This won't come as a massive surprise to most, but author Nick Hornby isn't so into
e-books. After walking into a British Borders book store to find the
£399 ($790) Iliad for sale next to some £4 paperbacks, he poo-poo'd the platform in a guest column on the Penguin Blog. So here we have a book author blogging on a book publisher's site about the downfalls of a technology that could supplant his industry. To be fair, he does make some salient points about the unlikelihood that e-books will replace print in the same way iPods have undermined CD sales. He points out that people, on average, only buy seven books a year compared to the number of CDs they used to buy. In addition, book readers
just like books and tend to be suspicious of new technology. Finally, he goes back to the iPod: the popularity of portable entertainment devices, what with their TV shows, games, movies, and other fancy schmancy doohickeys will continue to make the notion of reading a book -- even in electronic format -- not so tempting.
[Via
Shiny Shiny]
posted July 5th 2008 10:10PM
If e-book technology was better I'd buy into it
Is the excerpt shone in the screenshot from the Her Majesty's Dragon series? Just curious.
The iLiad is a loser so I don't blame the author for not feeling compelled. But the Sony PRS-505 (latest gen Sony Reader) has reflectance as good as a paper back. But economically still a loser. There won't be mass appeal until the silly things can do color and cost $100 USD.
Whats more is that ebook is more feature rich comparing to paper books. It is like Web page .. you can have cross-links, indices, references any way you want. Great for techniical texts. You can highlight word and look it up in dictionary.
eInk is expensive ? Come on ... Sony Reader is $280-300 ... it is like crappy digital camera :) And the device is for life. Yes you have to charge it, but one charge lasts for 5000-10000 pages.
Lots of classic books are free and you dont even need to go to the library.
And did I mention that it opens whole thing about ebook piracy ? :) Same as for movies and songs. I know there are honest people, but you can find literally THOUSANDs of books on torrent trackers :)
Ebooks will not take off until there is essentially one standard ebook format across the industry or until the top three ebook format companies agree to read each other's formats.
Ebooks will also not take off until there are do-it-all devices with large screens (about like the iPhone at a minimum) on which you can read your ebook. My Treo 680, for example has such a small screen that I can read the entire block of text on the screen in an ebook in 5-10 seconds, depending on how focused I am. That is a whole lot of page flips to get through a book.
Battery life must also improve for the do-it-all devices with the screen running.
If you want to know why digital videos will fail the way they're going, then look no futher than ebooks. The entire industry managed to tear itself apart with proprietary file formats, proprietary readers, poor support for standards, expensive devices, DRM, devices tied to service, device activation, expensive titles and poor choice. Frankly you'd have to be stupid to buy a dedicated reader when they cost so much and tie you into an expensive service.
Now, if the major players were to swallow their pride and adopt a single file format, allowing consumers to buy their books from multiple sources and play them on a device of their choosing... then it might take off. For now, it's just languishing. The weird thing is everyone is so paranoid about book piracy when it already happens right now. It's very, very, very easy to find any book in .rtf, .pdf, .txt, .html format. Piracy already exists so they may as well acknowledge that DRM has failed and throw it away entirely. The potential for the market would be huge assuming they have the vision to see past their petty format wars and paranoia.
The mobi format is as widely adopted by ebook readers as mp3 is adopted by media players. Every reader that I'm aware of uses it as the default format. Kindle renames the file extension as .azw but it's the same thing.
The price has to come down, but I really think e-book readers, in some form, will be commonplace in a few years. If (big if) someone comes up with a way to make something slightly larger than iPhone sized and touchscreen LCDs/LEDs.. whatever become as easy on the eyes as e-paper (maybe a colour e-paper with a way to toggle a backlight on and off)– because I want one device that can do colour – then that's it.
People only buy so many books, but what about textbooks, newspapers, magazines, maps. The iPhone, and phones like it, are almost there, but they need to be just slightly larger and have a screen that's easy on the eyes. Then you've got internet connectivity, gps, movies, music, books, games, phone...
If you get a secure way to get my wallet and keys on there and that's all you'd ever need to carry.
