German Book Publishers Cool To E-Book Market

Now that the Kindle is being actively marketed in many countries outside the US, reader rsmiller510 sends in his piece up on DaniWeb about the skepticism in Germany about the whole e-book phenomenon. A major difference from the US book market is that in Germany, book prices are regulated in an effort to protect authors, publishers, and small booksellers. As a result, publishers don't issue electronic versions of their books until the paperback edition comes out, up to 2 years after the hardcover — and then they sell the e-book for the same price as the lowest-cost paperback. An article on e-books in Spiegel.de notes a survey taken recently for the Frankfurt Book Fair, which found that "only one in 12 Germans has a clear idea about what an e-book is, and seven out of 10 of them would prefer a printed version over a digital one." 65,000 e-books were sold in Germany in the first 6 months of 2009, vs. almost ten times that number bought per week in the US, in what is still a small niche of the overall book business.

Comments

are the US figures really that high?

[Trepidity]

Ten times 65,000 e-books sold per week in the U.S. equates to about 34 million per year. Sales are really that high? Is this including magazines and newspaper, or just actual books?

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[nacturation]

Also when you figure per capita, the US has almost 4 times the population, which makes US sales roughly 2.5 times better.

Their sample is a bit skewed too. They took this survey at a book fair? Where people who love books go? It'd be less biased if it were a "reading fair", but that's like going to a classic car fair and asking people whether they'd give up their car for a new hybrid.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Also when you figure per capita, the US has almost 4 times the population, which makes US sales roughly 2.5 times better.

Umm, no. RTFA. 65,000 in six months in Germany versus 600,000 per week in the USA. Even accounting for population differences, the difference is about 120:1.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[AliasMarlowe]

Also when you figure per capita, the US has almost 4 times the population, which makes US sales roughly 2.5 times better.

I think your math is off a little. According to the summary, sales are 65,000 in 6 months in Germany, vs 650,000 (10*65,000) per week in the US. That would make annual rates 130,000 for Germany, and 33,800,000 for the US. The per capita rate is then 65 times higher in the US than Germany.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten times 65,000 e-books sold per week in the U.S. equates to about 34 million per year.

If you think 65,000 * 52 is 34 million, you should buy some math e-books.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[Trepidity]

Did you miss the "ten times"?

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[Moridineas]

That's not really the same thing at all.

The Frankfurt Book Fair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Book_Fair) is an ancient and massive trade fair. Today it's largely a place where publishers get together to work out trade deals. For instance if a German author+publisher wants his book translated and sold in the states. Tons of business generated here.

Secondly, from the sound of the D.S. article, the survey was commissioned BY the Fair, not taken of random browsers AT the fair. Could still be biased, but I don't see what they would gain? The fair is about business.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[nacturation]

Thanks... I completely missed the 6 month vs. 1 week distinction.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[ScrewMaster]

Thanks... I completely missed the 6 month vs. 1 week distinction.

Hey ... close enough for government work.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[tyrione]

Also when you figure per capita, the US has almost 4 times the population, which makes US sales roughly 2.5 times better.

Umm, no. RTFA. 65,000 in six months in Germany versus 600,000 per week in the USA. Even accounting for population differences, the difference is about 120:1.

Hey, FU. How about a sense of Civility and just say, RTA? If you need the F for a book sales article you truly have issues.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[Rocketship Underpant]

The blurb is unnecessarily confusing (thanks, Slashdot editors). I missed the "vs." the first five times I read it and thought it was saying Germany's six-month sales were ten times the US's weekly sales, and that made the US's numbers seen awfully low.

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[Meski]

You with the dirty mind, maybe he meant Read The First Article? (I doubt it, but maybe)

Re:are the US figures really that high?

[lavaboy]

The Frankfurter Buchmesse isn't just a "book fair". It's the largest publishers convention in Europe - runs for a week, and is only open to the general public on the last weekend. Calling it just a "book fair" is like calling CeBIT a computer fair or SF ComicCon a comics fair.

I don't think it's that much different, here

[piojo]

In the U.S., books used to be expensive because they were expensive to print, bind, and ship (or so I was told by a published author that I used to know). You would think e-books would be a lot cheaper, but from what I've seen, they aren't.

I'm not sure why, but publishers seem to price e-books at only a few dollars below the same printed book's cost (from the little I've seen). This seems a very careful thing to do--there's no way e-book sales can cause any harm if they don't actually sell.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Anonymous Coward]

ya, i just can't bring myself to spend ANYTHING NEAR the print price for an E-book..

no printing, binding or shipping costs...

come on guy... give me a break...

maybe a buck a book... then i could jump on the band wagon

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Trepidity]

For large publishers, printing/binding/shipping/warehousing costs these days don't run more than $1-3 per book, so it's not too surprising that the e-books would only be discounted a few dollars.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Moridineas]

You're pretty much right for large publishers, but it absolutely depends on the book (length, size, color?, cover type, binding type) and print run size. For instance if you have a 200 page monograph, no color photos, 2-3 color cover, you can easily reach that $1-$3 (or less) unit price with even a small print run (1000 copies?).

On the other hand, an 900 page textbook--no color, plain cover, 2000 copy print run last year cost the publisher i work for upwards of $8/copy. That's just for the printing costs and does not include shipping, warehousing, or the production costs.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Moridineas]

You would think e-books would be a lot cheaper, but from what I've seen, they aren't.

You would, and I think ebook prices WILL fall. Part of the issue here is that when a publisher sells a book to a bookstore, a wholesaler, or Amazon, they sell the book at an average range of 10%-50% discount.

When Amazon sells an ebook, they typically give the publisher (or author) less than 50% of the sale price. Ebook is sold for $10, the publisher maybe gets $4.

Few books are sold as ebook ONLY, and publishers really don't make that much MORE (less?) off of ebooks, and don't want to cannibalize sales. Ultimately I think in many fields ebooks will become the primary sellers, but we're not there yet.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[masmullin]

I've seen discounts of 63% on some ebooks (hardcover and the authors are NYT best sellers).

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Fizzol]

The funny thing is publishers complained for years about the physical cost of books, and used it as a base for low writer royalties. Once that was taken out the equation by ebooks, then suddenly it's all about the cost of editing and layout and so on. Someone along the line wasn't telling the truth, and I'm not inclined to start believing the publishers now.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Toonol]

On the other hand, an 900 page textbook--no color, plain cover, 2000 copy print run last year cost the publisher i work for upwards of $8/copy. That's just for the printing costs and does not include shipping, warehousing, or the production costs.

Well, they make up that extra $5 by charging $160 to students that have no choice but to purchase the book or flunk their class.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[ScrewMaster]

The funny thing is publishers complained for years about the physical cost of books, and used it as a base for low writer royalties.

Hollywood accounting. If you believe the studio execs, no movie actually makes any money.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Moridineas]

Yes, and that's why many of the big publishers are stupid and self-defeating.

$160 textbooks are ludicrous and only make people all the more desperate for alternatives (ebooks, used books, etc).

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Anonymous Coward]

Oftentimes you don't actually need the book very much. The school library should have some copies you can use when you are there. You might not be able to check them out, but just learn to do homework/study at the library.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[hedwards]

Which is why some teachers like my mother use open source books. The cost to produce is probably higher, but the books end up being sold to students for somewhat less than $30. Which when you consider that a really good deal usually is at least double that, it makes a lot of sense. Plus, there's far more control over when they go into a new edition and can make minor corrections for things as needed, without necessarily requiring a new printing.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[PopeRatzo]

You would think e-books would be a lot cheaper, but from what I've seen, they aren't.

You misunderstand how capitalism works. First of all, you seem to believe all that nonsense about how the "market" works magically to bring prices to logical levels.

The only markets that work as the theorists claim are Black Markets. At least there, the prices are based on factors that can be seen and measured, like risk, supply and demand. The so-called "free" markets are actually based on the illogic of desire, the effect of mind control (aka "advertising") and make-believe shortages enacted by companies that have power greater than the laws of the countries in which the corporations operate. And of course, "free" markets make use of good old-fashioned tyranny to make their products in places where the workers have all the social status of slaves. As collective bargaining continues to come under attack from the corporations, the US increasingly looks like one of these tyrannical countries. People have to work for below-market wages because if they don't their wives or kids can't see a doctor when they get sick without bringing financial ruin on the family. This causes a de facto slavery, or more accurately a "serfdom" where the powerful forces (corporations) conspire to keep a work force poor. The use of "EZ Credit" to make poor people feel like they're not really poor, is a 20th century innovation. The difficult part for the corporations in power is to strike a balance where the poor workers will continue to work against their best interests going deeper into debt (even to the point where the debt become generational) while still making sure that enough people are fooled into believing that they can "afford" to buy the overpriced products (ie big screen TVs) and services (ie cable television) that the corporations sell.

The skids for this neo-serfdom are greased by electoral systems that require huge but manageable sums of money to run for government office and electoral laws that allow for direct transfers of large sums of money directly from the corporations to the candidates for "public" office.

As long as they can keep the working population in debt, ill-informed (not a problem in the age of Fox News and Clear Channel) and desperate to buy stuff they don't need, the system continues to work to the great advantage of the corporations, while cementing the master-slave relationship with workers. Barring cataclysm or the spontaneous moral conversions of the very wealthy (think camels and eyes of needles) the end-game is larger numbers of incarcerated, more wars, suffering and profits, profits, profits.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Just Another Poster]

And of course, "free" markets make use of good old-fashioned tyranny to make their products in places where the workers have all the social status of slaves.

Slaves don't get paid for their work.

Back when places like China really were slave States, people like you cheered them on, and declared them to be wonderful examples of workers' participatory democracy and true freedom.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[tftp]

Slaves don't get paid for their work.

Slaves always were paid for their work. Traditionally they were paid by letting them live, or in their daily food and shelter, or in some little privileges among slaves. Those slaves who didn't work well were sold, at loss, to another owner who would be more demanding and less nice. That was a serious incentive, nobody wanted to become a rower on a war galleon.

Today [wage] slaves are paid with money. It doesn't really matter to the owner; he can build barracks for his slaves and feed them, or he can just give them money so that they go and find their own barracks and their own food. Modern slaves are even permitted to move between slave owners because the owners figured out that one slave is not different from another, and all of them want to eat. The legal mechanism of ownership of slaves is abandoned in favor of voluntary service. It is voluntary because you have an option to work for someone (here is your choice) or to die - or to become a business owner if you can.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Meski]

Sometimes, its equal or greater than the dead-tree price.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[piojo]

There's too much conspiracy theory and things that just aren't true in your post. I'm sorry, but I don't think it deserves a rebuttal. It's too "far out". (Yes, I'm a sheeple, I can't see outside the box, et cetera, et cetera.)

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[BrokenHalo]

To be fair (given that I am not an American, so this can be rare), there are lots of American-published books that are very well bound and printed on nice paper, and I am perfectly happy (within the limits of my meagre budget) to pay a fair price for them. Being asked to pay full price for the content without all the production work hardly seems fair.

...Which is why I guess I won't be among the early adopters here in Australia. I would welcome a device capable of rendering PDFs nicely, so we could entertain ourselves with the abundance of literature already out there on Project Gutenberg or whatever, without that unnecessary UMTS connection where a USB plug would be perfectly sufficient. Other people are working on these, and their day will come.

