Slashdot Mirror
Google Working To Make 'iPod/iTunes for Books'
nettamere writes to mention an initiative by Google to take the library online. The end result of the Google Book Search, the company hopes to see a future where they are not merely referring customers to Amazon, but instead offering them the ability to download books directly. According to the Times Online, Google hopes to 'do for books what the iPod did for music.' From the article: "One of Google's partners, Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press, said he foresaw a number of categories becoming popular downloads: 'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?' The book initiative would be part of Google's Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which will make books searchable online with publishers' approval. At present, only a sample of each book is available online."
Today's tech just makes for a not very pleasing alternative to a paper-based book. And who want a book that withholds its content because the battery has gone dead? I am glad Google is working to digitize books that have not yet been digitized. And more text online makes a more showcases for Google ads. But I do not see digital book tech being there any time soon. The technology of paper-based books is just too difficult to exceed while pleasing the regular reader.
Somewhat misleading: TFA is not about any new hardware, just that Google is scanning in books to make them avialable online. Great, but hardly anything new here.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?'
Yes, I'd much rather have a guide book in my hand that screams "I'm not from here" than a digital version that could run out of batteries leaving me stranded and lost or, worse yet, the look of "I'm not from here" (generally obvious for tourists, anyways) and focusing all of my attention on an expensive looking toy, which is likely to draw in more problems.
I'll take a good old guide book any day, thanks. The novels, however, we can talk about.
As long as I can install the books using Linux software, I'd support it. Amazon has got an unhealthy DRM model that makes me not want to buy any ebook from them.
From the summary:
I'd rather have a book and not have to worry about internet connectivity, worrying about dropping a laptop or other reader into the bathtub or a pool or a sidewalk, battery life, rain, leaving it behind at a restaurant, getting it stolen, and "sorry, you can't take that in here".
Books "just work" - and if you lose it, you only have the cost of a paperback.
And no, I don't want to read a book on my cellphone, either, even though I watch 3gp ripped episodes of The Simpsons on it when I have to kill some time.
Until there is decent hardware to read books on, projects like this aren't going anywhere beyond niche markets.
I love books, I own a few thousand of them and buy new ones every few months. I don't own a single ebook and I doubt I ever will because I've yet to see an ebook reader that was superior to an actual book. The only benefit to ebook readers over physical books are portability and storage capacity. The problem with this is that neither of these are big problems with physical books - if I'm going on a long trip it's not a big deal to bring even a few full sized hardbacks along to read. I don't need to have a library of books on my person at any time, the most books I've ever needed to bring with me anywhere at one time (since high school) was 4, and that was to read on a flight to the other side of the planet. I don't often fly to the other side of the planet.
This is really good, imagine if the youth would start reading books instead of smoking weed.
To download this to a tablet PC or a e-ink device would be awesome.
Also very cool if you have one book, then there is a new revision of it, then you can download the updated book with the new revision.
Yes, I *do* really want to go on holiday carrying (at least) four novels and a guide book. And I normally accumulate a lot more along the way (it takes a stronger man than me to resist a good book store when overseas). In fact, I have developed a habit of snail mailing them home as I finish reading them.
Hmmm, did I mention that I like books?
As the iridologists told me one day, watching an electronic screen makes your eyes "nervous" to some extent due to the refresh rate of the screen. Even if you don't see the screen refresh, your eyes sense SOME movement, which gives you a limited degree of anxiousness...you want to do something...click on something...type something.
But when I read an e-book (err PDF...for school usually), I find myself madly clicking around the book or wishing I could walk while reading because the screen just makes me anxious, you know?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
I'll buy one of these electronic guide books provided it has the words "do not panic" in large, friendly letters on the cover.
If not I'll stick to my hard-edged paper travel guides which also come in useful for swatting the local wildlife without ruining the guarantee.
Ever notice that whenever you read an article in the newspapers about something you know about, it's always riddled with errors? This article made me think of that. In my not so humble opinion, this is just a really, really bad piece of writing. Where do we even start?
I guess he means fair use, not fair dealing. I'm not sure why he thinks Google is paying for music. This is news to me ...
