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Amazon's Ebook The Future of Reading?
theodp writes "With a seven-page cover story on The Future of Reading, Newsweek confirms all those rumors of Amazon's imminent introduction an affordable ebook. Kindle, which is named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, has the dimensions of a paperback, weighs 10.3 oz., and uses E Ink technology on a 6-inch screen powered by a battery that gets up to 30 hours from a 2-hour charge. Kindle's real breakthrough is its EVDO-like wireless connectivity, which allows it to work anywhere, not just at Wi-Fi hotspots. More than 88,000 titles will be on sale at the Kindle store at launch, with NYT best sellers priced at $9.99."
what kind of refresh rate a device such as this needs?
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
is that you won't get the feel from turning pages, the thickness of the book the weight.
Epaper and ebooks were all tried and not successful at dethroning the paperback.
Or are they afraid a picture would distract the reader from the many shiny ads on the page?
I'm not even going to consider really reading an ebook until the XO becomes wildly available. From the information that is available on the XO it would be the right mix between utility and readability.
Subscription. I can't wait to have unlimited books for 20 dollars a month
This is what I've been waiting for. I almost considered buying Sony's Ebook reader a while ago, but, to tell the truth, I hate Sony. The Kindle sounds like something I'd really like to have. It's not cheap but once it's in my hands, I have the entire Project Gutenberg to go through.
The only way I'd ever buy one of these is if it nicely renders unDRM'ed PDFs and features good bookmarking (not just files, but page and line too). If the idea is a device that will only work with some DRMed format, then it'll have the same future as an ATRAC-only music player, which is to say... None.
No, I didn't RTFA, I'm just naturally pessimistic about these devices because everyone seems to be out to sell a service and 'give away a device'.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I like the idea of ebooks on physical "epaper". I like the idea of not having to pay ten to fifty dollars for a fucking paperback book, because I'll now be able to buy it in digital form, without the expense of manufacturing and distributing. I like the idea of having the data available to myself for use in different formats and as part of my collection forever, instead of having to buy another copy if I lose my book or spill a soda on it.
However, what is more likely to happen is that you'll pay just as much as you would for the real thing, be severely limited by crippling DRM, have to pay all over again to re-download the data should you ever need to and also be bound by all sorts of limitations that only benefit the publishing industry. For instance, now you won't be able to sell your book back to a store for them to sell on-the-cheap as used to another reader. The publishing industry HATES the used-book trade and they'd even love to see it criminalized. Not to mention how this could affect libraries.
So yes, the idea is great. Just like the idea of an immense online collection of videos that I can cheaply download and watch any time I want to with some sort of subscription service. Sounds great, but every implementation sucks and is more limiting than anything else.
Oh yeah, but can it run... never mind.
I'd at least like a _picture_ of the thing. Or are the letters running across the guy's face indicative of what the device is _really_ meant for: bringing porno within reach of the toilet/bathtub/bed where the computer won't reach?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Paper books have to be printed, they have to be printed before you buy them and this costs lots of money. The publisher has to take a gamble on how many books can be sold, he will then put in an order for that amount at a printer, who wants his money NOW thank you very much. He will then have to stock those books before sending them to the various retailers. Those retailers will have to stock the books as well, until the customer hopefully end up buying them, eventually. In the meantime a lot of the books will get damaged and be less desirable to buy.
It is a huge complex operation that EATS money. It is why books are still so damned expensive.
Go digital and you loose an awfull lots of costs. First, with digital distribution you can always create EXACTLY the right number of copies. You will never have to take unsold copies back or have to turn a customer down. Never again will the last copy be in some bookstore in a remote place devoid of human life, like New Jersey.
The cost of "printing" is insanely low and in this case for a large part already paid for by the consumer. The consumer PAYS for the download through his internet connection and PAY for the "paper" through the ebook reader. Would you pay the same for beef at the butchers if you had to bring your own cow? The cost of distribution also plummets, what do you rather send, a paper book or a megabyte (and text books are well under that) of data? Could you even express the cost of transmitting that amount of data in whole cents anymore?
Then there is the fact that the costs remain the same no matter where the ebook is send, that there are no losses or damages in transportation and that there is no wait time for delivery.
The costs of stocking disappear as well, you only need to stock one "copy" of the book and then can sell it through the magic of the computer a million times over. The ebook doesn't get old, can't be stolen from inventory, doesn't get eaten by rats. It just sits there, pristine, ready to be sold anytime there is a buyer. For a company like amazon that stores a great many books going to ebooks would mean a fortune saved in warehouse space.
The cost savings of going to ebooks are gigantic.
Yet we still got a price of $9.99 for an ebook when all that is really left is to pay the author, a bit of hardware and software and electricity?
Anyone want to make a bet that an ebook means a profit margin for amazone that would make Apple blush? I am no economists, but I think you can express amazon's angle as "Cazhiiing", or eyeballs spinning and being replaced by dollar signs.
Do you also want to make bets that authors won't all of a sudden find that they get a huge increase on their income?
I can see Amazon's reasons for keeping theprice high, amazing profits is one, not wanting to canabalize paper sales (anyone could setup an ebook store, no need for huge investments Amazon had to make to setup its paper book distribution system) but I also fear it will kill the idea.
Why is it so hard for these types of companies to understand that the less you sell something for, the more you sell. Rather then trying to squeeze a limited audience for all you can, squeeze them less and find yourselve with a bigger audience.
It is depressing that business just doesn't seem to get that with the costs of selling digital content being so low, you could expand your market to truly epic proportions.
Imagine for instance if comics (or manga or strips) were no longer sold JUST on their original continent, but were distrubuted worldwide at a fraction of the costs. I find it very hard to believe that this would not massively increase the sales and profits of the publishers. Yet they keep insisting on distrubting their works in the most expensive way possible that limits the exposure to potential customers.
Truly amazing. $9.99 for a megabyte of data, that requires me to pay for delivery AND the tech to read it. Yeah, why not.
If business had been charge of the internet, email would cost 0.50 euro cents to send. Because hey, that is what regular mail costs so why should we pass the savings by going digital on to the customer?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To read E-Books.... Search google for ebook+psp or ebook+ds and you'll see lots of into on them.
If I was into ebooks, I'd probably prefer reading them on a PSP because it's screen is wide. For reading, a wide screen is more important than a tall or square screen... IMO.
Camping on quad since 1996.
EBooks delivered to and read on Cell Phones is the future.
... but a simple magnifier lens solves that problem ... could be in the form of a snap-on for regular glasses or as a separate bluetooth unit that's worn over one eye; guy from MIT used something like that for over 5 years to surf the internet most anywhere he went ... to digress a bit, I wouldn't be surprised if in say 5 years, accounts of people walking into other people, walls, cars, etc become commonplace.
... in 10 or so years, most students likely won't even have physical textbooks anymore - it will be all on computer; cell phones will be one of the many methods by which people will be able to study while on the go.
Screen resolution on cell phones has greatly improved allowing much more text to be displayed...