Color e-ink is not even close to doable. People complain about the prize of ebook readers but the reason is the cost of making e-ink screens. That price won't start coming down for many more years (it's currently produced by a few companies -- the same screen is made for the Sony and Amazon). The technology for color e-ink is still in the early stages in the lab. We won't see that for another 10-15 years.
Suggesting LCD ebook readers is just a joke and shows your ignorance of the technology. They already tried LCD ebook readers and they hurt peoples eyes, we've moved on from that. They failed.
Bottom line:
An average song is 4 minutes long.
An average book is at least an hour of reading, probably much more.
I have a use for a device that lets me store 1,000 songs because I can listen to a song in a short period of time. Music requires little commitment from the person using it.
I have little use for a device that lets me store 1,000 novels because I cannot read a novel in a short period of time. Novels require a time commitment from the person using them.
I can think of no situation where I'll be on the bus, taking a walk, or standing in a line and suddenly feel the need to dig out a particular novel from my personal library and read it right there, on the spot.
I won't read a book while exercising. I won't read a book while having dinner with a girlfriend. I won't read a book while doing chores. I won't read a book while *reading another book!*
I DO listen to music during these activities.
On top of all this, the average reader LIKES the feel of a book, and cannot justify the cost of a Kindle or other e-Reader. With e-Books, in the end, all you have is a collection of 1s and 0s. With real books, you have an actual book that can be lent to friends and family, donated to libraries and schools, collected and read again years later, and which looks pretty nice in your bookcase.
When I sold books, I noted that a lot of people buy books as DECOR. They buy the book that Oprah is reading as part of her "book club" and they NEVER read it. Instead, it's placed on coffee tables or nightstands or desks so that other people *think* the buyer is reading it. They'll get their whole synopsis from Oprah, and never crack the book open. To people like this, the book is a status symbol. It's a way to "prove" they're not shallow. For these people, an e-Book is USELESS.
For real readers, though, there's a *relationship* with reading. We enjoy the whole experience, and it just feels inferior when you downgrade from real pages to a single flat screen. It feels like a betrayal for a dedicated reader.
I really doubt these devices will take hold easily. They might be great for textbooks in schools (but they'll still charge you an arm and a leg for them) and they might be handy for casual reading, but I would never consider replacing my dead-tree library with a Kindle.
Oh, a few more points...
* If someone steals my book on the bus, that's $5 to $25 worth lost.
* If someone steals my Kindle on the bus, that's several hundred dollars plus every eBook in my Kindle library lost.
* With an MP3 player, I can put my own CDs on it, so I'll have all my old favorites (even those out of print) without having to re-purchase them.
* With an electronic book, I cannot put my paper books on it without a lot of work, or re-purchasing them. I'll never get my out-of-print favorites.
* I can find hardcover books for sale under a dollar from various sources, including used bookstores.
* I will never find these exact same books for less than the MSRP in electronic format. Nobody will sell "used" eBooks.
* If I look hard enough, I can find any paper book ever printed even if it has been out of print for a hundred years.
* No matter how hard I look, I will NEVER find most out-of-print books in an electronic format.
Finally, the potential for eBooks to be censored, edited, re-written, and continually altered is not a pleasant prospect, but a paper book is a solid, real, permanent record of the original book's content.
Most of your arguments can be repeated for media players. Cost of media player vs. a cd or dvd, risk of losing the expensive product, ability find used cds/dvds for pennies, blah blah blah. Same arguments, different technology. We've heard this all before.
ZeroCorpse
"If someone steals my Kindle on the bus, that's several hundred dollars plus every eBook in my Kindle library lost."
You will need a new Kindle (just as you would need a new iPod if stolen) but you still have access to all of the books you bought from Amazon. They are tied to your account and you can just download them again.
"With an electronic book, I cannot put my paper books on it without a lot of work, or re-purchasing them."
You don't have to get rid of your paper books. Ebooks are just another way to read books.
BTW - you can add any books that you have in electronic form such as txt, doc, html, etc. to your ebook reader.
"I will never find these exact same books for less than the MSRP in electronic format"
In most cases, ebooks are 30%-50% of the price of paper editions (publishers vary). Older books are often in the $1-3 range.
