $1.50 to make but the "book ecosystem" encompasses more than you're imagining here. First of all, prices are determined in editorial meetings by what the market will bear for the book in question. These prices change (read: "go down") if readers aren't willing to pay at the levels set by the publishers or the booksellers, like everything else sold in America. If the hours of entertainment derived from a paperback isn't worth a measly 14 dollars to you, then I don't know what to tell you but you're definitely not the typical reader.
Also, there are many more costs than you're taking into account. Publicity, marketing, production, editorial, bindery, shipping, author costs (royalties and advances), facilities (like 25 floors in midtown Manhattan and 2 unbelievably large distribution warehouses, fully staffed), art and design, subsidiary rights, legal, administrative, et al. It's just a much, much bigger operation than you're laying out.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[nomadic]

Think about that the next time you're about to pay $14 for a trade paperback, or $9 for a normal one. Hell, I saw a shitty, mass-market paperback of Thucycides "History of the Pelleponesian War" that was selling for $14. Not even a trade, printed on awful paper, and with print so tiny as to be headache inducing. But it's a new(ish) translation, so they charge that much.

Thucydides needs money to live on, man.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[RyoShin]

I even might be willing to pay $350(!!!) for the damn thing.

The reason this reader costs so much (aside from capatilistic greed) is the cost of the E Ink technology being used in it.

For a potential project, I was able to get in contact with a sales person from the company that creates the technology. A regular sized 8 1/2" x 11" size of this eInk paper would run about $150. That's for one sheet of this stuff.

The eReader size is smaller, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was still $80+ for each sheet used. Add in R&D, manufacturing, and whatever liscensing they need and it would add up.

I believe the segmented displays (which act more like an LCD clock, turning bars on and off) are far cheaper, but they didn't suit my needs (nor would they work well here) so I didn't inquire for those prices.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Technician]

Except they forgot to create a bookstore

Dig further. The deal is pre order and get a $50 dicount to use at the bookstore. Keep reading. The bookstore is there.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[TopShelf]

You'd be amazed at the profit structure in the book business, it's far leaner than you suggest. Distribution costs, for example, are quite high, considering that a huge portion of books never sell, and anywhere from a quarter to a third of all books shipped to a bookstore end up getting returned back to the distributor or publisher. Retail bookselling is a risky business - you're not sure what's going to sell, so you need to have plenty of stock on hand to make sales on the hits, but that gets extremely expensive when many of those books don't pan out.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[tiocsti]

"BOOKS are too expensive. New ones, anyway.

You know those Barnes and Noble hardback classics? The ones that are often in the $6-$10 range? Dostoevsky, Melville, that kind of thing?

They are still making a profit on those!"

Basically you've proved that significant costs of book distribution are in the creative process of _creating_ the work, and not so much in distribution. Congrats.

If you want books that are currently in the public domain, they are available for free electronically, and you can read them on this device. That seems plenty cheap to me.

You can look at public domain books, to some degree anyways, as an example of the distribution costs of a book. If you are going to charge x, you can sell y if you dont have to pay the overhead of the author, editors, etc. I'm not sure why you'd expect this to extend to new books, though.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[kalidasa]

Books have much higher production costs than you seem to think. With acquisitions, development, editing, and typesetting (i.e., data entry and formatting) costs, there's not that much difference between the production costs of music and those of print.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[kalidasa]

It takes on average 6 years to translate Thucydides properly, so I for one don't have a problem with the translator making some cash.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[ceoyoyo]

I'm waiting for the sheet-of-paper sized one. If it can fold, outstanding.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[arth1]

Your eBook? How are you going to sell the copy or even give it away? Isn't it DRM'ed to your registered display device?

The way it works with the PeanutPress format used by eReader, Fictionwise and others is that the book is locked to the name and number of the credit card, not the device. You can also "reset" a previously bought book to your current card.

Too bad that the Sony Reader won't support the PPrs format. Too bad for Sony, that is -- with close to 200 eBooks in this format, there's no way I'll change to an incompatible device. That would be like, um, rebuying all your CDs on MiniDisc... Sony, people don't want to do things like that, no matter how much you want it.

--
*Art

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

Well, for one, the prices seem static regardless of book length. There is only a handful of authors currently publishing in whose works I'm interested, and they all tend to write books well on the short side of the spectrum (think Vonnegut). I can get through one of those in a day's worth of heavy reading, or maybe 3 or 4 days of more casual reading, easily, yet I'm paying the same $15 or so (trade paperback, they also tend to publish only trades of these guys) for a book that's 1/3 the length of many others on the shelves.

Also, book prices have gone up a whole lot in the last decade or so. I guess that kind of bugs me.

Anyway, I just buy used. If I'm buying, I usually want hardcover, and I can get a good used hardcover for the price of a new mass-market paperback, or I can get a REALLY good hardcover (granted, usually of an out-of-copyright classic, as they don't tend to make really nice editions of newer books) for the cost of a mass-market paperback.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[CronoCloud]

Who says it's limited to 64 megs, that's just the size of the internal storage.

Look, if sony hadn't included the slots people would have whined about being limited to whatever internal storage the thing has.

Only include slots and people without cards would whine that they couldn't use it out of the box

As for the price, it's got a large e-ink screen, plays music, displays photos and does the e-book thing. Yes that iPod costs less, but it can't do what the e-reader does.

Sony can't win with you people.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will come out with the IReader and offer text books for $1.99 on IBooks.

That will never happen because no publisher is going to accep that little profit margin on their book, and no author would accept it either. Authors get about 10% of the sale price of every book sold (depending on the deal made with the publisher). No author would accept getting $0.20 for thier work.

I am always ammazed at how much the people here hate sony

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

They should at least spend the extra 50 cents or so to make a decent printing.

It was on that stuff that feels like a thicker version of newsprint, and has that awful smell (gives me a nasty headache, I've had to stop reading books halfway through because of it).

And the print really was tiny. I can (reluctantly) live with that for lighter reading, but the tougher the book, the bigger I'd like for the print to be, as I'm going to be reading every single word very carefully, never skimming, and I'll be looking back at previous paragraphs and pages a lot, so the bigger text makes it easier to find what I'm looking for.

I might have bought it, just because I don't like buying translated books off the 'net as I can't read a bit to make sure that the translation is readable, and I've been having trouble finding that particular book at any of the local used book stores... but I just couldn't bring myself to pay $14 for a book that likely cost less than a dollar to make, and that was so poorly made that I might not have even been able to get through it. If they'd upped their print cost a bit to make the book not suck, and if they'd wanted maybe $12 for it, I'd likely have bought the damn thing.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

The GP was talking about how low the costs of online distribution are and saying that the price they want for an e-book is thus too high, so I was pointing out that, proportionally speaking, you're paying about the same in markup on a dead-tree book. Thus, if the ebook edition is too expensive, it follows that the print edition is also to expensive.

And I do think that they are. I've stopped buying any new books that aren't in the bargain bin, and I read used hardcover copies of classics (2500+ years worth of writing, plenty to keep me busy) while I wait for any newer books that I want to hit the used market. Mass-market paperbacks have gone up, what, more than 50% in the last decade? Don't get me started on trade paperbacks. Fuckin' ripoff.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[Fallingcow]

I wish that the Loeb Classical Library editions weren't quite so high. I understand why they are, but it still kind of sucks.

They really funny thing about them is that they retain value VERY well on the used market. They're ~$20 new, but most of the used ones you see are selling for only 2 or 3 dollars less, unless they're badly worn or damaged.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[LWATCDR]

Displays Photos? In black and white with four shades of grey. Wow that is about useless. And yes it is a grey scale display.
Does more then an E reader?
Really.
Funny for less than an Ereader you can get an iPod that will play movies, play games, show color photos, and play music.
The only thing that the EReader does is have a better screen for reading text one. Yes you can get the low end iPod for less than an eReader from Sony.
The Slot is nice but the limited amount of memory for the price is just nuts. If you don't think so then buy one. I do think so and so will a lot of other people and we will not buy one.
When it is a flop and on Woot for $150 I might pick one up but until then no thanks.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[LWATCDR]

Okay $4.99 per book.
And the author could get a bigger chunk of that because there would be.
1. No printing costs.
2. No shipping
3. No returns.

When a publisher prints a book it costs a lot of money to set up the press, bind the book, ship it to the store and then to take back the unsold books. Or the "stripped" books. When a books store can not sell a paper back book they rip the cover off. If you look inside just about any book it will warn you to not buy a book missing the front cover for that very reason. Those are returns.
With digital books it becomes all profit.

I don't hate Sony. I have a PS/2 which is a fun little toy. I do not like their proprietary nature. I do not their lack of respect for their customers. I do not like their lack of respect of the law. I was actually excited about the PS/3 until I saw the cost. This product is currently flawed. It isn't even flawed technically. In fact technically it is very nice but the marketing decisions where dumb.
The 64MB of ram is too little for the price. Ram is cheap. They should have put at least 512MB on it and a GB would have been better.
Photos? That is a throw away. No one will want to view grey scale photos on that thing. They include it because it costs nothing to put on and is a "feature".
The selection of books is tiny and the selection of computer books is close to useless. The first market for this will be the extremely technical.
The cost of the books is way too high. They should be half of cover price or less.
If you think it is great buy one. I think it is too expensive for what you get so I will not.

Re:eBooks still to expensive!

[advid]

This means that a new book sells for about 400% to 600% of the cost of manufacturing the book. That extra is what goes to the publishing company and the author, mostly. So over 75% of a book sale is profit, in one form or another.

I have actual first-hand knowledge here. My wife runs a small publishing company, so I know something of the costs involved. Note that the big publishers will be getting a better deal than I mention here, since they can afford to place bigger orders, and play hardball with distributors.

First, your 4-6x the printing cost estimate for the final price is about right, depending on your printer. But, of course, only half the cover price will actually go to the publisher -- the rest is given directly to your distributor. (Of which they only get part; the rest goes to the retail outlet who sells your book.)

Bear in mind that I'm not factoring in other necessary costs to the printing price. No shipping fees (freight is expensive), shrinkwrapping (if your book is... naughty), and creative costs. Shipping (and shrinkwrapping) scales with order size, and adds maybe 15% to the cost. Authorial royalties don't count until their advance has been made back, but then they're a fixed percentage of the cover price. Then there's some unavoidable flat costs - you're going to spend about the same amount on paying your editor and your graphic designer (both of which are essential; trust me) whether you're printing 3,000 or 30,000 books.

This brings us probably closer to a fifth to a quarter of the cover price being the expense.

Now consider that (as a rule-of-thumb) to get a decent per-book cost, you have to order at least 3,000 books. So your small-print-run book has to sell something like 1,500 copies to break even, after the distributor's cut. If it sells less, you've lost money, and have big stacks of worthless paper sitting around.

Selling an ebook has definite advantages here, obviously. You can lose the printing costs and (most of the) distributor costs. Problem is that the market for ebooks is smaller, and the advertising channels aren't as good. Bookstores have a certain mindshare, after all.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[parislemon]

I'm kind of excited about this thing but at $350 you could buy A LOT of paperbacks before making up for the cost.

http://www.trashingtrailers.com/

It's great

[mikesd81]

for some things, like manuals in the field or for work elements or long bus rides and such, but not for casual home use. If I'm gonna read a book, I like to sit in a recliner and actually turn pages. The only thing I would use it for is for traveling or having reference on the fly.

Re:It's great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea it's great until you find the rootkit you get from Sony...

Re:It's great

[loraksus]

Or it breaks and you have to file a BBB complaint (or threaten to) to get them to fix it.

Re:It's great

[sankyuu]

I've tried out the Japanese model (Sony Librie) on demo in a shop, and I have to say this thing makes me drool.

It is very expensive, but quality-wise, it makes other e-book readers feel clunky and painful to the eyes. And it even comes with a cover that makes it *feel* like a book. No backlight, but it conveniently runs on ordinary aaa batteries. The quality only problems are the slow refresh and occasional slight ghosting that reminds me of an etch-a-sketch. It's as close to the real thing as it gets.

Re:It's great

[Colbalt Blue]

You might be surprised. I bought a NuvoMedia ebook reader several years ago thinking I would only use it for limited applications. Since then I have read well over 200 books in digital format. I love being able to sit out in my back yard reading and not have to worry about turning the pages or having the wind blow around the pages. I hope the Sony reader works as well as the NuvoMedia reader.

Re:It's great

[Anonymous Coward]

for some things, like manuals in the field or for work elements or long bus rides and such, but not for casual home use. If I'm gonna read a book, I like to sit in a recliner and actually turn pages.

Bidets are great for ass-wiping in fancy hotels, but not for casual home use. If I'm gonna wipe my ass, I like to sit on a toilet and actually wipe my ass with paper.

Re:It's great

[grimdonkey]

Not necesarrily. As an eastern-european I find it quite difficult to buy english hardcover books (or any original foreign works for that matter). Shipping costs and distribution are a big bottleneck. Reading at the computer can be tiresome, so this is actually a very nice thing to have.

Re:It's great

[19thNervousBreakdown]

No backlight . . .

That's the idea!

Re:It's great

[timeOday]

What could really differentiate it from paper books though is if they manage to hook it up to some instant delivery system through the Internet.

Personally I know I'm frequently printing out manuals of a few hundred pages at work. I read them (at most) once, then use the electronic form for reference. *If* this thing is nice to look at (big if), it could serve that need.

Re:It's great

[el_womble]

I have a pile of of books on my desk. Most of them are already replicated as pdfs on my harddrive. I have the option of two screens if I want them. I only ever fire up preview.app for pdfs when I don't own the book.

There is something eminantly more productive about having a book on my desk. I tried for months to get by without a Ruby book, there is a mountain of free and good documentation for a wonderful language. I actually finished my project a couple of days after getting Ruby for Rails in paper. Its easier to find stuff, I'm not constantly moving my mouse, or using expose to look at the info, I just look down. And I can find what I want far faster using a book, than I can with a pdf (even though preview/spotlight are good search tool).

If this is half as good as they say it is, the first product in the £100 bracket is going to winging its way to my desk. Being able to have every API, every manual and a few novels and it a few tracks to drown out the world whilst I read OUTDOORS, in SUNLIGHT! This could revolutionise IT.

I'd be tempted to buy a cheap laptop with this, even if its only available in black and white. Actually being able to leave the office, sit in a park and not spend the time squinting at very dark image sounds like a step in the right direction. I don't need a colour display to word process, crunch numbers, or cut code. Its a nice to have at best. A little sunshine and a chnge of sceen is probably worth more to me.

Re:It's great

[vonwilkenstein]

like manuals in the field or for work elements

Until you drop someting on it, or have to use it outside in the elements, or forget to charge it.
IMHO, You can not beat a paper manual for the field. It does not get washed out in the sun, is likely to be more reliable and durable than an eReader, and has a killer feature, you can write in it.

Wow...

[joetheappleguy]

A recent Sony product I actually want??

That's unpossible!

I need to see one live, but I like what I see so far - The ability to also display pdf, word and txt are a (finally) smart move by Sony, and the mp3 AND AAC capability is a nice bonus.

The GUI for the Connect app looks awful familiar though...

Re:Wow...

[mikesd81]

The GUI for the Connect app looks awful familiar \though...

The display, based on technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff E Ink Corp., is composed of tiny capsules with electrically charged particles of white and black ink. When a static electric charge is applied on the side of the capsule that faces the reader, it attracts the white particles to the face of the display, making that pixel show light gray. Reversing the charge brings the black pigments floating through the capsule to replace the white pigments, and the pixel shows as dark gray.

Re:Wow...

[ArghBlarg]

Let's starting counting the days until they offer a firmware 'update' that turns off the free PDF/txt/MP3 reader bits :-p. I'm sure they'll wait six months or so, until they think they've got everyone hooked..

Re:Wow...

[anagama]

A recent Sony product I actually want??
That's unpossible!

I was thinking the same thing ... then I looked at the specs:

System Requirements
Operating System: Windows® XP (Home Edition/Professional, Media Center Edition, Media Center Edition 2004, Media Center Edition 2005)

Re:Wow...

[Mr. Jaggers]

Yes, but the poster was refering to the GUI on the Connect app, not e-ink technology; you know, the Sony "iTunes" for books...

Why does it look familiar? BTW, if it's an itunes reference (thus making me look dumber than I am, due to my clarification above), then I should note that I've never actually seen itunes. I just know what it's supposed to do.

Re:Wow...

[dryekindrew]

I hope the GUI of the Connect app is better than Sony's Sonic Stage (Sony's connection software that comes with their Walkmen). It's painfully slow, ugly and non intuitive, and it handles lower quality mp3s very badly. Not to even mention DRM.

Re:Wow...

[CronoCloud]

The Sony PSP doesn't mention that it works in Linux, but it most certainly does. The e-Reader probably works the same way.

And even if you can't plug it in directly just take the MS or SD card out and put it in a card reader.

Re:Wow...

[CronoCloud]

Sony's been ADDING MP3 support to their devices in the past couple of years. They're not going to turn it off. Even the PSP can handle txt files.

Sony cracking down on people pirating games is unrelated.

Re:Wow...

[Kris_J]

Yup. With products like these, you can't trust that they'll continue to have the same features in the future. And with Sony, you know that if they want to downgrade your (their) product, they'll use some very underhand ways to get that update onto the device.

Re:Wow...

[Lehk228]

wait for the jinke V2, it closes like a book to protect the screen and yes, it runs linux.

Thanks for the DRM Sony

[ricree]

From Sony's ebook store http://ebooks.connect.com/

We will offer titles on a pay-to-own basis - similar to the way a user expects to purchase and own other digital media today. The user will have the option to purchase this content and read it on up to 6 different activated devices (computers or Readers).

So I'll own the books so much that I get to put them on a whole six different player. Thank you very much Sony, your generosity is awe inspiring.

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but i dont see my self ever needing to read something on more then 6 devices. hell, just my desktop, laptop, and reader would be enough. Would you have 6+ copys of the same (real paper) book?

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Pofy]

>Would you have 6+ copys of the same (real paper) book?