Of course, reading such a small screen poses challanges
There's also a psychology factor to consider - people are already accustom to paying for extra stuff (ring tones, wall papers, etc) via their cell phone; billing system is already in place.
Plus young people, especially teens and younger, are very comfortable with reading text off a computer screen - they aren't as emotionally attached to physical books as older people are; many schools / colleges are increasingly transitioning over to on-line instruction
Ron
...Amazon's imminent introduction an affordable ebook. Quench, which is named to evoke the squelching suppression of knowledge by DRM, has the dimensions of a paperback...
Ok, I've not RTFA, but i've quickly perused through the article, and first, one thing that's bothering me : no price yet. Sony's Reader has been for sale for some time now, and was recently out of stock, so I think it sold quite well. It hadn't been sold anywhere in Europe for now, that's a bad thing. Now I don't really see what's the point, on Amazon's eBook reader, of having a full keyboard and EVDO connectivity. Is that a thing that attract kids now ? putting some devices together, saying it's an advance in technology ? I prefer using the usb connection on Sony's eBook reader.
Another thing that's bothering me is the size of Amazon's eReader. The full keyboard adds to the size of the thing, and again I don't see the point of that keyboard. Maybe a bluetooth connection, so that we could buy eBooks with our cellphone, and then transfer it wirelessly. That would be a great thing i'd like to see in a future version of Sony's Reader.
From 2 months ago (Engadget):
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/
$399 is too much for something that's bigger than a PDA or smartphone and does less, doesn't take standard AA batteries, displays in two-bit greyscale, can't be left in a car on a sunny day, has a headhone jack and cellular CDMA capability but can't make a phone call, can't scribble in the margins or highlight.
Cross an iPhone and a OLPC laptop together, and you'd get a better ebook.
I mean a six inch screen at $399? What's so revolutionary? I can get a sony ereader with eink right now for $299:
http://www.amazon.com/E-reader-Portable-Silver-E-book-Approx/dp/B000WPXQ2M
and it looks a million times better with less buttons. While I personally want to buy it, I won't until the screen is the size of textbooks or a standard 8x11 page sheet. I hate squinting -- I might as well read off a PDA if they keep insisting on making screens so small. What is so frustrating is that we could have our libraries - every newspaper we read, every book we ever bought, every textbook in such devices already with current technology.
But how long will it be in coming? Will textbook manufacturers stall until the wikibooks project provides real competition on any level?
Will the future releases of J.K. Rowling come in pdf or will they wait until, like music, they can't ignore the market due to downloads they don't get any compensation for?
All 7 pages of TFA with no ads
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
- You can read it in the sunlight. 99% of most LCD screens can't be read for shit in the sunlight.
- For $9.99, I better not have to have to pay for that fucker again, ever.
And even then, I would still wait a year, so that they don't pull an 'iPhone' on me.Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
More likely the cracking sound of cheap Chinese plastic when you sit on and destroy it. That never happens with paperbacks, and if you do damage/lose a paperback, you just buy another one for a few coins.
Also look at Palmfiction on a HiRes+ Palm device. Far superior 320x480 touchscreen loveliness, and fantastic battery life.
Is this the dawning of a new era? The obsolescence of the "bookshelf"?
Camping on quad since 1996.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, unlike an mp3 player, this cannot be just a passive device: plug yourself into it and vegetate. It will need user interaction for every page, so apart from looking pretty, this UI will have to actually be usable.
Now if Amazon want to really make this take off, they'll make it able to read the book to you. Apart from never overestimating the intelligence of the user, this would also make it much more accessible to the young and the visaually impared. It would also make the device usable outdoors in daylight - a failing that every other screen based device has, and shows no signs of being fixed.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Most of these cost savings could have been achieved years ago by printing on demand. A simple book printer in the store (Borders/B&N/Chapters/etc.) that takes an electronic version of the book and prints out a paperback or hardback.
They could have even charged 100-90% of the normal costs and gotten rid of most of their inventory.
Plus they could have exploited the demand for out of print books.
No need to worry about piracy, as your digital content would have been under your control and only an analog (paper) copy given to the customer.
The problem is (as far as I can tell) the publishing industry is going to Hell in a hand basket. There are no editors anymore. (Take a look at Card or Brin's recent work. No one is ridding herd on these guys.)
Why would they adapt to the possibilities technology offers?
Once again we have to wait for someone outside the traditional system to do something innovative. And even what AMZN is doing isn't too innovative. Really AMZN should have setup a publish on demand system.
I'll call this revolutionary when the reader costs $50 or less (or is free) and when the books cost $2. Not when you get ripped off on the reader as well as on the book price (zero cost for the manufacturer, same or higher price than a paper book).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
GOTO is considered harmful.
All rites reversed 2010
An EVDO connection instead of WiFi: Well, okay, 802.11x sucks for a variety of reasons, but there is one good thing about it: many people have home networks that use it. EVDO? That's a fancy way of saying "we control the device's access to the internet, and you will pay for it."
According to the article, "classics" will be available for $2/pop, and you can subscribe to blogs for $1/month. You know, classics, like the ones that are out of copyright, and blogs, like the ones you can get for free.
How many times do companies come out with a "cool product", and then think it will succeed purely as a vector for other purchases? It might work for video games (where the base product's performance and design is unique) and inkjets (where the supplies drive the retail price), but here you're competing with services that are free. You want to point to the iPod and ITMS? What percentage of tracks on all iPods out there were purchased at ITMS?
Okay, one more thing, this time from Microsoft's Hill:
There's more than that. Codices have been around since late antiquity (I dunno, 4th century maybe?). Before that, we had papyrus rolls. Books are also more versatile than that, with some being designed to be read from across the room.
Finally, how fast does kindle let you flip through the pages?
Like many other people here, I've been waiting for an affordable and usable eInk reader, but this ain't it either.
I agree that wireless is the killer part of this device - you now have a way to get readable documents to someone instantly via pdfs. No longer do you need to connect a laptop and d/l a file or struggle to read a pdf on a PDA; all you need to do is email it to a Kindle. The question is how well does it do gray scale (no mention of color) so taht you can get reasonable reproductions of documents.
In addition, it'll be interesting to see what is in this for Sprint. While I am interested in the device I don't want to pay for yet another wireless device on a monthly basis; my guess is Sprint will get a cut of the sales. That means the Kindle can't become an exchange documents a lot and browse the internet but buy one or two books a year device without Sprint getting upset over the lack of profits. Maybe they will serve up their own adds on the browser? That would be an interesting proposition since you would be able to narrowly target ads to desired market segments since Amazon / Sprint knows who owns the device.
I wonder if KindleMail will be two way - i.e. can I send a markup of a pdf to someone? Or can I, for a small fee, send a marked page or pages to someone from a copyrighted work?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
+Raider of the lost BBS
I'm a household name (at least in the literate households) and I've just written my next best-seller. Where exactly does a publisher feature, if the book only appears as an eBook? They won't need to publish (i.e. print) anything and I can obtain the services of a publicist myself.
What that means is all the royalties go to me - and then to the tax-man, without having a mega-corporation in the middle, skimming most of my pay.