"No matter how hard I look, I will NEVER find most out-of-print books in an electronic format."
There are thousands of out-of-print books available on Gutenberg and other sites. In most cases for free.
I absolutely do read while working out. It makes the time on the elliptical machine go much faster and my Kindle is much more convenient than a paper book in that context.
I don't carry 1000 books on my Kindle but I do carry 10 - 20 books at a time. There is the book I am reading at the gym and lunch, there are the reference documents I read at work. There is the humor book I read when I just need to kill a few minutes. There is the daily news that I read over breakfast. There are a couple of big novels that I read when I am travelling. There is the trashy novel that I sometimes read whose cover I don't want to flash around in public. There are the Shakespeare plays that I keep thinking I will read and feel better for having around. There is my task list. There is the copy of my travel itinerary and the map and directions to the hotel.
I do not expect ebooks to replace paper books. This is not a competition where you need to take a stand with one side or the other. As ebook reader prices come down, there will be a gradual move from niche into a broader market, but it will be a gradual process and there will always be a market for physical books.
NO, no, no. Physical books aren't wrapped in DRM, which means I can give them away or lend them to others when I'm done reading. I can also borrow a real book from my excellent local library for free.
"NO, no, no. Physical DVDs aren't wrapped in DRM, which means I can give them away or lend them to others when I'm done watching. I can also borrow a real DVD from my excellent local library for free."
I'll agree with you RE: DRM. But then, I don't buy anything with DRM unless I can make a backup of that item in a non-DRM format.
That being said, I'm a big believe in the rights of users to transpose format of anything they own. A paper book's format is physical in nature, and thus, is less easy to transpose into another format than any DRM'd item out there. If that's not locking you in, I don't know what is.
I -used to- believe that I'd never give up a paper book.
I was given a punk-ass Franklin ebook reader my mother bought in bargain bin for $20 while visiting the states. It sucked - BUT - after harvesting Project Gutenberg, and the odd other place, I realized just how convenient it was.
I'm not ready to pay $300+ for a book reader yet, though. I have however, fallen in love with the cheap Ebookwise (dot com) device, formerly sold by RCA.
The Ebookwise is $150 with memory enough (65mb Smarmedia card, to show you how technology age) for 100+ books. It has an adjustable backlight (from perfect for zero lights to use-it-as-an-emergency flashlight brightness) and is readable in all light. Sure, I have to angle it in the bright sun, but it's never bothered me. The rechargeable batteries last between 15+ hours and take less than an hour to recharge to 80% of that or so. The $20 software they sell to convert from other formats (html, doc, rtf, txt, rb, etc) is great. I have to fiddle now and then - but as there is software to convert from every other format out there to something this will handle, I don't worry about it. You also, if memory serves, can just upload a book to their site and have it converted for you, though I've never bothered, so this may have changed.
Do I still read paper books? Yes.
Why? I can't find them in a convertable form for this, or they are visual heavy.
99% of my paperbacks, though, are read on here. And I tell you, being able to take this around with me, always having a book handy, is a godsend for someone who goes through a pocket book every couple days. Airplane trips and camping - it is awesome.
And for those paranoid about reading on a screen - with the adjustable contrast, there is not an issue of it being hard on the eyes. It's NOT like reading a PDA screen or something.
I'd not spend $300 on an ebook reader yet either. Especially without a backlight. I did spend $120 (Sale) on the ebookwise twice (I dropped it in the tub once..grr....and had to replace the first after 3 years with it). It still works, though, the battery just won't hold a charge, so I have to use it plugged in. It'll find a home in my future classroom, though, filled with classics and kids books though.
My only complaint - being LCD tech, the contrast changes in the heat of direct sun, so you may have to pump up the contrast on the screen to compensate. Easy, but does shorten battery life slightly.
So for those, "I'd never give up a book" folks, suck it up and try some of the alternatives. The SCREEN is not an issue for eye comfort - though, I agree, the price is.
Think of it this way for you avid readers:
1) Will you read at least 20 of the books on Project Gutenburg (free)? Well, since they'd cost you $7.50 each (or so), bingo, you win.