I would not be surprised if Amazon finds that it has made a ballocks of their business model and killed off their future markets with their zeal for DRM.

Re:I don't think it's that much different, here

[Just Another Poster]

You're redefining the ordinary meaning of words in order to twist reality, in order to justify totalitarianism. If one is able to switch jobs, and are paid money, it's quite obvious that they are not slaves.

So the lesson is...

[gregwbrooks]

If you artificially prop up prices for the benefit of a few, then competition and innovation that would benefit the broader consumer market can suffer.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

There is an argument that the continued existence of a healthy ecosystem of independent local bookstores and multiple publishers is a benefit to the members of the society that outweighs the increased costs. In this particular case I do not know the details of how well that ecosystem has been protected and how much of a benefit it is (both quite difficult to quantify I would imagine) nor the details of the increased costs.

Re:So the lesson is...

[El Torico]

There is an argument that the continued existence of a healthy ecosystem of independent local bookstores and multiple publishers is a benefit to the members of the society that outweighs the increased costs.

What about academic publishing? Textbooks are now ridiculously expensive, and I don't see any benefits to society from this particular healthy ecosystem of independent local bookstores. On the contrary, these excessive costs are making education more difficult to obtain, which is a detriment to society.
The plethora of small academic book stores (such as the local College or University bookstore) with no resulting bargaining power against the largest (or any other) academic publishers is a contributing factor to this problem.

Re:So the lesson is...

[mrmeval]

There is a new ruling for German books sold in Austria that takes a stab at the law.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/84235-court-rules-out-austrian-fixed-price-imports.html

I do not respect this law or it's benefactors and am glad any politician here promoting such would become a pariah.

Re:So the lesson is...

[jmorris42]

> If you artificially prop up prices for the benefit of a few, then competition and innovation
> that would benefit the broader consumer market can suffer.

No, the lessons are bigger than that.

If you regulate prices you set the system at that moment into stone, the current winners and losers get fixed into law. Innovation becomes virtually illegal. It isn't just consumers who lose, everyone except the government blessed winners lose. And of course the government itself which gains power and can be assured the support of those who depend upon it for monopoly rents.

In short, government price fixing, regulation and government in general are BAD. Some government is a necessary evil at this point in our philosophical development but we must realize that it is always evil and thus to me kept carefully chained lest it destroy us. Worse than fire or even fissile material.

Re:So the lesson is...

[jipn4]

There is an argument that the continued existence of a healthy ecosystem

What's "healthy" about a large number of small book stores with limited selection? And why do you need bookstores and publishers at all if there are electronic reading devices?

In this particular case I do not know the details of how well that ecosystem has been protected and how much of a benefit it is

I haven't been able to find any numbers on it either, and the people arguing for price controls don't cite any figures either. If they did, it would probably show that they aren't working.

Re:So the lesson is...

[LordVader717]

It's actually the big bookstores which benefit the most from price fixing. It guarantees them a high profit margin irrespective of the quality of their advive or service. This enables ludicrous profits by focusing on mass-markets, enabling them to rent huge building in the most prominent retail locations. Why would anybody bother pacing round town to smaller bookstores when the huge retailer on city square
1) has a better location
2) has a better selection
3) The prices are the same anyway

Re:So the lesson is...

[macshit]

There is an argument that the continued existence of a healthy ecosystem

What's "healthy" about a large number of small book stores with limited selection?

Taken together, all the small (and of course, not all independent bookstores are small...) bookstores likely end up having a larger selection than the apparently-large-but-actually-kind-of-monotonous-and-generic selection of big chain bookstores. Moreover, because there's a lot more individual taste used in choosing books, there's better support for non-mainstream material; I imagine that's what the GP was referring to.

And why do you need bookstores and publishers at all if there are electronic reading devices?

I guess you're just trolling a bit, but like many people, I like bookstores, and am willing to pay more when buying a book in a nice environment. Amazon's nice too, in its own way, but ... not the same.

Remember back when there was a kind of meme that said "in the future, we won't need to prepare food, we'll just eat food pills!"?

Re:So the lesson is...

[Blakey Rat]

Taken together, all the small (and of course, not all independent bookstores are small...) bookstores likely end up having a larger selection than the apparently-large-but-actually-kind-of-monotonous-and-generic selection of big chain bookstores. Moreover, because there's a lot more individual taste used in choosing books, there's better support for non-mainstream material; I imagine that's what the GP was referring to.

Where I live, the big chains have already killed-off all the mom-and-pop places. (Except used books.)

Germany's wrong, anyway, price isn't the reason... although it is a factor. The big chains have coffeeshops, live music on weekends and evenings, a children's area with dedicated staff, a vast database and knowledgeable staff. (And they're actually polite, unless many mom-and-pop staff.) They don't mind if you just sit down and read for an hour or two. Or if you connect to their wifi and just surf the web. You don't have to drive all over town to get your books, since the selection is huge.

Hell, where I live, the big chain bookstores are more social spaces than the libraries are.

I have trouble feeling any nostalgia for the mom-and-pop bookstores. The big chain ones are simply better.

Re:So the lesson is...

[jipn4]

Taken together, all the small (and of course, not all independent bookstores are small...)

Oh, come on, what kind of bogus argument is that? When we're talking about the supposed importance of independent physical bookstores, what matters is not the selection of all bookstores "taken together", but the selection of my local bookstore, and, in my experience, that's even smaller at non-chain stores than in "generic" chain stores.

Online, I can get anything I want anywhere, and I really don't care whether it's from a big or a small seller, I just want the lowest price.

And, of course, those arguments fall completely apart for e-books anyway.

The only effect of price controls on books seems to be to make more money for a lobby group that holds on to old business models. I don't see how it benefits me as a reader, and I think it's harmful to literacy by keeping prices up.

I guess you're just trolling a bit,

No, I'm not, but you're being rude.

but like many people, I like bookstores, and am willing to pay more when buying a book in a nice environment. Amazon's nice too, in its own way, but ... not the same.

So you're saying that everybody should pay artificially high prices for books so that you get to hang out in a nice cafe with tasteful bookshelves. Sorry, I think that's bad public policy. I'd much rather see books be as affordable as possible and cut out inefficient middlemen and businesses as much as possible. That way, maybe you get deprived of our coffee house experience, but poorer people can actually afford more books.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

It may be true that the large chains end up with increased profits, but it is possible that the small stores can stay in business in contrast to where there is no "price fixing" when the smaller places go out of business. Certainly excessive profits to some players is a societal negative, but it might be balanced by the perceived benefits.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

Where in Germany are you located? I had thought (but cannot find any references of course) that locations such as Germany with this type of fixed pricing in fact did have a much higher number of bookstores per capita than those places (like the US) that do not have such systems.

Re:So the lesson is...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about academic publishing? Textbooks are now ridiculously expensive, ...

Except that here in Germany - in the "protected ecosystem" - textbooks are actually cheaper than in the US for example. During my time at the university I tried to find the cheapest prices for books recommended for lectures (Software Engineering, so most books were English anyway). US prices were always 30-50% higher than the German prices.

Always keep in mind that the free market is also free to overcharge you wherever it can ;)

Re:So the lesson is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prices for English / American books are unregulated in Germany - guess about their prices. Yup, usually at least twice the price printed on them.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

Oh, come on, what kind of bogus argument is that? When we're talking about the supposed importance of independent physical bookstores, what matters is not the selection of all bookstores "taken together", but the selection of my local bookstore, and, in my experience, that's even smaller at non-chain stores than in "generic" chain stores.

That might be what you are talking about, but many of the people supporting these types of pricing systems are talking about the system as a whole rather than just your small neighbourhood bookstore. If there is only one maga-store that gains a monopoly people are concerned that there will be all sorts of negatives:

- have to go a long distance to get ANY book since the mega-store only has a few big boxes
- many small concerns go out of business eliminating many decent paying jobs and careers and replacing them with fewer lower paying and less fulfilling careers.
- decreased numbers of local stores can be seen as a negative in and of itself changing the character of neighbourhoods in a negative way (perhaps worries that it will somhow signal less importance of literacy, destroy the "bookstore neighbourhood", give less status to old-bespectacled antiquarians, what-ever)
- decisions about what types of books to order, advertise, and support would be concentrated in fewer individuals resulting in a shrinkage of the total number of different types of books being produced

Online, I can get anything I want anywhere, and I really don't care whether it's from a big or a small seller, I just want the lowest price.

If there is only one bookstore, you CANNOT get anything you want, you can only get the things sold by that one bookstore. A worry is that the one bookstore will not buy all the books that the society wants available, so these types of regulations work to avoid that type of outcome. I do not know how effective they actually are, but the aim is not on-its-face stupid.

And, of course, those arguments fall completely apart for e-books anyway.

Certainly e-books throw a wrench into things - at least in this type of analysis. Are paper-book stores "important" enough to a society to have extensive interventions in the market? Perhaps. Pricing e-books high enough would certainly allow paper books to more effectively compete so that is one possible intervention. Perhaps the marginal cost of entry for e-books means that anyone can easily produce and sell them so the worry of a monoculture of booksellers is overblown? Perhaps paper-books are so inefficient in comparison that we should not support them at all? Perhaps print-on-demand systems are affordable enough that the neighbourhood arguments are less weighty since every copy-and-print-shop will soon have a book-printer? Perhaps the old-bespectacled antiquarians lobby is going to finally see its iron-fisted influence over political discourse loosened and we will all better off for it?

Re:So the lesson is...

[nutshell42]

The problem with US textbooks is professors shilling them in their courses.

In my experience German textbooks, even translations of those US books, cost roughly a third of what you're paying.

This is mostly because for undergraduate lectures universities generally buy enough copies of a book for the library that students don't need their own. That magically increases longevity and reduces prices for said books. If Professor X requires everyone to read Expensive Expenses, LXVIth incompatible to any other Ed., written by Professor X, the students complain to the library, the library complains to the administration and the administration tells X to go and fuck himself.

Re:So the lesson is...

[b0bby]

like many people, I like bookstores, and am willing to pay more when buying a book in a nice environment.

If there are enough people like you, then there's no need for a price control system since people will support their local bookshops by paying higher prices. The problem is that when you have price controls those who don't share your views are still forced to pay the higher prices. Maybe the German people as a whole like bookstores more than Americans do, but I doubt it, since they needed to impose this law.

Re:So the lesson is...

[Blakey Rat]

Not in Germany, I'm in the US.

And while Germany might have more bookstores per-capita, I'd still prefer the big ones we have for all the *other* reasons I mentioned.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

So I guess Germany is NOT wrong insofar as their policy seems to have maintained a higher number of bookstores - even if you do not particularly see that as being advantageous.

Re:So the lesson is...

[jipn4]

If there is only one maga-store that gains a monopoly people are concerned that there will be all sorts of negatives:

Is there any evidence that price controls change any of that development? Where?

- have to go a long distance to get ANY book since the mega-store only has a few big boxes

That doesn't make sense. If people want to buy physical books locally, either the mega-store fills that niche or an independent bookstore does, regardless of price controls.

- many small concerns go out of business eliminating many decent paying jobs and careers and replacing them with fewer lower paying and less fulfilling careers.