Even for the unknown authors, it will be easier, if somewhat more crowded, to get published. Unlike a musician, you won't need instruments and a (home?) studio - just a copy of vi and an internet connection.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If it's not waterproof, when I drop it in the bath I'll be $400 down instead of $10 down. And will I have to turn my book off during take-off and landing? Oh look, I'd need to change my mobile phone service provider! How much does EVDO cost, anyway? I can't find anybody offering UK-based contracts? Can I mark text with different coloured hi-lighters and draw diagrams in the margin?
Looks to me as if it might find a place alongside the book, but I don't see it being a replacement any time soon.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The ONE reason I don't buy ebooks anymore is due to copyrights.
With a book it's quite LEGAL for me to loan what I've purchased to somebody else. With most ebooks I can't. They usually are locked up with DRM as well. The publishers want to treat ebooks like traditional software (in regards to copyright). You can't just check out an ebook at the library free of charge (usually) and you can bet the publishers would like it to stay that way as they generally hate libraries.
The liberal copyright restrictions on books when it comes to loaning them to somebody else is very important.
Or how about this quote? cnn.com
Wireless that connects to their "service". Yea. Nice multi-functionality. I assume you're assuming you'll be able to freely surf any site you want. How do you know? The product isn't out yet. You're making it up or guessing if you think you know.
Ok. There'll be audio output. Wowzee... just what everyone was waiting for: playing audio CD's and MP3's on a clunky $400 e-book reader. OOoo. Hot seller.
Oh yea, and I'm sure I'll be dumping my small $75 cell phone for this reader to catch all my email. Yes!
Can it run a PDA version of office? How about games? How about a web browser? How about synching my desktop files? Slapping WiFi and an audio output on this device hardly makes it multi-function. Face it. It's a book reader, single purpose. That's how it's supposedly functions, what the available specs indicate, and what all the marketing hype advertises. That's it. It's nothing special.
Camping on quad since 1996.
If this included a copy of all the books I already own then it would be a good deal. ...but I suspect he's hoping I'll pay all over again for an 'e' version of them.
No sig today...
399 when you can get a paperback for lets say 10 USD, then thats 40 books for the price of this. Thats quite a lot, I really like to read books but rarely get time to read more than 1 a week, so this thing cost the same as allmost my yearly book habit, without actually giving me any books to read. There are no way I am going to cash out that amount of money.
Visit http://www.crunzh.com/ for free software. Mac/Lin/Win
I'm sure Amazon will revolutionize online reading... with a bunch of patents: a patent to use buttons to flip the pages on an E-book, a patent on formatting textual content for display in a window, a patent on using black and white pixels for displaying text, a patent on storing books in files, a patent on using data compression for reducing the amount of storage required for storing an e-book.
I'd still read paper. I'm a big fan of open source software. I know I can get documentation for the book at the point of the software. tldp.org and many other free avenues. Yet I have 7 books on my desk right now.
I like a good book.
Why are companies so greedy? When I buy a book, I go to a store and buy it in paperback, which is cheaper than $9.99. So this company wants to sell me a book without the paper (which saves them a lot of money on production and distribution costs), and yet they still want to charge me even more? An e-book is worth less than a paperback to me, it costs them a hell of a lot less to make and distribute copies, and I'm certain it will be bound up in DRM so tightly that you can't use it with different devices, which means you will have to buy it again when that device goes out of style. Does that sound like a good deal to anyone here?
Wasn't this idea tried years ago? And wasn't it a complete failure? The entire thing is too expensive, and too big a pain.
Tell me again why I would want this device when my laptop already fills that role (plus more, and it is mobile enough for me)?
I can't answer how -this- beats a PSP or DS, but I have an n800 and I can answer how that does.
The large screen is a must. The DS's screen doesn't get enough text on it at once, even using both screens, to read at a good clip.
The touch screen is -really- useful. I can tap a corner of the 'page' with my thumb and it'll go forward or backward in the text.
You don't have to hack or buy a questionably-legal cartridge to use the n800 for reading.
I can guess the Kindle would also add: 30 hours of battery life, and paper-like screen which could be easier on the eyes.
I bought the n800 mainly for ebook reading. I use it for other things as well now, but it really was just another $400 ebook reader when I bought it. But it -could- do other things, which this Kindle cannot. No Skype phone, web browsing, organizer, etc, etc.
One last unrelated thing: I see everyone talking about DRM'd ebooks. I have never bought a DRM'd ebook in my life and never will. I buy my books from baen.com (ALL completely DRM free and in several formats) which has -years- of good books that I don't have yet, and they release more each month than I can read in a month. In addition, Project Gutenburg has the classics.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
An ebook reader should have a high contrast, high DPI display that is easy to read in sunlight, with a long battery life. This can be provided with e-ink technology, which the PSP and DS being designed to play games (not read books) don't use. That is why you'd want to buy a separate e-book reader, but if you are comfortable using your PSP or DS for this, then use them, but they wouldn't suit me. That said, I think $400 is too expensive.
If my cell phone and laptop are any indication, my biggest problem with ebooks is that when I want to read, I'll have forgotten to charge the damn thing.
If they would add an "emergency" generator like in those shake flashlights, so that I could get a 15 minute charge after shaking it for 30 seconds, I'd buy it.
400$ is not too much money, and is in line with other offerings (Sony Reader, Cybook 3) and so on. However, current electronic devices have a too limited lifespan. If it only lasts 3 years, one must read many books for the thing to become somehow profitable. Quite a lot, except for real reading-lovers...
My photography
In fact I think a dedicated book-reader will never have any significant market share. What it needs is that everybody carries a PDA araund, that can also serve as a book reader. Until then, a genuine paperback has huge advantages:
... ...
- Cost: Cheap. If it gets wet or you losse it, no issue.
- Reliable: Works. And everybody understands what it can and cannot do.
- Resilient: Works when damaged. Pretty hard to destroy to non-functionality unintentionally.
- Compatible: Works with eyeball mark one and light mark one. No vendor lock-in here.
- Easy to use: Flip a page.
- Versatile: Can also double as fire-starter, toilet-paper, doorstop,
- Durable: If stored carefully, will still work after decades
- Non-surprising behaviour: No virusses, disk-crashes, empty batteries,
The only advantage I see in a dedicated ebook is the following:
- Simpler transport and storage: Easier for the bookseller to make money.
I think this thing has zero market. At some time we all will be carrying around a PDA stype devices that can match most of the advantages of a book, and then we will be buying ebooks, But not before that. And there will allways be a market for trade-paperbacks and hardcovers. It is not only about getting a sequence of letters to the customer.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It didnt mention how much the device was, if its $500 bucks then its silly even if books are 8 dollars or less.
Can i backup my books locally on my PC forever, or are we going to have another fiasco where down the road amazon pulls the plug and i lose access to all the content i bought?