The ability to quote or use small parts of a work as fair use has always been there as far as I know. This is a new way to use it, that's all. Is this post a looming intellectual property issue now?
Given that the author points out elsewhere that the American libraries are the first to allow digitization of copyrighted books, I'm not sure why he is surprised by this.
I don't even know what to make of this paragraph. The net doesn't educate? Teachers will dictate how we read books in the future? If students only read books for information, we're doomed? It seems like a random collection of ideas that aren't backed up with logical argument, but exists only to give a punchy ending paragraph.
I admit, I never cared much for The Times, but this sort of writing is below even their standards. It jumps all over the place, gets the facts wrong, generalises too much and is sensationalist in style. Poor show guys.
although not very successfully. I like the store, but the selection sucks. I fail to see how google will get more publishers than Sony, but I guess we will have to wait and see.
Monstar L
I have very much enjoyed the iPod Nano as a book viewer -- the Notes section lets you read Project Gutenberg texts, and the device's form factor is great for always having handy and stealing moments here and there to read. The big problem with the Notes feature is that the text files are limited to 4KB. That makes it a hassle to put the text into the ipod because you have to use split(1) or a similar utility to break it up. That seemed really stupid and shortsighted to me. But, as always, Apple is crazy like a fox -- limiting Notes to 4KB means they can charge more for the book-reading feature later.
Unfortunately, Apple marketing is getting too good for its own good. They're starting to manipulate markets like Microsoft does, by limiting features that they could easily choose to make available.
everything looks like a nail
MP3 players are already making huge volumes of information available to us. Openculture http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2006/10/free_univer sity_1.html is a site dedicated to making that information available to us. There is currently more information available via electronic media than has ever been available to an individual ever before. I include public libraries in that statement. Reading a book requires a certain amount of attention; you can't drive while you read etc. but listening to a lecture, or a audio book is able to be done while you do other things.
Sure, video books will be good too, but making this information available is hugely significant. If Google and others can make learning as easy as plugging in your MP3 player, that is very cool for those of us who would like to learn this way.
Much content is valid as audio only, and while there are those that prefer their reference materials to be on paper (not dependent on batteries), technology is making the possibility of not having power/batteries a much smaller likelihood. Lack of batteries is becoming a lame excuse, so to speak.
I predict that there will be a trend of teaching with audio/video download files. Imagine if everything you wanted to know about your hobby could be downloaded in a instructional form on audio or video/audio formats? So you want to learn about testing an alternator for a 73 Ford pickup: download the file. You want to learn about the latest in Hollywood gossip; download the file. Why should we be dependent on carrying a book, or sitting in front of a tv, or waiting for the radio station to tell us what we want to hear. Why can't we choose to hear it or view it when we want?
This type of service and technology will empower a great many people. Think of what home schooling can now do. Think of how this could impact training at work. Think of how this could bring author's content to millions more people!
Its a good thing, IMO.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
those who can't, Google. FTA: No, it is the teachers who will have the final say. They will determine whether people will read for information, knowledge or, ultimately, wisdom. If they fail and their pupils read only for information, then we are in deep trouble. Here's hoping the teacher knows how to Google for more than porn :)
MP3 player.
Deleted
Maybe if I worked at Google I'd have enough vacation time to read 4 novels and use a guidebook to do some sightseeing. :P
-Rich
Just what I've been looking for recently, actually! If they manage to make a decently priced e-book reader to go along with this, it would be perfect.
The general public is not that big into reading. I can see how the iTunes/iPod model works well for the masses but not reading. I have the sneaking suspicion that while this will not be an outright failure, it will not be a financial success either.
Keep in mind that Slashdot is not a very good representative sample of the population. Sure, I might purchase a few books just to see if I like the new model but my neighbor will probably continue to invest in John Deer hats and monster-truck shows.
a) I don't like reading off a screen as much as off paper. b) There is a thing about turning the page, the smell of a book - for me - is something important.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
iTunes/iPod for books?!
You mean once you've bought a book, you can only read it, you cannot loan it out, give it to a charity shop, or even show other people?
I guess it also means you can only read it in one place, jees I'll have to chose between the crapper and the train now.....
I guess once a year we'll have to buy a new version of the book if we wish to continue reading it, and subscribe to a new library every couple of months or else we won't be able to read any new books.