Career? Bookstore employee??? And even if it were, why should we make something so essential as reading more expensive so that someone who can't cut it in another industry has fun at work?

decreased numbers of local stores can be seen as a negative in and of itself changing the character of neighbourhoods

Neighborhoods always change and people always whine about it.

somhow signal less importance of literacy

People should be more worried about the effect that artificially inflated prices have on literacy: if books are more expensive than they would be in efficient market, fewer people can afford them.

If there is only one bookstore, you CANNOT get anything you want,

There have monopoly regulations in Europe and the US. If this was really a problem, they could be sharpened, as we do for media ownership. Price controls, however, are ineffective. In fact, a monopoly accomplishes perfect price control, since it ensures that the prices are set by only one company.

Perhaps the old-bespectacled antiquarians lobby is going to finally see its iron-fisted influence over political discourse loosened and we will all better off for it?

Antiquarians don't benefit from price controls, the publishers do. And publishers have a lot of political influence, in particular in Germany.

Perhaps.

"Perhaps" isn't good enough for a massive market intervention whose obvious primary effect is to make literacy and access to knowledge more expensive.

Re:So the lesson is...

[j-beda]

You have some valid viewpoints, but just because YOU do not think the other side of each of those issues I raised is very good doesn't mean that others (such those in jurisdictions that have these types of regulations) don't.

Various European regions have a long history of legislative intervention in economic areas designed to allow not-perfectly-efficient systems to be maintained for secondary purposes. A lot of the citizens like it that way. A large enough (and/or powerful enough) group of people do not want small bookstores to have to compete on "rock bottom prices", and thus more, smaller stores are able to survive. Presumably they think the price paid is worth the benefit received. Germany HAS more small bookstores than the USA (per capita) so is seems that in this case their major goal has been achieved.

I guess you are just lucky not to live in one of these places.

Germany will just have to change

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kindle is selling the best in regions such as US, Japan, UK, Norway(I can't explain why), and Australia. France and Germany don't even make the top 10 on Kindle sales.

If customers aren't buying ebooks, it's the fault of the publishers, authors and the system in Germany. There is no cultural difference that makes people only want physical printed books, unless you have some religious grounds to not use technology. You can poll people all you want, and they will tell you that they enjoy physical books. They like holding them. They like the smell. They like turing the pages. Whatever. But when you give them a device that can hold all their favorite books. Keep track of their progress without losing a bookmark. Being able to increase the font size to reduce eyestrain or help those with poor vision. And the books are usually 10%-20% cheaper. Add in all this and many people change their attitude. They quickly realize their emotional attachment to physical books was mostly imaginary. And that what they like best about books is reading them.

Anything you can do to make reading easier, and more accessible makes ebooks look good in a customer's eye.

Re:Germany will just have to change

[usrusr]

There is no cultural difference that makes people only want physical printed books, unless you have some religious grounds to not use technology.

You fail to recognize a massive case of "not invented here" ;-)

I do agree with your other points though. People don't need ebooks, therefore they won't develop a desire to get them.

Re:Germany will just have to change

[Anonymous Coward]

> The Kindle is selling the best in regions such as US, Japan, UK, Norway(I can't explain why), and Australia.
> France and Germany don't even make the top 10 on Kindle sales.

Not surprising. Amazon doesn't offer the Kindle in Germany. They just announced on the mentioned book fair that they now have plans to do so.

Another e-book story...

[Starker_Kull]

...that hits all the same notes. E-books will take over the world, why are the German publishing houses sticking their heads in the sand, etc. I've thought about it quite a bit, since I have a strong personal preference for printed books, and have debated the topic with passionate advocates of e-books. I've come to a few conclusions:

1) The advantages that printed books have over e-books in terms of convenience will go away over the next 15 years. Limited resolution (200 ppi e-ink vs. 600+ ppi for print), limited battery life, bulk, storage capacity, etc., not to mention cost (not just direct, but transportation, storage, disposal, etc.), will all favor e-books in 15 years. Resolution (my particular nit) will probably take the longest, but it will happen.

2) I doubt a personal e-book 'reader' will last long in the marketplace. It's too big and bulky to be 'just' an e-book reader. Why not make it a web-browser? 95% percent of what you need to do that is there. E-mail? Terminal access? A cell phone with a bluetooth earbud? A movie watcher? It will become a general purpose computing device just like cell phones are becoming.

3) It won't succeed until an Apple-like company makes it so stunningly easy to use and manage that its advantages are clear. A cellphone and a smart cellphone are quite similar, so the idea of an iPhone/Treo (a general purpose computer that happens to be a cell phone) was not so hard to get accepted. A tablet-like device has no commonly existing parellel right now, and the existing examples are weak, to put it mildly. It will have to be wildly simple and pleasant to use...

4) Once most books are no longer printed, it remains an open question whether it will make censorship of ideas easier or harder. I haven't been able to come up with a convincing argument either way. DRM is also still an open question, although you can make a good argument that a DRMed device will fail in the marketplace. Maybe.

There will be a great e-book reader one day, but it won't be called that. It will be part of a package that can do far more.

Re:Another e-book story...

[zippthorne]

1. Resolution is my nit as well. But in 15 years, I'm not entirely sure it still will be, regardless of whether or not it improves...

   Also, Computer displays had been getting higher resolution for a while, but for some reason OSs seem to like to stick with the "assume an 'm' is fourteen pixels wide (or some other hard-coded number)" paradigm. I want sharper text on my screen, not more text. I don't want to have to sit twelve inches away from a twenty-six inch display just because I used to sit that distance away from a fifteen inch VGA monitor (13.5 inch viewable...) (some numbers exaggerated, but not by much.)

   So, I think your 15 year estimate may be a little optimistic.

2. Kindle already does this. The wikipedia access and lifetime cellular connection have made many people compare it to the Hitchhiker's Guide, which similarly connected many small dumb devices to a centrally stored encyclopedia of dubious pedigree but surprising usefulness.
3. Kindle. But I wish they'd do away with the keyboard and put in a PDA-style B&W touch interface. Something that's pretty good on power when it's on, but GUI and responsive enough for searching would be a nice feature until the redraw speed on eInk improves.
4. I think the argument is that DRM will fail eventually. It's a loaded gun and some day someone is going to pull that trigger. At that point it'll fail in the marketplace as the word finally spreads that everyone's geek friend was right and "they'd never do that" once again turns out to be wishful thinking. The geek friend will get no cred for this, though.

   I suspect the publishing houses know this, so the question really is how long they can keep it going without actually using it.

Re:Another e-book story...

[masmullin]

As a sony 505 user I have to reply to your comments

1) resolution of 200dpi is good, and is not an issue. As a user I do not get eyestrain from my 505 (I get eyestrain from smartphones and monitors). Battery life is measured in weeks and is not an issue (505 lasts me a month considering that I plug into a computer to get a new book on the device). Cost is mitigated by lower ebook prices (I've only purchased 1 ebook, and it was $1. The next book I will purchase is $8 online and $30 in hardcover atm... I find a lot of the books I want "underground"... yarrr). 505 is about the size of a paperback, but thinner. Its certainly lighter than a hardcover, it is MOST DEFINATELY less bulky than carrying 3 books with you (I often have 3 books I carry around)

2) like I said, 505 is not bulky. There isn't a webbrowser because the refresh rate of eink isn't sufficient for the kind of things you want to do on the internet. Its perfectly acceptable to be only a book reader device, because its the same size as a book (although it would be nice to get emails on it).

3) Sony has made using the device stunningly easy, from what I read, Amazon has made their device very easy too

4) Censorship of ideas? have you been on the internet before?

The only argument you bring up that I agree with is DRM. I am wary to drop money on anything with DRM because I've had bad experiences before purchasing DRM music (I had to buy an album 2ce as I formatted my computer even though I "backed up" the songs to NAS). The one book I've bought so far was DRMed, but it was also only $1 so I didn't really care.

Re:Another e-book story...

[QuoteMstr]

Eventually, our devices will differ only by form factor. They will all be general-purpose computers capable of running the same software.

Re:Another e-book story...

[Eighty7]

4) Once most books are no longer printed, it remains an open question whether it will make censorship of ideas easier or harder.

The internet has been the greatest force for information dissemination since the printed press. Logically moving to electronic versions of books should increase rather than decrease propagation.

Re:Another e-book story...

[tepples]

Eventually, our devices will differ only by form factor. They will all be general-purpose computers capable of running the same software.

But who will be allowed to produce such software? Anyone, or just established companies?

Re:Another e-book story...

[Anonymous Coward]

e-books suck! Not only because the DRM and other similar crap but e-book readers are bulky, fragile and just plain uncomfortable to use.
Paper rules (or some other form of material that needs no power to display text)

Re:Another e-book story...

[Aceticon]

An e-book doesn't look the same, doesn't smell the same and doesn't feel the same as a paper book.

It's the same reason why those that can afford it have fireplaces at home: a good wood fire in a fireplace is a pleasure to one's senses.

E-books are likely to sooner or latter dominate the utility space of literature (reference manuals, newspapers, magazines) provided they're cheaper than what they replace (which isn't happening at the moment). This is the same space where the Internet has already significantly displaced paper-books (hands up anybody that still uses paper encyclopedias...) so we might bypass the e-book stage altogether.

What is more doubtful is if they will ever replace paper books in the pleasure space of literature (those books you read for the pleasure of it while lying in our sofa with a nice cappuccino, put down in your bookshelf when you're done and pull out a year or two later to read again) much less the home decoration space of literature (hardcover books with fancy covers for looking pretty in a bookshelf).

Re:Another e-book story...

[am 2k]

3) It won't succeed until an Apple-like company makes it so stunningly easy to use and manage that its advantages are clear. A cellphone and a smart cellphone are quite similar, so the idea of an iPhone/Treo (a general purpose computer that happens to be a cell phone) was not so hard to get accepted. A tablet-like device has no commonly existing parellel right now, and the existing examples are weak, to put it mildly. It will have to be wildly simple and pleasant to use...

Well, you can already have exactly the device you're describing, and it's called ... iPhone. I've been using my iPhone (with the app Stanza) for reading books while commuting for a while now, and it's much better than printed books (I've tried that as well, didn't work out, since carrying a heavy book around doesn't fly in public transport while standing, and having to switch vehicle every now and then). The downsides are of course battery (have to recharge every other day) and the small display, but to solve the latter you'd need a foldable or rollable display, since I certainly won't carry around a larger device than I'm already doing.

Right now, getting material to read is very hard though, because ebooks usually cost four times as much as the printed book version on Amazon (yeah, wtf?). Nearly all PDFs don't work either, because they're typeset for larger paper sizes.

Re:Another e-book story...

[Anonymous Coward]

German publishers fear piracy, german users avoid those machines because publishers charge more than a paperback price for the ebook edition.
Add to that that no one really loves the kindle over here. Sony has a nice machine being sold over here but also treats us as second class citizens, by simply
charging more and withholding the latest models although we pay as usual the 1$ == 1€ fee.

I personally have a sony ebook reader and love it, but I converted an entire library of public domain ebooks into epub myself because I did not want to pay the publishers their drug induced fees.

I dont see any future for ebooks here unless the publishers lower their ebook prices which will likely happen never!