No, but my one copy can end up on more than 6 different book shelves or other furnitures in my home (or in other peoples homes) over the years. I might read it in/on a whole lot more different furnitures, most of which might not even be mine. Now, what did paper books have to do with the original article?

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike, say, a music CD, being able to use your e-book on 6 devices is a massive value add. By default, a dead-tree book is time-consuming as hell to copy—and that's just scanning the pages as bitmaps, which basically limits you to reprinting or reading your book in exactly the same format. Throw in OCR and you have to add a non-trivial amount of man-hours to proofread the text afterwards, fix page references in the table of contents and indices, typeset any graphics and footnotes, etc.

Think before you type.

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Horizon_99]

They do mention 6 different *activated* devices, which probably means you can deactivate one of the devices once you reach the limit in order to use the book on a new device.

This is just speculation as they don't specifically mention it on the website, but I suspect it works similarly to iTunes.

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, show me another way that is easier to copy text from a book in an equally readable format as the original.

Ever since tapes music and videos have been very easy to copy fairly reliably. However, between xeroxing, scanning or transcription, all methods of copying books are difficult, expensive, or suffer from a loss of quality. They now give you a way to read the book 6 places in the exact same format at the exact same quality for one slightly lower price. What, exactly, is your complaint?

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Pofy]

You must have answered the wrong post. I have not discussed the meaning of "activated". Someone started to discus paper books and tried to make some typically strange comparions without figuring out that paper books (or anything physical) is vastly different in both working and use to for example digital content on computers or other devices.

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[aussersterne]

True. In the world of electronic devices in which I've gone through far more than 6 PDAs in 10 years just due to use and wearing components out, it's easy to imagine "running out" of instances for such ebooks. When you buy a paper book, it can "stay in the family" for generations. Your kids/grandkids (if you are so inclined) can someday read it. If an ebook is accessible only for a decade or two at most, I'd rather have the paper. It can easily be transformed into whatever e-format I want if I need to read some or all of it on the go.

Re:Thanks for the DRM Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

"So I'll own the books so much that I get to put them on a whole six different player. Thank you very much Sony, your generosity is awe inspiring."

So how many times have you loaned a paperback to more than six people? There are also a lot of DRM free books out there that you can put on the reader. BAEN and TOR
SF, for example......

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... They even have downloadable rootkits.

Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[HatchedEggs]

I hate to say this, but the reader looks horrible. First off, the quality seems low. It certainly isn't stylish, and you aren't going to see people pulling them out in public to show off their gear (like iPods were back a few years ago). The material also looks poor.

Hrm, so no color screen.. and the pics don't show much backlighting. So no really good things to say so far. At first glance I'd say it's a flop.

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's not backlit, you idiot. It's an e-ink based reader. And this is for reading, not for showing off. If it works, why do you care what it looks like?

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

... this is the first time ive posted because of the shear stupidity of the parent post.

Its not supposed to be a full color backlit screen... its supposed to resemble printed PAPER!! You wouldnt want a backlit screen in this application because of the eyestrain associated with reading off a bright screen. Its supposed to essentially be digital paper.

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[Zadaz]

Let's see, mod a troll, or respond... Never the smartest one in class:

Clearly you've never seen e-paper in action. No backlight, stupid, it's just dark print on a white sheet. Just like... paper, just as easy to read.

Glad to see Sony has finally released one of these in the States. Been out for years in Japan, though more expensive.

None of the reasons you list will be the downfall of the device. It'll be two things: Sony's crappy Connect service. Sony has never been able to make any software worth a damn. And two: The same reason ebooks have never gained popularity, namely they're too expensive for what you get, and there are not enough titles to make it worth buying a $300+ device.

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[NosTROLLdamus]

Oh wow! Why didn't the Sony Marketing Division consult you first?

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[serbanp]

The lack of interesting titles may be an issue, but I doubt that the main usage would be reading books on it.

I am considering buying this thing just to be able to read documents (pdf docs, presentations etc) on a very easy to use "tablet" that has excellent contrast and battery life (expressed in page turns instead of minutes/hours). Instead of resorting to printing them on paper.

One thing that's intriguing is how does it support the Microsoft Word format. Any idea?

Serban

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[Fengpost]

Hey, it is made out of E Ink. It is a type of refelctive display. The next big thing in the display industry. It is suppose to mimic paper, hence no back light. That is why you turn on the light to read a book or ebook. It is much more natural and easier on the eyes. Check out http://www.eink.com/index.html

You did not RTFA,or even the intro on top!

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[at_slashdot]

No backlight? That's a deal breaker for me, I'd like to be able to read in bed in the dark.

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[DJPenguin]

and I'd like to listen to music with my fingers in my ears!

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[at_slashdot]

Then I'd recommend a technology that transmits soundwaves through the head bones.

I can explain why I'd like to be able to read in the dark (or in poorly lighted room), can you please explain why you prefer to keep your fingers in your ears?

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[HatchedEggs]

Great idea, mod a troll and make a silly comment... it'll make you seem intelligent in front of all the /.ers? What more could you wish for.

Fact of the matter is, if you can't create a product with high end design elements at that price, it isn't going to sell that well. I haven't seen an angle of this that I am been impressed with yet.

So clearly I haven't seen one of these in action. I was basing my impressions on images provided. However, I'd bet that the product is going to fail, and the only point you made that will be relevant is the last one. Which was mine. For $300 you'd better have a great looking, functional product.

Re:Low quality, high price? No thanks!

[edschurr]

I think someone will make an attachable lamp. This is better in that it seperates the batteries, and makes the extra bulk removable. Tt might not distribute light evenly however.

I'm not sure if e-Ink can even do backlight, by nature of the design.

Creating still toO expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since you brought the issue up. Why don't you tell us how books and music are produce and please don't leave any of the dollar amounts out. I'll check your handiwork tomorrow.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Trillian_1138]

Ignoring for the moment the actual sentence structure, I'll assume you meant, "Yes, but books aren't free to produce either - how to you want to pay people to create things?"

What I meant is that while movies and music require physical equipment to produce - microphones, instruments, video equipment, etc - books require a single person and - if you really want to go bare-bones - a pen and paper. Even a nice computer is going to be cheaper than a recording studio rental for any significant period of time. So, while movies and music can reasonably say "Sure, distributing digitally means *distrobution* costs go down, production costs are still expensive! We'd love to sell you cheap movies and music online, but we can't afford to!" Now, they may still be lying (about wanting to) but they can make that argument and not be complete liars. Once you lose the cost of distrobution for books, on the other hand, you've cut out the vaaaast majority of your built-in costs. Obviously, you'll still want editors and (presumably) type-setters and layout designers and such, and you should probably pay the author at some point, but the assumption with books was that you were paying a good chunk toward the physical 'stuff' the book is made out of. With that cost gone, it would seem books should be dirt-cheap, but clearly they're not...

All I'm saying is that it looks like, once again, media distroution companies are trying to wring every last cent out, rather than selling at a point that is both profitable and reasonable.

-Trillian

PS - In all fairness, it may be the book publishers, not Sony, who is requiring the consumer to get screwed. They may have deals about minimum book prices or some such BS. I'd tempted to blame Sony, but the main point is that *someone* along the line - Sony, book publisher, etc - is being a greedy bastard and it makes me sad because the tech seems so cool.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out one very important part. The type of book. An encyclopedia will require both more, and a different set of people than say the latest romance novel. Plus cost is also a function of demand. That's why a book for pediatricians is going to cost more than say a mass-produced dime store novel.

"All I'm saying is that it looks like, once again, media distroution companies are trying to wring every last cent out, rather than selling at a point that is both profitable and reasonable."

"Profitable" and "reasonable" aren't the same thing. For some things, "profitable" and "reasonable" are close enough to satisfy the majority. But don't assume that will always be the case.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[tapin]

books require a single person . . . you'll still want editors and (presumably) type-setters and layout designers and such

Ah yes. Slashdot: Where uninformed opinions, flawed logic and factual inaccuracies are mere fertilizer to the flowerbed that is yet another ignorant rant.

(PS: "distribution".)

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Fallingcow]

As I posted somewhere else on here, look at the prices of out-of-copyright classics. Not super-special collectors' editions with gilded pages, but just plain paperbacks and hardbacks.

The actual price of manufacturing in distributing ANY book is probably just south of that price. So, under $2 for a mass-market paperback, and that's if they don't go with the very cheapest paper, and maybe $5-$8 or less for a hardback.

Which means that the author, the store you buy it from, and the publisher's staff are taking a total of over 75% of what you pay for most books. 25% or less is the cost of physically manufacturing the book.

That, or all the big chains are selling huge numbers of classics at a loss for some reason, which I doubt.

Hell, in the early and mid 90s Wal-Mart used to sell classics in paperback format, mostly adventure-type books, Robinson Crusoe and crap like that. I think I have a copy of Dracula from them, somewhere. Anyway, they were 50 cents a piece, IIRC, and I guarantee that both the printer and Wal-Mart were making money at that price. They were, however, printed on really awful paper. But it goes to show that the costs for physically producing a book can be extremely low, indeed.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[bunions]

you're not taking into account the IMPOSSIBLY WASTEFUL distribution model for books. The distributor sells the bookstore X copies, and the deal is that after some time the bookstore can rip the covers off the ones it haasn't sold and sell them back for some large fraction of the original sale price. These books are then, I presume, dumped into the recycling vats. So that $4 book also has to cover the manufacturing costs for the other 9 copies that didn't sell.

ps: I'd welcome any corrections on this, I just have this info secondhand.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[smallpaul]

but the assumption with books was that you were paying a good chunk toward the physical 'stuff' the book is made out of. With that cost gone, it would seem books should be dirt-cheap, but clearly they're not...

I never made that assumption for a second. Do you really think that a hardback novel costs something akin to $25 to make and distribute? If the costs were in the binding then they would bring out the hardback and paperback at the same time and let the customer choose. Instead they delay the paperback to push you towards the (relatively) overpriced hardback.

So where are the real costs? A book may take anywhere from a month to ten years to write. Ten years of a skilled labourer costs a million dollars. But more important, the occasional bestseller has to pay for all of the advances paid for unprofitable flops. In addition, there are substantial marketing costs to be heard above the noise.

Downloadability might actually cost the industry because people buy books to read "someday". But if every book is a download away, they won't buy speculatively anymore. They'll buy when they want to read. If my bookshelf is representative, that will represent a drop in sales for the publishers.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[montyzooooma]

"These books are then, I presume, dumped into the recycling vats."

I believe it's not unknown to return torn off covers for credit if the book turns out to be a real stinker and the rest of the books ends up in the dumpster.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[shmlco]

At a or so page a day (a good clip for an author) it can still take a year or more to write a book. How much do you make in a year?

You're right in that you're not paying for the equipment... but you are paying for the author's time (and food, and rent, and...).

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Shaper_pmp]

So... what part of "a movie costs many times more than a book to produce" were you disagreeing with?

If you can show that even an international bestseller book costs several hundred million dollars to write then I'll believe you.

However, I think you'll have a hard time proving:

1. There are more people involved in the production of a book than a movie.
2. Book production requires more equipment.
3. Book production (of necessity) takes noticeably longer than films.

If this isn't the case, then someone, somewhere along the line is ripping people off.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[yusing]

I'm guessing that there's got to be a ton of imbedded resistance to E-books. The cost of a physical book means a living to presses, ink companies, paper companies (and their suppliers), and distributors. It's a big industry.

Catch-22. How can a publisher cut their ties to these people without cutting their own throat? If they sell e-books cheaper, and only get 30% penetration, they still have all the costs associated with paper publishing ... of which the actual cost of paper is only a fraction ... as well as holding onto business relationships formed over decades.

Until something like a book iPod comes along ... actually it'd have to be much more universal ... E-books are a nice convenience for people with money. They, and the readers, are priced accordingly.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Tim C]

but the assumption with books was that you were paying a good chunk toward the physical 'stuff' the book is made out of

Perhaps that assumption was incorrect?

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Zidane-The-Dom]

although this was quite common in the uk, with the introduction of waste recycling law, it has fallen out of practice and now most books are returned whole for recycling. i suspect it does continue in areas without such law, in several books i have read (i am an avid reader) i have seen warning messages on the fist few cover pagers stating that if the cover is missing from the book, you have baught a copy that should have been disposed of and to call the publisher to report it.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[joto]

What I meant is that while movies and music require physical equipment to produce - microphones, instruments, video equipment, etc - books require a single person and - if you really want to go bare-bones - a pen and paper.

To be equally daft, I could say that music requires one or more musicians coming together for the duration of the song, playing various instruments, and recording on a $10 tape-recorder with built-in microphone, whereas a book requires years expensive research, years of writing, and even more years of editing, by intelligent well-educated people, before it's printed on specialized equipment that costs a fortune (a CD-burner is something everyone's got).

Even a nice computer is going to be cheaper than a recording studio rental for any significant period of time.

Even buying a studio is going to be cheaper than hiring an entire staff for editing and printing books.

Once you lose the cost of distrobution for books, on the other hand, you've cut out the vaaaast majority of your built-in costs.

No. If you by book mean anything printed on paper, such as a new volume of the Hardy boys, or some doctor romance novel, I agree. But then I could counter that with music, I mean a CD-release by some hotel- or street-musicians. But if you by music mean "The Wall", I happen to talk about "Encyclopedia Britannica" when it comes to books.

but the assumption with books was that you were paying a good chunk toward the physical 'stuff' the book is made out of. With that cost gone, it would seem books should be dirt-cheap, but clearly they're not...

Your assumption, not the assumtion.

All I'm saying is that it looks like, once again, media distroution companies are trying to wring every last cent out, rather than selling at a point that is both profitable and reasonable.

And how is that different from any other business? While I agree that the cost of CDs is absurdly high (I buy most of my DVDs at half the price of my CDs), and that this certainly smells like something only a monopoly or a cartel could do, the market for books and e-books is entirely different. There is real price-differentiation there.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[tolan-b]

Ah yes Slashdot, where pointing out which website we're reading is considered an insightful argument...

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[sjf]

I think it is a fair conclusion to draw that the value the book publisher places on the intact book is far less than the value the publisher places on the content. Otherwise the whole book would be returned.

A friend of mine owned a bookshop. I was in the shop once when her daughter expressed interest in a particular book. The owner took the book off the shelf, tore the cover off and handed it to her: "Here you are. Have it."

Sadly I never benefitted from this retail model.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

All I'm saying is that it looks like, once again, media distroution companies are trying to wring every last cent out, rather than selling at a point that is both profitable and reasonable.

Welcome to capitalism.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. There's a reason why J.K. Rowling (Author of Harry Potter Series) is a billionaire. She's only released 6 books, and yet managed to get extremely rich.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the instant gratification has a lot of benefits. Take the romance genre. Light, fluffy, and some women are totally addicted to them. If you had something where they could instantly get their hit with a mouse click and a few bucks, I'm betting they'd get a lot more sales.

Also, it reduces a lot of the risks for the publishers for the flops. They might still be paying the advances, but there's no distribution cost risk. You don't waste money on printing 20,000 copies of a book that nobody wants. Alternatively, your popular books are never sold out. If at some point in the future, "Harry Potter and the Whores of Babylon" comes out and people can't get a copy of it immediately, they might be tempted to borrow a friend's copy. If it's all done the ebook way, they can always get their fix immediately.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[cubicledrone]

and the deal is that after some time the bookstore can rip the covers off the ones it haasn't sold and sell them back for some large fraction of the original sale price.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. sigh... Physically destroying the books serves only one purpose: to express the distribution system's contempt for authors.

So that $4 book also has to cover the manufacturing costs for the other 9 copies that didn't sell.

Sure! That way, the author gets nothing. You see, publishers are happy under only one condition: the author gets zero. Anything else is a failure. They get really happy when some poor misinformed but really talented author signs away their licensing rights. "Oh we get all the money from the $100 million movie I'm afraid." Publishers love that.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Trillian_1138]

I do take a little issue with being accused of ranting, but be that as it may...

What do you disagree with? I'd honestly like to know. Yes, it's an uninformed opinion, but I don't think the logic was flawed or the facts that inaccurate. I specifically didn't use numbers but spoke in generalisations for just that reason. I realize books don't magically come from fairy dust, but they still have fewer inherent costs than movies or music. Where is that thought process flawed?

-Trillian

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[kfg]

Why don't you tell us how books and music are produce and please don't leave any of the dollar amounts

If I leave the the 486 (which so far has cost me exactly nothing) which I write on sitting on the shelf unused for a year it costs me nothing to do so.

If I leave the fiddle (which cost me thousands) I record with sitting on the shelf unused for a year it costs me $200 to be able to use it again. Costs go up if I actually deign to use the thing.

KFG

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[kfg]

You left out one very important part. The type of book. An encyclopedia will require both more, and a different set of people than say the latest romance novel.

You left out one very important part. The type of sound recording. Sgt. Pepper will require both more, and a different set of people than say the latest solo acouctic guitar teenage angst crap.

KFG

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison to movies is valid. But the comparison to music isn't, not really. I've done both music and book production; while music production requires a larger equipment outlay, the staffing requirements are very similar. For every A&R guy, there's an acquisitions editor; for every engineer, there's a proof-reader; for every producer, there's an editor; for every equipment manager, there's a fact checker and a typesetter.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[ceoyoyo]

There were a few movies in there too. I wonder if she made more off the books themselves or the movie rights?

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[pyrotic]

I know 4 authors. One is an illustrator, another a photographer, another a journalist, another an economist. None of them are full time professional authors. It breaks down like this - a book takes 1-2 years to produce, and earns maybe US$10,000 if you're lucky. Advances are rare, and pretty small change. A book might get you some spin-off consultancy work or media appearances, but otherwise, it's mainly a labour of love. And it's madly competitive to get anything published at all, every other journalist/academic has their eye on the same market and a manuscript in the drawer. Anyway, to discuss the economics of this as though authors didn't exist is pretty much exactly how the status quo in publishing views it. The big winners are currently publishers, and the rare superstar author. Add in some more tech middlemen, and the authors still get screwed. Hey, that's progress.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[drsquare]

No-one's being ripped off. If you don't like the price of a book you don't have to buy it. There are many other books you can buy which are much cheaper. The number of books being sold suggests that the prices are actually correct.