Better read the book quick too, before the vendor revokes your rights to read it.
And don't read any dodgey books as it'll probably dial home and report you to Homeland Security.
I was just thinking the other day that I could do with an ebook reader, like a big screen without the laptop bit, as I have so many ebooks and it's not the same reading whilst sitting in front of a PC. But the thing stopping me is that I know anything like that will be full of restrictions.
#include <sig.h>
Dear sweet, evil-less overlords,
Please please please PLEASE bring the unwashed masses electronic paper. Thousands of pages, hundreds of hours of power. Please! Break the cartel of book publishers that strangle poor college students' wallets. Give them an e-reader and downloads of their texts for free/cheap. Allow universities site licenses for their texts, and give outgoing students the option to buy their copy. You are more powerful than Harry Potter!
And do it quickly, before Sony writes a textbook destroying rootkit.
Yeah it's a little embarrassing that they don't have the English version.
A few seconds of Googling turns up the standard English language translation by Sir Richard Burton, available here. Seeing as it was translated in 1883, I think it's suitably out of copyright.
Anyone have any idea how you go about submitting something to Project Gutenberg?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Everyone already said the obvious for travel guides but there are also things I can do with books that can't be easily done with electronic devices (unless you're full of money). Something I do often with technical books is to open a few of them in front of me while the computer's screens are kept exclusively for the task ahead. Even with multiple tabs to various sources of information on the web, it's just not as efficient. With a few books in front of you, your brain can cross process the data from each book and sometimes it's all that's needed to move forward.
In Soviet Russia kgb turns book into 5 pages for you.
In Web 2.0 CIA and google read with you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There are some quite capable eBook readers on the market, lead by the Sony Reader and the iRex iLiad. Both feature an e-ink screen which uses a matrix of charged dark and light particles at a resolution of around 160 dpi to represent a paper page.
There is no backlight and power is only consumed when the black/white charges are flipped to rebuild the page. The Sony Reader is rated at about 7000 page turns before a battery recharge is necessary. It can be happily left on without worrying about the battery going flat, and owners report in excess of months between charges.
Without a fluorescent backlight, the screen is far easier on the eyes than reading on a LCD screen, provided the ambient light in the room is good. The screen readability is roughly equivalent to a pulp paperback novel. (The texture is smoother but the white is not pure white, rather a very light gray.)
The main limitations are getting the content onto them. The Sony Reader accepts text, RTF, PDF and Sony's own proprietary eBook format, which is what books bought from the Sony Connect store are supplied in (DRM protected).
RTF is generally accepted as the best form to obtain and create books in, as PDF has to be specifically make to the 600x800 screen resolution (larger PDFs scale poorly) and is slower for the device to render.
Buying books from the Sony Connect store is acceptable in theory, but in practice the range is somewhat limited to recent bestsellers and popular classics, and the price is only discounted around 20% from a pulped tree equivalent (for something that is less tangible and less shareable).
Books from the Gutenberg project and other sources can be freely downloaded and transferred as text (plain) or RTF (moderately formatted) although these of course are classic, out of copyright works. More modern books, for which a legitimate or illicit PDF or CHM has been obtained (eg, O'Reilly manuals) can be converted from their original form into RTF, but the process is somewhat tedious and more work than the drag-and-drop method of say transferring a downloaded MP3.
(This is also not helped by poor Sony Connect software (intended to be iTunes for eBooks, and clearly UI inspired by it), which is slow and poorly designed.)
Still, with the Sony Reader and similar devices accepting up to 4GB SD cards, able to store a library of many thousands of books in a quite readable format which is slimmer than a potboiler novel, the hardware certainly shows promise. This is a first generation line of products, so inevitably it will improve for the next rev.
Filling them is the hard part, which is where Google could help.
I have been using gutenberg.org for about 2 months now and I love it. Reading analog books is not pleasurable for me due to my poor sight and being to resize text on my downloaded .HTML books through Firefox is quite nice. Gutenberg has a decent selection but it is only a small fraction of the books in real life so having somebody like Google working on an E-Book system is great news for people like me.