Can i load my own books in PDF format onto this thing ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Also, since a lot of books I read are references, it sucks if the images are down sampled to B&W, low res, or stripped from the book entirely. I'm not a fan of e-readers so I'm not sure how well they deal with images.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I would really rather have an EBook reader, say as opposed to read pdf or txt files in a computer. The thing that would make me buy it would be: - decent screen that doesn't kills my eyes (after already spending the whole day programming); - battery life measured in thousands of pages; - a form format that is suitable for reading. - easy to get it to work with Linux The form format of the screen is a bit of a problem with something like the XO. The screen brightness could also give me trouble. [...] About screen size, the only ereader with something more than 6" is this iRex illiad. But it costs around $700 :-(
And it has DRM all over :-((
I am, however, eagerly waiting for the Hanlin v9, which will have 10", and can be easily used from Linux. But there is no info on the pricing yet.
[..]
BTW, this is a good summary of the EReader market http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
Cheers
Kindle? As in kindling? As in a bonfire? Books and bonfires?
The only logical conclusion is that Amazon is a front for Neo-Nazis.
(kidcharles - Godwining threads with a single post since the dawn of the intertubes!)
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I also don't want skin cancer.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Under-Construction Kindle Store: No pics yet, but tabs for Buy a Kindle, Kindle Books, Kindle Newspapers, Kindle Blogs, Kindle Magazines, Manage Your Kindle, and Kindle Support.
Agreed, the internet tablets are THE devices for e-book reading at the moment.
Amazing screen, open, FBreader has amazing format support, pretty good user interface (I like zoom buttons for page browsing, in addition to the thumb press). And while they might not get quite 30 hours of battery life, if you're just reading without using wifi/bt or anything cpu intensive, my 770 gets at least twelve hours. While the paper-like screen could, in theory, be better for your eyes, much of the eye-relief of paper comes from huge resolution, and e-ink just doesn't have that yet - the Tablets actually have quite a bit better resolution (~225DPI) than the amazon gadget (167 DPI), so it just might be that they're actually better to read on, to boot.
And of course, as you say, while they're good book readers, they can do a whole lot more for almost half the price (n800 is going for just over 200 now that n810 is out).
Books. They also don't need to be recharged every 30 hours. Also have a great tactile navigation method. I call it "turning the page".
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
A few points:
The largest variety of books sold these days is in the SciFi section. Jerry Pournelle recently said on TWiT that he was told that the way to push books is to put a hot chick on the cover (paraphrasing). Black and White text is not worth much if you want to hawk new titles over EVDO to the thing (ordering from a PC is different).
I read the article on my cell phone before firing up the PC this morning. Not bad, but a little hard on the eyes for several pages. Holographic displays may help down the road, but still too far off to bet a business model on.
Finally, this has been one of the nicest discussions I've read in a long time. Very civil, complete sentences, and correct use of "there." Slashdot (and the overall websphere) would do well to use this as an example of proper communications.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Will amazon offer me e-books in an unrestricted and un-DRM'ed form? no........... well i'll pass then thanks.
There actually is another new e-ink based reader out as well; the Booken - Cybook http://www.bookeen.com/
It supports books in Mobipocket format along with PalmDoc, HTML, Txt and PDF (with restrictions on a few of these formats).
Also supports playing of MP3's
Price is $350 or $450 depending on the bundle.
This seems like another situation where a company selling a product is looking at features that can be cheaply added to increase the price of a device thereby making it less good at more things. I believe the WiFi functionality of the Kindle will prove to be exactly that. People will try to start using it as an internet tablet, the battery will go dead faster than 30 hours because of the WiFi use, people will get angry and go back to paper.
Perhaps if they added networking over bluetooth people could have just enough functionality to add a new book that they forgot on the road but really, who cant/doesnt get away with a mini-usb cable and their laptop for these purposes.
I think this is one of those cases where e-books are already fringe enough, they need to start driving towards the rest of the populace or they are going to miss the boat. Pushing down the price even at the cost of removing "features" like WiFi and at the same time increasing battery life while allowing E-Ink to continue to improve... now that sounds like a better way to push a new medium!
Amen to Baen! Darned near all of their catalog is available electronically (certainly everything printed in the past decade), they have a huge library of free books, and everything is available in plain ol' HTML as well as other forms (Rocketreader, Palm Mobipocket, Microsoft Reader, and RTF). Individual books are priced about the same as a paperback, cheaper if you buy the bundle-of-the-month.
They also publish a monthly SF magazine in a purely electronic format, if that sort of thing floats your boat.
Baen has a serious corporate allergy to DRM. Jim Baen hated it, and his successors hate it. This is what commercial electronic media should be. (I'm talking to you, RIAA!)
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
- i use a hacked PSP with the BookR PSP PDF reader... you can format any copied text, ebook, Gutenberg public domain text into PDF... i use a page width of 4 inches and page length of 20 inches (to avoid overuse of the next/previous buttons)...
- alternatively, i mount the Gutenberg DVD and serve it up via Apache - voila: a wifi library of 40,000 texts that i can read using the PSP's browser from anywhere at the casa!
- new PSPs are US$170 - much cheaper than any dedicated ebook reader...
400 clams gets you into the now running OLPC buy one, some kid gets one deal, and they are "ebooks" as part of the function.
For $399, I can buy Asus EEE, which is great as an ebook reader plus does a lot of other things. Why would I want to buy this ugly looking device which only works with DRM PDF's?
As for buying PDFs from Amazon, it's a nightmare if you want to read them in anything than Adobe. If you try Foxit reader or SumatraPDF they won't work. Plus, there are tons free of non fiction PDFs on the internet if you know where to look.
And I use my laptop to read them, in fact can't remember the last time I read a paper book. Digital ebooks kick a**. So there's definitely a market for ebooks, the problem authors and publishers face that is easy to duplicate and distribute ebooks. They need to lower ebook prices so conscious consumers would buy from authors as opposed to wasting time looking for the ebooks elsewhere.
We're talking about completely removing the physical chain of distribution and all of the massive costs associated with it and they're only dropping the price to $9.99? Greedy bastards. And do they DRM this shit, too? From what I've seen lately, DRM means that there's no way for you to own the product in perpetuity like with a physical book. You lose the device it's locked to, fuck you, buy it again. Look at the recent MLB thing where they shut down the authentication server that allowed the DRM content to play. Look at Nintendo not allowing you to transfer virtual console games from one box to another.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
http://www.baen.com/ sell reasonably priced ebooks and have some free (as in beer) ones. Good start for an SF library, we just need a few more publishers* to follow that example.
... and, of course, for this new device to be able to accept them.
* a good start would be one that does detective stories - that itself might be sufficient to bootstrap ebooks to a larger audience.
The whole idea of e-books makes me a little hesitant. I'm an academic and I underline like none other in my books (at least the academic ones). So if an e-book reader had a stylus or something I could "write" with I might be receptive to the idea. Would also help if the academic publishers (Oxford, Harvard, Illonois, CQ etc.) were to jump on board. Does anyone know of either occuring?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/
if this is really it, its dead before it gets out of bed.
However the Hanlin V9 with a bigger screen, better looks and a more reasonable price could be what lets the market take off. The Sony is close. It just needs to be a bit bigger screen and a bit less expensive (and drop all the non-book functions), and it could be a real goer. But this thing...!
