There's only two real main factors regarding the adoption of electronic publication formats, and that has to do with portabilty and legibility.
With and electronic publication you are forced to be in front of a computer, whereas a magazine can be carried anywhere, anytime. A magazine is lighter than a laptop, and most people don't read magazines or books in one sitting. Picking up a printed magazine is not necessarily premeditated, whereas booting up a computer and starting up the publication software is. You think twice before needing to wait 5 minutes to read a digital mag.
Legibility is also another issue. If you don't have a high res LCD monitor then staring at a cruddy LCD or CRT screen is not really a good option, as it's very fatiguing to read. Affordable high quality LCDs finally hit the market 1 or 2 years ago, but haven't fully proliferated into the market yet. How many people have a Dell 20" ultrasharp at work or at home? Probably only 35% of you.
Another issue is with the publication itself. Staring at text with a bright white background is very fatiguing. High quality LCDs can reproduce the color white with no problems, but who wants to stare at a white screen.
I think DRM has worked itself out quite a bit. The only problem I've encountered with DRM is windows media player or adobe PDF third party DRM plugins like EBX Handler used on amazon. I noticed that Zinio Textbooks are locked to the harddrive, but should you need to get a new drive you can always download the pub again.
I think the transition from printed material to digital will take some time. You can expect the free industry circulated magazines to be fully adopted first, then monthly mags and then educational textbooks. Novels will come in last because people don't want to take a laptop with them everywhere they go. Ever take your laptop to bed the sunday paper?
Letting the public decide what format they want could take a couple of decades, instead I think advertisers will be the one's choose what format to back.
Slashdot Mirror
There's only two real main factors regarding the adoption of electronic publication formats, and that has to do with portabilty and legibility. With and electronic publication you are forced to be in front of a computer, whereas a magazine can be carried anywhere, anytime. A magazine is lighter than a laptop, and most people don't read magazines or books in one sitting. Picking up a printed magazine is not necessarily premeditated, whereas booting up a computer and starting up the publication software is. You think twice before needing to wait 5 minutes to read a digital mag. Legibility is also another issue. If you don't have a high res LCD monitor then staring at a cruddy LCD or CRT screen is not really a good option, as it's very fatiguing to read. Affordable high quality LCDs finally hit the market 1 or 2 years ago, but haven't fully proliferated into the market yet. How many people have a Dell 20" ultrasharp at work or at home? Probably only 35% of you. Another issue is with the publication itself. Staring at text with a bright white background is very fatiguing. High quality LCDs can reproduce the color white with no problems, but who wants to stare at a white screen. I think DRM has worked itself out quite a bit. The only problem I've encountered with DRM is windows media player or adobe PDF third party DRM plugins like EBX Handler used on amazon. I noticed that Zinio Textbooks are locked to the harddrive, but should you need to get a new drive you can always download the pub again. I think the transition from printed material to digital will take some time. You can expect the free industry circulated magazines to be fully adopted first, then monthly mags and then educational textbooks. Novels will come in last because people don't want to take a laptop with them everywhere they go. Ever take your laptop to bed the sunday paper? Letting the public decide what format they want could take a couple of decades, instead I think advertisers will be the one's choose what format to back.