Besides, literature is expensive; only about 1/3 of the price goes to actual profit for publisher/author. The rest of the price goes to materials (20% of total cost), storage for unsold copies, printing staff, etc, etc.
Digital distribution could significantly drop prices...now that $60 dollar hard cover could cost 25$
Ugh. If you like traveling with a bunch of jewel cases, that's fine, but I, too, remember The Time Before iPods, and I didn't like it one bit.
First, those jewel cases suck. I'd never manage to go more than a few days without cracking one, or breaking the hinge pins so the covers would fall off, or any number of other things. They were just a bad design from the beginning.
Plus, whenever I went anywhere and brought a handful of CDs, I'd always end up wishing "gee, too bad I didn't bring CD x, that would have been fun," where x was always some CD I didn't bring.
Sure, both these problems are solvable: friends of mine used to tote big binders of CDs around, with the discs and their liners tucked into pages, sometimes 300 or 400 discs to a book. But in addition to just being heavy and a pain to move around, they were even bigger theft targets and worth more money than iPods are. I wouldn't want to carry my actual collection of CDs around with me -- not only would 300 discs probably be worth upwards of $400, that's not counting the time and effort that went into amassing the collection in the first place. An iPod, on the other hand, isn't cheap, but if it gets stolen, replacing it is straightforward: buy a new one and re-sync it. (N.b., I didn't buy an iPod when they were new and cost $500, I waited until they were down around $200.)
But the real problem in comparing MP3 players to eBook readers, as others have pointed out -- and I think this is where most companies attempting to market them have fallen short -- is the number of books you can consume in a span of time versus MP3s. If I go on vacation for a few weeks, I can easily listen to dozens of CDs worth of music, hundreds of individual songs (and I'm sure some people could probably listen to thousands, but I'm not a true member of the Cult of the White Earbuds yet). But the books I'd read in the same time would easily fit into the bottom of my suitcase.
If I was going to be marooned on a desert island (which somehow had a mains outlet and other infrastructure on it), I'd definitely want an ebook reader instead of paper books. But as a portable device for vacation or other short periods, it's tough to beat that "charming little clothy box."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The author was incorrect to use it, particularly in quotes, because they were talking about a U.S.-based company and U.S. law. In the United States, the term is "fair use," not "fair dealing," so the former would have been the correct term.
Alternately, the author could have not put the term in quotes, which would have made it acceptable, or better yet, used the correct term in quotes and then followed it with the term that would have explained it to the casual non-U.S. reader. However, he or she did neither.
By putting the U.K. term in quotes, it made it seem as if "fair dealing" was a term in U.S. law, which it is not (at least not in that context -- 'fair dealing' in the U.S. jurisprudential system means something else entirely).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Companies like Vitalsource have been doing this for years now. http://vitalsource.com/ (Quite literally, iTunes for books) Unfortunately either publishers don't trust the distribution method, or customers don't trust it. Is Google's name all that's needed to change the problem on both ends?
is that when you're reading one, the book itself offers you no distractions. The physical book contains just the novel (or guidebook, or collection of short stories, or whatever) you're reading. Nothing gets between you and the content. The book offers escape from the short attention span theater we all live in.
So yes, I'll take the four novels and the guide book when I'm on vacation.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Accessibility is very important. I'm visually impaired and use a device (www.bookcourier.com) to read text files. Of course, most ebooks aren't distributed in ASCII, but in some kind of DRM'd format. I've spend a lot of time coming up with ways to break the DRM on ebooks, just so that I can use them. The only format which I know can be reliably broken is Microsoft's .lit. I'm not stupid enough to hope that google will release books in plain text (although I wish they would), and I'm sure almost no publishers would allow them to, but I hope whatever portable reader they produce has good text to speech.
Having said the above, google might as well release them in plain text, I'm sure the slashdot crowd appreciate the uselessness of DRM. In fact, it's generally easier for me to attain an illegal copy of a book (which I can format shift) than it is for me to buy one and try to break the DRM.
This world is really screwed up!
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Call me crazy, but I think iTunes is more likely to be 'iTunes for Books'. Here you have this hugely popular downloadable content store that already sells every other kind of media, versus Google, which, bless their hearts, has never had much success selling anything but ad space.