Format. This is the one thing that will always ruin ebook readers. Every company doing ebooks has their own ideas about the file format and the ebooks you buy today will probably be unreadable in the near future. This is why books have survived for as long as they have...printed words on a page are pretty much the same now as they were 150 years ago. Do you honestly think that in 150 years you will be able to open a Microsoft Reader ebook or a Sony ebook or a Palm ebook, or a Kinder ebook? I don't. But I do know that I can pick up a book that was published 150 years ago and still be able to open it, turn the pages, look at the pictures, and if it is written in English be able to read it.
I'll buy an ebook reader when either one format comes out the winner and all other formats are tossed to the wind or someone develops an ebook reader that can read all existing ebook formats with expandability for future formats. In other words I doubt I will ever buy an ebook reader.
It's not the device which is important: it's the file format. As long as these devices use restricted formats, they're dead in the water.
I started using books on my PDA in 2001. The problem for ebook success isn't the devices, but the way content is priced and the restrictions. I found that the price for a hard cover and a ebook were the same. This is ridiculous! A hard cover has to be printed, shipped, stored, stocked, returns need to be handled, there is inventory risk, etc. I know that a ebook is cheaper, likely by several dollars than a hardcover, yet they price them the same. I don't do ebooks because I resent being ripped off.
Add to the the same lousy implementation of DRM that we see in music, and an ebook is a really bad buy. I can't share with my wife, give to my sister, have the kids read the book.
New devices won't make ebooks popular. Rationale pricing and usable DRM (or no DRM) are the keys.
"The possibility of interaction will redefine authorship," says Peter Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, an association of libraries and institutions. Unlike some writing-in-public advocates, he doesn't spare the novelists. "Michael Chabon will have to rethink how he writes for this medium," he says. Brantley envisions wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a "superuser," the lead wolf of a creative pack.
This was also an idea that some people had 10 years ago with television and it failed as 99.999% of people want to receive entertainment from TV not to write it themselves. Only geeks that think about how to apply technology to entertainment think this stuff up as it isn't needed.
Well, I did RTFA, and you are sort of right, but it doesn't even have to be an issue with DRM - the format is just as important. The key to providing a winning formula for consumers is:
a) don't DRM the data. People remember what MS did to all their loyal customers with the Zune (all their legally purchased "PlaysForSure" music from Napster, Yahoo Music, AOL Music Now, MusicMatch, or even Microsoft's MSN Music or MTV-partnered Urge became obsolete and unusable in the Zune, and therefore completely unusable at some point in the future).
b) use an *existing* standard format, OR if you need new features, create an *OPEN* format. People want to own books, not just rent it until Amazon decides it doesn't want to keep building the readers.
What publishers of music *and* books need to remember is that people want to keep their music and books, and be able to enjoy them in the future. I have books and music dating back to the 80's and I still enjoy them today. And I want to keep enjoying them into the future.
With music, Apple won by:
a) creating a very permissive DRM that protected rights but let the customers do what they wanted (shift to different devices)
b) supporting ownership of music users already owned - that is when music was ripped from a purchased CD, it went into non-DRM formats (c.f. early MS rippers that DRMd your music).
c) supporting most playable formats, especially MP3.
I hardly use a regular telephone. I can't tell time on an analogue clock. And I haven't listened to the CD version of an album in a long time. But you'll never convince me to stop using real books!
I don't just like books, I revere them - and not just novels, but textbooks too. I once bought a used textbook that the previous owner had cut pictures out of and it made me angry. I've never even written in or highlighted books. I'll certainly resell them once I'm done, but I can't throw them away. That's why I've got a box of books in my room that are listed for $0.75 each on Half.com right now.
A book is knowledge and information in a tangible, lasting form. When a civilization fails, its books (tablets, scrolls, etc.) often survive. Can the same be said for the DRM encrypted, Sony proprietary formatted, digital version of James Patterson's "Murder in a Middle-Class Resort Town"?
I can sit and read a printed book for hours. Have you ever had to sit and read a computer screen for hours? Its tiring and bad for your eyes. Now imagine reading Crime and Punishment on a DS screen, an iPod, or a cell phone. Books a simple, intuitive to use, and can easily be shared. You don't have to worry about file formats, DRM, or hardware. The only compatibility issue with a book is whether or not its written in a language you can read.
What's worse is that, once most books are available in digital format only is the sad but inevitable next step: "Why should I have go to the trouble of reading my ebook when the machine could read it to me?" We're already half-way there with books on tape. Yes, audio recordings of books are wonderful for people who are blind or have other issues that limit their physical ability to read. The digital age is already eroding people's ability to write without a keyboard and grammar/spell check. What happens when people depend on a machine to read for them too?
Sure, it would be nice to have a search function on my 5 inch thick Invertebrate Zoology reference text. But, I'd rather have the satisfaction and prestige of that book sitting on my bookshelf and the knowledge that I can pick it up and look through it without paying a subscription fee.
I know affordable is a relative term, but $400 is no cheaper than other ebook readers. I'd consider buying a nice eink ebook reader once they come down in price more towards the $100 range but $400 just isn't worth it to me.
"I like the idea of ebooks on physical "epaper". I like the idea of not having to pay ten to fifty dollars for a fucking paperback book, because I'll now be able to buy it in digital form, without the expense of manufacturing and distributing"*
What makes you think the majority cost of publishing is in distribution and printing?
"I like the idea of having the data available to myself for use in different formats and as part of my collection forever, instead of having to buy another copy if I lose my book or spill a soda on it."
And if you damage the digital copy, do you believe your entitled to perpetual replacements?
"However, what is more likely to happen is that you'll pay just as much as you would for the real thing, be severely limited by crippling DRM, have to pay all over again to re-download the data should you ever need to and also be bound by all sorts of limitations that only benefit the publishing industry. For instance, now you won't be able to sell your book back to a store for them to sell on-the-cheap as used to another reader"
Maybe the publishing industry has taken the lessons of piratebay to heart? Anyway you already can't sell some kinds of software used due to piracy (the copy the discs and return to the store kind).
"The publishing industry HATES the used-book trade and they'd even love to see it criminalized. Not to mention how this could affect libraries."
Libraries have already embraced ebooks and I'd say their behavior towards it is more rational than the publics "gimme, gimme, gimme," attitude.
"So yes, the idea is great. Just like the idea of an immense online collection of videos that I can cheaply download and watch any time I want to with some sort of subscription service. Sounds great, but every implementation sucks and is more limiting than anything else."
It doesn't work because of human nature. The issue has never been about technology.
*Yes I'd like ebooks but for different reasons. Small size, little weight, durable, searchable, etc But I know that the behavior of my fellow men will make all of that difficult. Just like the same means that I can never have an unlocked outer door. Maybe I should blame the lock industry?
I bet this thing won't suppport DJVU, the best format for eBooks tha weren't natively typest into PDF.