Books are a luxury entertainment product anyway, you can't cry about the prices like you can electricity or water.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[14CharUsername]

What is the "inherent cost" of music? Sure you have to rent a sund studio and pay a sound engineer and a band. But how much would that cost for a week long recording session? Probably a few tens of thousands maybe. If you want to get the best studio and the best sound engineers and producers lets say about $100,000.

Well the music and publishing industries are the same in that it sin't just a matter of someone writting down some stuff or someone strumming a guitar and singing a song. You have to be able to find people with talent. You have to promote them. And if they suck you have to be able eat the loss and not go out of business. Add to that you have to hanger ons and executives and marketing idiots and the costs start to rise.

Yeah maybe books could be cheaper. What surprising is that you question the price of books but not the price of music. Both industries are similar in many ways.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Carnildo]

Actually, proper production of a fiction book requires at least three people: the author, the editor who spots the author's mistakes, and the typesetter who formats it for the target medium. It's a rare author who can format a book for printing, and any author needs an outside reader to point out mistakes the author made but can't see because he's too familiar with the story.

An ebook doesn't have the printing and distribution costs of a paper book, but the publisher still needs to advertise it -- even more so than for paper books, since paper gets some free advertising just from being on a shelf in a bookstore. I wouldn't expect the price of ebooks to be lower than 60% of paper for top-sellers, or 40% for older stuff.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Awel]

Except that then the author will go to another publisher for their next book[1], which is likely to be a big seller no matter how good or bad it is, because the author is already famous. An already successful author is a valuable asset to any publisher, because they already have a fanbase and you don't need to spend so much money on marketing them. So it would be very short-sighted to fool an author into giving away all their rights.

[1] Unless you tied them in to a multi-book contract, which is a risk in itself because if the author turns out not to do very well you've just tied yourself in to publishing several more dud books that you'll make a loss on.

Production costs do exist, but many of them (such as copy-editing) will exist whether the book is on paper or in electronic form.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[nuzak]

What is the "inherent cost" of music? Sure you have to rent a sund studio and pay a sound engineer and a band. But how much would that cost for a week long recording session? Probably a few tens of thousands maybe. If you want to get the best studio and the best sound engineers and producers lets say about $100,000.

Golly .. getting something for a song just got a lot more expensive.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Castar]

PS - In all fairness, it may be the book publishers, not Sony, who is requiring the consumer to get screwed. They may have deals about minimum book prices or some such BS. I'd tempted to blame Sony, but the main point is that *someone* along the line - Sony, book publisher, etc - is being a greedy bastard and it makes me sad because the tech seems so cool.

Yeah, apparently this is the case - Sony says the publishers have complete control over the content pricing in the store. My guess is that the publishers saw what happened to music labels and iTunes, and demanded control. Hopefully content creators will eventually realize that DRMed digital works are worth less to consumers than the physical hardcopies.

Re:Creating still toO expensive!

[Shaper_pmp]

Do you believe that an item's price should be based on the production/distribution cost, consumer demand and the pre-agreed "fair price" of similar items, or is it solely dependant on consumer demand?

If you take the hardline ultra-capitalist approach and think it's ok for the price to be based purely on demand, presumably you also have no problems with "cornering the market", price-fixing cartels and gouging people (eg, selling inflatable rubber dinghies for $1000 each during Hurricane Katrina) - after all, whatever people will pay, eh?

If you think price should contain some element of "fairness", then these prices are way over the odds - the price is broadly equivalent to a brand-new hardback book, but consumer demand for e-books isn't exactly battering the door down, production is less than for paper books, distribution is essentially free and you have to shell out something like $300 minimum on hardware before you can even use the thing you just bought.

If you agree that it's perfectly acceptable for companies to charge you a premium merely because people will pay it, then fine. However, given most people believe that ticket touting, price-fixing and the like are wrong, I think most people would agree that "fairness" should also be an important consideration.

And incidentally, in the UK books are considered an essential/educational item, not a luxury - this is why you don't have to pay VAT on them.

Sony's not locking it up....

[buxtehude]

This is a nice move from Sony. Something they make that isn't solely operable with their own proprietary formats a la Betamax or Minidisc. Even though encouraged to purchase from Sony's store, it sounds as if you can load any sort of printmedia you desire. Though some recently published books are still too expensive, Project Gutenberg opens up a whole world of classical literature. I can't really justify the pricetag, but as soon as it drops into a reasonable range....maybe.

Academics

[quarrelinastraw]

This looks great for people in academics. I read 100 pages or so per week of articles in PDF that I may never read again. Reading them on an LCD screen is a huge pain, so I usually end up printing them out (and of course using both sides and recycling). This would save me a lot of paper.

Re:Academics

[RMB2]

You're absolutly right; I spend thousands of pages on technical documents. It would be unbelievable to have them all on a card. I could have all my research sharing flash memory with my music.

One important thing that sounds to be missing... I wonder if there is any way to annotate on the documents? While I read papers, I usually mark them up, references and formulae and such. Is there an E Ink equivalent?

Re:Academics

[adrianmonk]

I read 100 pages or so per week of articles in PDF that I may never read again. Reading them on an LCD screen is a huge pain, so I usually end up printing them out (and of course using both sides and recycling). This would save me a lot of paper.

Yeah, but $350 worth of paper? :-)

Re:Academics

[Anonymous Coward]

While a cute comment, some people care about things besides money.

Re:Academics

[dimension6]

I should warn you, as the owner of a Sony Librie (previous Japanese version, uses the same screen as the Reader I believe), that the screen (and resolution) is definitely too small to read a 8.5x11 or A4 .pdf document. For the Librie, I can convert the .pdf files into 2 pages for every 1 on the .pdf file, and that works pretty well. However, this means more flipping around, and at about a second per page turn, could be inconvenient for academic books.

Re:Academics

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be cost effective if you add in the ink + paper. Plus a reader is plain cool.

Re:Academics

[pimpimpim]

nah, it are research papers, in most cases you'll only read the first half and the last half page of it ;)

Re:Academics

[dimension6]

Heh...I forgot to add that if it's text, it's definitely in your best interest to save the .pdf as text (you can do that in Acrobat Reader) and convert it from there. The text is scalable, and looks awesome.

Re:Academics

[quarrelinastraw]

It's not the cost of paper I mind -- it's the waste. Plus there are only 2 quality laser printers I can use for free. This means that much of the time when I want to print something I have to pay 10 cents a copy, including at my department office and all campus libraries etc.

Re:Academics

[Aladrin]

While a cute comment, it had absolutely nothing to do with the previous comment.

Re:Academics

[XenoPhage]

As best I can tell from the Sony site, there is no annotation capability. No real input other than loading the documents and turning the pages.. I was really excited about this until I thought about all the times I've annotated documents myself. I'm an avid reader of various genres, but I was looking at this device as something I could use for PDF reading.. Without annotations of any kind, it's use has dropped considerably..

I like the look and feature set of the I-Rex Iliad, but the pricepoint it way out of my range...

Re:Academics

[failedlogic]

I've been thinking of this problem as well as I waste too much paper. I seem a bit unmotivated to read all the academic journals but if they're read to me, I absorb more.

One solution I've been looking/waiting for is to have a text-to-speech translation of the document to play on my iPod. I don't know if there's any good solutions right now particulalry when it involves PDF documents. I'm primarily a Mac user but have an older PC lying around. I heard the text to speech demo in the Jobs WWDC keynote and it sounds great. I'm hoping I can use that for some documents. Its my last year though so I won't be able to use it for university ;)

Any suggestions?

Re:Academics

[coldmist]

Check out the iRex then. It's an E-ink based reader from England (650 Euros though), but you can annotate right on the screen with a stylus.

Re:Academics

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone seen how the reader renders math ?

Finally..

[anethema]

I've been following these e-ink readers since I've first read about the technology. I'm an avid reader and re-read all the books I enjoy many times. Having all my books available on a SD card in a reader which lasts like 20 books worth on a single charge, all while looking a lot like real paper is like a dream come true for me.

The main competition to this sony reader seems to be the Iliad from I-Rex. I think it is a much nicer reader for a couple reasons.

It has a nice page turn interface, it has a proper paperback A5 sized screen, and runs linux. There has already been quite a bit of hacking on it. Can code your own readers for various formats etc.

The downsize? It is like $850 instead of $350 of the sony :(

Guess I'm still stuck waiting till the iliad comes down in price or another reader comes out at a lower price point. These things are way to specialized for the price they are demanding.

Re:Finally..

[dimension6]

The Sony Librie runs a modified version of Linux, but doesn't provide information on the specific libraries they use to output to the screen. Small detail.

Re:Finally..

[smoker2]

The main competition to this sony reader seems to be the Iliad from I-Rex.

But it takes at least 2 seconds to turn a page !

Re:Finally..

[tiocsti]

"These things are way to specialized for the price they are demanding."

That's how things usually work, isn't it? If it has a limited potential market, the price has to be higher to cover development costs. Prices get reduced when production costs decline or the market increases.

Re:Finally..

[Castar]

The Iliad doesn't seem too bad, but some points:

The page turn bar looks cool, but some users complain about the fact that you flip it the wrong way.. That is, you flip left to go to the next page, rather than right. Apparently it's a bit confusing sometimes.

Also, Irex hasn't released the SDK or the GPL source, so you can't write your own reader yet. Even when that stuff is released, you need to distribute your reader through their official service, so that limits things somewhat.

Plus, the software is still buggy, with power management in particular being a huge downside. Also, PDF is basically the only readable format on the device.

I love the big screen, though. It could certainly have promise, along with the Hanlin V2 reader, if it's ever released.

Source code to GPL'd components

[Eric Smith]

Is on Sony's Source Code Distribution Service:

http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/catego ry3.html#2

The older, Japan only model is there too. As well as various other interesting products.

Re:Source code to GPL'd components

[PotterMan]

Can custom apps be written for the Sony Reader?

It's not LCD, dumbass

[pkcs11]

The disconnect for e-book isn't LCD eye-strain. It's the tactile connection to a book.
The ability to tote a book anywhere and curl up and read it: either under a tree or in front of a fireplace or at a friend's house...the actual weight of the book, the thickness of the pages....thats a book. Thats why people buy books.
Not the lack of eye-strain.

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[binarybum]

are you sure? That sounds very quaint to me, but merely habitual, like saying people would never switch to computers because they like the weight and motion of a typewriter.

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[The Bungi]

Of course typewriters and computers are mostly used for work, whereas most people read books for pleasure (even the pleasure of learning, outside of an academic setting). So the "habitual" part of the effort is quite understandable - people don't normally run the bulls in Pamplona for the sporting value, even though jogging or riding a bycicle could potentially be considered "quaint" as well.

In any case, we've been using books for almost a thousand years now. They're not going anywhere. Readers like these will be niche solutions for a long time to come. Still, it's good that the technology gives us the choices.

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[fabs64]

Seeing as books/writing are artificial constructs to begin with, that seems to me to be a pretty shaky point.
What's to stop you curling up with this reader?

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[MightyYar]

Well, I sure won't be taking this to the beach! Seriously, paperbacks are essentially disposable, so if they get sandy, wet, or dropped it doesn't matter. I've spilled drinks on books, dropped them into a pool, and even had the tide start to take one away. I've lost paperbacks - left them places. In the case of the wet ones, I put them in the oven for a little while and kept reading... I don't think the ebook will be that hardy in its first revision. Most importantly (for me), you can't take most ebooks out of the library. My library, New York Public Library, has about 5000 ebooks available - which is nice, but nowhere near the size of their traditional catalog. Perhaps this will all change in the end, but it's a pretty big hindrance right now.

Before anyone yells at me for ruining library books, I am smart enough to recognize my clumsiness and actually buy books that I take on vacation. :)

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[Kasis]

Just to validate your point.

I have an ebook reader on my PDA and I regularly read from it in bed and on the move. It's more convenient for me because of the luminous display and small size (about equal to A6 size and less than 10mm thick, containing about 20 novels along with a sizeable MP3 collection, a couple of silly divx clips, 5 or 6 games and all the usual organiser stuff). It could be expensive if I dropped it but devices like this come with that risk attached.

It did take me a little time (less than half an hour I would say) to become accustomed to pressing a button instead of turning a page.

Re:It's not LCD, dumbass

[Carnildo]

The disconnect for an ebook is eyestrain from the backlight. Which is why my chosen ebook reader (a Zire 21) doesn't have a backlight.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

eh... at say $10 a paperback, you could buy 35. project gutenberg alone has 19,000 books, add to that innumberable articles available online, etc. etc. i think it's a good value.

.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify, this can read .txt files? (a la Gutenburg?)

If so, I've been waiting for this for so damn long.

Just say no.

[Dzimas]

I like being able to share books with friends. I doubt that Sony's going to allow me to lend my book license to someone else, nor am I likely to find electronic books in a used bookstore. Libraries probably won't be allowed to offer them, either. It's easier to just say "no" and rely on the old battery free paper versions. At least no one can deny that I "own" it if it's sitting on my bedside table.

Re:Just say no.

[ricree]

Good point. I can't speak for anyone else, but the majority of the books I read are from the library. Without some way of "borrowing" a book, I would be extremely unlikely to be interested in this.

That said, there really isn't any huge obstacle in the way of a library system for these. They already have a system to "authorize" a fixed number of players, so it doesn't seem like it would be that much more of a stretch to allow libraries to buy licenses to have the books checked out. The library would only be able to check out a certain number of copies per license they own, so it really wouldn't be any different than a library is now. If the file format is going to get hacked, then the books will show up online anyways. If it doesn't, then it would pretty much work the same as a normal library. Either way, it doesn't increase the publishers' risks, and it would greatly benefit the device makers.

Hopefully, they will consider setting up such a system, but I'm not optimistic. After all, when's the last time Sony acted rationally.

Re:Just say no.

[takev]

Don't worry they will plug that analogue hole when everyone is reading digital books.

Re:Just say no.

[ian_mackereth]

Mobipocket has a scheme which allows ebooks to be read for a fixed time. When that expires, the ebook just becomes unreadable.

I've used an online library which used this with reasonable effectiveness. They had a fixed number of 'copies' (i.e. licences) for each book and only that many could be on loan at any one time. Once the loan term expired, that 'copy' became available for borrowing again, without requiring the previous borrower to do anything.

I never tried circumventing this by turning back clocks, etc., as it was on my PDA that was used for too many other purposes to stuff around this way!

Generally, I found it useful for the same reason I use a dead-tree-containing library: trying out books that I wasn't already fairly sure I'd like.

Re:Just say no.

[vanyel]

I've been reading ebooks on my treo for a year or so now, and I've pretty much stopped buying paper. Aside from having recently moved my library of about 600 books for the second time in a couple of years (and not looking forward to ever doing it again!), it's very nice having my entire library with me at all times (ok, so my electronic library is small, but it *would* be nice to have it all).

Most of the books are open pdfs from fictionwise.com. It's true, I would have more if they weren't charging outrageous prices for some of them, but hopefully as more people do this that'll change. I'm trying to order the Reader now (apparently I'm far from the only one!) to have something more book sized to read --- I like having my Treo with me everywhere, but when it's convenient, it would be nice to have something bigger than a postage stamp to read...

Re:Just say no.

[Darren Hiebert]

This is my fear of getting involved with ebooks. When I buy a book, I have the freedom to read it when and where I want to. But with DRM, I loose this freedom and become enslaved to some degree, in that my investment is under their control. I have no trust for Sony, as they have tried again and again to push DRM-protectable formats so that they can have complete control over the content for the sole reason of controlling their revenue stream. If I invest any money into DRM-protected content, that investment can be wiped out in a second when either the hardware or the software that support it becomes obsolete or unsupported.

Case in point: I have a lot of important material on cassette tapes (talks and interviews). It is no trouble transferring that to CDs, MP3s or whatever. But, if I buy an SACD (another example of a proprietary DRM-protected Sony format), that material is lost when my last SACD player breaks, since I can never get it off of the SACD.

Re:Just say no.

[nurb432]

Dont forget that the 'real' book you own cant be 'banned' out of existance by DRM magic. ( or simply 'edited' to fit the 'current model' of the facts )

Once you have the paper in your hands, you can always read it long after the information is considered 'wrong'.

It's great-Siphlonurus rapidus

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only thing I would use it for is for traveling or having reference on the fly."

A fisherman aye?

Re:It's great-Siphlonurus rapidus

[Anonymous Coward]

A fisherman aye ?

A sailor, eh?

Re:It's great-Siphlonurus rapidus

[Anonymous Coward]

A sailor, eh?

A Canadian, huh?

At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[Dystopian Rebel]

I predict that the Sony® PRS-500 Portable Reader System® featuring innovative E-Ink® technology will meet the same fate as the Kamen Segway® Human Transporter featuring the innovative S-Feet® and S-Walking® technologies.

Re:At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[swingkid]

Considering this is the first version of an e-ink reader, you're right in that this particular model probably won't sell enough to recoup Sony's investment. Remember that the first DVD player from Sony was about $1000. I'd expect to see these things selling at less than $100 within a couple years.

Re:At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[timeOday]

For me it would depend a lot on the screen. I have never seen an "E ink" screen in person. If it has great contrast, and leads to long battery life, they may have something here.

Re:At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[Reapman]

I saw one in Japan... was pretty impresseed although the technology still has a ways to go. Reading on these is MUCH easier then staring at a regular LCD screen.

Re:At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[Catbeller]

Maybe they'll clock in at $100-- Sony and the other eBook reader companies can't seem to drop the prices, mainly due to lack of economies of scale because they make them in such small numbers.

They historically couldn't sell because they were too big, the screens sucked, the formats were DRMed to hell and back, the readers were too expensive, the ebooks too expensive, and it's illegal to scan (some) books that you'd really like to. Did ya know that scanning a textbook will land you a (possible) five year federal prison sentence? Per book? Plus tens of thousands in fines, maybe more? Per book, again. The big guns have bought some nasty laws to prevent people from doing what they want to do, namely, save money on books by copying them. Might drive down the cost of textbooks. I digress.