Re:Another e-book story...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...that hits all the same notes. E-books will take over the world, why are the German publishing houses sticking their heads in the sand, etc. I've thought about it quite a bit, since I have a strong personal preference for printed books, and have debated the topic with passionate advocates of e-books. I've come to a few conclusions:
"

I guess you have been not been an long term user of computers. E-books will take over ... for all types of pulp fiction books, read, delete and forget within a generation of e-book reading devices. For real import information e-books are useless. Just look back: I cannot read any computer disks older than 10 years. I still have punch cards from the 70s, 8" floppy, tapes from the 80s and 90es, Iomage jazz and zip drives, all useless on modern computers. File formats are not compatibles, my 8 year old palm is not supported any more, any you people write "E-books will take over the world" ...?? I have worked with over 20 OS in the last 30 years The books, however, I bought in my childhood, are still there, they are readable without charging up batteries, without licencing issues, without bound to a reading device which will be dead in 2-4 years! The most important pieces of information for man-kind lasts 2000 years and more. Who can give a perpective for e-books for even the next 10 years?

Peoply wine about price, but e-books are realy expensive if nobody can guaranty its lifetime to the user for 50 and more years. We will end up buying a book over and over again, each time, a new standard, a new gadge comes out. We will spent lots of time thinging about copying reformating and transfering files from one hot toy to the next-- which are probably prohibited by the licences anyway.

10 Years ago everbody bough a palm, its dead now, now people buy iphones or e-books. They will be dead in ten years time considering the technological advances in the past. My paper books are low maintenence and easy transferably. They will be even be readable in 200 years by my offsprings! Where will be the e-books? I guess on the electron grave yard like some many "high-tech" gadges I encounted in the last 30 years.

Do not get me wrong. I am not against an e-book. But as long as the company who sells that device cannot give me a lifelong warranty (50years !) for the device and all content on it, its wothless to me. Otherwise an e-book is worthless to me. Its only a trap the industry wants to fall into. They are saving by giving us nothing (a file?) for lot of money. They save by not printing and not shipping any books.

Good luck guys with your e-books.

Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[Jane Q. Public]

This is something I do not understand. I am sure that the readers are easier to read than something smaller like, say, a smartphone or palm pilot. But, on the other hand, when I am at home I have my computer, and when I am mobile I don't want to carry something as large as an e-book reader around.

I have done just fine reading e-books on things like Palm and smartphone. And an additional benefit is that they tend to support many more formats, not just a single, proprietary, DRMed format.

All in all, I think for most people an e-book reader is simply not worth the money. Sure, some people use them heavily but until it is merged with my super-small laptop, or super-large smartphone, or (more likely) all 3 in one unit, I will just stay away from proprietary e-book readers. There is nothing there for me.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[Branestawm]

I don't get the 'screen is too small' argument for existing iphone / ipod / treo /etc reading. I completely agree with you - when you get into the material you're reading, the format just 'goes away'. Why buy a big clunky device when you're existing one works fine?

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[rossdee]

I agree - I havr no real need for a portabe stand alone e-reader. I read (novels) at home, since I don't get a(n official) break at work, and I either walk to/from work or someone gives me a ride (less than 5 minutes. (BTW I work night shift.

For those people that have long mass transit commutes, and hour lunches an e-reader might be more useful.

I would (and in fact do) spend $5-6 on an e-book in HTML of PDF, compared with $7.99 plus tax or shipping for the cheapest dead tree version.

I might buy e-books from amazon if they came up with a reader program that ran on my computer.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[OrangeTide]

I started reading ebooks on my Palm III and Visor Edge. It was great, I could read a little bit anywhere and not have to mess with waiting for the books to be mailed or have to go to the bookstore to find out they don't have it. Plus I'm a last minute sort of guy, I go to the bookstore at like 9pm because thats when I decide I need a new book. Now I own two Kindles (one per person in the household). A dedicated reading device suits my lifestyle better than a PDA.

I probably use my Kindle more than I use my mobile phone(I don't like making or receiving phone calls or any kind). But I don't use my Kindle as much as I use my laptop or netbook. I think a reader is worth the money, and they get cheaper every 6 months it seems. But I doubt that an e-book reader is appropriate for all people. The Kindle for example is terrible for textbooks and reference books. And their newspaper subscription service seems a little pricey, although reading the news on the device works out better for me than unfolding the giant sheets of newspaper. And I especially hate having to deal with a massive stack of old newspapers to leave for the recycler, but honestly going to a news website is almost always free and you can get videos and color photographs there which makes the webnews a far better experience than the Kindle.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[masmullin]

eye strain from backlit screens. I cant stare at my smartphone for more than 5minutes at a time.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[masmullin]

If you dont want to carry something as large as an ebook, you also aren't interested in carrying a paper back book around with you either.

It isnt' the size of the screen that is an issue between ebooks and smartphones, its the backlighting causing eyestrain. I and many people find that staring at a cellphone for more than 5minutes makes me feel a bit tired, I cant imagine staring at one for 4hours.

So, my point? Ereaders are not for casual 15minute reads during your coffee break (although they certainly can be used for that, your cellphone is better because its more portable), Ereaders are competing against paperbooks for the people who like to read for 2+h at at time.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[Fizzol]

Having used both extensively I've found a dedicated e-ink device FAR superior to any mobile device I've been able to try. There really is no comparison. An iphone/ipod/treo whatever might be good enough, but it's definitely not as good.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[JaredOfEuropa]

For me the overwhelming argument in favour of e-books is ease of reading.
I really like reading off a more or less paperback sized screen, as opposed to a small PDA screen. The e-paper is also a lot easier on the eyes if you're like me and read for hours on end. And unlike a computer screen or even a laptop, e-books are just as easy to read as regular books lying on the sofa, in bed, on the train, etc. A decent reader is about the size of a paperback and half as thick, so they are as easy to carry as a paper book.

Also, many e-book readers these days support multiple formats; open or DRM-less formats as well as the more prevalent DRM schemes such as Mobipocket. The notable exception is the Kindle and Amazon's e-books... I am really disappointed that one of the largest distributor of books decided to go with their own reader and their own closed DRM scheme, which really doesn't help, and which means I will not be buying e-books off Amazon. I like having one e-book reader, but I'd hate to have to own more than one just to beat the format wars.

The main problem with these e-readers is different formats, iffy DRM (the idiocy of that book being pulled off people's Kindles did nothing to increase e-book popularity), and the high price of e-books (people expect to pay a lot less for electronic books). People might like other functions on these devices, but I already have my phone on me, which is small enough to carry with me at all times, and fulfills all those functions you mention. If I want to read, I bring an e-book in addition to my phone. If I need a bigger screen or a real keyboard, I'll bring a laptop.

Re:Why would I want a single-purpose ebook reader?

[ScrewMaster]

I don't get the 'screen is too small' argument for existing iphone / ipod / treo /etc reading. I completely agree with you - when you get into the material you're reading, the format just 'goes away'. Why buy a big clunky device when you're existing one works fine?

On the other hand, if you're not into the material but simply have to read it whether you want to or not, or if you're just using the device for reference materials (like I do on my G1 all the time, I have it stuffed to the gills with PDFs on a variety of technical subjects) the display can and does become an issue. Not everyone is reading an edge-of-the-seat page-turner, you know.

German market peculiarities

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal: Yes, Germany and Austria have a regulated market for books in German (only!), meaning no price-based competition as the publishers set a binding minimum retail price with only a few exceptions like going-out-of-business sales, damaged books and stuff, but the principle remains. Amazon may throw in free shipping, but apart from that must not undercut brick-and-mortar stores. Go figure...

That said: the prices are set by the publisher. There is nothing to prevent them from having different prices for different editions. Just as a hardcover costs more than a paperback, an ebook could be even cheaper. Their call.

Re:German market peculiarities

[Anonymous Coward]

Aight. I wonder why they bring up the fixed book prices in every goddamn discussion about ebooks in Germany. As soon as I get my Sony Reader I will propably either buy books in US webshops or simply pirate them. No way I am paying 17,x € (over 25 dollars!) for an DRM infested piece of literature.

Other Issues

[trydk]

Today I had a nice, long bath with John Grisham.

Well, not the author in person, but his book, The Street Lawyer. Paperback version.

I would have been rather more reluctant to do the same with a Kindle (or equivalent) edition, as I am pretty sure a dip in the water would render it beyond repair.

I cannot be the only one who occasionally loses a paperback to whatever unfortunate events that pass me by. (Temporary insanity and such.) I have provided Dublin Airport with one (I got my camera back, which had been impounded by security guards), an assortment of hotels, planes and trains have got their share and for some odd reason I have never found my lost PDA. (The interesting stuff was encrypted, thank you very much.)

The thing for me (and quite a few other people, I am sure) is that the loss of a paperback may be unfortunate but not a major setback, whereas the loss of an eBook reader is more than just annoying.

Re:Other Issues

[OrangeTide]

Try comparing the packing of a Kindle versus 3-4 paperbacks on a long journey. Some of us have to fly around quite a bit for our work.

If you are into serial novels, it is great that when I'm done reading book 3 I can immediately purchase and start reading book 4. I might not want to buy all the books ahead, because sometimes the series just isn't worth reading all the way through. And more often than not the bookstores quit stocking my series before I'm finished reading it.

I think the advantages of ebooks outweighs the disadvantages. There are disadvantages, and you pointed out one. Of course destroying a $300 reader in the bath tub is terrible. But on the other hand if your house floods and destroys 100 of your favorite books that is perhaps worse because it took you not just money but time to build up a collection. With ebooks, you can smash your reader and still have the ebooks available.

I think the last obstacle to ebooks being a real alternative to print books is when they let go of the DRM nonsense and start using a format that works on more than one or two devices.

Re:Other Issues

[masmullin]

you have valid points, but how important are the points to the mass market really? How many people really take baths rather than showers? As for your second point... just take better care not to lose your stuff... you sound like a serial forgetter.

Re:Other Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

No DRM at Piratebay.

And a nice selection of thousands and thousands of books.

For the top dollar.

Re:Other Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always just put your reader in a transparent ziploc bag, that way unless you deliberately drown it, it should come out much better than that heavy paperback.

And in terms of losing them, things that are more valuable tend to be looked after better.

Re:Other Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

piratebay is gone noob.

Is America really all that different?

[93 Escort Wagon]

... only one in 12 Germans has a clear idea about what an e-book is, and seven out of 10 of them would prefer a printed version over a digital one.

Maybe a higher percentage of Americans than Germans know what an ebook is - maybe not. But my gut tells me that we probably match up similarly in terms of preferring a printed book over a digital book, since I hear that all the time (even from a fair number of techies).

I have no doubt the tech will continue to evolve until someone gets it right, and finally makes digital more convenient than paper. It's not there yet, except for the small number of people that use multiple books at the same time (e.g. students) - and even in those cases, DRM, non-availability of many titles, and other issues deleteriously affect their ebook experience.

Re:Is America really all that different?

[Virak]

You seem to have completely missed the next sentence, which states that:

65,000 e-books were sold in Germany in the first 6 months of 2009, vs. almost ten times that number bought per week in the US, in what is still a small niche of the overall book business.

Sorry, but your gut is pretty severely contradicted by the actual facts. And "I hear that all the time" is not a reasonable basis for making conclusions, as people tend to surround themselves with similar people. About half the people I know use Linux, but it'd be absurd for me to thus conclude that Linux's marketshare in the general population is anywhere near that high.