As an aside note, I'm 20, and I have a bunch of books and a bunch of eBooks, and I think that each kind is better for its purpose. For instance, software documentation requires fast lookups, and I'm using it while doing things on a computer anyway, so it better be in electronic format. On the other hand, 'real' books IMHO are more comfortable to read, never require batteries, and so far DPI resolution of print is biggern than the one of the screen.
I think it's a stupid thing to say that one format is better than other, especially when you can have both and convert freely. I frequently print out sections of scanned books, so that I don't have to carry the whole book, but have the comfort of paper (thus going the full circle: print-scan-print). I hope that in the future every book will come with a CD containing it; and you already can print out your ebooks for not-that-much (Kinkos/laser printer/inket with 3rd party $2 cartridges). So let's stop the zealotry war, and start celebrating the spread of both formats =)
they should just hand Kindles out to people on planes.
Something new and fun to play with. Get to use it for a few hours to see if you like it - and offering a plane trip with an onboard library of a few hundred thousand books deinitely ranks above half a dozen crappy blockbusters.
More importantly, you can seed the market by letting travellers pay to walk off the plane with their new Kindle and their half-read book.
(Jeff, you owe me if you run with this)
"You can't just check out an ebook at the library free of charge (usually) and you can bet the publishers would like it to stay that way as they generally hate libraries."
Well one the Indianapolis Public library loans out ebooks. Two I wouldn't say publishers hate libraries otherwise I'd lump Baen into there along with a long list of small publishers.
"The liberal copyright restrictions on books when it comes to loaning them to somebody else is very important."
I especially like the liberal right to scan a book and distribute it via Usenet.
I know that Amazon did not design this to be a word processor, but they did put a keyboard on it (albeit, an awkward-looking one), and it has a USB port, and a nice big screen which you can read in daylight. . . With all that in place, the only thing needed is a bit of code and the job would be finished. But still. . . It just hasn't been done!
The Asus EEE is sort of close, but still no cigar. The battery life is too short, the screen is a flashy all-color thing, and there are far too many features for somebody who just wants a durable portable word processor.
I think chasing this wish-list item of mine is like experiencing a dream. --In dreams, when you are faced with a problem, (at least in my dreams), I struggle to solve it and right when all the pieces are just about to fall in place, when the light bulb is just about to go on, that's when I wake up.
Which leads me to wonder if when somebody finally makes a decent portable word processor, the world will come to an end.
Maybe it's a good thing that nobody has built one yet.
-FL
I second that. I got hook on Baen's free library and now have dozens of their hard copy and paperback books plus even more online books I have bought from them. I just picked up another in a series about midnight when I finished reading the first book in the free library.
Like the music industry, the book industry is largely clueless when it comes to why they are losing sales and where they are going to pick them up. And we do need editors.
Well I certainly see why no one takes this forum seriously. No, servers, personnel, or bandwidth don't go to zero or anywhere near zero.
Amazon will happily sell you a 10MB high-quality audio track for $0.89. That's likely about 1/100th the price-per-megabyte that they're charging with this bookstore. A $0.10 book would be pretty damn close to zero
Is to combine the ability to be able to actually physically turn pages with the flexibility of an electronic device. Which would end up giving you a true "e-book." Which can best be described as a device that physically looks like a book with pages, but the pages are really e-paper, the book has perhaps wifi, usb2.0, or something not yet invented to allow you to download books to your e-book. And when you download a book the e-book automatically formats the text to fit the e-pages of the book. So no matter what book you download it fits in your device with standard looking text.
Now given the developmental rate of e-paper technology, and other relevant technological areas I'd say something like this might come out in the next 10-15 years. Although it might take a bit longer.
I like to read (like most blokes) while in the smallest room of the house...
Answers to your questions
1. Price? $399.00 (US)
2. Backup books No, DRM will prevent transfer of books
3. Yes, fiasco down the road.
Things you forgot to ask about.
A) connectivity? only through a cell phone network you have to pay separatly for.
B) control? Remote, with Amazon or their assignees able to modify the memory of your reader remotely.
C) Book Cost? 9.99, higher than a paperback. They plan to sell you 'classics' for about $2.00 each. A classic is anything you can get from Project Gutenberg for free. This could be a problem for them, but they arranged it so that the connectivity ONLY goes through Amazon.
D) Image Quality? a 6 inch screen, 4 level gray scale. Expect a flash whenever the screen changes. Also expect it to take about 2 seconds to flip a page. That is typical of E ink displays.
E) Give/Loan/Borrow a book? forget it. See 2 above.
I hope this helps you decide if the system is right for you. It isn't right for me. I do read books on my laptop, and have read dozens on a PDA. The age of the e-book is here now. We already know the format that will win out in the end. It is called HTML. No mention if this reader can view either HTML or ASCII text. That probably means no.
A better reader for the price seems to be the Nokia 800 series Internet Tablet. The 810 also includes a GPS, so you can tell where you are too. I'm thinking the 700 series (now less than $200.00) may be a better choice for me. Just my opinion on this last paragraph.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
They named it "kindle", meaning "to catch fire"? This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I mean, you don't see an airline calling themselves Hindenburg Airlines, do you? Seems to me like Amazon just loudly asked what could possibly go wrong.
I'm really sorry. This is going to sound like an ad.
I'm carrying an iRex iLiad. Everywhere. It's very slightly more than an ebook reader, because it has a Wacom stylus and you can write on it; then again, it is significantly more expensive because of this. But here's the thing:
It is much nicer than a physical book.
I was absolutely amazed.
Here's why:
First, it has more usable display area than a book. Why? Because although a quarter of the face is case surround, there is no facing page. This makes a huge difference when reading on the bus, or walking down the street, or while drinking a cup of coffee.
Second, it may not be lighter than one book, but it is certainly lighter than three. So now, in a single device I can hang from my belt when I don't mind looking like a dork but want my hands free (which is usually, I'm afraid), I can have a light novel, a heavy novel, something of historical interest, a programming language manual, the reference materials for whatever I'm working on, three technical journals, my entire archive of research papers, my handwritten notes from my chinese class, my meeting notes, my doodles, and my RSS feeds. This is a win, even if I'm now mostly reading classics while I wait for the publishing industry to get its head out and start charging only the software costs for new releases.
Third, and this still weirds me out, in one important way, epaper outperforms contemporary physical paper. It is greyer. "WTF?" I hear you say, "don't you want maximum contrast?" But the answer appears to be that modern paper is made slightly fluorescent; certainly it is immensely white. In direct sunlight, it can be painful, and is certainly hard to read. The iLiad display is disappointing in situations where your mum would have yelled "turn on the light! You'll ruin your eyes!" but in good light it is great and outdoors it is much better than great.
Don't you see? I can now be a functional researcher in the park. With a coffee in one hand. And my book bag increased in capacity by several orders of magnitude and reduced in weight to less than a pound. (Well, except that I live in Canada and its is f***ing winter now and will be for six more months....)
I really hate to sound like a fanboi, but for me, a piece of the long-promised future recently arrived by DHL, let me tell you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wang built a dedicated word processor in the 70's. Radio shack did it again in the 80's. Both devices died when PC's became generally available. The word processor is just a word processor, the PC can be a word processor and much much more.