2) Do you read a lot on the go - as in carrying a backup pocket book is a pain in the ass - bingo you win. I love being able to switch between books on the fly.
3) Do you use usenet. Undernet specifically. You win! But I won't say more.
I'm still not happy with the pricing of ebooks, in general. Old books are often very well priced - just a few dollars. BUT...best sellers, and newish books are often priced the same as the paper-version (soft or hard cover), which is obscene. But hey, I don't let that bother me.
So you naysayers who've never even tried a REAL ebookreader, stop bitching, and go talk about something you have experience with. Personally, I recommend not switching from a record player to CD/anything newer. You'll keep the strength of having something not portable, and that has that old-fashioned sound.
I buy numerous books every year. I generally visit the bookstore at least once a month and buy 6-8 books at a time. I absolutely love books. My house is overflowing with them. You'll find them on most surfaces in my home, in my bed, and on overflowing bookshelves. Some of them are as stiff and new as they were when I first bought them, others worn and creased from where I've read them over and over. The ones that I truly love feel like comfortable old friends.
When I'm looking through my collection to find something to read, and my hand passes over them, each recalling a memory of it's contents, it brings me so much happiness. I love loaning my books to people. Love sharing my favorite stories with someone else. Handing them a book, and knowing that they take that same journey with it that I took.
I'm sure digital books are lovely, but I'm really just not interested in purchasing them in lieu of an actual book. I don't want my books in a tiny portable location. I want to touch them, remember them, and share them with others. Each one has a history to me. When I first read them, and how that is tied to my life. I would just feel cheap reducing them to so many bytes.
However, I do know that my love affair of books is not always shared by the iPod generation, so this may work for others where it doesn't work for me.
I love vinyl records and still buy them. That doesn't mean I don't also own a portable media player. You don't have to choose between books and ebooks. You can have both.
Clearly most readers don't just "love books", otherwise everyone would buy hardcovers and not the cheap paperbacks that start falling apart after 2 or 3 people go through them. What will likely happen in the future is people will still have hardcover copies of the "classics" and "favorites", but when they just want something to read from the bestseller list, or some pulp genre fodder, they'll get an ebook.
Canadian stats:
# Canadians: ~40 million
# items (includes books, cds, etc, though majority are books) signed out of libraries (pariticipating) in Canada in 1999: ~403 million.
# books purchased in Canada (does not include those imported from US):8
So, if we scale things up to the US proportions (400 million people), you may just have 4 BILLION books taken out of libraries each year (I'm not bothering to look for US stats). Ad the 21 billion (400 million x 7 books/person) other books purchased in the states each year, and you've gotta admit, a hell of a lot of books are still being read, regardless of what Steve Jobs says.
Canadians, mind you, do read more books per year than those in the US, ~17/ year is average, and I'm not sure what it is in the US.
Reading is positively correlated here, with education level and, surprisingly, with time spent on the internet.
there must be a typo in your comments. Canadians sign out 400 million items a year, yet libraries purchase only 8 books?
The Sony reader I played around with was almost unusably slow. Just browsing around in its user guide was an exercise in patience. Going forward or back one page took between 3-5s, while skimming the page itself took perhaps 10s. Not a good ratio. In all fairness, I'm not sure how much of that slowness was the e-ink vs the slow processor (in my opinion more the latter), but the device is way too slow for my personal use. And I saw no means of annotation. FYI it takes me about 1/4s to turn a paper page, unless they're stuck together. And as you said, I then get to read two pages before having to turn again. Now, for the right price I could overlook these issues, because there ARE advantages as well, but we're not even in the ballpark yet.
I absolutely love Hornby (my all-time favorite writer), but in reading all the comments here, I'm actually MORE curious about getting an e-reader like the Kindle. A must for me is the content. My collection of books take up a LOT of space and an e-reader would solve that issue. However, much like the early days of DVD, I worry that the stuff I want isn't going to show up in an e-book format.
Of course, doing a search on Amazon, I just found all of Hornby's stuff that I've read...including a book that came out in February that I wasn't even aware of.
I'm so very, very tempted now. Sell off all my old books on Half.com and use the proceeds to buy a Kindle.
>I worry that the stuff I want isn't going to show up in an e-book format.