Re:Is America really all that different?

[93 Escort Wagon]

While I certainly agree with you regarding the fallibility of a gut reaction, I think it's pretty obvious the relative sales numbers don't really tell us much because, as the article states, the German ebook market is artificially constrained - much more so than the American ebook market (which I realize has its own set of constraints). Relative sales numbers would only provide a valid comparison if factors like availability and price were similar across both markets.

Re:Is America really all that different?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly surprising that so few germans want e-books. There are simply no practical reading devices on the market, they are only introduced only now, and even those take ages to actually get shipped.

Yes, as a German publisher...

[RevWaldo]

..I have for years struggled with bringing ebooks to market. I have even written a book about my experience. I am simply calling it "Mein K%*^*(^$(&^(*&*($>>>NO CARRIER

Audiobooks seems to be the trend

[jaclu]

Whilst not suitable for reference material, audiobooks seems much more suitable for portable usage. No big screen device to carry arround, and you get to keep your eyes for other purposes - driving, cycling, looking where you are walking etc.

At least in Sweden, the audiobook scene have exploded the last couple of years, many books are released as audios at the same time as the first print hardcovers hit the bookstores.

We even have a few online streaming services for listening to audiobooks directly from the phone/computer without the hazzle of first downloading or copying CD discs to the desired listening device.

Not everybody likes to listen to books, and more odd titles propably wont be recorded, but for the titles available it's quite convenient.

Re:Audiobooks seems to be the trend

[Anonymous Coward]

I think actually *reading* books has contributed a lot to my ability to read and write English (I like to think that reading LoTR when I was about 13 contributed a _lot_ to my English, if only I would have read it in French... also this sentence pretty much guarantees that my post will contain at least several errors). It has gotten to the point where I know and use words when reading/writing that I couldn't pronounce correctly if my life depended on it (this doesn't bother me much, my Dutch accent is a good reason to never let anyone hear me speak your beautiful language...:p ), and on rare occasions I won't recognize such words when I hear them for the first time.

Aren't you worried that using audiobooks a lot will screw up your ability to spell (especially when the book is in a foreign language that you rarely use in other situations)?

Re:Audiobooks seems to be the trend

[masmullin]

This is also an audiobook vs real book issue. I think audiobooks totally have their place, but they are not w/o their flaws (you can stop paying attention and its hard to "reread the last paragraph" like a book).

Re:Audiobooks seems to be the trend

[jaclu]

My spelling has always been awfull regardless of language ;)

I see audiobooks as a compliment to paperbacks, when driving / walking it's hard to read, also when doing garden work and similar audio books comes handy, but I still like to read. I guess I spend about half my reading time using audios.

Re:Audiobooks seems to be the trend

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of audiobooks in the US is insande. An audio book isn't like a hardcover; I'm goign to keep a dead tree for a long time. However, an audiobook isn't very readable, so I just want to listen to it and return it. nope, they don't have any enduring value to them. So, $30 for a book that I'll read once and throw away (donate to the library, but close enough for me) is not a good choice compared to a $12 paperback. And no, if it's worth buying promptly, I'll buy it in hardcover and read it well, as opposed to an audiobook.

Re:frist pots!!!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Somehow, Hitler missed the entire ebook trend. What a bastard.

Oh, and discussion over.

That's a scary thought

[AnotherUsername]

I pray that you are wrong. I triy to imagine future anthropologists and historians trying to figure out what life was like during our time, and if your idea comes true, they will have nothing to base their studies on. Paper is valuable because, unlike a computer(which your hypothetical all-in-one e-book reader appears to be), it doesn't require electricity to read, file formats are a nonissue(as long as you can understand the language, you can read it), and as long as it is kept in good environmental conditions, it will last much longer in a usable form. If books ever completely go away, historical studies of our time are doomed before they begin.

Re:That's a scary thought

[Idiomatick]

When's the last time the internet went down? We store shit in multiple places spread across the world in a variety of formats. We are keeping more crap well documented and backed up than ever before. Journals of emo kids bowel routine, millions of pictures of cats, and singers that inexplicably barrel roll in their music videos. Trust me, in 50yrs people will just search: cult worship longcat 2002..2010
If they want to research history from our time. Or do you think books would last longer? One big advantage/reason for ebooks and google's uber scanning is to save old books from certain doom. Much like they saved usenet, our early internet history.

Re:That's a scary thought

[ScrewMaster]

Or do you think books would last longer?

Actually, yes. Well-preserved printed books can and do last for centuries. We have no idea if any of our current storage techniques will last anywhere near that long, manufacturers bombastic claims of extended lifetimes notwithstanding. What electronic storage (optical, magnetic, quantum, whatever) does do is allow for data to be more conveniently transferred to new media when the older stuff begins to wear out. But that requires a lot of maintenance and awareness ... Google seems to be doing well at it, so far, but then again Google is a private corporation that may or may not be here in ten years, or twenty or a hundred. NASA, for example, is losing tons of data from the early years of the space program because they can't find enough old equipment to restore the information. They waited too long, and such data loss scenarios play out pretty regularly.

A typical hard drive, such as that used by every server farm in existence, will become unreadable long before a paper book will. Solid-state memories may have greater lifetime ... or they may not. Flash memories self-discharge over time: plenty long enough for typical use but not for archival storage. Optical systems are probably the best bet to date, but they are also subject to degradation, and it doesn't take much to make a disc unreadable.

What it comes down to is that if we want to make sure critical information is kept around in case civilization crashes, we'd better keep the important stuff on paper. I always thought, heck, even if an apocalyptic Mad Max event occurs, there will plenty of knowledge stored in the world's libraries to help us rebuild. Knowledge that will help us skip the thousands of years it took our ancestors to go from playing with bits of stone to flying spacecraft. Nowadays ... I don't know. The trend towards purely electronic storage is well under way, and libraries full of printed books will soon be considered obsolete. The day may come when we start dismantling them. Would that be wise?

Put it like this: if things go all to Hell (and technic civilization is more fragile than you think, just ask Charlton Heston) we'll be unable to retrieve squat from Google's servers. We will, however, be able to read books. If we fall so far that we can't even do that, well, I don't suppose it would matter very much.

Re:That's a scary thought

[QuoteMstr]

What it comes down to is that if we want to make sure critical information is kept around in case civilization crashes, we'd better keep the important stuff on paper.

That didn't help much the last time civilization fell. The classical world used papyrus and other kinds of paper extensively, yet the vast majority of what they wrote was lost by the time of the Renaissance. We'd know nothing of Aristotle without a few fortunate translations that served as backups.

The classical texts we do have were preserved by repeated copying, not through the durability of a particular physical copy. The same applies to the digital world. You can't beat off-site backups.

Re:That's a scary thought

[ScrewMaster]

The classical texts we do have were preserved by repeated copying, not through the durability of a particular physical copy.

True, and I made that point in my original post. What I'm trying to say is that if our technological base is lost, we'll need something that can be read without needing power or spare parts. Maybe not paper per se, but surely we can come up with a more durable form of printed matter.

Re:That's a scary thought

[shutdown -p now]

I pray that you are wrong. I triy to imagine future anthropologists and historians trying to figure out what life was like during our time, and if your idea comes true, they will have nothing to base their studies on.

This assumes there's some catastrophic, civilization-rebooting event between now and then. I for one would rather pray that you are wrong, there's no such thing, and information is simply steadily accumulated, copied, and re-archived to keep it accessible with tech of the day.

Re:That's a scary thought

[VJ42]

I pray that you are wrong. I triy to imagine future anthropologists and historians trying to figure out what life was like during our time, and if your idea comes true, they will have nothing to base their studies on.

This assumes there's some catastrophic, civilization-rebooting event between now and then. I for one would rather pray that you are wrong, there's no such thing, and information is simply steadily accumulated, copied, and re-archived to keep it accessible with tech of the day.

Not really, I recently saw an original copy of the Magna Carta at the British Library. It's almost a thousand years old. OTOH I no longer have the tech to read floppy disks from little over 10 years ago, and even if I could I doubt that I could read many of the file formats stored, Tell me again how digital is better than paper for long term storage. No catastrophe has happened, just technology has moved on.

Re:That's a scary thought

[houghi]

Actually, yes. Well-preserved printed books can and do last for centuries.

Well, there you have the reason why publishing houses are so against it. What clearly must happen is that the lifespan of books must be shorter AND extend the copyright on them much longer.

That way you and the people after you will have to buy a new version every time. Imagine that you are able to read a book in a few hundred years without buying the book. That would mean the writer would not get his share. This is all just for protecting the writers. Seriously.

Now you see that Shakespear does not get any money any more because he is not protected by copyright and as a result he has stopped writing. As a result of not having an income he DIED. Not having unlimited copyright kills people.

Re:That's a scary thought

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't need to be a catastrophic event; people who need all their energy to provide their daily food/shelter have no energy left to maintain the current information infrastructure. Then, when maintenance is postponed/lacking, things just start slowly breaking down.

I recommend reading "Collapse" by Jared Diamond.

Re:That's a scary thought

[Zerth]

When's the last time you went down to the bookstore, bought a book printed on archival paper or vellum, and then placed it in a humidity-controlled/light-safe cave? Your last book probably was printed on a paper that will start getting fragile in less than 10 years, but the backing glue will probably crumble before that.

Publishers don't want books that last 20 years, let alone 200.

Re:That's a scary thought

[Anonymous Coward]

"and as long as it is kept in good environmental conditions, it will last much longer in a usable form."

That's a big phrackin IF. Ever hear of the Library of Alexandria? Whether you believe one fire or several fires, massive amounts of material were lost.

Even today, this is still an issue. There are a lot of out of print or limited copied books out there that people want to read that have restricted access because, gee, it's on paper and the owner is restricting it to protect the book itself from deterioration. Isn't that also one of the minor points of Google's efforts going into university libraries and digitizing? Some of these works have very limited distribution today but people want to read them.

Now imagine them on many ebook readers. The archaeologists and the like will simply become more adept at technological recovery, that's all. Having multiple copies and the like will make it more likely they can recover something. And the way things are going, DRM is going down in the ebook market, making it more likely they'll recover a work successfully than a paper copy..

Re:That's a scary thought

[Idiomatick]

I don't care if hard drives die in a year. Computers make reproduction and multiple points of failure waaaaay easier. Thats it's strength. I didn't say to stick this shit on CDs and put it in a warehouse, I'm sure that'd last a fraction of the time books do. BUT the internet is a living thing almost. It will protect a lot of data that has a even a low bar of importance. There was a story on /. about a guy saving all the crap on angelfire most of which I'm sure is totally worthless.

NASA is losing closed information. Had they stuck it freely on the web dozens or hundreds of people would have it and someone would have been format shifting it. If Google dies something else will take its place.

But your apocalypse scenario is certainly true. With widespread nuclear war the emps and bombs would destroy nearly all of our computerized data which would suck. But I think books would fair nearly as poorly. I say this because I think the data that would survive a nuclear war would be the most important stuff because it would be the most mirrored. Books that make it outside of major cities will probably be the same way. Either way it would suck.

That said books are NOT a good alternative. We simply cannot print the wealth of data we have on computers into books. Sucky but true.