I don't expect different results here.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
When will they learn? Greed guarantees failure for yet another e-book reader entry. Only $400? Wow, I can buy a laptop and donate another for that price. Let's go over what you need to succeed One More Time:
If you still don't believe that the leaked FCC photos depict the final product (some say it's hideous), check out next week's cover of the Newsweek: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7336&d=1195413957
Ebooks will not become practical for most people until the reader costs little enough that you won't cry if you forget it on the bus.
At $400, you are trying to train people to carry around something more valuable than their cell phone. Unless this thing is supposed to stay home, out of harm's way. Which would be lame. $400? You can buy a portable DVD player for half that. Less than half, even! I understand about economy of scale and all that. But this is the kind of comparison Joe Blow is going to make.
I am already an ebook guy. I use uBook on my Pocket PC. (Great software, btw: http://www.gowerpoint.com/. Fan, used it forever.) Sure, the screen is smaller, but at 640x480 it's plenty sharp. OK, the battery doesn't last as long, but it makes up for that by being a PDA/web browser/media player too.
For $400, you may as well buy yourself a nice new PDA phone and buy a copy of uBook for it. Or get one of those new $400 mini laptops. There must be some free reader software for linux? Or move a Windows license to it, and use the desktop version of my preferred app.
But that's still only a solution for techies. Give the world a $100 reader, with no wireless BS.
This doesn't even address the media cost issue, but other posts have nailed that.
WTF? 400 bucks buys a lot of paperbacks and if I lose a paperback I am out less then 10 bucks and I can just buy another. Not to mention a paperback doesn't break when I drop it, can go pretty much anywhere, doesn't need to be turned off on takeoff and doesn't need to be plugged in. You can buy a cheap laptop for 400 bucks, so why would I buy this?
Also why would I want to pay the same price for a electronic copy of a book? They should be cheaper then their paper counterpart.
I am surprised no one has mentioned the E-ink ads appearing in grocery stores across America.
I have to say, this was a sort of entertaining thing to read, in part because I've heard all of this before. My first book contract was to write Diablo: Demonsbane in 2000 for Pocket Books - it was even going to be the e-book that would inaugurate the entire Blizzard fiction line. I couldn't lose, right?
So, I write the book, get Chris Metzen drooling over it once he reads it, trying to find me a full-scale Diablo print book to write (which never happened, sadly), and the book is released in October 2000. It spends weeks on the PeanutPress bestseller list.
By the time it had been taken out of "print," it had sold around 500-900 copies. That's it. There are print books that have utterly tanked that sold more copies than that, and as far as e-books go, I was doing WELL.
The e-book revolution that was supposed to wipe out the bookstores and revolutionize the way we read turned out to be nothing more than a pipe dream. Now, the wild claims are being repeated, and it's still a pipe dream.
The reason for this is simple - when it comes down to it, for something to take off, it needs to have a level of utility. You need to be able to offer the customer lots of flexibility, and remove additional steps wherever possible. No matter what happens, when it comes to e-books, the first thing you are doing is adding a step, and a step that requires electricity. And then the internet.
The book I've got coming out in under a month was tested as an e-text with two classes of students at the university where I work. This is one of the top universities in Canada, too - plenty of laptops in class during the lectures. The most frequent complaint we got when the primary author and I asked for comments was that it wasn't a print book. Students like to be able to make notes in the margins, you see - they even said so on their comment sheets.
The simple fact is that the e-book is not going to dislocate the print book any time soon, if ever. The print book has no technological barriers to entry for the readers, while the e-book does. And no amount of idealistic speculation is going to change that.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
"Price: $400 is a non-starter. Shoot for $200 for the opening price, with price reductions to follow."
Oh gee like that never happened to your laptop solution. You want to be on the cutting-edge? Then you pay cutting-edge prices. Bitching that you don't get it cheap off the bat* is plain silly.
*Oh yes there's the cell-phone model but slashdot bitches about that too. I can't image you all ever being happy at all.
"Hardware Openness: Hardware companies don't know how to make software. "
Someone get Jobs on the phone. The GIMP people have a lesson to deliver.
"Decrease Information Friction: Don't eyeball every source of information as a profit stream -- instead, focus on how damned easy you can make it for people to get information onto your hardware (think of why YouTube succeeded and Google Video had to fold). "
Youtube succeeded for the same reasons Flash succeeded and we all love Flash.
"Profits from Platform: Of course, you have to make money or you won't bother to make the device. Focus on being the platform that all e-book readers are based on. Think long-term. Think profits from volume. Think of being the AdWords/AdSense of e-books (you can pay and get X content ad-free, or not pay and get it with ads)."
I feel a certain ad-block moment coming on. Oh wait you were expecting people to accept your business model when slashdot regularly turns everyone elses down?
Does anyone have any real idea of the cost breakdown of supplyinng eBooks? Lets ignore the reader and associated development costs and worry just about providing the books in some formats. There would be some costs that were not 'per book', but it seems like they should not be huge.
I had read somewhere that the authors might get around $1.50 per book. It must cost at most $0.01 to distribute the the book itself. Where does the other $8.48 go? Is it 'pure profit'? licensing for DRM schemes / formats? ....
Don't forget that some of Baen's hardback books come with a CD full of DRM free books, and the CD says that you are allowed to make personal copies for friends...
Buy 1 physical book, get 20-30 more books on the CD in the back? That is a good reason to buy the hardback over the paperback.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Firstly, thanks for turning me on to the Baen free e-books, very cool!
Secondly, I'd like know which of the many available formats of their books will be best for reading on the OLPC XO-1?
I purchased the XO-1 for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that I really hope it functions as a nice e-book reader.
I haven't done any e-book reading yet, and wonder if anyone knows what format(s) are best to use, both in general, and specifically for the XO-1?
I think I read that it comes with a PDF reader, so maybe thats my answer? But it seems like HTML and Rich Text would be nice formats to support, too?
Any advise I could be would be much appreciated.
Cube On! (http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz)
You didn't mention which country you are from, but I had no trouble identifying it from your list of its sins. Interesting. I hope by "give up" you mean lowered expectations. As long as you live there, it is still your moral duty to vote - using write-ins if needed. And I mean real write-ins for a qualified candidate, not "Mickey Mouse". In the unlikely event that enough people do that, and we aren't still using E-voting machines controlled by a corporation run by ex-cons, there could still be some positive changes.
Many thanks for the info. Regards Dimble
TFA states that it does not have wifi. And also says that you can access websites like google or wikipedia, but I wondered whether you'd be able to access other sites because of the flashy graphics and bling. The refresh rate on this screen is so low as to make that unfeasible. And it does have PDA. My point stands.
+Raider of the lost BBS
It might be presented abrasively and it might be a little hard to swallow, but the parent is right. GP's optimism is unfounded, about the quality of books written by authors no longer beholden to the publishing establishment. There will be brilliant stuff, to be sure, but there will be mountains of crap, too. I'm concerned about what will happen when authors don't have to commit to a text. That is, I'm wonder if we'd see _Great American Novel_ v1.0, v1.01, etc. To the parent: maybe some credible reviewers will be able to point us to the good stuff. If you just read the best blogs and sit on a good forum to get youtube links, you can reach a pretty high level of quality.