Amazon has cut deals with all of the major publishers. The vast majority of new books will be available on the Kindle and the publishers are going to work on their older works. That is the major reason that I decided to buy one this week -- the content is going to grow every week because Amazon has done the work to put the infrastructure in place and they have the leverage with publishers to make things happen. Imagine if Amazon simply stated that they wouldn't distribute a book if a Kindle version wasn't available? They could if they wanted to...they have the sort of leverage that Walmart has with their vendors.
For casual reading, eBooks will always fail. I would posit that anyone who hails the eBook as the future, doesn't actually read books.
I love my Kindle. Kindle FTW.
I use a Cybook ebook reader to follow my rss feeds. I can't do without it...just love it...
7 books a year? Holy shit, I buy like 30 books a year. Not including books for school.
It doesn't have to be either or. I treasure both electronic books and physical ones. I teach and do original research and publish so I buy lots of books--over 100 per year probably. I also read for leisure and was literally being move out by books and articles. Then I started reading books on my axim--eye strain! and then bought a cybook. I use it for my leisure reading and for the classics that I can find for free on project gutenberg and feedbooks. I also assign the free versions to my classes.
We are in a period of transition and are lucky to have experiences of both.
The problem is not with the device, though of course it would help if
prices dropped to the 100-200 range instead of 200-300 (where most
readers are).
The problem is in the cost of the books. Even with the big push by
Amazon, if you go past the most common titles, prices jump to par with
the print edition. That just doen't fly. Publishers must pass on the media and distribution cost savings if they ever hope for this to catch on with the general public.
A secondary problem is the in/limited ability to browse a book before
buying. Amazons 'look inside' is an attempt but really doesn't work
the way most people check out a books, especially text books.
"So here we have a book author blogging on a book publisher's site about the downfalls of a technology that could supplant his industry."
Really? So book authors only have interests in printed media, and they are doomed when e-readers take over from print? Who writes all those e-books then, I wonder?
Think, McFly. Think.
Inexpensive (less than US$150) reader and effortless delivery of material (public libraries would be wise to jump on this asap) equals win for the ebook. Wireless connectivity with hyperlinking creates something even better. This won't even be a discussion in 10 years after academic texts have been readily consumed by students unwilling to lug around the 50lb hard copies.
For a lot of us, our book collections are a major deal. They're a symbol of who we are. The books that a person reads tells far more about them than their MySpace or Facebook ever will. It's part of their identity. Go look at a person's book collection, and you will know who they are. Dismissing arguments against ebook readers as technophobia is both naive and presumptive. I am obsessed with technology. Most of the anti-ebook reader people on this website are. A lot of us work in technology-related fields. Hell, look at the website we're at. It's a blog about cutting edge gadgetry. Calling someone a Luddite here is at best comical, at worst idiotic. But that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy anything unless there's an e- or an i- in front of the name.
Look at DVDs and MP3s, the items that are always brought up in this discussion to prove that books are going to disappear one day. Have movie theatres been killed off by the DVD? No! Has live music been killed off by MP3s? No! They've complemented their analog parent, but their analog parent is still going strong. There is no reason to think that anything else will happen with books and ebook readers.
Finally, there's the fact that you own a book when you buy it. It's yours. Excluding the right to copy, it is your physical property. Even then, you still have the right to change the format that the text in the book is presented in for your own personal use. You do not own ebooks, and you never will. DRM is never going to go away. Sorry. For those of us that like to spend money to buy things that we will own, as opposed to rent things from mega corporations, ebooks will always feel wrong in that you do not (in any loose sense of the word) own the work that you're reading. Besides, last time I checked, the mp3 market pales in comparison to the CD market, and most people don't even know what the hell DRM is, so you can't blame the failure of downloaded legal mp3s on DRM. People don't even have the strong emotional connection with CDs that they do with books, but they're still ignoring the mp3 market in favor of the CD market.
For the record, I will buy an ebook reader, but only when a) the prices come down. A lot. and b) physical books start coming with ebooks included. I'm sorry, but I am not paying $400 for a device that a limited number of books that I'm interested in reading (academic works in the sciences) will be available for.