That said -- this is a really nice ebook reader. Been waiting for this for years. The screen is right. The lack of DRM lockout of text books I already possess is a huge winner -- I've actually scanned some, so it's nice to read my ebook on something besides a PC.

As for the costs. Ah, cost accounting, the death of the human species. This reader will make it or not based on immediate market reaction, profit or loss. This is the wrong way to look at the costs.

The real cost is: how many trees will we NOT cut down in the world if this reader were prevalent? How much CO2 would be converted back to O2, slowing the greenhouse overheating, if hundreds of millions of trees aren't pulped to provide all those millions of pounds of paper books and newspapers and magazines that are discarded after reading? Factor the cost of those trees' absence into the balance of how much Sony win/loses in the next quarter.

If we were a sane race, we would use government funds to develop and distribute ebook readers and slowly ban paper books . A hundred billion dollars would be cheap. Give them away for free. And plant forests. The cost of doing otherwise is the possible heat death of our civilization. The free market is a moron.

Re:At $350 USD, it's already doomed.

[VdG]

If they weren't needed for making paper, most of trees wouldn't be there in the first place: there's no CO2 problem from that.
Making paper is quite a strain on the environment but the biggest problem is its use of water.

I'd need to see a lot more information to be convinced that this sort of device is environmentally beneficial. Generally, creating electronic devices uses quite a lot of resources and produces some nasty polutants. You've also got to consider the cost of re-charging the battery. A paperback may take energy, water etc to produce, but once it's there you don't need any power to run it.

$ 349.99? Yeah no.

[loraksus]

Especially considering that I can get a new laptop for $399 without having to play with rebates...
Sale is dead now, but wait a week or so and there will be another

Really. Is this really a choice that you have to think about?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Shipping On or Before October 31

[Time Doctor]

Does not mean "now available".

Re:Shipping On or Before October 31

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up - very valid point! "Now Available" is very much an overstatement.

Re:Shipping On or Before October 31

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod both down! It said "Availabe for PURCHASE"

PDF-s !?

[suv4x4]

I'm truly disappointed at Sony for supporting proprietary formats like PDF, instead of introducing a better, mandatory *Universal E Book* format that any Sony Reader can open!

Oh btw, maybe their marketing isn't totally worthless if they offer more than 250 star trek books to their early gadget adopters. It's kinda obvious, but it might as well work!

Welcome too the future, btw! Party at my house.

Re:PDF-s !?

[taskforce]

PDF isn't propreitary, the format is entirely open and documented.

Re:PDF-s !?

[Anonymous Coward]

> PDF isn't propreitary, the format is entirely open and documented.

The Original Poster was advocating for a *new*, *mandatory* and *sony-wide* e-book format.

*** wooosh ***

That was the sound of sarcasm passing over your head...

Re:PDF-s !?

[LordVader717]

Sarcasm. Their previous model only supported their own special format, and required things like PDFs or even TXTs to be converted with special software.

Re:PDF-s !?

[suv4x4]

PDF isn't propreitary, the format is entirely open and documented.

I find it amusing how you said that, and were modded insightful. This requires serious lack of sarcasm in both you, and all the people that modded you.

Congratulations.

Re:PDF-s !?

[Sepper]

I find it amusing how you said that, and were modded insightful. This requires serious lack of sarcasm in both you, and all the people that modded you.

Actualy, there is some truth to the grand-parent's statement about PDF. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf

If you stick to the subset of PDF that is an ISO standard and don't touch any Patent from Adobe, you can make a PDF generator (http://www.google.com/search?q=pdf+generator).

That is the reason why OpenOffice.org support exporting to PDF. That is also the reason why you can print directly to PDF any unix flavor... or on Windows with GPL tools: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Re:PDF-s !?

[Joosy]

PDF isn't propreitary, the format is entirely open and documented.

That's as maybe, so how was Adobe able to stop Microsoft from having a "Save to PDF" feature in MS Office 2007?

Simple benchmark for consumer morality

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does what I am about to do involve giving money to Sony?"

'Nuff said.

Good books need good typography

[DeborahArielPickett]

I do hope that the supplier of the ebooks for this device take a little more care than do the current crop of ebook producers. Most of the books I read now are ebooks through eReader or Fictionwise, and they often are so poorly converted into electronic form that it hurts to read them.

The one I'm currently reading is obviously an OCR job, because there are occasional soft-turned-hard hyphens peppered through it, and some lines where the wordspacing was evidently tight in the original, leadingtoareallylongwordin the ebook. Another one used hyphens for dashes too-which is extremely jarring in a proportional font-as this sentence demonstrates. Quotation marks and apostrophes are usually just the ASCII ones, which really isn't very professional-looking in print.

Then you see situations where the culture shock just got too much for the converter and they gave up. The sample book in the SonyStyle web page, The Da Vinci Code, has some pictograms in it. Those probably just get included in the ebook as a low-resolution bitmap. They certainly did on my copy from Fictionwise. I've lost count of the books which have hard-coded page references ("see page 321"), which is useless considering that pagination is up to the device itself. Forget about tappable hyperlinks; I've only seen one such ebook in the dozens I've read.

Don't get me wrong. I love my ebooks, and they compare well to Australian dead-tree books in price. But there's more to releasing an ebook than spitting out a plaintext file. If the parent poster is right about manga, hooray, finally. But history doesn't make me optimistic.

Re:Good books need good typography

[vonFinkelstien]

It can read PDFs. I usually LaTeXify Project Gutenberg books to make beautifully typeset texts.

Re:Good books need good typography

[Aladrin]

"Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

Kidding aside, I'm LaTeX-deficient. Can you describe the process for this? I am seriously considering one of these readers (wish it wasn't Sony -sigh-) and anything that might correct its possible deficiencies would be welcome. I've access to Windows and Linux PCs both, but would prefer it be under Linux.

I currently use a Palm (that I just bought! argh!) device, and I used a PocketPC before that, so I'm not new to ebooks in general, just LaTeX. (And conversion to PDF.)

Re:Good books need good typography

[TheRaven64]

For a novel, you need almost no LaTeX skill to typeset it. Put a preamble in looking like this:

\documentclass{book}
\title{A Book}
\author{A. Person}
\begin{document}
\maketitle

That will give you a titlepage of a book. LaTeX uses a double line-break as a paragraph-break, which I believe is also the standard for Gutenberg. The only other thing you need to do is mark up the chapter headings like this:

\chapter{A Chapter}

Then put this at the end of the document:

\end{document}

Save this as ebook.tex and then run the following command:

$ pdflatex ebook.tex

This will give you a typeset copy, ebook.pdf. There are other options you can play around with for default font sizes and page sizes.

I really don't know why PG didn't go with (a subset of) LaTeX for their base format. It's trivial to convert to their format with latex and dvi2tty, and also easy to convert to PDF, HTML, etc.

Re:Good books need good typography

[kfg]

. . .there's more to releasing an ebook than spitting out a plaintext file.

I'm with your other respondant. Almost all of my ebooks are plain text files from Project Gutenberg, with a few PDFs thrown in. I'm generally perfectly happy to just read ASCII text, but for something I want prettfied I just mark it up.

The fact that it's Sony makes my spine itch, there has to be a catch in there somewhere, but this one is soooo close to what I've been waiting for. epaper, isn't bound to a propriatary format, but supports what few propriatary format documents I have by going with a standard . . .I suppose I could bitch about the lack of vorbis support, and of course I'd have to throw in at least a gig of memory to seriously consider it as a music player.

And it's a bit small. There are places to make things as small as possible; and then there are places where you shouldn't. They tried to find a compromise here. I disagree with the side of the line the fell on (they wanted to make the device the size of a paperback; I want the screen the size of a paperback), but they are in the vicinity of the line.

I'm not the target market for this thing because nobody is going to make money from me other than the sale of the device, to me ebooks are for public domain text files, Gibbon, Kipling, Burton and the like, stored in mass quantity, but for the likes of me this is the one that looks purchasable.

KFG

Can you imagine....

[sfeinstein]

...reading an article about Beowulf clusters on these things!!?!

(it had to be said)

CHM

[dwarfsoft]

I wonder if they will end up supporting Windows Help format CHM files. I have a vast library of PDF's and CHM's. I would get this device if I could find any info that it supported CHM :/

I have been wondering when a device like this was actually going to see the light of day. I look forward to the day when I can take my entire library on a device like this... and afford it.

Just say no...to online books.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Libraries probably won't be allowed to offer them, either. "

The Indianapolis Public Library offers online electronic books.

"It's easier to just say "no" and rely on the old battery free paper versions."

It also represents a good solution against piracy. Certainly better than what the MPAA/RIAA are offering.

"At least no one can deny that I "own" it if it's sitting on my bedside table."

You own the "original book", not the words on the pages.

Re:Just say no...to online books.

[MadJo]

"You own the "original book", not the words on the pages."
I'll sue you, you are using words that I used... Clearly that's copyright infringement!

*mutters* Blatantly copying words that I used in my texts, the nerve...

Now how much would you pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't answer yet, because the next 50,000 buyers to call in and order gets a free Sony Root-Kit at no extra charge!
Hurry. Supplies are limited!

Before We Get More Comments...

[Anonymous Coward]

About how you can get cheap laptops or PDA's, let me remind you of why this device was made: eye strain! Staring at a screen is like staring at a lightbulb, a dim one but a lightbulb nonetheless.

But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[ian_mackereth]

I do virtually all my reading on my PDA (Palm T3, 1/2VGA) and have for the last couple of years.

This Sony device has some of the same advantages; potential for large number of books in hand and ability to buy books online at any time.

However, it still misses some of the point of an e-reader vs a dead-tree book!

Portability: it won't fit in my shirt pocket like the Palm does. Why is it the size of a dead-tree book? Because that's what people who haven't used ebooks much think that they want!
The paperback size is a compromise between having enough words to balance the effort and inconvenience of page turning, and having a reasonable thickness for an average-length book. When turning a page requires just a minimal thumb pressure, fewer words per page is less of a consideration.

Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great. Or in any other environment where the light levels are low enough to cause your mother to worry about you going blind!

Dictionary: being able to tap on a word on the screen and have a dictionary entry pop up is so useful, especially with obtuse and erudite writers. I always _mean_ to go look up words, but with ereader and a 150,000 word dictionary loaded, I actually _do_!

Availability: my PDA is a general-purpose device and I use it as an alarm clock, an organiser, an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a calculator, a map (with BT GPSr), a note-taker, etc., etc. Because I use it so much, I always have it with me. Because I always have it with me, I always have my current book(s) and magazines available for those unexpected spare moments (or hours!) Since even a long novel is rarely more than 3-400kB, they really don't make much of a dent in a 1GB SD card.

I often hear fellow bibliophiles say that they wouldn't like an e-book reader because they really like the smell and feel of real paper, and the tactile experience of turning pages, and so on.
I imagine that their great-great grandparents thought that automotives were never going to be popular, because people would miss the feel of the reins and the clip-clop of the hooves...

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[TheSHAD0W]

Ian raises some points, but I have to disagree...

(1) Yeah, it's big, but if it's popular I'm sure you'll see variations in multiple sizes from multiple producers. Also, I don't think your PDA has 20 gig of space. Also, the Apple Newton was rather large, and there are people who STILL swear by it.

(2) I don't think you can put a backlight on an e-ink display. Even so, it'll be of high enough contrast to read in most situations you can read an ordinary paperback book. You could always use one of those little LED book lights, and you wouldn't burn the main batteries either.

(3&4) I don't think it'll be long before people start hacking this doohickey and turning it into a general-purpose computer. I'm pretty sure the concepts will eventually merge and you'll have a reader that'll also function as a PDA.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[bunions]

I do most of my reading on a PDA too (Sony nx80, because the jogdial is a must-have for ebook readers, IMHO) and while it's immensely useful for tech docs, it's not something I can read for hours. Maybe you have younger eyebones than me, but after 30 mins or so, I have to give my eyes a break for a while.

I do agree that I'd like to see something smaller, but I guess I'd have to actually see how it looks and feels in person. If the device is decently durable and I can throw it onto a table like I would with a (paper)notebook, I don't mind a larger format. It'll make for less scrolling around.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[donaldm]

Good post.

The PDA does have its usages in that is is very flexible in what it can do, however the problem with a PDA is that it has a small screen which can be quite irritating to people who need to display large amounts of text and/or drawings in context rather than scroll. This is a major issue with human interfaces because you still need an input device (stylus, keyboard, mouse, .... etc) and an output device (screen, sound, ... etc) that a human can use either their hands or eyes (mainly) and that restricts the size of many electronic devices.

Say you are in an environment where you require many manuals to be available. Other than having lots of paper manuals you use a laptop (a PDA can be useless here), but this is a fragile device and is very easily broken so that is why paper is preferred which in turn can result in time consuming searches. The Sony document viewer goes a good way to solving this issue however it does need to be robust if it it to survive workshop environments. I have seen specialty PDA's that are quite large used for data entry in workshop environments but they are not that robust and are rarely seen on the shop floor.

As far as e-books go I personally have no interest preferring paper, but I do know that this will be the way of the future, however in many ways this will be "market push" (pushed by industry) not "market pull" (required by the consumer) - to coin marketing buzz wording.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[Bazman]

Cleary you dont use your dictionary enough or you wouldn't have said 'obtuse' where you really meant 'abstruse'!

Barry

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[ian_mackereth]

Cleary you dont use your dictionary enough or you wouldn't have said 'obtuse' where you really meant 'abstruse'!"

(Quickly pulls out PDA and scribbles both words in dictionary lookup)
Bugger. Well, don't I feel obtuse! 8-)}

On the images/formatted text issue; yes, a PDA screen is too small for that to be at all comfortable. I've done it, when that was the only option available, but the scrolling gets annoying very quickly.

Small(ish) images embed into ebooks fairly well, with those larger than screen size being shown as icons that open into a scrolling window (in the ereader program.)

Luckily, for the vast majority of fiction, it's the words and their order that are important, not their spatial configuration. pdf is almost exactly the wrong format for small screens!

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[Rogerborg]

Well done; you've defended products that don't exist yet. Now, what do you think about this device?

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[stg]

Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great. Or in any other environment where the light levels are low enough to cause your mother to worry about you going blind!

    I also read mostly on a Palm (E2), about two books a week or more. I was somewhat disappointed at the fact that you could not turn the backlight off. The minimum setting is still too bright. I'd rather have the extra battery time.

    Size - I'd like a much larger display. I wouldn't mind an A5 form size.

    Palmtop vs Ebook reader- I'd much rather prefer it if Sony did their e-reader as a Palm. They did a ton of them, why not one more? I imagine it'd cut into their profits since Palm Reader and Mobipocket users could just buy at their regular places. Of course, the e-ink display would be awful for most Palm apps.

    Good PDF support - I don't know about you, but so far I think PDF support on the Palm is awful. I tried a couple of apps, including Acrobat, and the conversion isn't great and the delay on new pages (or specially when going back a page) is terrible, sometimes several seconds. Good PDF support would be great.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[Anonymous Coward]

>The paperback size is a compromise between having enough words to balance the effort and inconvenience of page turning, and having a reasonable thickness for an average-length book. When turning a page requires just a minimal thumb pressure, fewer words per page is less of a consideration.

Dude, it takes one second for the page to refresh on a e-ink display. If it was PDA size, you'd spend one quarter of your reading time waiting for pages to flip.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[TheSHAD0W]

Borderline. I wish I could try it out. I have a bunch of e-books I haven't read yet that I could stick on it.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[bunions]

> Good PDF support would be great.

Plucker (plkr.org) does a good job converting pdfs to it's own format - as long as the pdfs aren't all images. So it's a good solution if you don't mind a translation step.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[kwalker]

One of the things I like about using my PDA as an eBook reader is that most of the readers I've tried have the ability to change the font, primarily making it bigger or smaller to help with things like eyestrain. I've got pretty bad eyes to begin with, and I have found a combination of settings that make all of the books I read easy on me.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[An anonymous Frank]

Back in my Palm Vx days, I recall keeping up with over 30 news sites daily using the offline sync application, as I'd read the bits whenever I wasn't doing anything else, be it in the elevator, waiting for people to show up for a meeting, ...

It really is unbelievable how much information can be processed in these small periods of time.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[stg]

I used Plucker for quite a while with CHMs (using HTMLHelp's decompiler first) and regular pages but I didn't know that - thanks.

However, while Plucker worked great on my Tungsten E, in my Tungsten E2 it kept locking up and requiring resets...

I will try it again to see if the problem persists.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[evilviper]

Why is it the size of a dead-tree book?

For one, PDFs.

For another, no matter how easy it is to scroll, your eyes have a hard time following the continuous motion of the text.

Because that's what people who haven't used ebooks much think that they want!

I've used numerous PDAs, and the screens certainly are too small to read ANYTHING on, without putting your face right up against them. Something on the order of 2-3x the size of your Palm is necessary.

A half-height version of this Sony device (and MUCH cheaper) would be about ideal, IMO.

Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great.

Backlit and reflective are mutually exclusive. And relective is infinitely easier on the eyes (Screen vs. Paper). How easy is your backlit Palm to read in direct sunlight?

In other words, just buy a booklight. You'll be much better off.

Availability: my PDA is a general-purpose device and I use it as an alarm clock, an organiser, an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a calculator, a map (with BT GPSr), a note-taker, etc., etc.

Multipurpose devices are overrated. Jack of all trades, master of none. Still... movie viewer is the only application this device inherently can't do.

Re:But it's not a reeeeeallll book!