I don't think it's such big leap--the store is all ready there. iTunes already distributes some PDFs with music albums, and even supports them in podcast feeds. I assume PDF would be used because it's not yet-another-proprietary format, is extremely versatile, supports content protection, and is easy to produce.
The other part of the equation is the devices -- e-reader devices have traditionally sucked much ass through some combination of being bulky, low-resolution, greyscale, poor format support, poor battery life, and by virtue of being yet-another-device-to-carry-around. Regardless of what you think of the iPhone, I don't think you can argue that it's lacking in any of these areas: It'd make a damn-near perfect ebook reader. It already supports PDF, already syncs with iTunes -- it's begging for content. And I'm begging for a page-flipping gesture.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Apple isn't planning to start selling ebooks -- but unless Google can make buying from them not suck (Google Video, I'm looking at you in disgust), and bring something more than a Blackberry as a reader, I still say Apple is in a much better position than Google is.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
I hope they use an open format with little or no drm. I have purchased ebooks from Baen in the past (http://www.webscription.net/) and I love their no-drm html file setup. For reading ebooks I just use my cell phone, it's small and get's great battery life, no screwing around with an ebook device. I use Tequilacat Book Reader, it's a simple, free and excellent tool (http://tequilacat.nm.ru/dev/br/index-en.html). If Baen stuck all sorts of DRM on their books I would be limited to using a small number of expensive and poorly designed devices but since it's just html I can do whatever I want with it, if Google can do something like this I would be very happy. More companies need to follow Baen's example.
Yes, I'd rather Google not do to books what iPod did to music. They came late to the party, added DRM and several layers of obfuscation, and gave the entrenched monopolies of the past a toe-hold in the digital future. The net result is that the nicest of hardware is also the some of the least friendly to free software and it's users. Others have been publishing ebooks without the restrictions. I'm not going to be happy if the only way to get newer books is going to boil down to a choice between ever more expensive pulp and DRM. That is the choice the non free publishers want to give you: surrender your freedom or be banished from your own culture.
I'll be very sad if Google has joined the wrong side of the American publishers war against libraries. The most distressing sign is that they will point to Ammazon before they point to Project Gutenburg and other free sources. They have been very good about pointing to free software, creative commons and other free culture. Books and academic publishing is just as important and freedom needs powerful friends like Google.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As I see it, theres already a quite useful and working system for eBooks thats like iTunes, but for books, and thats webscription.net, although there is one big difference, NO DRM. I've personally been using this website for a few years to get ebooks, It started off with only one publisher (Baen) but lately it seems to be branching out with other publishers as well (although slowly). It doesn't have many different genres of books, but it is selling current and future releases and offers large portions of the books to preview.
Well I used to feel much the same way: I abstained from buying any of the earlier ebook readers and would never ever even consider really trying to read anything on a PDA/laptop/etc, but the new eInk devices work pretty well. I've got the new Sony eBook Reader and I'm quite happy with it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to throw out books just yet (and I read at least 2 books a week on average), but it's definitely getting close. I'd give it another few more years to start gaining real mainstream traction.
... only not quite as slick).
Legibility is perfectly good, imho, comparable to a decent paperback. I've read about 20 novels on this thing since I purchased it and I haven't had any problems.
What it's lacking right now is:
1) Equally good online selection & equivalent prices (though improved since Nov?) -- there is a small premium on most things (esp. considering I can't readily share it with friends/family), though frankly I don't mind it that much (being able to get what I want now is kinda nice... kind of like iTunes is to Ipod
2) Better firmware. Stupid quirks, which are perfectly fixable, exist in the software. For instance, if I walk away from the book and brush it against something, it'll cause the pages to skip forwards or backwards by some large number... there's no easy way to simply return to where I left off unless I vigilently bookmarked every several pages as I read (and this compounded by 2 second refresh time for flipping through--doesn't matter when you read, but it does when you want to flip through something quickly). A few lines of code could fix this #$@$
3) Some small form factor changes. The buttons are in kind of a wierd place.
4) Battery life could use some improvement. I may be alone in this, but I've only been able to get 2-3 novels per charge or about 1.5K pages. This is about 1/2 or 1/3 the number they quoted. Not a show stopper, but it'd help its long term ability to replace books.
