Novelists On the E-Book Experience

An anonymous reader writes "How is reading different on a Kindle, a Nook, or an iPhone? The NY Times asked two writers what they thought. Joseph Finder, the author of thrillers, misses the indices compiled by humans and finds it annoying the way that all of the fonts are the same. Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, actually likes the simplicity because he can concentrate on the words themselves. And then there's the issue of monopoly, which must give the authors the willies."

Comments

No problem

[Dyinobal]

I love the -idea- of Ebook readers, nothing is more awesome than being able -in theory- to carry around all my college text books and all my favorite novels on a thin little device that has a huge battery life. But in general all the systems that I've thought about buying I've turned down for being to locked down, or to expensive. DRM and Price is really a deal breaker, and the idea of rebuying books I already own so I can read them on my ebook reader is a little obnoxious. I love the Idea just hate the execution thus far, but I'm still hopeful for the tech to catch on.

Re:No problem

[FrankSchwab]

I agree; why the hell would I pay $300 for a device just so I have the right to pay $10 for each book I want to read?

A device with an unprotected screen that I don't expect to last a year?
A device that, should Amazon or Sony decide to get out of the market, will become a paperweight that I can't read my purchased content on anymore, and can't transfer my purchased content anywhere (see Yahoo Music Store, MSN Music, Walmart online music, etc ).
A device that can, at any time, decide that some of my content is no longer "acceptable", and delete it (see Amazon and "1984"/"Animal Farm")?

The concept is great; the current implementations just suck. /frank

Re:No problem

[Bigjeff5]

A device with an unprotected screen that I don't expect to last a year?

Ever heard of a cover? Jeeze, it's not that hard man. I assume you don't buy laptops either because they'll break in less than a year, that screen is so unprotected!

A device that, should Amazon or Sony decide to get out of the market, will become a paperweight that I can't read my purchased content on anymore, and can't transfer my purchased content anywhere (see Yahoo Music Store, MSN Music, Walmart online music, etc ).

While you are absolutely correct about Amazon (which is why I don't recommend the Kindle), you are completely wrong about Sony and everybody else. Sony now only sells e-books in the ePub format, and has offered to update all of their old readers' firmware, which don't support the format, so that they will. EPub is ubiquitous, there are dozens of e-book stores that sell in that format, the two major online public-domain book sources (Google Books and Project Gutenberg) all use ePub, nearly any device but the Kindle can read it, and anybody can create books in this format. If Sony goes away (which, by the way, will never happen, it's fucking Sony for christ's sake), the ePub books remain, and can still be purchased on your device and moved to another device even if Sony were dust. You can easily move them from one device to another - the DRM simply attempts to ensure that you do not copy it to more than one device at a time (note that this also makes lending possible). This is a function of ePub, not Sony, and like I said it is becoming ubiquitous.

A device that can, at any time, decide that some of my content is no longer "acceptable", and delete it (see Amazon and "1984"/"Animal Farm")?

Again, that's pretty much Amazon and the Kindle that can do that - except for library books (which are possible thanks to ePub's DRM, btw), you download a copy to your hard drive (or directly to the reader, if the device supports it) and the book is yours. All the readers except the Kindle allow you to access the reader as a mass storage device and move the files off it.

In other words, your complaints are entirely against Amazon and the Kindle, and have nothing to do with e-book readers in general.

The concept is great; the current implementations just suck.

You know this from experience right? Oh wait, you don't, since everything you said was incorrect. I do speak from experience, and frankly I won't go back to hard copies (except for technical books until till I get my Que) even though I have a crappy, old e-book reader which has none of the nice features the newer devices have. I've had that reader for about two years now, by the way, and I bought it refurbished.

Even the old implimentations (which have had their problems) were overall far supperior to paper books - the fact that I cary about 150 books in my bag now is proof positive of that, as is the fact that I now have access to millions of public domain books on a device that reads as well as having the paper versions.

Re:No problem

[NotBornYesterday]

When the only viable solution to a legitimate problem is to become a criminal, there is something wrong with both the law and the original problem.

Re:No problem

[NotBornYesterday]

IANAL, so I can't say how fair use factors into the DMCA. Plus, the concept of fair use is under constant attack here in the US by the same people who are lacing content with DRM. I also don't think that the legitimacy of fair use would stop them from trying to intimidate me into not removing their DRM.

All of that is beside the point for most people, however. Average mom & pop don't know how to remove DRM, or if doing so is legal. The result is that regardless of what is morally right and/or legally permissible, restricted content hurts consumers.

Re:No problem

[WalkingBear]

"There is no source that I know of for new, legal novels without DRM."

Wrong. Baen publishing has been selling their entire catalog for almost 10 years with NO DRM. RTF, HTML, Mobi, epub, sony, and rocket formats. Direct support from their store for e-mailing to your kindle and relatively simple support for the iphone/ipod touch.

They're also selling several other publisher's books through their store now too. Including a direct competitor, Tor.

Scott

Re:No problem

[NotBornYesterday]

The fundamental lie I was refuting was this:

There is not, and has never been, any concept of 'fair use' in US copyright law.

Citation proves otherwise. End of story.

I have already admitted that I am not a legal expert. I am not about to go earn a law degree in order to debate on Slashdot, and I am not trying to argue what entails fair use, or how it is implemented. I am simply attacking the erroneous claim that fair use does not exist in law. Misinformation like that is just what overzealous copyright and IP proponents would like the public to think, and it fits well with their long-established pattern of revising history to suit their own interests.

Wait for interoperability

[Animats]

There are now four or five e-book readers, each with their own incompatible "ecosystem". Until that settles down, don't get one. Most of them are going to fail, and you'll lose your content. Just like the people who signed up for WalMart Music or Microsoft PlaysForSure.

Re:Wait for interoperability

[gyrogeerloose]

I consider the probability of Amazon going bankrupt to be very small

Of course, go back a few years and you'd hear people saying the same thing about General Motors. Up until the Eighties, GM was considered a huge industrial powerhouse that couldn't possibly fail. Not so much any more. But if you never re-read your books, you definitely have a point--it really doesn't matter if Amazon or whoever goes under.

The thing that worries me is this: if all publishing goes electronic, with DRM, what happens to public libraries? There are a lot of new books that I'd like to read but don't care to buy; I go to my local library for those. I don't know how they could continue to exist beyond repositories of old books in a world of electronic publishing.

Re:Fonts

[stagg]

What it NEEDS is screen fonts that are analogous to the original print font.

Monopoly

[Aladrin]

" And then there's the issue of monopoly, which must give the authors the willies."

WHAT monopoly? They already sign to a single publisher for a book as it is. That publisher has always gotten to make all the publishing decisions. It's business as usual!

And if the answer is 'DRM', then they are doubly fools.

Re:Comfort and Freedom are their Best Aspects

[AmiMoJo]

If only they could get the screen refresh rate up so you could read textbooks and PDFs properly... There are huge amounts of free books, magazines and scanned books (Google Books etc) but at the moment you can't access them on an e-reader because they are designed for a page larger than the screen and scrolling/zooming takes 2 seconds per screen update.