[coredog64]

I've read books on a couple generations of PDAs (Casio EM500, iPaq 3100 and 3600) as well as dedicated eBook readers (Franklin EBM-911, Fictionwise eb-1150). In general, fiction isn't too bad on the smaller screens. The problem for me is that my reading is split between fiction and technical reference. You've never experienced pain until you've tried to figure out WTF 70 columns of code is supposed to be when it's been split over 8 lines and the reader has added extraneous hyphens. In general the eb-1150 isn't too bad if you're willing to stick with the content you get from Fictionwise. $DIETY help you if you want to download content from PG. You've got to convert the plain text to HTML and then use the proprietary ETI ebook publisher software (Win32 and OS9 only!) to create the ebook.

Re:Who buys this thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'll bet that all of the extra features like playing music were possible without any extra hardware. The processor was probably designed for music players (and they probably chose to use it because it was cheaper than an ARM core without an embedded DSP).

There are a lot of buttons, but more screen space and touch sensitivity would only serve to drive the price higher.

Yeah, becuase that's exactly the same thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sony Reader weighs 9 ounces. The laptop you linked to weighs 85 ounces. Also compare size. The least you could do is compare it to a Pocket PC, which might be considered a similar item. A laptop is in a completely different category.

Yeah, I'd probably rather put the $350 towards a laptop, too. Or a nice Pocket PC. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's fair to compare it to those items. I'd also rather put the $350 towards upgrading my desktop PC for gaming, or a new TV, or a hundred other things.

If you have the disposable income, this is a fairly nifty item that fills a niche in the market. I can think of a lot of situations where this would be handy to have, especially when combined with free eBooks from sources such as Project Gutenberg.

Re:PG oblig.

[RMB2]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.....

... and no Ogg!

[Markus Registrada]

And, of course, no Ogg/Vorbis audio support. Next!

Seriously, this thing cries out to be hacked. Although one with stylus input would be a lot more useful, hacked.

What about images?

[ofprimes]

Even though the website says the reader handles "Unsecured Text: BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, TXT, RTF, Microsoft® Word; Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMPit", not on one page did I see an image displayed on the reader. This is the most important feature for me as I read many IT books on PFD that include numerous diagrams, pictures, charts, pieces of code as a graphic, etc. I noticed it said it displays 800x600 resolution with 4 shades of gray, but why are there no examples of anything other than plain text? Are images something you do not want to even display on these? If anyone has more info, your insight is appreciated. That would be the difference between me buying one or not.

Re:What about images?

[bunions]

I've seen an image of images (!) on the devices. From what I can tell it looks fine. Or as fine as any image will in 2-bit grayscale, anyway.

Re:What about images?

[Brother Seamus]

Unfortunately, the images disappear whenever the is unit shaken

Battery

[simontek2]

The Battery is a Lithium-Ion. Are these the re-use apple and dell batteries? sorry couldn't resist. Although it has a black and while screen. How really useful is it that it displays JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP? Min requirements: Hard Drive: 20MB9 Minimum availible Hard Drive space Spell check please. I am surprised it supports SD as well as Microstick. I figured it would only support MS.

Re:Battery

[simontek2]

err i forgot something. I looked up a sample. Freakanomics. its cheaper to buy the paper version then the digital one. That doesn't make any sense. I want to email Mr Levitt and find out if he makes more profit with the digital one. I bet he doesn't. The bandwidth space would be about equal price for a website posting information of the book. Digital conversion of the original would be very little (when was the last time a book was written on a typewriter? Its already in Digital format somewhere. So BASICALLY, The cost of the e-book should be MUCH cheaper than the paper version, which its not. Go Figure.

Re:Battery

[OrangeTide]

Yes but you can pirate the digital version. So they really need to charge 1.2x the price to account for 1 in 6 people pirated it:)

"Ultimate digital reading experience"

[dbIII]

Ultimate digital reading experience? I thought that was braille.

Re:"Ultimate digital reading experience"

[value_added]

Ultimate digital reading experience? I thought that was braille.

Well, at least the sight-impaired won't be distracted by the two logos and all the buttons. Last I checked, books didn't have logos or big buttons on every page, so my guess is that the sight-impaired will be at an advantage in that they'll less distracted than everyone else using this device.

On the plus side, the device offers a list of features that include 7,500 page turns per charge, readability in sunlight, 180 degree viewing, and support for reasonably standard formats (despite their hawking some CONNECT(TM) format). Sounds great, I suppose, but I'll wait for next year.

Sigh.

I expect when someone does come up with an ideal device, I'll be the first in line. Hell, I'll probably buy a half-dozen the first day. I read more than most people (for pleasure), so I agree that using an "ebook" (whatever that is) will never replace the experience of holding a book and flipping pages, but for everyone else, such a product is long overdue. Students at all levels require text books, for example. Myself, I have to slog through technical documentation all day long, so being able to store a few hundred PDFs on a usable portable device rather than printing them or devoting bookshelf real estate would be the cat's meow. Or at least a big start.

As it is now, we're still mostly stuck sitting at a desk, reaching for a mouse, and playing with scrollbars. It works, I guess, but imagine having the contents of something like Wikipedia on such a device? Years ago there was a huge flurry of activity (both technical and artistic) in developing an alternative format to web and print. Most of it disappeared not because of a lack of interest, but because there didn't exist a device that was good enough. Well, that and the dot com bubble bursting. Maybe this will help resurrect some of that effort and we can move closer to replacing what has worked so well for so many hundreds of years: the book. The iPod revolutionised our approach to music, so maybe it'll be Apple that figures it out.

Re:"Ultimate digital reading experience"

[noidentity]

Or finger-reading, if there is such a thing.

Re:"Ultimate digital reading experience"

[Magada]

Well, it would appear that support for anything other than JPEG, PDF and plain ascii text is in the form of a piece of software which converts stuff to the SonyProprietaryCrapDRMformat also known as BBeB Book (tm). Wake me up when they make the necessary adjustments.

also technicians

[bunions]

datasheets are always PDFs.

I have a serious hankering for this device. I can fit a giant shitton of PDFs on a 1GB memory stick. As long as I'm not forced to run some shitsack software to get stuff onto it, I may actually get one of these. I guess it's a choice between this and a Wii. :(

What's this?

[Anonymous Coward]

> PC Management Software

A rootkit? Does it actually run on my (non-windows, non-x86) PC?

Wahuh?

[GimliGloin]

Why does this text file reader REQUIRE a Windows PC??? Wouldn't it be better just to have it act like a USB drive that can also image the contained files (text. BBEwhatever, etc...)... GSG

Re:Wahuh?

[monsted]

Apparently, the windows software converts the pdf/txt files to a native format before uploading it to the device.

Seriously...

[RMB2]

... but will it run Linux?

No, seriously. I know Eric Smith already mentioned a link to the source code.... I wonder what people will be able to do with this thing... What are the refresh rates i.e. could we make it do some kinda TI-83 style video? And so on....

Neat concept, hacking your book.....

Re:Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, part of the problem would be to get your own kernel on the device. Sony doesn't document a way to do it. One of the possible ways is to trick the firmware upgrader - that's how it was done for Librie. However, if they implement any kind of code signing or asymmetrical encryption it'll be much tougher to crack.
Another (lesser) issue is that they don't provide sources for the Reader GUI, so if we want to add our own file formats to the existing UI, that will need to be reversed too. However, making a standalone application to read e.g. DjVu files shouldn't be too hard - a simple text reader is already available for Librie.

Foreign language books?

[antifoidulus]

I wonder if they will ever stock books in other languages. I want to try to learn Korean(because Korean women are hot :P) and I think that being able to download books written in Korean(childrens books at first, then getting more advanced) would be an interesting way to learn the language. I can always go to hanbooks.com which offers some decent prices, but being able to integrate e-books with dictionaries and whatnot would be really cool. Plus you can be much less limited in your selection.

Re:Foreign language books?

[PietjeJantje]

>I wonder if they will ever stock books in other languages.

Nah, only books in Japanese for you, I'm afraid.

Re:Foreign language books?

[taff^2]

It's true. Korean women are hot.

OpenDocument files?

[vinsci]

How do you put OpenDocument and other format files on the reader? I noticed even PDF files have to be converted to the Sony proprietary BBEB format before being loaded to the device...

How do you perform the file conversions when loading PDF:s from a Linux host?

I didn't see anything that looked like a conversion program among the published GPL files for the device.

Re:OpenDocument files?

[Budenny]

Its a good question. The four questions about it are:

1) Can you read your own books in native mode, and get them in and out using normal file transfer tools?

2) Can you read books bought at the store on other readers?

3) Can you read other ebooks bought at other stores on it?

4) Can you buy the ebooks using an ordinary web browser or do you have to use proprietary software?

Otherwise we are headed down towards a rather familiar place. In this place you are locked into both bookstore, reader and download/management software, and have given up the ability you currently have with both books and cds, to buy them in a variety of ways, from a variety of people, and play/read them on a variety of devices. Which is bad enough in music, but when it comes to books, its truly terrible.

Re:OpenDocument files?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I noticed even PDF files have to be converted to the Sony proprietary BBEB format before being loaded to the device...

No. From the Sony site "Adobe® PDF, JPEG, BBeB Book and plain text formats natively supported. HTML and other text formats require conversion using included software."

Re:OpenDocument files?

[vinsci]

In particular, I'd like to see DjVu files (see DjVuLibre) supported on this and similar E-Ink devices. DjVu, in summary, is a lot faster and a lot smaller than PDF files.

About DjVu:

DjVu is a web-centric format and software platform for distributing documents and images. DjVu can advantageously replace PDF, PS, TIFF, JPEG, and GIF for distributing scanned documents, digital documents, or high-resolution pictures. DjVu content downloads faster, displays and renders faster, looks nicer on a screen, and consume less client resources than competing formats. DjVu images display instantly and can be smoothly zoomed and panned with no lengthy re-rendering. DjVu is used by hundreds of academic, commercial, governmental, and non-commercial web sites around the world.

DjVuLibre is an open source (GPL'ed) implementation of DjVu, including viewers, browser plugins, decoders, simple encoders, and utilities.

(quoted from the DjVuLibre homepage)

Re:OpenDocument files?

[Anonymous Coward]

>1) Can you read your own books in native mode, and get them in and out using normal file transfer tools?
Yes and yes (you'll need a card reader though, Reader itself doesn't work as a mass storage device). Without conversion it can read PDF, RTF and TXT. There are also free tools to create LRF (BBeB) books.

>2) Can you read books bought at the store on other readers?
If you mean readers from other makers then no. You can read them on your PC though and other Sony Readers (up to 6 devices in total).

>3) Can you read other ebooks bought at other stores on it?
No, if they're DRMed. Reader supports only Sony's DRM.

>4) Can you buy the ebooks using an ordinary web browser or do you have to use proprietary software?
You'll have to use the software. Though you can browse the shop and check prices in the browser (and apparently Firefox works fine).

Re:OpenDocument files?

[Budenny]

Basically tben we have the iPod/iTunes model. The hope is to have a virtuous circle between store and player. Once you have a few books bought from the store, you are locked into the player unless you buy them again. You are also locked into the store, since DRMd books from other stores will not be readable on your player. The download software is out of your control in terms of what it does or reveals about the PC on which it is installed, and you need that in order to work efficiently with the player.

Like the iPod/iTunes model, this is something anyone seriously committed to intellectual freedom will boycott.

I'm excited at least

[Tycho]

The Sony Reader looks really neat and I am excited, and I noticed a few things about storage on the Reader. For instance, I think it is good that Sony made SD card support available, in addition to Memory Stick compatibility. This is nice and all, but PDF files can get large and being able to add even more storage would be good. From what I understand MS cards on the PSP top out at 4GB at least with the older firmware, which leads me to believe the MS "standard" only supports cards 4GB (2^32 bytes) in size. SD 1.1 cards are limited to the same size, 4GB. However there is a new standard for SD cards called, SD 2.0, which is also known as SDHC. I like to know if Sony has plans to or already supports SDHC cards on the Reader. I would also like to know if the Reader supports USB host mode like certain hard drive cases and the Apple iPod do. One model of hard drive case by AMS that supports USB host mode has an internal Li-ion battery. While I do not know the battery life of this case with the drive running, it should be at least one to two hours. This would be long enough to copy a couple of files from an external hard drive to the internal memory of the Reader. If the Reader does not support USB host mode, Apple could add a file browser to the iPod and with the Camera Connector which enables USB host mode on the iPod, files could be loaded on to the Reader. Then again maybe Sony could maye a larger version of the Reader with a hard drive and a larger battery.

Re:I'm excited at least

[dimension6]

I might be able to shed a bit of light here (I have a Sony Librie from Japan). First, the Reader doesn't support .pdf natively. You first have to convert it in some way to the BBEB format (proprietary Sony format, fancy that). I'm not too sure how different the Reader's interface will be from the Librie, but it's not too practical to have 300 books on the Librie, because scrolling through and finding the ones you want to read takes a long time (it takes about a second to flip pages). I have a 1GB card that provides plenty of space, and I have many .pdf-converted files.

What I want to know is if Sony will convert the .pdf files into images for the Reader or into text+images. This is important because the text is scalable, and true text looks terrific on the screen. The quality of text converted into images varies widely. Oh, and, Apple and Sony are sure to get together to create some iPod-Reader synchronisation. ;)

Re:I'm excited at least

[Anonymous Coward]

Reader is not Librie and it DOES support PDF, RTF and TXT natively. See this extensive report for details:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t= 7713

Re:I'm excited at least

[Penty]

Don't count on SD Card 2.0 being available. All the current portable process only natively support 1.1.

Can you imagine?

[dryekindrew]

If this thing had audio support, it would be interesting to see electronic books with soundtracks included. Can you imagine reading a horror book, and as your turning the pages the music gets creepier and creepier. You could also hear al sorts of ambient sounds, depending on where in the book the charecters are. If I had money i'd patent this idea ;)

Re:Can you imagine?

[kt0157]

You now can't patent that idea since you disclosed it in public. But hey, nor can anyone else.

K.

Re:Can you imagine?

[Anonymous Coward]

um. it does have audio support. rtfa.

Re:Can you imagine?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then we can take out the text and show moving images along with the sound that tell the same story and... er, wait, it's already invented.

Doesn't appear to be Mac compatible!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Operating System: Windows® XP (Home Edition/Professional, Media Center Edition, Media Center Edition 2004, Media Center Edition 2005)" from Sonystyle.com

Shame - I was seriously considering one of those as well!

like.no.other

[Anonymous Coward]

Please enable Cookie and JavaScript to download modules.

What a bunch of complete wankers! Apparently they expect me to send this cookie with my request...

function SetCookie () {
    var expdate = new Date();
    expdate.setTime (expdate.getTime() + (365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
    document.cookie= "cesp_module_download=Approved; path=/Products/Linux/";
}

Can I be bothered opening cookies.txt and adding this cookie? No, I don't think so. Why don't Sony (consumer) make the source code availiable without demonstrating their famed outright contempt for customers?

Fuck you Sony!

eyestrain on lcd - what?

[LosManos]

hejdig.

>The six inch screen uses E Ink, rather than an LCD, to display the text,
>reducing strain on the eye while reading.

Since when did LCD strain your eyes?
I have read many books (full scale novels) on an ordinary PDA and thought paper lacked contrast when I switched back. Compared to LCD I would say that paper puts a strain on eyes.

Maybe EInk is even better than LCD. (don't know, don't care - sony has used all their credibility with me)

/OF

<sig/>

Could be good, but its sony...

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be see how this turns out. I like the idea (although doubt I'll be investing anytime soon... I love my dead trees, and the accumulation thereof). It could have it uses, but... it's a sony product, so (a) it will have to wait till a less evil corporation produces a competitor and (b) you have to wonder how badly crippled it is.

Resolution, file formats, battery life

[SuperBanana]

I got to wondering what the screen pixel count was, and found "170 DPI". Curious to put that down as "numbers I know"; my 20" dell is 1680 pixels wide and ~17 inches wide; almost exactly 100dpi. This is a fair bit higher (not quite twice!) so they should be able to put down a fair amount of decent-looking print on a "page".

It's slightly disappointing that HTML support isn't standard; they support everything else, but HTML requires "conversion." Yuck.

You know what I like best, though? Battery life is rated in "page turns", not minutes...and it charges off USB. With that kind of battery life, you can cut down on the number of charge cycles and keep the liion battery living longer.

Re:Resolution, file formats, battery life

[mlk]

HTML is a very yucky format. Adding a HTML viewer would add a fair old chunk to the price. But then what problem do you have with converting documents to read on it? It is not net enabled, so you can not download pages to it.

too much, not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

People who read books are satisfied with low tech. you can't get much lower than a book. So why is this thing crammed with stuff like MP3/AAC player?

All I want from the ebook reader is the ability to lug my library with me when i travel!

And why doesn't it handle HTML? And no linux way to convert to the BBEB format, or whatever? Remove the extra crap, add several other formats it understands, lower the specs, so it only does the book reader thing, lower the price point. if it was about 250, i'd go for it...

CHM minor issue, my gripe: extra bulk

[Mostly a lurker]

CHM support would be nice, but you could always run your CHM based books through a CHM to PDF converter.

My biggest complaint is that it incorporates irrelevant extras that add to the weight. It ought to be possible to create an e-Ink based device with a small battery that would be lighter than a paperback book. Do that for US$100-150 and I shall be an immediate customer.

Sony marketing may assume that, because people like extra features in their cellphones, the same will be true with electronic readers. If so, they miss a fundamental difference. Most of us do not hold our cell phones out in front of our eyes for hours at a time.

Re:CHM minor issue, my gripe: extra bulk

[dwarfsoft]

Indeed this is ultimately true. From an e-Ink reader I would only intend to use it for that; reading. Although I could cope with having something the size of a PDA, now that I have given it some thought I think I would prefer the book-sized reader, as then I wouldn't be looking at minute text on a minature screen. I think I have to commend Sony on their design, having looked through their Reader site. I certainly am looking forward to where this technology will be going.

Regarding the CHM's: Converting CHM's to PDF's is definitely not an ideal solution, because in that process you lose some of the better structuring that CHM has to offer, and the increased search functionality that CHM has natively. But given no other option I would certainly go this way if I had such a reader.

Re:Who buys this thing?

[CronoCloud]

It sounds to me like they have, once again, given it far more features than it needs, resulting in, as usual, exorbitant prices.