No thanks

[ISurfTooMuch]

I just don't see e-books catching on. Even if the technology matures to make them just as legible as a printed book, that isn't the thing that will make them popular. It's a convenience thing. For example, my wife just bought a few books the other day. Yesterday, she loaned one to her mom, who read it and returned it. And today, she loaned it to her sister, who took it back home with her, which is several hundred miles away. Now, while this process COULD be easier with an e-book, since you could easily transfer the file over the Internet, the publishers will never allow this. Not only that, but good luck selling e-books you've already read to someone else.

Finally, there's the issue of longevity. Books can last for hundreds of years if they're printed on acid-free paper and properly cared for. With an e-book, while the file could be preserved, you run into the issue of making sure a reader manufactured, say, 200 years from now can still open it. I'm sure you could write data conversion software to keep the files current, but I think the publishers would resist, since they'd want you to buy new versions of the same work. And, unless you have multiple backups, one catastrophic media failure could wipe out your entire library.

Re:No thanks

[Boomerang Fish]

I agree that all of these are valid issues, and I do think the 15 year estimate someone above posited is optimistic, however none of these are insurmountable. I think we probably will see wide-spread acceptance of ebooks/readers but it's gonna take a generation or two of people for whom online services like facebook, etc. have been with them practically since birth.

My daughter can't believe my parents bought me an encyclopedia set when I was in high school... in her world, if it's not online, then it's gotta be somewhere "special" -- to her encyclopedias belong in a library.

As technology gets better and more pervasive, as publishers realize they can cut costs, perhaps after existing contracts for suppliers, etc. are up for renewal, they will migrate, though I doubt the printed word will disappear completely.

As to the issues with sharing a book, if an ebook cost me $1, I can easily see me buying it multiple times throughout my life if it's one I like or use a lot. And since I'm assuming that most of these services have a site where I can track and re-download stuff I've purchased, it's not that hard of a step to allow me to temporarily assign my rights to a given product to another user... after all, it's just data.

As to data recovery, I will admit we haven't done to well with that, what with tapes and floppies that can't even be read anymore, but we (the geeks) also know this is a concern... it CAN be dealt with, if planned for. I mean, how many DVD drives can't read CD-Roms? (I know, very similar tech in terms of physical characteristics, etc, but the point is newer methods don't HAVE to break older technologies unless it truly is a fundamental change in mechanism/methodology.

We'll get there, but when the next couple of generations expect it and think we're crazy for "reading asynchronous BBS postings at 300 baud" (Daddy, what's a "baud"?), not when you and I think it's ready.

--
I drank what?

Re:No thanks

[ISurfTooMuch]

I agree with everything you said. I don't think any of this is insurmountable, but I think that there are certain things that might get in the way. Publishers are the big obstacle, mainly because they see DRM on the one hand preventing someone from making unlimited copies of a work and on the other hand allowing for all these interesting new revenue streams.

As for data longevity, this is something we've truly been horrible at. If I could find my Master's thesis from 1994, which was written in WordPerfect 5.1, I'm pretty sure I could open it, provided I can find a computer with a floppy drive, but I'm pretty sure the formatting would be pretty messed up, requiring lots of tweaking to get it to print in a format closely resembling my bound copy. And this is a file created in a program that was the king of word processors. Most of the stuff I did as an undergrad is pretty much lost, since I wrote it using Mass-11, which I could never get to output a file that could be opened in anything else with all its formatting intact.

Finally, I think that we need one and only one e-book standard. If e-books are to succeed, there needs to be the utmost assurance that any file can be opened on any reader, period. The only differences allowed should be add-ons, like Internet connectivity, the ability to directly beam a file from one reader to another, and maybe a monochrome vs. color screen.

You know, maybe this is an area where the OSS community can really come into its own. One body could develop a single yet flexible file format, and other groups, such as Project Gutenberg, could convert as many of their public domain works as possible into this format. Since many of these works are classics, the new format would immediately have a huge base of books that people would want to read, all available for free.

The standard could even be called OpenBook. :)

Funeral eulogy for the german book marker

[mseeger]

Hi,

since i am german and an ebook user for several years (iRexx Iliad), i would like to comment on that:

• It is very hard to purchase german ebooks. Only a small percantage of all books is actually offered as an ebook. If they are published at all, the ebook version comes months or even years later.
• The german book market is heavily regulated and publishers/authors are mostly happy with the status quo. The ebook is seen as "a disturbance of the force" and therefor not appreciated. Publishers already try to get lawmakers to extend the regulation to ebooks as well.
• Germanys "Intelligenzija" (from which a lot of authors are recruited) is notorical hostile towards technology.
• The primary clients for ebooks are geeks and technology friendly young adults. Those can read books in english. Since those are even a lot of cheaper, germanys ebook shoppers buy beyond the border (e.g. i have 200 ebooks from Baen.
• The trend of germans reading "english" literature is already demonstrated by Amazon Germany having an own category "English books". Patrick Rothfuss fulminant debut with "Name of the wind" costs 25 Euro as a german book or 7 Euro as an english one (both including S&H).
• The early adopters of technology typically read a large share of Science Fiction & Fantasy... not a strength of german authors (few exceptions). SF&F is still frowned at, not considered to be "real literature" here. This also drives readers into exile.

Like the music industry the publishers are currently comitting sucide due to the fear of death. By trying to preserve the status quo, they are scaring away a big part of their future customers. Ebooks are only a symptom here.

I have purchased and read about 1.000+ books during the last 25 years. Due to a still progressing carreer, my budget is rising. But i am less and less inclined to spend it on the local market.

Sincerely yours, Martin

Re:Funeral eulogy for the german book marker

[Anonymous Coward]

The trend of germans reading "english" literature is already demonstrated by Amazon Germany having an own category "English books". Patrick Rothfuss fulminant debut with "Name of the wind" costs 25 Euro as a german book or 7 Euro as an english one (both including S&H).

This. I have bought maybe one or two german books since Amazon DE started offering english ones, compared to tens of english ones. Even before, I often imported books from the UK because translations tend to suck and even including international shipping they were cheaper.

Re:Funeral eulogy for the german book marker

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, Bruder!

Re:Funeral eulogy for the german book marker

[argStyopa]

Good post.

Here's the money-shot: "Patrick Rothfuss fulminant debut with "Name of the wind" costs 25 Euro as a german book or 7 Euro as an english one (both including S&H)."

German book: $37.50
English: $10.50

The industry will live only as long as the populace will continue to tolerate subsidizing it.

That said, the Germans I know have a deep respect for books as matter - witness Inkheart, a (for Germany) wildly popular kids book about a love for books. Not the stories within, the actual BOOKS themselves, which as an American I find really strange and for some reason disturbing.

Nevertheless, this would suggest that there will always be a niche market willing to pay absurd prices for their books printed in German. I'm curious how small that niche will be, and how aggressively the EU will defend a single industry's collusive (although that implies a level of secrecy that's wholly absent here) pricing and behavior.

Re:Funeral eulogy for the german book marker

[mseeger]

Nevertheless, this would suggest that there will always be a niche market willing to pay absurd prices for their books printed in German.

Correct: A niche... that's what i ment with funeral eulogy. Currently the german book market is nothing but a niche; it has to collapse to become a niche market. Unluckily they are doing their best to achieve this.

CU, Martin

how big is the German book market anyway?

[jipn4]

I can't find any figures on it. How much do Germans read on average compared to Americans? To other nations? How much do they pay on average? Do price controls on books in Germany actually do anything other than make books more expensive and reduce the number of books Germans actually read?

Re:how big is the German book market anyway?

[VirginMary]

I am German and live in the United States. Unfortunately I can't give you any numbers but I would guess that the percentage of avid readers is much higher in Germany than the US. Reading is extremely popular in Germany while it seems fairly rare in the US. I have only highly educated geeks as friends here and they tend to read a lot but as far as the general US population is concerned I don't think it is a very popular pastime. I only found that there are around 80,000 new titles being released every year in Germany and this very depressing article about US readership. I know that my experience is not necessarily statistically relevant, but I do go back to Germany every year and I see quite a few bookstores and people reading while using public transportation. My parents did not have college degrees, yet my mom strongly encouraged book reading through financial incentives when I was a kid growing up in Germany and virtually all my friends were reading. But, that was 30 years ago. From the articles that I did find through google.de it seems that reading is as popular as ever in Germany and making good money for German publishers. I had read well over 1,000 books by the time that I graduated from high school in Germany! Apart from leaving my human friends behind when I came to the US to study physics, leaving my book "friends" behind was the hardest! :)

Re:how big is the German book market anyway?

[Hognoxious]

How much do Germans read on average compared to Americans?

In terms of pages, about the same. Of course it's considerably less if you count the words.

books vs. ebooks

[David Jao]

The whole dichotomy over printed books vs. ebooks just seems strange. You don't have to choose one or the other, you can have both. And you don't need a special ebook device; most of the key benefits of electronic books are available on an ordinary laptop with a PDF reader.

This is, of course, assuming that the publishers and lobbyists get it right, and don't destroy the entire product category out of greed.

Advantages of ebooks that you will never get in a printed book:

• Text search. This is especially important in academics and research. You want to find where a phrase is defined and you don't want to read the whole book to find it. An index is a far inferior alternative.
• Did I mention search? Well, it's not limited to just one book. You can go online to google books and search for a phrase in every book ever published. This achievement is stunning when you think about it. The fact that publishers seem determined to kill this golden goose with their greed is pretty depressing.
• Portability. Sure, if you have one single book vs. one Kindle, the comparison is pretty favorable towards the book. But a Kindle can hold several hundred books, and a laptop can hold tens of thousands. When traveling, it's not even a question of books vs. ebooks, since 10000 printed books are physically impossible to carry with you. Oh, and of course, you can perform text search across all those books too.
• Ease of copying and backup. The publishers hate this one, and try to do everything they can to prevent it, but for the user it's a boon.

Of course, printed books have advantages too: higher resolution, low tech, can read in bathtub, doesn't matter as much if you lose one. So there is room for both formats in this world. What would make sense is for publishers to automatically supply the electronic rights to anyone who purchases a physical volume. That would greatly increase the value proposition in a book purchase, and (dare I say) expand their market and profits. It's frustrating that everyone except the publishers themselves seems to realize this.

Well, that last bit has an important and noteworthy exception. In academic publishing (journals and such), it is the norm rather than the exception for publishers to provide electronic rights to libraries and institutions that purchase the corresponding physical copy. So there is hope that the rest of the industry can come to their senses in time.

It's worth mentioning that technological progress (if not stymied by the copyright lobby) will eventually bring to ebooks all the advantages of printed books, whereas no amount of progress (short of replacing books with ebooks) will allow printed books to compete with the advantages of ebooks. The resolution of ebooks will improve, and it is at least conceivable that they can be engineered to last months on a single battery charge, or be waterproof, or become cheap enough that you wouldn't mind losing the hardware (the content will, of course, be easy to back up, once the DRM fetish subsides). So, for now, we have a choice of printed books vs. ebooks, but in the future I see ebooks taking over.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[MrBigInThePants]

The whole dichotomy over printed books vs. ebooks just seems strange

Some of the arguments here from people really come from those who have not actually tried the eink readers and really should not be commenting on them until they do. I mostly agree with your listed advantages and analysis but i think you missed the most important feature of ebook readers here and it has led to a very false premise.