In what world does 320x480 count as high res? I read eBooks on my 770 which has a 800x480 screen, and it's right at the lower limit of quality I'd consider acceptable for reading large amounts of text (225dpi - I'd prefer 300+ on a passively-lit screen).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
With a tendency toward old fogey-ism acknowledged, I doubt I would ever use an ebook reader extensively. When I acquire a "book", I prefer it to be a physical thing that I own & not something that is licensed. Physical books are also desirable in that one doesn't need special technology to read them (except for something to provide light at night ... and maybe glasses ...).
... or possibly work-related material that I didn't want to lug around.
I suppose I might use an ebook reader to read things that I would throw away, like a newspaper or a magazine
At the end of the day, I suppose I just like real books - the feel of them, the way they look, smell, etc.
I realize that sounds luddite. Clearly I should just haul my keister down to the second-hand bookshop and kvetch with the subversives therein about this Demon of Progress.
Will it fit in my back pocket on my way to the beach? Will it cost me $5.00 AT MOST at a local used book store? Can I read it in direct sunlight? Seems like a complicated solution to a very simple dilemma. Also, library's rock. They're free and usually have everything I'm looking for.
Then it stands on shit. You've never used a PDA... have you? Hint: a PDA is not a castrated, stripped down web browser.
Camping on quad since 1996.
"You need a great reader at a great price. This $400 reader I just heard about from Amazon is not the great price by a long shot. $50 sounds ball park off the top of my head. $100 might be pushing it at today's dollar value for my part of the world."
Oh lord. Maybe the first ebook should be on economics. Listen to you all whining about the cost of a technology that recently just became viable. Comparing it to laptops that when they came out were likewise "too much" and you had to wait several years before it became "affordable".
"eBooks should be way less than regular books people."
And why is that? Oh right, slashdot understands publishing about as well as it understands the law and science. Distribution and printing are only part of the cost and not the most significant part. The part that's already embraced the electronic age
"Have every regular book come with an eBook in a sleeve in the back or have a code printed in it that allows for a free download of the book."
And of course slashdot's deep understanding of human nature tells them that this will not happen to the book industry.
"Why this last bit? Best of both worlds for people who like physical books. You get the physical book with all of its advantages, plus you get the eBook with all of the searching, bookmarking, cross referencing possibilities."
You'll note that O'Reilly no longer does that.
"Stop thinking about how to milk the people. We are not your cows and goats. Give the people a product that will make things better for them and settle for an honest, decent profit while doing so."
Slashdot has some interesting ideas of what constitutes an "honest, decent" profit. Guess that explains why movie stars and football players piss them off so much.
iRex has a linux based eInk reader.
Mabbe if you knew anything about anything youd know the difference between evdo and wifi jackass GP is correct
It'll have both. Moron.
Camping on quad since 1996.
"I *really* don't think you can make an argument that your average person will put out $400 for an e-reader."
I think that's why Apple missed the boat on this one. But they seem locked on the notion that a "portable media device" means something that can play music and movies. They seem to forget that there are other forms of media that are older and yet in many ways more popular than CDs and DVDs and their digitized equivalents.
And, personally, I think the iPhone would be a very nice reader. I know I'd sacrifice some of the advantages of a Kindle NOT to have yet another device to lug around and recharge. See: Amazon Introduces Kindle; Apple Introduces Nothing
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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Just about every other media has been digitized inexpensively (legally or illegally) except current books. I'd pay a few dollars for a one-month reading, but generally not the tens of dollars bookstores and ebooks charge now.
$10 for best sellers???
*looks at back of current paperback she's reading*
Yup, I paid $10 for a physical book. Why the hell would I pay $10 for a ebook? That being said I can get a used copy in good condition for usually $2-4.
This assumes I want to keep a copy. If I don't there's always the library down the street.
Figure out what the cost of a physical book is, minus the manufacturing costs, shipping, distribution and retailer costs. That's what the ebook should cost. The commission to the author, publisher and ebook distributor. That's it.
Silly.
I've got an N770 which is even cheaper than the N800. It doesn't have all the features of the N800 (No flash 9, no skype), but it still works really well for ebooks. The screen size and resolution are great and FBreader is awesome.
/. in airports and hotels is just a bonus.
I've read maybe 10 books on it since I got it and am loving it. Checking email and
May be for viewing books, but not for reading, for reading it's better to have a PDA like device which comfortably fits into your hand.
ResoMail - the alternative secure e-mail system
I'm not sure I would object to ads on the device if it cut my costs. Most books come with ads, if I go to Borders books, they put ads in my bag, if I buy from Amazon they put ads in the box. Some publishers even put ads in the back of the books in the form of plugs for other books. Old books came with coupons, why not put a few ads in my ebook?
I admit I didn't read the 7 page story, but does it:
1. Let you back up your books so when you lose the $400 device you don't also lose your entire library?
2. Will it let you read the e-books on other e-readers or are you stuck to their device?
3. Is there any DRM that makes you reliant on the wireless network (i.e. if you're stuck for a year in Alaska with no connection can you still read your books)?
If it looks like something you could pick up in Radio Shack (and it does) then it is doomed.
And what the hell are all those buttons for?
Why the hell does a READER have one third of its real estate covered by a keyboard, that will probably be used very rarely? I mean, how much typing do you do while you're reading a book? Bad design, DRM, horrendous pricing. I hope the post that showed it on the cover of Newsweek isn't a hoax, because this thing is the poster child for what an e-book reader should not be, and when it tanks hopefully Apple or somebody will be taking lots of notes.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Hang on... where I saw this logo already... Ah, it is a ID Software's first Quake! ;-)
Amen to the Amen! Baen rocks. I've even found discs in their hardback books with the entire series up to the book i purchased.
And i'll repeat what chellovek said. All without DRM and beyond that supplied in half a dozen formats to make your life easier.
I personally use a Palm Vx which can be had on ebay for about $20. It stores half a dozen books, works with linux, makes a great little reader and and is darn near disposable.
Battery life is good, you can easily get through one or more books on a charge. The display is a bit small but easy to get used to and is reflective so its not too far off eink for your eyes. Plus you can use the backlight to read in the dark which I don't think eink does yet.
If you watch the promotional video at www.amazon.com, you will see that its possible to read slashdot on the Kindle.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.
is the size of the books relating to the size of the reader. The small 6" screen reminds me of small books, like 200 page novels etc which are already in a small factor and don't weigh much. You wouldn't mind having these in your hands while telecommuting.
But what _I_ would want to read (and I can't while telecommuting) is the 1600 page behemoth of a Java book which if held by one hand would do for weightlifting as well. You can't read that in a 6" screen. You need something bigger. But which would weigh less; and let me annotate hopefully.
You can not clean your ass with one of it's sheets
if necesity arises