Of course they did, because multi-purpose devices are what consumers "say" they want. Even when sometimes they don't want that, but just think they do.

It's about time

[bblboy54]

I was really starting to get worried that my printed works would never benefit from the powers of DRM. I'm so glad we have Sony to protect us all.

Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy like 80-100 dead-tree books for the price of the hardware alone. It's a pity I can't also buy the time to read them all.

How about combination books?

[harlows_monkeys]

OK, here's what I want-a format that combines a readable book with an audiobook. That would be great. I could then listen to the book in the car on the way to and from work, and read the book in bed at night.

Quite an exciting technology, but...

[Wizard052]

Is the use of external PDFs and TXT files in the device completely unrestricted? While they mention the availabilty of e-books from Sony's website, would Sony freely allow content from any other place to be freely used in their device? I don't know, but Sony being Sony...I'd expect some very proprietory kind of thing which lets you use nothing but 'Sony stuff' on the device. Maybe this is different, but I have my doubts...otherwise, why would anyone pay for any content from them at all if e-books are available a dime a dozen on the net, cheaper or even free. I also read somewhere of documents being stored have a limited life- they tend to 'self-destruct' after a while?!? Could be just a rumour...

I otherwise think this is quite an exciting technology. Reading e-books on regular PCs is quite a strain on the eyes, and a medium that can somewhat replicate paper is fantastic.

Re:Who buys this thing?

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

"It sounds to me like they have, once again, given it far more features than it needs, resulting in, as usual, exorbitant prices."

That's just silly.

Mp3 player hardware - even *if* it had to be added in, onlys cost a couple of dollars at most.

What it adds is the ability to also play audiobooks.

The pricing is based on what Sony's marketing department has determined the traffic will bear - just like every other product.

Barfly

[feyhunde]

I'm a Barfly, eg, I hang out on the Baen Bar a good deal of time.

What that means is I read a large amount of ebooks. Baen books, http:/// www.baen.com , was started by the dearly departed Jim Baen who saw the internet as a way to hook readers. They created http://www.webscription.net/ which has most of their library for sale. Books which aren't even in hardback and are 2+ months from publication are $15. Books in hardback are around 6. Older books are even cheaper, some less than $4.

All of them DRM free.

Jim Baen has been a very passionate voice in the publishing industry against the concept of DRM because it assumes the customer is a Crook. He, and some writers (multiple NY times bestselling writers) decided that it was best to not DRM and to not charge an arm and a leg. Ebooks have low costs, and once the hardware is paid off the only costs are maintenance. They went a step further with a free library of Ebooks, mostly slightly older works and the starts of popular series.

http://www.baen.com/library/

Eric Flint has a nice editorial about the system. The idea is if the books are good, and people share them, Bully! Sharing books gets more people to read them. You might not buy the paperback, but 5 people you share your ebook with might. Or they might buy the hardcover of the sequel. The authors who are in the library have all had greatly enhanced sales.

One step further are their cds. Many hardcovers have a cd in the back with ebook collections related to that book. They even post them online for free, with the only stipulation is you don't profit off their ebooks. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

That would be sony of the rootkit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry,
I cannot trust this company, thus I will not *ever* buy any product or service from them.
I threw out all my sony cd's, reformatted en reinstalled my machine and I am sure I will never let anything sony back into my house. Especially anything 'technological'
For me they are backrupt.

p.s. I really like eInk!

Re:That would be sony of the rootkit?

[jbrandv]

I too am boycotting SONY. Never again. I don't care how cool their technology is. The best that could happen is that SONY goes bankrupt!

Numbers and the inevitable

[Romancer]

It all boils down to how much the author is paid per sale.

The only other thing that makes any impact is the money the publishing company spends to promote and distribute the book. Now that we have digital distribution it's got to be less than a buck to add a book to a site and the bandwidth is nothing. The main money is in publicity and most of that is advertising flyers (bus adds, billboards, all the static printed poster stuff) not too many commercials and complex adds like they have for movies and concerts.

How often have you gone out and purchased a book because of a really convincing ad?
would you have purchased it if you were just given the synopsis? a clever plot in the genre that you prefer is probably what most people look for in their fiction selection. And for the non fiction the subject is probably 90 percent of the deciding factor.

Best seller lists make themselves.
Top reviews are for good books and are free to the publisher (should be, tsk tsk if they're paid for)

So where's the numbers?

Justify to me that my money isn't just stuffing the pockets of people who really didn't create the thing I want. I want the words. I'll pay for the words and make the person who wrote them happy to hopefully write another book I'll buy and the cycle will go on and on.

But if I'm told I have to pay a large amount and buy less books because of it and there pops up another P2P service that I can get the books I want because people like me don't feel bad enough to pay some fat cat then we'll have another napster revolution and in the end some iTunes will come in and set it up right. I wish we could skip the BS part and just have these people realize that the best thing that they could do to get our money is treat us like intelligent people and give us a fair price.

We'll buy the books if we feel the price is fair. otherwise it'll be P2P.
Justify the price and show how much is going to the author.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Romancer]

And to all the people out there that are spouting off numbers and guestimates: shut up

Unless you know a number or percentage be quiet.

We all don't know everything on every topic yet we come in here spouting off like we're experts.

My main point is to draw attention to what we actually want to buy. And that's an experience that an author created. If that's a bunch of researchers and the cost is more for lets say an encycleopedia set then fine we can all understand that. If it's a sci-fi novel written by 1 author, don't lecture me about typesetters and editors. That's BS because it's a finite amount of effort and typesetting is now performed by printers and controlled by computers and probably was taken care of when the author wrote the book on his computer. No matter what else happens, the words that were written become digital as soon as possible. it's in everybodies best interest, including the publishers.

And editors, seriously, there's a spellcheck on almost all computers and handing out a couple copies for editors to read really can't cost that much. I'd like to see the numbers but I doubt that it's over a hundred bucks per editor to read a book and make some notes. Hell, I'd doit for free just for the oportunity to read the books.

I'd be very interested to see a pie chart of the percentages from a paperback vs an e-book.
Untill I see that or hear that the authors are getting a certain percentage of the sale price, I'll stick to the used book stores all over town. I can get a used paperback for a buck and it makes no difference to me that some of the pages have fingerprints on them or dogeared corners. I am paying for the experience the author created. And the used book store makes a profit.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[KDan]

Editors don't do spell-checking. They typically do a round of reviewing of the story and work with the author on improving it and making it more readable to others. That's creative work too.

Daniel

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[smallguy78]

Not all books are fiction, which seems to be the main source that these comment posts have in them, albeit it seems from people who are just guessing rather than any experience in the publishing industry. Factual books need research, researchers, the various editors, proof readers, legal advisors if necessary. Not anything close to a movie cost but these people still need paying, and are generally paid well.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

A decent editor will also mark any misspellings they come across while looking for substantative errors. Saying that they don't indicates that you have little experience with editors or editing.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Haeleth]

A decent editor will also mark any misspellings they come across while looking for substantative errors. Saying that they don't indicates that you have little experience with editors or editing.

Well, that would have been a crushing reply... if he'd actually said that.

What he actually said was that "editors don't do spellchecking". Which is true. They may mark any typos they spot, but they don't deliberately set out to find typos. It's not what they're paid for. Finding misspellings and so forth is the job of a proofreader, not an editor. It requires a whole different skillset and a very different approach to the text.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[jaysones]

That is the copy department's job, not the editor's.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Haeleth]

We all don't know everything on every topic yet we come in here spouting off like we're experts.

Oh, the irony. If only you'd stopped there, instead of carrying on spouting off like you're an expert on a topic you clearly know very little about.

If it's a sci-fi novel written by 1 author, don't lecture me about typesetters and editors. That's BS because it's a finite amount of effort and typesetting is now performed by printers and controlled by computers and probably was taken care of when the author wrote the book on his computer.

Nonsense. Fully automated typesetting produces very poor quality results. (Don't give me LaTeX. LaTeX produces poor quality results, and moreover makes it unnecessarily difficult to tweak things by hand. LaTeX is very good compared to crapware like MS Word.)

It is true to say that typesetting takes far less effort than it used to. It is utterly false to say that it is "taken care of when the author wrote the book on his computer"; the files authors produce are damn well not sent straight to the printers, they are completely taken apart by the publisher and typeset properly in a dedicated layout package. Note that this is done by the publisher, or often by a freelance typesetter, not by the printers (as you falsely claim).

And editors, seriously, there's a spellcheck on almost all computers

Leaving aside the point that spellchecking is not the editor's job, I'll point out that computerised spellchecking is utterly inadequate. It misses most common errors (there/their/they're, for example), and doesn't even attempt to spot problems with spacing, punctuation, etc. The difference between a book that was spellchecked by a computer and a book that was proofread by a competent professional is like night and day.

The editor's job, meanwhile, is to check facts and consistency. Amazingly enough, even sci-fi novels require this. Would you be impressed if an author stated on page 37 that a Cx'thwogh starship could only travel at 88% of lightspeed, but on page 104 the Cx'thwogh fleet reached Earth from Alpha Centauri in a year? No? That's why writing a novel is damn well not something that any sensible publisher leaves to a single author.

I'd like to see the numbers but I doubt that it's over a hundred bucks per editor to read a book and make some notes.

It's more than just "reading a book and making some notes". We're talking about a full-time job here, remember. I'm sure you can read an average-length novel in a matter of hours, but it takes more than a few hours to edit a book.

Hell, I'd doit for free just for the oportunity to read the books.

Yes, everybody thinks they could do it. Proofreading (which is what you're thinking of, not editing) is actually a very difficult, highly skilled job. Most amateurs are worse than useless, since they miss trivial errors while giving the book a wholly unmerited stamp of correctness.

Hey, why do airline pilots get paid so much? It can't be that difficult to sit in a chair and pull the flight yoke around. I used to be really good on Microsoft Flight Simulator, too. And planes have computers these days that do most of the hard stuff, right? Hell, I'll fly the plane for free, just for the opportunity to travel a bit!

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[KDan]

Actually, I would imagine they're paid pretty badly, like most people in the publishing industry.

Daniel

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[cubicledrone]

Justify to me that my money isn't just stuffing the pockets of people who really didn't create the thing I want.

Can't. Everyone except the author makes money. That's the way it is. Then again, most authors are quitting the bullshit system and publishing direct now anyways, so it's a moot point.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[cubicledrone]

I'd be very interested to see a pie chart of the percentages from a paperback vs an e-book.

Well, both are one color. In the paperback chart, that color is labled "publisher." In the e-book chart, that color is labeled "author."

Thank you.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[drsquare]

You start with:

And to all the people out there that are spouting off numbers and guestimates: shut up
Unless you know a number or percentage be quiet.

Then follow up with:

I'd like to see the numbers but I doubt that it's over a hundred bucks per editor to read a book and make some notes.

Is this intentional? Because I know I laughed. Maybe you should have spent a hundred bucks on an editor to catch that.

Considering that to read (I mean properly read, not scan though so you can say you've read it), a 800 page book could take 50 hours. Then to sort through thousands of grammatic errors, redundancies, rambling bits that don't go anywhere, lame dialogue, and all the things that can be wrong with a book, and correct them, you're talking hundreds if not thousands of hours.

At $100 per book, you're expecting editors to work for a few cents per hour.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Romancer]

The main point aside from my own observations was that I would like to see the portion of my money that actually goes to the author as well as the percentages that go to other costs.

They do this in the DMV to show you where your fees go.

I know that it takes a skilled person do do any job well, I also know that once a computer program is written well it can perform tasks much faster and do it with supervision rather than by hand. Typesetting CAN be as easy as Edit -> select all -> Format -> Paperback and it would justify all the pages and take the chapter headings and make a table of contents and all that. Supervision of that process does not take thousands of dollars for every book. The publishers make a lot of PROFIT so there are costs to the publisher and there is my book sale price and they don't even out.

Do some searching online and you'll find the American Association of Publishers states that the typical manufacturing cost for a book was approximately 25 percent. So a 6 dollar paperback costs 1.50 to produce. Then you have shipping and storage and the retail outlet overhead and profit to add to that. These costs do not apply to the new books.

Proofreaders and fact checkers and plot reviewers oh my.

My comment "And editors, seriously, there's a spellcheck on almost all computers" as meant to be to the editors. I still find spelling errors in major works that my e-mail spell check would catch.

Again my point is that I'd like to see the numbers before I go out any buy in to this new electronic format. I love reading, but if the authors aren't getting a decent percentage of the money I pay compared to physical books considering the material and printing and shipping and storage and shelving space are simply not applicable in an electronic book sale, that money should then go to the author since everything else is the same. Publishers could make the same profits off the authors work that they had been making before. The manufacturing and distribution method is cheaper with e-books.

Is the author realizing any of that savings? Where is the money going?

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[Romancer]

Sorry, should have been a hundred dollars per hour. not per editor.

And the discussion I was dismissing was from the posters that state numbers like they know them not as their opinion.
I said I DOUBT that something costs such and such. others have been saying that something actually costs such and such without any references or experience.

Re:Numbers and the inevitable

[JasonKChapman]

The main point aside from my own observations was that I would like to see the portion of my money that actually goes to the author as well as the percentages that go to other costs.

As a writer, I'd can say that it's going to vary from author to author and/or from literary agent to literary agent. What the author gets for an advance and for royalties, even how those royalties are calculated, is all negotiable. The author's, or the agent's, negotiating strength depends on things like how well known or how "marketable" the author is, how "marketable" the book is (I won't say how "good" it is, because that actually has very little to do with it), how hot the subject matter is likely to be over the next six to eight months, and a lot of other considerations.

Ancillary rights also figure into it. Who gets what cut of film rights? Translation rights?

Sure, both printing and electronic distribution have reached the point that any author can bypass the whole traditional publisher system and keep all the profit. And freelance editors and proofreaders are readily available.

But who's going to pay for the advertising that gets it noticed? The distribution to get it into the hands of booksellers (dead-tree or electronic)? Who's going to pay the staff of publicists that get it mentioned on the talk show circuit or in newspapers and magazines? Who's going to get the promotional Web site set up? Who's going to get review copies sent out? Who's going to set up the book signings?

Production and distribution costs are just the start. Getting a book noticed is where much of the money gets spent.

Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[200_success]

From the presentation, it appears that the Sony Reader supports

• SD card in addition to Memory Stick
• Unencrypted MP3, not ATRAC
• RTF and unencrypted Adobe PDF, among other formats

So where's the real Sony? Does this show what they are capable of developing when their audio division gets out of the way? If this reader actually supports these standards natively without requiring silly conversion software on the PC, I might even consider un-boycotting Sony to show that they are on the right track.

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[a.d.trick]

MP3 is not an open standard, if fact it's patented and if you run linux and live in the wrong country, your probably breaking the law. RTF and PDF are not quite open standards either, although their not that bad, and Adobe seems to be fairly interested in maintaing interoptability with the PDF (I'm not so sure about Microsoft and the RTF). And I don't know about SD or Memory Stick.

Nevertheless, this is definitly a breath of fresh air. I'm not going to be buying anything from Sony yet, but I'll have my eyes on them.

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[Smorkin' Labbit]

Yes, it is too good to be true. From TA:

"Using the included CONNECT(TM) Reader PC Software, you can easily transfer Adobe® PDF documents, BBeB Book, and other text file formats to the Reader".

So, Linux & Mac users can't use this, and who knows if you will be able to upload those files back to another PC than the one you downloaded from...

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[tiocsti]

Something can be an open standard while still being patented. MP3 is an ISO/IEC standard, and it is an open standard. It is not, however, an open format. PDF and RTF are not standards at all. Neither memory sticks nor sd are open standards (secure digital requires nda just to get standard).

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[Bohnanza]

I notice that while the /. post says this reader supports "TXT" files, I don't see any mention of that on the Sony page.

This is fairly important to me, since I would likely get most of my "e-books" from gutenberg.org

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[200_success]

But perhaps one could transfer the documents using the SD card instead of using their software?

Re:Sony and open standards - too good to be true?

[Yaksha42]

Here.

Media Formats Supported
Unsecured Text: BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, TXT, RTF, Microsoft® Word (Conversion to the Reader-requires Word installed on your PC)
DRM Text: BBeB Book (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio: MP3 and AAC7
Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP

Project Gutenburg, documentation

[mqsoh]

I'm not buying a damned, DRMed book, but there's always Project Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). I'd actually like a peripheral display using something like e-ink. It would be something I can dump text from the main monitor for long reading (like Slashdot comments) - or documentation...that'd be a relief.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[bhima]

I'm more interested in storing reference material in it...

It's Sony - remember?

[bertilow]

This is a Sony product. Remember what Sony did? (Think "rootkit").

So it doesn't matter how good the product is. I will not buy
anything from Sony, _ever_. The boycott is eternal.

Not that I have many illusions about the length of the
collective memory...

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where's Nintendo's eternal boycott for raping third-party companies and stringently censoring titles for their consoles in the '90s?

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[edschurr]

The point of a boycott is to change a company's behavior. If you intend to never use Sony again, then what incentive do they have to behave well?

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[bertilow]

Edschurr wrote:

The point of a boycott is to change a company's behavior.

That's not the point of my boycott. My goal is not to change Sony's behaviour. My goal is to destroy Sony. They are criminals.

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[edschurr]

You don't think they can be rehabilitated? Besides, the blame is probably on a few individuals who will be gone eventually.

Your attitude sounds simple-minded and unreasonable.

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[bertilow]

Edschurr:

You don't think they can be rehabilitated?

Fat chance.

Besides, the blame is probably on a few individuals who will be gone eventually.

Why would they go? They have probably been promoted already.

Look. What they did was criminal and immoral. Why should we let them get away with it? Why should we buy the products of a criminal company? I know there are heaps of people who do that all the time, and who don't care one way or the other. But I'm not one of them.

Re:It's Sony - remember?

[edschurr]

Well if you don't have evidence they can be fixed, I suppose it's better to err on the side of caution. I hope you re-evaluate your strategy when new information comes in.

Price

[yusing]

$350? for a little plastic box to read text?
Wow, that sets MY world on fire.