1)The key benefit of ebook readers are NOT available on PDAs and laptops. Eink technology makes the screen look like paper. That means that us technology friendly people who stare at screens all day as part of our job will not get the serious eye strain associated with reading ebooks from back lighted monitors. (at least anymore than reading a printed book)
Any technology that does not have this is simply a non-starter for most people. This is the SINGLE feature has allowed the ebook revolution to begin, period.
Every other aspect of ebooks themselves existed before with little effect.
2) Amazon, public libraries and google's foray into ebooks is on the backs of eink (or similar) readers. Ebooks have no future with LCD alone. Most of the momentum that is building at the moment is speculative based on the future ebook reader. (e.g. projected sales this Christmas) Amazon sees it coming and wants to corner the market.
3) The resolution of e-ink is PERFECTLY FINE for the printed word. Pictures and high-res diagrams may struggle, but for the printed word it is PERFECTLY FINE.
This is a straw man argument based on some very erroneous assumptions are specs vs real life usability.
4)There are many book publishers out there NOT doing DRM or platform restricted books. Amazon has become the "slavering corporate dog" here by its recent DRM actions and restrictions, but it is easily circumvented at the moment via other distributors. They know this, hence their very early push into this market.
Personally I would stay right away from the kindle. They have already shown what they are all about with the "1984" saga, but their use of DRM is also a worry.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[David Jao]

Any technology that does not have this [e-ink] is simply a non-starter for most people. This is the SINGLE feature has allowed the ebook revolution to begin, period.

It looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I love e-ink as much as the next person but it is NOT the most important feature of e-books. It's not even fourth or fifth on the list. You can get all of the paper-friendly advantages of e-ink just by ... printing the book out on paper. Printers are old technology.

The ebook revolution coincides with e-ink in terms of timing, but that's just because it took computers this long to catch up to the point where ebooks are becoming useful. Before a couple of years ago, google books did not have every book, laptops were bulky and heavy, disk space was more expensive, and of course less content was available. I should also mention, though, that if you consider niche categories like academic publishing, rather than the mass market, electronic journals already became dominant several years ago, because PDFs are so vastly superior to paper for research work.

I've used both eink and LCDs. I have average eyes (neither great nor poor). I find backlit LCDs perfectly acceptable. Most of the eyestrain from LCDs comes from the low resolution of monitors, and from sitting upright at a desktop staring straight at a fixed location for hours on end. The low resolution is greatly mitigated by subpixel antialiasing (which some people apparently hate, although I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would hate it). Get a PDF reader that supports subpixel antialiasing for fonts. Couple that with a book-sized laptop (again, only recently available) and there's no great visual advantage to e-ink displays. E-ink of course wins on battery life, but backlighting has its advantages too; for example, it's easier to read in the dark, or in low light.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[MrBigInThePants]

You totally missed the point. The reason ebooks have become popular in the market is because of this technology which removes the main reason people have not liked reading books electronically.
Prior to this, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the things you mentioned already existed for ebooks. And they did not take off. Why? Because reading novels on an LCD makes most people's eyes hurt. It really is that simple.

Your argument about academics is also missing the point. I am talking about mass market books here and not niche use. PDF has been around and used for all sorts of things for a very long time.
Academic articles can be downloaded/bought/printed per paper and that is why they are liked.
Besides, almost all students and researchers I knew (I taught at university for a while) printed the articles they liked/needed and referenced them that way.

"I find backlit LCDs perfectly acceptable. "
You would be the exception then. It also has nothing to do with the quality of your eye sight.

And perhaps that is it then? You are one of the few who can spend hours reading an LCD ebook after working a desk job doing the same without it effecting your eyes? I am pretty sure that is not the rule?

I have excellent LCD monitors at home and work and could not fathom it without getting bad migraines.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[David Jao]

You totally missed the point. The reason ebooks have become popular in the market is because of this technology which removes the main reason people have not liked reading books electronically. Prior to this, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the things you mentioned already existed for ebooks.

No, I specifically addressed this point. Even ignoring e-ink, the technology for comfortable ebook display on laptops was not there until recently. Small cheap laptops, PDF software supporting subpixel antialiasing, and widespread availability of ebooks on the scale of google books are all recent developments that just happen to coincide temporally with the development of e-ink.

And perhaps that is it then? You are one of the few who can spend hours reading an LCD ebook after working a desk job doing the same without it effecting your eyes? I am pretty sure that is not the rule?

I have excellent LCD monitors at home and work and could not fathom it without getting bad migraines.

Almost everything I stated about LCDs being acceptable for ebooks was based on the use of small cheap LCDs, so for you to turn around and refer to "desk job", "LCD monitors", and other desk-bound devices is rather missing the point on your part.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[MrBigInThePants]

Then I have to agree to disagree. People have had laptops and PDAs for some time and have used them for long periods for reading as part of work.

You are trying to say that the technology advances are a simple coincidence even thought the largest player in the market is hinging its whole strategy on its own version made at great expense. (with no LCD alternatives)

I think this is far fetched. Beg to differ and all that.

Still, interesting discussion.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[David Jao]

Definitely agree to disagree, and yes, interesting discussion. The way I see it, if Amazon started selling instant PDF downloads of books, without tying them to the Kindle, I think the response would be tremendously positive, and the money they stand to gain would dwarf their profits from the Kindle. So, from the point view of what could have been, e-ink displays are not the largest driver of customer interest. (Right now, they are the largest market segment, but that's because Amazon only sells ebooks in Kindle format.)

What I described will never happen, but only because the publishers are deathly afraid of piracy. It's certainly not because of a lack of market demand for PDF format ebooks.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[thesandtiger]

I read my Kindle in the tub all the time; I put it in a big ziploc baggie and it stays perfectly dry.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[foniksonik]

For reading novels or regular literature my iPhone's resolution and backlit screen is just great... I haven't tried any of the eInk products - so I can't comment on that. I can say that they are too expensive to just be eReaders and too big for my personal preference in reading format.

I like a small paperback format, so that there is just one column of text at the optimum characters per line for easy reading and it should be small enough to fit in a pocket (something I always disliked about novels until really baggy pants came in style - which is a problem again now that they aren't in style any more).

I don't want to "carry around" my eReader... not trying to show off to people "hey look I read in the digital age" - in fact I'd rather people didn't know that I have 500 books in my pocket and can look up a reference to something in 5 secs while pretending to check my text messages (just tappity tap for a sec to make them think you're a hipster and they'll ignore your rudeness for some reason).

Re:books vs. ebooks

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that DRM is not really an option (copy protection can always be cracked) and thus digital books can be copied for free is precisely why publishers might want to stay away, I am guessing.

The business model for books works roughly like this; you print a paperback (black and white offset, 144 pages say) for say 1.25 dollars (if you do a run of a few thousand). Rule of thumb is cover price should be eight times that, so 10 dollars (so you pay 10 dollars in a shop). Depending on the shop, 50% or 60% of that amount goes to the shop keeper (distributor also takes some, but we're talking ball-park figures here). Lets say 50%. That leaves the publisher with 35%, of which the author typically gets 10%.

Now, it is interesting to note that if you want a copy of the book, you can either buy the book for 10 dollars, or make a copy for yourself at the local kinko's. The thing is, your copy will be more expensive and of less quality! Effectively there is currently no incentive to make a copy of a (paper-based) book, as you can get a better-quality version for less money in a bookshop.

This changes when books get distributed digitally.DRM will not be a real option, it can always be cracked, and so suddenly you will be able to make a copy for free that is exactly as good as the original.

You can argue that you take out the middle-men (bookshop and distributor) and printing cost, so you can drop the price and still make the same profit per book, but the fact that you can then make perfect copies for free will put pressure on book prices.

Amongst the people who will suffer from this will also be the authors of the books. Similar to what happened in the music industry, where you could suddenly make copies that were as good as the original, people stopped buying CD's. Artists suffered too.

Ebook readers are a real threat to the book publishing industry I think. Or at the very least a threat to their current business model. And it will be hard for them to find another model that is as profitable as this one.

Re:books vs. ebooks

[david_thornley]

PDFs suck for electronic reading, unless the pages are the exact right size. If they don't fit your display device (eBook, laptop, iPhone, whatever), then you either scroll awkwardly or use a potentially inconvenient (or even unreadable) font size. Text and HTML work, and there are other more specialized formats that work even better.

skip the lame blog link, read the Spiegel article

[bcrowell]

The first link is to a lame, short, not very interesting blog post. The second link is to the full article (in English) in Der Spiegel.

The Der Spiegel article criticizes the traditional publishing industry for price fixing (with some help from government), but it uncritically parrots the traditional music industry's party line about copyright violation, and then uncritically makes the analogy with books. It assumes that copyright-violating sharing of music is wholly to blame for the fact that the music industry isn't as profitable as it would like to be be, without mentioning the possibility that people were unhappy with the choices the music industry was putting out, and unhappy with being expected to pay $16 for a CD that only had 2 or 3 good tracks on it. It also never mentions DRM.

In general, I don't think it's a good idea to lump together all kinds of books as if they were the same. Selling a Dan Brown book in hardcover is different from selling it as a mass market paperback, which in turn is different from selling a used copy, which is also different from borrowing a copy from a friend or from the public library. Copyrighted e-books are different from public-domain e-books, and then there are copyrighted books whose authors have intentionally made them free online (see my sig). There is a huge difference between a college textbook and other types of books; prices of college textbooks have gone up much faster than inflation in recent decades, and that's happened because the people who made the textbook selection decisions were the professors, while the people who had to pay were the students.

Most published authors don't make much money from most kinds of books. Never have and never will. What the traditional publishers would like to see is a world in which that continues to be the case, but DRM on e-books makes it impossible for people to buy used books, share books with friends, or borrow books from the public library.

Publishers don't like your freedoms in paper books

[jbn-o]

There's no question about DRM -- DRM requires proprietary software which does subjugates a user's freedom to read by giving that freedom away to publishers and their agents. The fix is free software: a free software eBook reader would give users control over their electronic copies of works. This outweighs all the alleged advantages of eBook readers because it means the ability to control what we're allowed to read with that device.

Not to undercut books

[Midnight Thunder]

If companies are keeping eBook prices around the same price as their printed counter part, it is probably because they don't want to risk undercutting the printed media. Also, while people accept to buy eBooks at the price offered, they have have no incentive to lower prices. Generally you you only want to lower prices if the target market is not buying.

From a consumer point of view, the printed version can work out to be cheaper, since you still have the possibility to sell it second hand or exchange it for another book. If you never lend or sell the book, then it probably works out to be the same price as the electronic version.

Same as in France alright

[Nicolas MONNET]

Same kind of stupidity here, esp. the part about the intellectual elite. Fucking douchebags hate the internet, and the internet hates them in turn.

I would point out that the US situation is not significantly different wrt ebooks. When you factor out the difference in book prices, US ebooks (and audiobooks) are still way overpriced, close to the hardcover price.

Well in fact it's the electronic delivery that's fucked up. I love audiobooks, so that I can "read" while on bicycle, and I wanted to buy Bob Woodward's "the War Within." It's $24 in hardcover, and $20 through Audible.com. But I can't buy through audible, because the sons of bitches insist on fucktarded DRM, and don't support Linux anyway. So instead I bought it in CD format from a third party, for $10 shipping included. It's a complete waste, since I'm just going to waste time ripping it.