5) An integrated backlight/frontlight would be nice... a real advantage over paperbacks, though I guess Sony chose not to for marketing reasons.
Overall, I find it's very nice to have though. I do like not having to carry several books with me when I travel (especially hardbacks -- I'd PAY the same price softback just for the privledge of not having to deal with them). I often find myself needing to carry more than 4 books and even that is a pain for me since I like to travel light (avoid checking bags in almost all of my trips). It's also nice being able to copy text files, PDFs and such to it for review. I don't often find myself wanting to read stuff that is in the public domain stuff, but it could save you real money if you do. This is where I see eBooks really gaining a foothold in the short run -- applications where commercial printed books simply aren't available (e.g, more nice/obscure works, personal papers, public domain stuff, etc). I also envision niche markets sprouting up precisely because of this technolog
'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?'
I really don't want to go on holiday carrying an electronic reader/player and whatever bulky and awkward gear is needed to keep it recharged.
They are being vague, too. Is this 'audio book' they are talking about? Or are we supposed to scroll down reading half paragraphs at a time on the dinky display on an iPod? Audiobooks been done already. eBooks have, too.
I can already take out a book and read it on my computer from my local lirbary. what makes this so special? I know I am the network tech who gets questions from patrons on how to do it. I mean that the book is an electronic copy.
imagine reading an article that has sources - and seeing "click here to download" the source for $.99 or whatever. Universities could have subscriptions for student, built in wi-fi, the ability to share portions (a page or so) a-la zune.... generation 2 of these machines could be very cool indeed.
Of course, we'd start getting spam to buy penthouse letters for cheap, but hey.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
So where are the decent sized ebook readers? The IRex is close, but seems targeted for business with it's price point. Apple needs to make a tablet for this purpose. Make it the size of a sheet of paper. Use an acclerometer a la the iPhone to detect rotation. Use multi-touch for the input. Support chm, .doc, html, PDF, rtf .txt. Use Safari to do the rendering and all the file formats above are just supported via plugins to Safari.
In fact Apple could do this quite easily given the technology they have at hand in partnership with Google and tied to the iTunes store. A tablet sized iPhone model with Wifi and bluetooth, with media card slots in addition to flash memory.
It would be sweet.
*runs*
I think this is a great start for an application to help musicians. Any classical musician knows that the amount of sheet music you own quickly spirals out of control. Not only that, but the books are heavy and cumbersome for a student to drag around. And they can be very annoying when they don't lay flat or the binding breaks. Oh yeah, and these books are very expensive, especially when you need a specific edition imported from Germany.
I was impressed that some of the books on books.google.com were sheet music books, although I was only to find partial previews for the ones I care about. Still, it is a good step and hopefully publishers will move towards downloadable sheet music in the future.
Some day, I hope there will be a good, cheap, portable sheet music tablet display with enough memory to hold a library of music scores. It could have some basic musician's tools like a metronome, digital tuner and audio record/playback. It could also have a wireless connection so that a conductor could just transmit the entire orchestra's music in one button press instead of passing out and keeping track of a hundred different scores.
In order to save battery time (drains power only to change pages), most eBook reader uses non-backlighet eInk.
It makes them less depending on a power source than a laptop.
But it makes them dependent on a light source like a book.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Being a paper-sniffer I just can't see a future for this. Every book has its own unique sweet smell of wood pulp made laminate - unless you can reproduce that via an olfactory plugin to the digital device, I would rather lug the tomes around thanks very much.
What? stop looking at me like that!
Nothing witty
May I do the honors of being the first Slashdotter to describe this device with the term "Lie-Berry".
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
Interesting - the Kamasutra by Vatsyayana is currently the top book today, yesterday, this week, and for the last month.
... read ;)
Those who can't do
I could possibly stand reading books on a screen rather than a paper-bound original. Several things have to happen:
I looked at books briefly when this was first pushed, almost 10 years ago. the format sucked, the DRM sucked, the selection sucked, the hardware sucks bigtime. Nothing much has changed.