The more I see attempts to create an E-book, the more I appreciate paper.

What about DRM'd PDB books?

[aussie_a]

While interesting, I won't be able to go to any new system that doesn't play DRM'd PDB books (also known as eReader files). Is there any way to convert them (even via a means that might not be DMCA approved, hint hint ;)) or play them on this?

Re:What about DRM'd PDB books?

[alexgieg]

I agree. If this device becomes popular the guys at Motricity will probably release a compatible eReader for it. Either this, or I also won't purchase Sony's new toy. Reading in my Palm Zire is good enough for my needs.

Either way, it's likely that devices like this one will be available from other manufacturers. So, even if Sony doesn't open it to 3rd party applications, others will.

Windows only

[zmotula]

"System requirements. Operating System: Windows® XP (Home Edition/Professional, Media Center Edition, Media Center Edition 2004, Media Center Edition 2005)"

How hard would it be to make this an USB Mass Storage device and have it work with all operating systems?

"Using the included CONNECT(TM) Reader PC Software, you can easily transfer Adobe® PDF"

No thanks, I still get shivers when I think of the "included Sony SonicStage(TM) software"...

The Iliad has a Wacom Tablet

[k2r]

build in.
The Sony does not have a pen-interface, AFAIK.
That's a lot of additional potential for the Iliad, let's see if their software leaves beta soon and whether they provide us with an appropriate SDK...

For Iliad-Discussion from iRex see forum.irexnet.com
For more independent info on both products see http://www.mobileread.com/ .

k2r

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[ThePhilips]

Can you take e.g. 10 paperbacks into long journey? After carrying heavy bag for several hours, believe me, $350 wouldn't look all that much.

unsecured MP3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is "unsecured MP3" the new name for NORMAL (non DRM-encumbered) MP3? Looks like the DRM lobby is at winning hands out on the semantic level.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[eric76]

It might be a good value if it handled more formats.

But considering the limited number of formats available, it's nearly useless.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[testadicazzo]

It supports BBeB, PDF, .txt, RTF, Word files, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP. This covers _all_ document formats I would be interested in reading on the thing. What do you feel is missing and sufficiently important to make it "nearly useless"?

Ogg support would be nice, but I wouldn't say that its abscence makes the product "nearly useless". If it provided a stylus or input method for adding comments and markup to PDF documents I would probably buy one. As it is, the functionality wouldn't be worth the price and clunkyness of carrying a fragile piece of equipment around.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[antek9]

More formats, as in .DOC or .LIT files? Won't happen (I haven't read the current specs of the Reader, though), at least not officially.
But rest assured, as with the previous readers (and with almost all DRM-heavy Sony products, like the PSP and Playstations) it will soon be hacked to run anything you might see fit. The Reader runs on Linux, anyway, AFAIK.

So what, just re-flash your librie ....

[da5idnetlimit.com]

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/sony -librie-ebook-hacks-115752.php

Firmwarez are available for the librie, so maybe you can find one with just the features you want.

Personnally, I will be holding my breath for the Secong Generation devices, like this one : http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/tag/sharps-shows-pr ototype-color-ebook-17256.php

1 mm thick, color paper, made by sharp, should be available in 2007... We still must have a look at the drm limitations if any, but the product do look superior !

One discussion of e-book vs paper book

[aussersterne]

...comes from Umberto Eco and I find it to be insightful. It is here.

What I Want To Buy

[Garrett Fox]

The version I'm waiting for has several hundred e-ink pages like a novel, so that I can flip between them at will, hold several open at once with my fingers, etc..

As an added bonus

[Anonymous Coward]

You get a Sony Rootkit at no additional cost. Just sync the Sony Reader to your computer and your new Sony Rootkit is good to go.

Sony Reader runs Linux too

[nickovs]

The main competition to this sony reader seems to be the Iliad from I-Rex. I think it is a much nicer reader for a couple reasons.

It has a nice page turn interface, it has a proper paperback A5 sized screen, and runs linux. There has already been quite a bit of hacking on it. Can code your own readers for various formats etc.

The Sony Reader runs Linux too. The manual says it runs MonteVista® Linux® professional edition and gives a link for download of the GPL bits.

Notice the quality of picture

[jackharrer]

If you check

http://www.eink.com/products/matrix/High_Res.html

you'll find full specifications for this toy. Like screen resolution (800x600) and refresh rate (500ms for black & white and 1s for grayscale). So any hacks that can make it play videos or anything related to animations are futile. Other thing is that it drains batteries quite fast - but only during refreshing of pages. So if you want to skip let's say 50 pages one after another it can dent you battery quite badly...

Nevertheless - it's enviroment friendly (think about all those dead trees you read from every day) and if marketed properly (slim chance with Sony) it can make a big change.

It's nice to dream sometimes... :)

jackharrer

You are a fucking tool

[Deadguy2322]

What th e fuck is your problem with a fucking browser cookie? Man, you paranoid dickheads annoy me!

Re:Who buys this thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me. I just ordered mine and am really looking forward to it!

It's like...

[Treacle Treatment]

Wow, it costs the same as a PDA
Wow, with 64mb of storage it will hold almost an entire album.
Wow, it does less than a (cheap) MP3 player AND a PDA yet costs more.
Wow, it comes from Sony... the company which has let the consumer down so many times.
Wow, I'm not going to buy one of these.

Re:It's like...

[OhPlz]

It's an ebook reader, not an mp3 player or a PDA.

I want one of these for *gasp* reading books. I don't even want it to have mp3 capabilities, I have an iPod for that which I'm quite happy with. I have no problem with devices that do one thing and do it well. Devices that try to do everything tend to suck at everything.

uSEFUL

[kurtis25]

I would buy one, not sure for $350, when I'm doing research this would be great. If publishers jump on board this would be great. If I could put the open books from print.google.com, works from CCEL.org, project Guttenberg and project Wittenberg, wikipedia , scholarly journals and the like I would buy. I could load everything I need to do my studies from the web easily onto this the cost would be worth it. I could load up all the websites, ebooks, journals, and such for the topic I was studying then take it on the road, of course I would want to be able to take notes in the margins, but this doesn't seem to be allowed so it isn't as useful.

There's another option

[Zillatron]

I doubt that Sony's going to allow me to lend my book license to someone else

Loan your loaded ebook reader to your friend.

Baen Books - cheap e-books, no DRM :)

[bingo fuel]

If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy at all you should check out Baen.

While many publishers are overcharging for e-books, Baen books http://baen.com/ sell electronic versions in multiple formats for very reasonable prices. I can buy six or seven Baen novels in a package for $US 15.00 without any DRM http://www.webscription.net/.

Individual books are between $4 and $6.

Baen also has more than eighty novels available for free (again no DRM) here http://www.baen.com/library/

For several years I've been reading e-books on my palm pilot (currently a Tungsten T5) with plucker . I need the PDA for work anyway and it allows me to carry several novels with me everywhere I go.

Delayed at the doctor's office for 30 minutes? It's an opportunity for me to enjoy a chapter or two from David Weber's latest :)

Re:Baen Books - cheap e-books, no DRM :)

[innocent_white_lamb]

I do the same with Weasel Reader rather than Plucker. Is there any advantage to using Plucker over Weasel Reader? I just looked at the Plucker web page and didn't see anything that jumped out at me....

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it says right in the specifications:

Microsoft® Word (Conversion to the Reader-requires Word installed on your PC)

Big as life.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[maynard]

Inline annotation and highlighting. Without pen input this thing is useless to me. I'm using a newton mp2100 as an ereader, and it supports excellent annotation functions. But the hardware needs replacement. Unfortunately, this Sony ebook reader ain't it.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[TheRaven64]

It supports BBeB, PDF, .txt, RTF, Word files, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP. This covers _all_ document formats I would be interested in reading on the thing. What do you feel is missing and sufficiently important to make it "nearly useless"?

HTML? Most of the Gutenberg texts that have formatted versions are HTML.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Richard_at_work]

Palmdoc, PDB, lit, ereader. You know, the most common ones....

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[TheRaven64]

The most important thing is size. I use my Nokia 770 as an eBook reader while I'm travelling. It fits in my jacket pocket when I get called to board my flight, and I can then pull it out later and be on the same page. At 225dpi, the screen is nice enough to read from, and the battery lasts the length of a transatlantic flight.

eInk is a nicer technology long-term, but the form factor is very important. If I can't fit it in a pocket then it is of no use to me; I only read eBooks when carrying a dead-tree version would be unfeasible.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this. Sony releases a device that supports all the common open formats, and people whine that it doesn't support their competitors' closed formats? Ludicrous.

PDF is proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems

Re:PDF is proprietary

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah, because wikipedia is never wrong. That very article used to say PDF was an open standard, which it is.

Do tell me any way in which PDF is closed. It is completely documented. The trademark and patents are licensed for free to anyone following and version of the spec. There have been multiple GPL and closed proprietary implementations from numerous companies for years. The only possible argument I can think of is you can't make a new standard based upon PDF and be guaranteed protection from trademark infringement (same as Linux) or patent violations (same as Linux).

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[testadicazzo]

much agreement from me. I've never heard of the document formats listed above. In my world PDF and .txt are the most common. Any decent format should be convertable to one, or both of the two.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[testadicazzo]

I completely agree with you on these points, but they have nothing to do with the formats it supports. Both text files and pdf will allow you to do annotation and highlighting (well, okay, it's kinda primitive in a text file to be sure). What you mention is a hardware limitation, and I agree that at the price tag sony's asking, they should provide these features.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[testadicazzo]

yeah, good point. HTML is a no brainer. Wonder why they didn't support it? Still, I think "nearly useless" is far too strong a comment. Gutenberg text can be just as easily viewed as a text or pdf file.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[arth1]

It supports BBeB, PDF, .txt, RTF, Word files, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP. This covers _all_ document formats I would be interested in reading on the thing. What do you feel is missing and sufficiently important to make it "nearly useless"?

Compatibility with the already existing e-book DRM formats, for one thing. I have over 180 books in PeanutPress format (the most widespread format, used by ereader, fictionwise and many others), and would not be able to read any of them on this device. How difficult would it have been for Sony to get a licensing deal? Instead, they did the typical Sony thing, and made it incompatible. Way to go...

The real killer for me, though, is that it doesn't have a backlight. I primarily read e-books in bed while my partner is sleeping. Can't do that with this device.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[CoreDump01]

It supports BBeB, PDF, .txt, RTF, Word files, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP. This covers _all_ document formats I would be interested in reading on the thing. What do you feel is missing and sufficiently important to make it "nearly useless"?

txt.gz, rtf.gz and html.gz just to name a few, you get the idea =) This thing if a far way from useless tho.

NOT Windows only

[Anonymous Coward]

You need Windows only if you want to buy the books from the Connect store. If you don't, just drop your PDF/RTF/TXT/MP3/pictures on the SD card - Reader will happily display them. It only needs a little time to index the file on the first opening and Connect software can do that faster if you use it to transfer files onto the device, but it's absolutely not required.
See here: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t= 7713

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[stoolpigeon]

because the people who want them have probably already bought e-books they would like to continue reading. but they are in closed formats. and the stuff you buy for this in closed formats will suffer the same fate.
 
drm and closed formats are why i wont touch any commercially available e-books. the people publishing them are so worried about protecting their intellectual property that they make they property worthless to me. (Just ran into this the other day with a Sybex book - it came with a pdf on a disc, but I can't view it because they have drm in there that is busted. their support people told me to uninstall my current version of reader and install the one on the disc that is 2 or 3 versions back- i don't think i'm going to do that)
 
someday - when you can buy a cheap e-book reader that will support a common format that i can purchase - or get from the library - or share with friends, then i'll think about buying in. basically i want to be able to do all that i can do with regular books now.

Sony just doesn't understand how price things...

[chroot_james]

Shame, really.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[AlHunt]

>What do you feel is missing and sufficiently important to make it "nearly useless"?

Why does everything in the world have to play MP3s?

This looks like a nifty little device, but it'd be cheaper and probably smaller without noise making capabilities.

Al

PDF's suck as an ebook format

[Kyaphas]

I'm surprised how many people here want the ebooks to be in PDF format.

I've been reading ebooks for a while, and PDF is the worst format for a book. It works well for magazines, but that's because PDF is a PRINT format. It's designed to lay things out to be printed. With an ebook, you want flowable text, so that when you increase the font size (you know, for grandma) the text flows to the next page. PDF will zoom in, and now you have to move around on the screen to read your book. Completely unacceptable!! (Look at this from an everyday user, not a techie viewpoint.)

CHM is better, HTML can usually be formatted pretty nicely, but PDF, ugh! When I'm reading ebooks, I always look for HTML or mobipocket, or something that's not PDF. And it's because of the flowable text issue.

I think many people who get this device with the intent of reading PDF's will be sorely disappointed.

Re:PDF's suck as an ebook format

[Spacejock]

Txt and html reflow well, and if you're a Windows user you might like this prog (My own ebook reader - freeware)

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it need .mp3 support? So it can play audio books.

I mean, duh.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[einnar2000]

I think the burning question in everyone's mind is...

Will it display porn??

Big?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has watched Big too many times. "See, its an electronic comic book. The kid will buy a new e-comic on a cartridge and put it in the book. Then they can have the option to change their story every time they read it by selecting the different character choices at various parts of the adventure!"

After all the excitement is gone...

[Gription]

It is nice when something comes along with information that you need but this technology won't come anywhere close to replacing a real book, manual, newspaper, or even a stack of printouts. It is mostly hype and is only a granular change from what is already available.

Here is the problem: Your eyes and brain are designed to gather and analyze an obscene quantity of information in a real 3D world. You can grab a 100 page manual (or some other quantity of printed material) and flip through it in a couple seconds and find where the info is that you need to examine in more detail. You can also read much faster from a plain paper page. You can't "skim" with any efficiency on any digital display.

Blind love of technology that makes us give up very well proven methods and technology is a real problem. A lot of the people reading this have never seen a card catalog in a library. The total replacement of card catalogs by search computers is one of the greatest losses to research in a library. Search engines are nice but the ability to flip extremely rapidly through the cards would yield serendipitous discoveries that are now lost with search engines. It is a great loss.

Until the technology arrives that allows epaper to be in the form of a multiple sheet book that you can flip through this is no replacement for paper. It is just another display. Ho hum...

Re:After all the excitement is gone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your eyes and brain are designed to gather and analyze an obscene quantity of information in a real 3D world.

Stick with the eyes, leave the brain out of it.

The eyes are designed for the real world, yes. However, the brain is designed to learn and compensate for changes in the environment. If you learned how to read from a digitital device like this, your brain would have a problem re-learning how to read from a printed page.

Multiple good suggestions, a few of my own

[Vokkyt]

Technology like this can definitely be good, but I think a few things are missing:

- Properly formatted Texts

Yeah, they are converting PDFs and such to display on the reader, but the reader should try to offer a portable solution to 8.5x11 sized papers that were made into PDFs. I know this is a little redundant, given how much complaining there is about Sony going nuts with its own formats, but I think that in this case, a new format (open source? well, let's start with making it workable) that is not only plausible on the reader, but on computers as well would be great. A more interactive version of a PDF or a .doc would be interesting not only for the reader, but for computers and the like.

- Stylus function

It needs a stylus for editing, scribble notes and whatever. Use PDA handwriting recognition or whatever, but it would be useful; so many people like to write in the margins and what not, so I can't see why they wouldn't do this.

- Secure a market for the reader

Yeah, there are sites that sell eBooks and what not, but a.) the prices are ridiculous b.) they are not well known enough to warrant trust in the eBook services or to make people shell out money for a dedicated eBook reader. Personally, I think that Sony is missing a gigantic market called College in regards to the reader. Could you imagine students paying $5-$10 per text instead of $50-$100 per text? I mean, if Sony would have worked with text book distributors a little, they could have hit a friggin' gold mine, and I am positive that within a year or two, every college campus would be flooded with Sony Readers.

- Multi-functionality

It was mentioned before in this discussion that not everything has to play mp3s, but $350 for a dedicated reader is just stupid, plain and simple. Granted, it doesn't need to play mp3's, watch movies, download files and the like, but a few extra functions would be nice. Mentioned before was a dictionary function (click and learn the word); limited software capabilities to incorperate programs that people deem necessary (I'm thinking more towards the college idea again). It doesn't have to have Bit Torrent and WMP and Quicktime and VLC and GIMP and blah blah blah, but a few simple things like an alarm clock, password protection on the system, schedule manager, text editor w/ text recognition...these are relatively simple things that people much smarter than myself could easily incorperate into the Sony Reader.

The sheer fact that there hasn't been much news about this seems to say to me that Sony either doesn't care or doesn't see a market for such a device, hence the impractical price tag. Most likely the Reader will be seen as a gimmick; a techno-fad that will fade out before it has a chance to become old. This is really sad, as I think that a lot of cool ideas could be implemented if they simply held the device back a bit and did a little more planning before release.

Selection of Books

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they have Da Vinci Code and The Communist Manifesto, but not the Holy Bible? If Sony wants this thing to take off, they can't be too exclusionary. I can understand a groupthink in moviemaking since the stakes are so high, but the barrier of entry to electronic book publishing has to be dirt-low.

screen still too small

[Lawrence_Bird]

based on the specs of 6" diagonal and 800/600 format, that gives 4.8Hx3.6W.  The width is almost, but not quite sufficient - a typical paperback is 4" wide including the margin.  However, the 4.8H is poor as the generic paperback is around abouts 6 3/4".  As most people won't want text sizes smaller than existing paperback formats this means significantly more page turning - a 500 page paperback would require ~ 780 pages on this device.

I tend to agree with an earlier poster that while music capability is nice, it seems to add too much to cost and size away from screen.  Sony would have done better to start with just the reading  capability in a screen size identical to mass market paperback w/ 3 buttons (up,down and a toggle for menus).  So almost, but not quite.

Re:screen still too small

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to agree with an earlier poster that while music capability is nice, it seems to add too much to cost

Think of the sound support as a way to listen to recorded lectures instead of as a way to listen to Abba or KC and the Sunshine Band.