Ebooks should be much cheaper than physical ones. Until they stop treating their customers like shit, they deserve all the piracy they get. Fucking fucktards.

E-Books in Germany.. more.

[missioncreep]

The Spiegel article isn't the last word in the discussion. The Frankfurt Book Fair has been in full swing this week, and e-books have gotten a lot of quite decently balanced press as a result, expressed within the larger context of the current state of publishing in Germany.

The Germans do fix all prices, across the board, from apples to undies. Getting around that will be a big obstacle to releasing a 'critical mass' of material into the marketplace, which will in turn impede adoption of reader devices. The overall conservatism and lack of imagination of the average German is likely to be another. But authors who don't want to be jerked around by publishers are finding other outlets, like the admittedly itty-bitty Textunes.de, and libreka.de.

But I think the biggest problem may be that Amazon is not offering titles *in German* concurrent with its launch of the international version of the device. There are certainly sound business reasons behind that decision -- among them the likelihood that Amazon has not managed to complete negotiations with publishers in time for the launch. But it gives an appearance of corporate tone-deafness that could hurt the entire industry. But it might also give the Sony Touch a boost. Who knows.

what is this stuff?

[zogger]

Those few quoted figures in the article are astounding to me. I question them. We live out in north cow flop redneck georgia and the local library is always packed, they have multiple librarians checking out the books and you have to wait in line. This is at various times of the week, we only go into town occasionally, and the days vary. The library has gone in a few years from three computers to about two dozen and again, most of the time you have to wait to get access, and there's always half a dozen to a dozen folks using their free wifi connections with laptops sitting around on the couches and chairs, all reading or researching or whatever. And a lot of local stores sell a lot of books, etc.

    I mean, this is *out in the sticks*, this is blue collars-ville, farming (that would be me) and a little manufacturing and construction and logging, in the larger cities the book scene is way more robust and extensive than that.

    I really doubt people check out books and buy books just to not read them. I also question this because the listed reference URL in the article you linked where they received this information is merely a spam link that has nothing more there that is on topic.

I mean it is great and all that ya'all read a lot in Germany, but I don't think you should assume people don't read a lot of books here either,(and magazines and newspapers and online), or that is it just people with advanced degrees or whatever, it is still a rather large industry and business across the demographic here. I mean, look back up in the article at the amount of ebooks being sold, and that is just a teeny tiny part of the overall market here so far.

Now to be fair, the age of the internet has probably changed a lot of reading habits, but text is text, on a screen or holding it in your hand and turning the pages. Today, I read a lot more on the internet than I did when I was a kid...and that's easy to do..the net didn't exist then ;)

I don't know about the Germans, but

[obarthelemy]

as a neighbour from France, which is culturally kinda close I guess, I don't grok the idea of buying content, but not really owning it, being at risk of losing it at any time, either short-term (Amazon pulling it, my reader getting stolen...) or medium/long term (Amazon going out of that business, their readers starting to suck...)

I'd like a Digital Ownership Law, clearly asserting
- resale rights
- loan rights
- transfer rights (to another reader)
- backup rights
- standardized DRM with a backup infrastructure in case the initial provider can no longer authenticate content/users.

Right now, Amazon's plan looks like MS's and Apple's: get user lock-in DRM / format / training / force of habit / DRM.

I think the next generation of readers, wich will probably be more geared towards replacing magazines, and hopefully integrating the magazines with an on-line community, will have more appeal over here.

PS: I am reading books an a Palm right now, so I'm not allergic to the concept. Buyers' rights just seem inexistant right now.

Re:I don't know about the Germans, but

[Anonymous Coward]

...Buyers' rights just seem inexistant right now.

Thanks for commenting more early.
As a German, I like your "more political" approach to the whole discussion.

As a part of the biz...

[BlackBloq]

I can tell you they just don't understand the market. Selling 100,000 books at 2$ a book profit is great money to a smaller book seller. They don't realize it's possible to make money without shipping a physical copy and that's infinitely easier. Shipping books hurts and in the biz everyone has carried box after box of books. Selling books is hard work. If you can make a small profit on such a slick platform as the itunes store then e-books will take off; Until then it's up to people like me to convince the publisher I work with that all her book catalog won't be pirated to worthlessness the nanosecond she goes e-book. Repeat after me " A Pirated download is not a lost sale!" (kinda like 5% of one)

One advantage outweight the disadvantage

[aepervius]

My copy of 1984 at home, cannot be destroyed remotely by amazon. Once they sold it to me, the only way they can get it back is to pry it from my hand, or burn my house. Now since we are all /. reader we all know it is not the same with DRM'd book (even if they ask to be forgiven afterward or whatever, the fact that it is do-able and has been done remains). Call me back when e-book are not DRM'd.

Another advantage : when joe six pack ask me to loan my latest Grisham, I can give him my 6 copy. Too bad if he dunk it in cofee I lsot 6. With eBook I can't legally do it, unless i loan my 300 eBook with all risk that include.

Resale is bothersome or even fully impossible. Strike another one for paperback. About the only reason I would want an ebook, is when I travel, maybe, or when I want technical manuals eBook. But for everyday usage, you CANNOT , as of now, beat dead tree.

Slashdot please support eh euro sign

[aepervius]

For pity sake, support the euro sign... In the previous post insert the word "euro" after all numbers , since I made the mistake of using the euro sign.

Re:Slashdot please support eh euro sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this? € or why not just write EUR?

Personal anecdote

[foniksonik]

When I bought my iPhone and found eReader I gave up printed books for reading.

My iPhone is much more convenient, easier to read (backlit is very nice in most situations ie: anything other than sunlight behind me) and the iPhone lasts for ~5-6 hours of reading and music listening with occasional browsing/phone calls.

It never loses my place, I could write notes and bookmark pages if I wanted to. It's my phone so it's always with me and isn't conspicuous - so I can open up a book for any extra 5 min anywhere and catch up on some plot line that's been calling me...

I can get new material in minutes without a car ride, wait in line or dealing with a store that decided to re-arrange the shelves again. There's no shipping charge like there would be with a real book from Amazon.

Another big bonus is that there's nothing to get rid of when I'm done reading the book. I don't have to waste time with eBay or Craigslist trying to give the thing away and they don't pile up in boxes in the garage waiting for the next garage sale or book-drive... sorry, for me that part of it is just a big waste of time - no I don't care about the old book ethos or whatever.

SO eBooks are the next best thing to sliced bread IMHO. I don't really care if they cost the same or less than traditional books... I've already saved so much time not dealing with the physical book format that I'm already ahead.

"regulated"

[Tom]

The summary is a little unfair, I think.

The "regulation" about book prices is not what you'd usually associate with the term. Specifically, it is a fixed-price model, which says that books can not be sold at discount except under certain circumstances. That is the main reason Germany still has thousands of small bookstores with employees that actually know something about books, instead of large discount chains that work on the WalMart principle. Second, the tax on books is lower than on other consumer articles (same discounted tax rate as for food, for example).

Re:"regulated"

[CrimsonAvenger]

The "regulation" about book prices is not what you'd usually associate with the term. Specifically, it is a fixed-price model, which says that books can not be sold at discount except under certain circumstances.

Actually, that's pretty much what I'd associate with the word "regulation" - the government sets a minimum price on a product or service, forbidding anyone from coming up with a better way to market the product or service.

While having small bookstores where the employees know something about the books is nice, buying four books a week instead of five because of the higher price is not so nice....

Re:"regulated"

[Tom]

the government sets a minimum price on a product or service,

But that is not what happens here. The price is set by the distributor, not the government. The regulation in place simply puts limits on things like bulk sales, volume discounts, etc.

The government doesn't determine the price. What it does do is ascertain that the price (whatever it is) is the same for everyone.

Re:"regulated"

[CrimsonAvenger]

The government doesn't determine the price. What it does do is ascertain that the price (whatever it is) is the same for everyone.

So, basically, you're saying the government is preventing me from selling my property for any price I care to set on it? Yah, that's regulation, alright.

Re:"regulated"

[Tom]

You're trying to simplify something beyond the point it can be simplified without distortion.

If you are the book's distributor, then the answer is "no, you can set any price you want".
If you are a book store, the answer is "yes, it forces you to sell the book at the same price every other bookstore has to sell it at, the price that was chosen by the distributor".

Yes, it is regulation.
No, it is not the same as the government determining the price itself.

German paperbacks are of much higher quality

[risom]

One possible reason could be that German paperbacks physically are of much higher quality - way nicer paper, better and more robust bindings, better cover print etc. than US paperbacks. I was really shocked discovering this after I bought a few US paperbacks. Obviously US paperbacks are more like disposable items - read it once and it falls apart. So replacing US paperbacks with ebooks makes more sense because they have no aesthetic value other than their content anyway.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now that the Kindle is being actively marketed in many countries outside the US..."

Yeah, right. After paying a hefty extra on shipping, customs duty, VAT etc. (summing up to ~250 EUR / 370USD) you can choose from many, many english books.
Even some might think different, the official language in Germany is still German... and surprisingly enough most Germans prefer to read in their mother-tongue.
So that's pretty much like "Even the brand new, left-hand-drive [enter favorite car manufacturer here] is available in the UK now, sales are very poor".

If more books were available, maybe...

[headLITE]

I don't know if Germans would buy more e-books if more were available; there aren't that many to choose from at this time in the first place. I live in Germany and I've been buying a fair number of e-books in the last few years, but all of these purchases probably count toward the US numbers as I bought all of them from US-based online shops (such as Baen). Also, my employer has a Safari subscription and I've downloaded several books from there... which should again count toward the US numbers.

And yeah, I won't consider a Kindle; if I pay money for a book then I want the book physically present in my shelf, or I want the file on a disk that I control and can make backup copies of.

Re:*I* am skeptical about E-books in America!

[wrencherd]

Remember how big a deal Bloggers were going to be? A few are great, the rest are just boring people being *precisely* as boring as the rest of us. And don't Twitter me your bowel movements, either: just not that useful.

Hey, I resemble most of those remarks!

(Link to blog listing tweets of my difficulties boweling--as well as other age-related complaints--to follow)

Re:One advantage outweight the disadvantage

[Anonymous Coward]

My copy of 1984 at home, cannot be destroyed remotely by amazon.

Nor is your copy pirated, unlike the dozens of people who had their illegal copy erased. Some random person put up 1984 and people bought it. The publisher received no money for the copies of 1984 that made it onto the Kindle. Feel free to contact the publisher (Secker and Warburg) and voice your complaints about a lack of an ebook licensing model for the popular novel.

As for Amazon deleting stuff, when they remove it from accounts, it automatically de-authorizes it and sends a delete command to all the devices on the accounts. Amazon didn't delete the book in the right way, and that policy has been adjusted.

where are the statistics?

[jipn4]

What good is a higher number of bookstores if people don't actually read?

http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_printcontent/0,,4792024,00.html

http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/09/news/bookreading/index.htm

From having traveled to Germany, my impression is that German society is not particularly literary or intellectual.

No news here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Germans are notoriously cool to everything.

Except for Hasselhoff.

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