First, nobody wants a restrictive format. DRM, by its nature, IS restrictive. Until the book industry, like the music industry, wakes up to this fact, they will be restricted in what they sell. IIRC, the main sale point for existing eBooks was mainly manuals, where the DRM was cancelled by the convenience of having huge volumes of reference material in a small package.
-The problem with reference material is that nothing beats the speed of riffling thru a paper book. Textual search features are great, but soemtimes not effective.
-Page size - you can fit a lot more on a piece of paper than the same sized screen, Until we have ePaper with 600dpi, the "eye fatigue" thing will be a problem.
-some books come on PDF so you cannot re-arrange the screen layout (i.e large type?).. The whole file-format thing is an issue; if it won't do Text, DOC, PDF, PPT, and most other default existing formats, what good is it?
-what about magazines? (A PERFECT eBook app. Timely subscription) Most are designed for full-page (9x12 or so). Either they all go to DIgest size, or your screen becomes unwieldy.
-Price, or what I like to call the "iTunes problem". The markup is beyond reason. When iTunes sells you a song for $1, the artist (if lucky) gets 10 cents. This means that really, you could cut out the money-grubbing midllemen and sell for, say, 25 cents; 10 for the artis, 10 for the publishing/production company, and 5 for iTunes. Ditto for an album, that costs almost as much as in stores for a CD copy. When eBooks try to sell themselves for half the cost of a physical book, that includes paper & printing, transport, store and warehouse inventory costs, etc - someone is making a killing, Unless you buy from the author's web site, it probably ain't the author.
- the ideal hardware would be a roll-up e-ink screen with electronics attached. Pull it out halfway for a trade paperback sized page; all the way for magazine-size. Or, if you can't do rolls, a form of clamshell where you get facing pages of a book with the hinge in the middle, or a full-page magazine with a seam across the middle of the page. (Think "fold a piece of paper down the middle").
- the ideal book will do all formats. It can do colour; it can do "read aloud" for those "books on tape" moments. It can remember multiple placemarks, and maybe allow you to highlight. (What good is a travel book without colour photos and maps, etc.?)
-but if it will do audio books, it will do MP3 as well; and if it does colour, why not do phot albums? video? (But we're not as concerned about refresh rate and motion blur yet.)
- Text, audio, video, input; by this point, it is straying into being a computer. Why not go whole hog - it's a PDA, with the full programmability and USB connections, runs you datebook and Email, browses the web. (Whatever happened to that stupid little touchscreen computer that Microsoft was pushing about 6 months ago?)
- now we add a built-in camera and the ability to chat, and we've come full circle - with the camera, you won't be able to take your guide book into some museums...
Try searching Google Books for a public domain work like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and you're taken to where you can buy a copy of the public domain work in question rather than to the text itself.
I'll believe it when I see it. "Dont be Evil?" From a corporation? suuuuuuure....
I've read novels on my palm for years. It's particulary useful for Neal Stephenson books which are enormous.
www.ereader.com formerly known as palmdigitalmedia is where I get all my ebooks.
I also get normal files and convert them to the palm media format and use their ebook converter under wine on linux (DropBook).
I find my T3 + an SD card a great way to read books. I can bookmark pages, highlight sections of text and lookup words using whatever dictionary.
And I don't mind good DRM. It means I can get new release books on my palm without waiting too long (they can become available when the hardback comes out).
However - I'd like ereader on linux without using wine. Hmm.
Some counter-points:
1. I can cuddle a physical book. E-books are un-cuddleable.
2. Following up on that thought, there is something really great about the feel of good book paper.
3. Have you ever smelled a well aged book? The perfume formed from the paper and ink and dust is one of the best scents I know.
4. I enjoy not having a backlit screen. Looking at screens all the time becomes tiring, and I feel far more impatient in my reading when I do it off a screen.
5. (direct response to parent's #4) Have you ever found someone else's notes or writing in an book? Perhaps a slightly older book? There is a sense of connection through time that is not to be hastily cast aside.
6. You can share e-books... at least not in the same way you can share real ones. True, more often than not, they don't come back, but shared books become physical symbols of connections between people.
Cue cheeky exit line:
Meet Johannes Gutenberg. Mainz's famous inventor. Dig him up and shake his hand. Appreciate the man.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things