Re:screen still too small

[Lawrence_Bird]

ok yes, but what about using your ipod (or equiv) or phone for
that?  And even if one were reading lecture notes at same time I
would venture that is a small market - students who have profs who
put everything online AND actually need to use it because they skip
class or take poor notes.

From a mass market appeal standpoint I think bigger screen less
extras the way to go until you can do both at same or lower price
point.  I'd also try to minimize space used by all buttons.

What I really wanted...

[kemosabi]

I've been watching the portable reader for a while and watched it slip its schedule twice, realized the screen is smaller than I thought/hoped earlier, and wished it had a stylus. What I always wanted was an 11" screen with these features and the ability to just draw ink onto bitmaps that I save. No text recognition, none of that crap. Just electronic paper (literally: just let me make marks on a blank page) and the reader funcitons. The closest I've seen is this: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/devices/device11 .htm/ and the goReader seems defunct and was way too expensive. So this seems like just another near miss to me. The problem seems to be that no one can ever bring themselves to offer the product I described: they start pumping up the functionality until it just *has* to cost close to $1000 or they make the sony reader, which shoots a little too low, like the previous paperback-sized reader that didn't take off --anybody remember the Rocket reader? I actually saw one in a store a few years ago. Is there any hope that someone's eventually going to make what I want? PDA screens are too small. And I don't want PDA functions. Most readers are just readers. What I want is the sony reader with a digitizer and an 11" diagonal screen. I don't even ask to annotate books. Just let me draw on blank pages. Work on the software for later. I'll even pay mark-up to add software to do more things later. Just give me that damn device, so I can avoid carrying paper documents and a notepad and not carry a portable computer. An not path $2500 for a whole tablet computer, since that's not what I want. In excess of half the business world would by my device, why won't anyone build it?

How Would you implement this

[Nazmun]

So many people are against DRM but I want to see a realistic proposal by you guys. How will you get the support from media creaters, authors, and publishers to obtain their work for your device without DRM? Everyone wants some protection for their work. Six devices to be honest isn't that bad at all. Consider a text book. You could technically copy it but who would bother copying a 500 page text (and with the binding on these, who would do it fully). Six painless copies of such large texts are imo pretty decent.

Library of Congress

[misleb]

Ok, but how many Library of Congresses does it hold??

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[oc255]

Good point on the audio book but I see the audio book's main strength in the car. Does anyone else use it differently?

It still needs work

[SkOink]

One of the things which has always bugged me about reading text on an e-reader, PDA, or similar device is the lack of multiple screens. I read pretty quickly, which means that I sometimes gloss over sentences or entire paragraphs, and it's nice to be able to glance back to the previous page immediately to pick up some detail that I might have missed. For technical publications like textbooks, this is pretty much essential.

Features that would get me to buy one of these:
1) Two side-to-side screens, similar to a traditional book
2) Some serious scratch resistance on these things
3) Longer battery life. Instead of wasting power on a CPU that can run an MP3 player, how about designing a product that shuts off entirely except when changing pages?
4) Some way to skip a lot of pages at once.
5) Some really slick OCR/PDF reflow software. I agree that PDF is impractical as an ebook format, so what we need is a really good OCR program that will convert PDFs into flowable text.
6) Low price. I would pay $300 or so, I think, if it worked well and did everything I wanted it to do. Sony could lower costs, unnecessary size, and battery usage substantially by removing every scrap of electronics aside from the e-reader part.
Take all of these

Re:It still needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

>1) Two side-to-side screens, similar to a traditional book
Some Japanese company tried that. I don't think it did well.
>3) Longer battery life. Instead of wasting power on a CPU that can run an MP3 player, how about designing a product that shuts off entirely except when changing pages?
It does exactly this. You DON'T have to play mp3s on it while reading, you know. From a review:
"Power Management -- I know that is a very hot topic! I specifically asked what was running while the Reader is on, but not changing the display. The answer was almost nothing. The Reader is just monitoring the various buttons for presses, so its almost completely powered down between page turns -- as it should be! In almost five full hours of what could only be considered very hard usage (constantly opening files and flipping pages and playing sound files and so on), the battery meter did not budge, still reading fully charged at the end of the day."
>4) Some way to skip a lot of pages at once.
You can skip to 10%, 20% etc of the book by pressing numbered buttons. Holding prev/next page buttons makes it skip 10 pages a time. It can also follow links in PDF or BBeB (e.g. from the table of contents).

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[drsquare]

Why would you need ten books on a journey unless you're a speedreader? Maybe you should move up from 'Spot goes to the Park' to something with a bit more depth.

This would be great tech....

[Upaut]

If it had more then one page... I buy books for the ability to turn the pages, to have the feel of the book.

And thats just for the crummy books.

For the good books I read, it is the experience I enjoy. The smell of the paper, a well-crafted binding, the yellowing of the paper, the feel of the paper. Its a relegiouse experience.

Or when I read a science book I enjoy, how would I take notes in the margins? Or use a massive resourse text as a filing system?

If the technology advances to the point I can enjoy reading my books with most of the sensations intact (hell, a movable touchscreen so I can still write in the margins, and I'll shell out a grand), then I might consider it. Until then, great idea, but its still way too green.

Re:This would be great tech....

[geekoid]

Your just old.

Isn't better to have the definition of new words available at a touch of a button? And if you are reading books that don't have new words, then you are just mentally masterbating.

How about the esperice of being able to increase the font size? or the experience to carry all your text books with you for less then a few pounds? or the ability to search an entire text book in a matter of seconds?

I like reasing a good book, the feel of the pages, etc... but I also know those are learned responses associated with something I like to do.

"Or use a massive resourse text as a filing system?"
book marks.

" Or when I read a science book I enjoy, how would I take notes in the margins? "

good point. however many PDAs let you write on them, so I imagine it's only a generation away from these devices.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[robertjw]

10 paperbacks? How long of a journey are you planning on. I'm sure I don't spend as much time reading as some people, but personally I rarely finish more than 2 or 3 books a month. 10 books would last me 5 months. Even if you read twice that much and 10 books would only last a couple months, how often do most people travel on a two month journey and even if they do how often would it be in a location that didn't have a store selling books in their native language.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[GreyPoopon]

Dude, it says right in the specifications:

Microsoft® Word (Conversion to the Reader-requires Word installed on your PC)

Big as life.

Translation: It doesn't support .DOC, but if you _buy_ another application, you can use it to convert the files to a supported format. And before someone else mentions it, I doubt this would work on Linux without some hacking.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[ifrag]

I know for .lit there is a program that will break it down into either html or txt. Oh yea, I just remembered having a good laugh about that program because it was named "clit". Not sure if the other closed formats are popular enough to encourage development on a DRM -> USEABLE app.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[ifrag]

The problem with adding compression could be the CPU overhead. If something as simple as changing pages slowed down even a little I think people would get annoyed. If the device had enough ram to always keep the entire document in an uncompressed form it would be a good way to save on storage space and the compression ratio on text is likely pretty high. But with how cheap storage is now, I'd be more concerned with speed on an embedded device.

Jinke: chinese manufacturer

[BlueYoshi]

Does anybody have allready tested jinke product? http://www.jinke.com.cn/compagesql/english/index.a sp

I would like to buy a V2 does anybody tested it yet?

Re:Jinke: chinese manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

Check this forum for a few reviews: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php? f=101

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Glsai]

Heck if this thing had college textbooks that you could download to it, I'd purchase it in a second.... hmmm now I wonder if the books might be out on torrents or something that I could use with it if nothing else. But I'd prefer to buy the textbooks in an electronic form because that's legal and my work would re-imburse me for it :)

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[gkhan1]

If you are an avid reader and go backpacking, you can easily finish 10 books in three-four weeks at the very most. Finishing a 300-page book on a 7-8 hour bus-ride isn't that great of a feat, and if you spend any time on beaches you can speed through most literature that isn't Finnegans Wake.

For people who love to read, and do it relatively fast, this is a major issue. If you're in China, it's not always easy to find good books in english. And if you don't, you can look forward to many, many, many boring hours of point A to point B.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[eric76]

You found a bigger list than I found.

At the very least, I'd prefer it to handle any electronic book format already around and have the capability of upgrading to new formats later.

Many scientific papers are readily available only as postscript files so that would be very useful. I see more and more djvu files as well.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Clover_Kicker]

That's why we have e-book warez sites.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[robertjw]

If you are backpacking, I would be surprised if the batteries on this (or any) reader will last 3-4 weeks. I don't know anybody that has taken a 7-8 hour bus ride recently or regularly. If you spend time on beaches you probably still aren't going to blaze through 10 books in a day - I don't, we don't have beaches where I live. When I do get to the beach I go for the scenery.

For people who love to read, and do it relatively fast, this is a major issue. If you're in China, it's not always easy to find good books in english.

Again, how many people are spending significant amounts of China. Most of us aren't. This is only a major issue if you read a significant number of hours, read quickly and spend time in places where new reading material isn't easily acquired. I'm not saying a good ereader isn't a fantastic idea, or even that $350 isn't a reasonable price. I'm saying that if Sony is banking on people using it to replace carrying 10 (or more) paperbacks that market segment is going to be pretty small.

Now where you do have a point is textbooks. As soon as somebody figures out how to provide college students with their textbooks on one of these it will be all over. I'm surprised no one has managed to do that yet.

OOo for .doc to .pdf

[tepples]

Translation: It doesn't support .DOC, but if you _buy_ another application, you can use it to convert the files to a supported format.

Why not just use OpenOffice.org Writer software to translate Microsoft Word .doc into Adobe .pdf?

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Richard_at_work]

Of the several thousand Ebooks I own, roughly 5% are DRM protected but all are in PDB format and none are in any of the formats Sonys reader supports - that gives me sufficient permission to whine. They simply arent catering to the mass market.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[gkhan1]

Haven't you ever gone backpacking? You know, take a friend, pick a continent, pack a bag, book some tickets and travel for two-three months? Go by bus whenever you can, stay at cheap and lousy B&Bs, see all the wonders of the world? It's the greatest experience you'll ever have as young man/woman (well, losing your cherry...), and for that books are pretty much a must have. In those travels, a bus travel that takes 7-8 hours is a short one, and you take a lot of them. Foreign languages are the only languages, and the beaches are not used for scenery, the beaches are a break from the scenery. They look the same all over the world and there are millions of them, but there's only one Machu Pichu, only one Angkor Vat, only one Papal Palace of Avignon and only one Checkpoint Charlie. If you're the kind of person who travels to foriegn cultures and great cities only to lie on the beach all day, you should save your money and go to a tanning salon, because frankly: what's the difference.

Believe me, when you travel that way, books arn't just for diversion, books are food. You eat them up, because at those times, culture is water, you have to have it.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, that was meant as a joke.

Guess it didn't work.

here you go

[geekoid]

http://www.jinke.com.cn/compagesql/English/embedpr o/prodetail.asp?id=15

It looks like this ebook has a keypad for entering notes.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[robertjw]

You know, take a friend, pick a continent, pack a bag, book some tickets and travel for two-three months?

Unfortunately no. Thanks for adding to my feelings of wasting my life though.

I absolutely believe you that books would be vital in those situations. I have spent spent some times in other countries (not at resorts) and it doesn't take long for the foreign culture to start wearing on me.

Back to the topic, I can only think of one person I know that has ever done what you describe. Plenty who have talked about it, but very few have actually done it and most of them wouldn't spend $350 on an electronic book. Not a great target market for Sony.

This would be great for college textbooks.

[Anonymous Coward]

College textbooks already cost hundreds of dollars, are bulky and weighty, and need to be carried around with other heavy textbooks. A single E-reader would be a lot more convenient.

Call it was it is

[Anonymous Coward]

It also comes with the ability to receive newsfeeds, display JPG images, and can play unsecured MP3 and AAC music files.

I think that should read, "It... can play unencumbered MP3 and AAC music files."

Remember, "DRM" actually stands for digital restriction management. It's most frequently used to restrict preexisting fair use rights.

HTML - RTF is pretty trivial

[Kadin2048]

This is true, but HTML (at least basic HTML, the kind you might use when formatting an eBook) is pretty trivial to parse and turn into RTF. There are any number of tools out there that do it.

Changing an HTML document to PDF is similarly trivial, although usually you end up with a simulated printed page, which might or might not be what you want.

I'm not sure what the hardware and software on this thing are like, but if it's even slightly open so that people can write third-party applications for it, I'd expect to see, if not a full-fledged HTML rendering engine, than at least a file converter that would dump it to some other format.

Personally, although I find the concept of e-ink and an ebook reader to be an intriguing one (I would read a lot more ebooks if it didn't mean either reading them on a backlit LCD or printing them out; neither of which are very attractive options), I'm going to hold out until I find one that's going to really be a swiss-army knife. But then again, I've never been an early adopter; I only got my first digital camera in 2004.

eBook Warez

[Kadin2048]

Talk about bang-for-your-MB: while 6GB of video might only get me a season of TV episodes, 6GB of ebooks, suitably compressed, are probably more text than most people read in a great portion of their lives.

How much trading would you do of that? I mean, once you've acquired the entire Library of Congress, what would a ebook-warez kiddie do? Start in on the foreign-language ebooks? ("Dood...I just, like, totally got this hot copy of The Da Vinci Code...in Urdu. How sick is that?") Would people brag about how many Human Lifetimes Worth (HLW?) of written material they have?

I guess anything that gets kids involved in literature is a good thing ... even if they never un-rar it.

Re:eBook Warez

[Clover_Kicker]

Don't forget about comic books, less pages/MB and they publish more every month.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[nightgeometry]

I think the pertinent point is that someone who is likely to spend $350 on a piece of kit for reading books on probably a big reader. I like the sound of this, I probably average 3 books a week, often I have 5 separate books I am reading, not including manuals. I like to read, I want lots of books available to me. I use a Palm for this reason, especially when I am spending more than a few days away from home.

I have a 40gig mp3 player, it has a large chunk of my music collection on it, do I want this much available to me because i can listen to that much music in a day (or week)? No, but I want it because if I am on my way home and suddenly fancy listening to some Bulgarian folk music I know I just have to remember what that damn bulgarian choir is called.. Pretty much the same with books, if I am on my way home I may decide I want to reread a Will Self short story, if I can have that available then I am a happy puppy (apart from Will Self doesn't make anyone a happy puppy, but that is another discussion entirely)

185dpi 'E-ink' is a joke, my Nokia 770 has 225dpi

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL@ suckers who still buy sony's crap. Maemo.org FTW

Math pdfs on the reader ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone seen how math pdfs are rendered by the sony reader ?

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[DeadChobi]

Jesus, if I could get my textbooks on this thing, at say, $10/piece sans software, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you ever gone backpacking? You know, take a friend, pick a continent, pack a bag, book some tickets and travel for two-three months?

Not many jobs in the USA that both pay enough to let one afford 2-3 months of holiday and actually let you take that long of a vacation.

Be fair to beaches, some of them are quite distinct and interesting in their own right. Though lying on it, yeah it's all the same. I go down to ocean beach in san francisco. Too damn cold most of the time to attract big crowds, so once I close my eyes, the surf all sounds the same. Tranquil.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[JimDaGeek]

I would like something like this too. However I looked at the requirements and it said the software is MS Windows XP _only_. I would only consider this device if I could use Linux and possibly Mac to transfer my NON-DRM PDF files to it. I hope this device just mounts as a USB mass-storage device. However, knowing Sony, they probably with mess this up with way too much proprietary crap.

Does it have to be read-only?

[smithmc]

If this thing had some sort of note-taking capability it would be killer.

Creating still toO expensive!-ARM

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hopefully content creators will eventually realize that DRMed digital works are worth less to consumers than the physical hardcopies."

And that's why E-Books will never become a force. Who benefits? Certainly not the pirates, no matter how many scanners they have. Not the consumer either. ARM(analog rights managment) has worked well ever since the early days, and will continue to work for many more. And more importantly only a small minority unlike music or movies are complaining they can't "rip" their favourite book.

Loved ebooks, but the pricing....

[pcause]

I was an avid fan of ebooks on my iPAQ 7 years ago, but stopped using them becuase I got pissed off at the pricing. I was paying the exact same price for a DRM restricted ebook that I was paying for the physical hard cover. This is a rip off. I understand why the publisher wants to maximize the bucks, but since they are saving printing, shipping, shelf space, and returns, ebooks are way cheaper and I should share some of the savings.

Alas, the publishers were much like the record labels and that means too greedy! If they provide price incentives than I'd use this, but given the expected restrictions if the prices are the same, I'll skip it and use the old fashion hard copies.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Minwee]

I'm kind of excited about this thing but at $350 you could buy A LOT of paperbacks before making up for the cost.

Or you could buy a good number of comic books which you would then destroy by treating them the same as you could treat an electronic device. Bringing that mint copy of Detective Comics #27 out on the bus with you and stuffing it in your pocket when you get to your stop would cost you enough to buy a thousand ebook readers.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[Cloud 9]

HTML can be read after converting the file to BBeB.

You have the wrong hobby for a backpacker.

[jotaeleemeese]

I thought backpacking was partly about practicality and travelling light.

But what do I know, I only stay in 5 star hotels :-P

Solution

[jotaeleemeese]

1.- Learn the local language (whit so much empty time, that should be a doodle).
2.- Buy books in the local language.
3.- Here I meant to say profit.

Demand is more than expected

[Anonymous Coward]

From the product page:
Due to overwhelming demand, new Sony® Portable Reader orders will ship mid November.

Ah, but does it come complete with DRM rootkit?

[bigbananaslug]

You can get, hopefully soon, a similar ebook reader with similar specs, but without all the potential baggage from Sony's DRM rootkit debacle from a Chinese company called Jinke, and from Phillips.

Re:The bookstore has more than just "regular" book

[martijn-s]

Translation: It doesn't support .DOC, but if you _buy_ another application, you can use it to convert the files to a supported format.

So you would like _them_ to take responsibility for _you_ getting documents in Word format while you don't have Word available?