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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."
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.
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.
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.
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 too am a book freak. I fondle them, smell them, read them, re-read them, stare at them and sometimes on lonely Friday nights I even talk to them. Nothing beats the feeling of a good book. I do, however, also own the Cybook Gen3 eInk reader. This is an amazing piece of hardware. I can read whole books and not notice that I read a digital text. For me the love for books and the love for reading are two separate things. An ebook and a paper book can live together quite happily.
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Am I missing the point of this? For 400 bucks, you can get a proper small computer that you could (with teh softwares) read eBooks on - and more. I'm thinking nokia tablets, the linux Archos machines (now defunct, sadly) kind of thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, one thing you can't get - yet - is a laptop that'll go thirty hours on a charge that only takes two hours to get. Another is this is designed to read, and ergonomically speaking, it's easier to handle than a computer for reading purposes.
Other than that, yeah, $400, four grey levels, 256 MB of (expandable) storage, much easier to break than a book, and if you break it, you lose ALL your books, and the other shoe for DRM hasn't dropped (and sadly, I think it will)... laptops are MUCH more general, and they do fabulous color...
No, I don't think you're missing anything in particular. Bezos, I think, has missed a few things, but that's only my measly little opinion.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seems like just a little effort and they could side light it with a few LEDs and a well chosen bezel. Separate battery for the light, maybe. White LEDs are getting fairly amazing in output and efficiency.
Re your age, I think you're naturally a little more flexible about this than I am. Ok, it's not just flexibility, I'm downright cranky. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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)
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.
Ok, one question then: How old are you?
At 21, were you used to communicating with people via the internet? What e-mail provider did you use? How often did you order products online?I'm 51; to say that I am habituated to books - physical ones - is to understate the case rather severely.
Age is no barrier to change unless you wish to claim it as an excuse. I, too, grew up with paper books. I now have an e-reader and only buy the paper books when I can't purchase them online. I like being able to take my reader with me on trips... do you know what it's like to be able to bring 80 books with you on a long business trip? I do, and I love it.
Certainly many people will never bother with them, but, quite frankly, it's just like reading paper. If you're already used to reading things on your LCD and clicking a link to go to the next page, this shouldn't be a big leap for you. The only difference is that these devices have batteries that will last for weeks of regular reading and they have displays that don't cause eye strain.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
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?
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...
I think ebook readers are a great idea, especially when they can be extended so I could get my favourite newspaper on it (the Independent in the UK). I thought this one looked better than the Amazon one and I thought about getting it. It's still too pricey for what it is, though. When these things are cheaper, I'll consider it if I can still find one then that's under my control and not some DRM infested nightmare.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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
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?
Real books aren't necessarily trivially replaceable either. I've bought plenty of $400 academic works for my research, as university presses sell things at high cost and then it only gets higher when the book falls out of print.
Hey fyngyrz,
your post prompted me to write this in my blog... ~;-)
eReaders and eBooks
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/11/ereaders-and-ebooks.html
For those who don't want to follow the link and check out all my other zuper ztuff...
eReaders and eBooks
Here is an idea for all of the companies trying to get this right.
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.
eBooks should be way less than regular books people.
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.
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.
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.
drew
Check my NaNoWriMo Novel in progress:
http://dangernovel.blogspot.com/
Danger - A Safe Bahamian Novel
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
That's too bad. I guess they'll just have to market this device to the proper niche... the other 99% of the population.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Publishing != printing. Publishers, when doing their jobs well, see a hair past what the author submits to what the book could be with a little polish. (They pay people such as copy editors and developmental editors to add that polish.) I get stuff thrown at me when I say so, but publishers also act as quality gatekeepers, if for no better reason than they have some money on the line. Now, with ebook publishing, that initial investment in paper and ink is reduced to almost nothing, and it's mostly the publisher's reputation that drives quality.
Given their overwhelming dominance of online book sales, Amazon has the power to completely change the business. We don't know what publishers will have to do--or, more important on my side, pay--to get books into their online store. We don't know who will impose the DRM: Amazon or the publishers. (I will not impose DRM on the titles I publish.) We don't know with any clarity how useful the device will be for reading local files, or how many formats it will support. (For $400, it should damned well be all of them.)
I'm guessing that they priced it high and will reduce the price significantly once they realize nobody's biting. Nobody seems to learn anything in this business.
But hoo-boy, what this thing could do to the publishing world at $99 a unit!
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.
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
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.
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 absolutely hate my bookshelves. The point was kind of driven home forcefully when my wife and I moved to a new apartment. A large collection of music and a moderate collection of movies weighed maybe 25 pounds, between a hard drive and some CD binders, and a couple of iPods. But for some reason, less than a gigabyte of text data required us to transport 300 pounds of removable storage media called 'books', and a 70-pound case unit called a 'bookshelf'. While I am pleased with the bookshelf's low power consumption and the ability for multiple users to access volumes simultaneously, I think an ebook reader would be a wonderful thing. Get the price on this thing down to $150 and I'd buy two.
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:
Ebooks solve the problem of "out of print" and "out of date" completely since there is never a reason to stop selling an ebook, and ebooks can be updated with current content as needed. For academic / technical books, the concept of ebooks is a "no-brainer". It would totally disrupt the current business model for textbooks however (in a good way for students) so we probably won't see it anytime soon. Maybe we can get more "open content" books out there written by profs that have more than profit as a motive for writing. These books would also be good for our government to fund - it benefits all of society.
The ebook reader also has to be better however. It needs to have a physically larger screen, full color, and very hi-res for a lot of content these types of books have. When I was going to school, it sure would have been nice to carry a little 2 pound ebook reader instead of 50 pounds of books in a backpack.
No, the other 99% of the population is sprawled on their couch, eagerly consuming the news about Britney Spears and blindly swallowing the propaganda on Faux News.
I *really* don't think you can make an argument that your average person will put out $400 for an e-reader. I seriously can't see that happening. You're pulling from the subgroup that consists of avid readers, perhaps with a smattering of pure gadget freaks. And the fellow you replied to is a member of that subgroup. He's probably representative of the majority of them. You ask a reader if they enjoy browsing in a good bookstore, and they'll probably bend your ear half off. What a good bookstore *means* varies; for me, it's always been Powell's technical bookstore in Portland, Oregon; for him, it's an antique bookstore; for others it may be Barnes and Noble or a used paperback bookstore... but my guess is that almost every book fan will have a story about the delights of browsing a bookstore that suits their interests. Where I live, there are no bookstores. I'm about 300 miles from the nearest city (and most of you wouldn't even call Billings, Montana much a city.) So I do a lot of book shopping on Amazon and other online booksellers. It's not the same. I can browse a hundred book titles in seconds across a bookshelf; a list on Amazon is hugely clumsy by comparison. When I get to a real bookstore, you might as well leave me there all day, and I'm going to spend some serious money.
e-readers have a long way to go to dig into this market. IMHO.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.