eBooks - What's Holding You Back?

blueZ3 asks: "It seems that the readers of Slashdot are the most likely early adopters of electronic books, but from posts I've seen here, it doesn't appear that many on Slashdot are e-book fans. In the hopes of sparking a discussion, I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?"

"Here are some of my guesses as to why people haven't taken up e-Books:

1. Form factor: They just prefer the feel and 'interface' of a paper book.

2. Lack of a compelling device (or perhaps lack of convergence): They don't own a reader (other than a PC or notebook) and can't take them with them.

3. Lack of content: Books they are interested in aren't available in electronic format

4. Distribution model: They don't like the DRM scheme their favorite publisher offers, or are otherwise unhappy with current offerings.

Maybe lively discussion from a prospective set of customers might spur the creator of the next generation of electronic book devices. Too bad the name 'iBook' is already taken."

What reason do you have for not taking up e-Books? Are they listed above or are there other reasons that you would like to add?

Straightforward answer

[AKAImBatman]

I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?

Lack of content and overreaching DRM. The selection of devices doesn't help either.

I'm a big fan of Baen's [baen.com] online books. They're quick to purchase, and simple to download to a Palm Pilot. And should you need to file again, you can easily redownload it from your "personal library" feature on Baen's site. Not to mention that they give away free books [baen.com] to get you hooked on new series.

Downloading to my Sony Clie was the perfect way to read eBooks, too. The backlight was pure white, the fonts were crisp, and the scroll-wheel on the side meant that I could hold the device in a pistol-grip in my palm rather than balancing it between my thumb and finger-tips so that I can thumb the up/down buttons on the front. (Sony screwed this up in later models, BTW. They replace the up/down buttons with a wheel, and eliminate the wheel on the side.)

The Clie wasn't so good for technical books (the layout is screwed), but for fiction it was great! I could stand on the bus and read without the difficulties of trying to turn the page on a paperback with one hand. Plus, the Clie fit in my pocket much easier than a paperback, and wouldn't lose its place when I needed to stash it away quick so that I don't miss my stop.

The only real problem I had was that I ran out of content. Baen has some great books, but they're no Simon & Schuster. I looked into other sites, but it was just too much pain and anguish for me to want to bother with. Most sites had a poor selection (though I have noted that selection has been improving lately), limited you to DRM formats (most of which don't work on a Palm Pilot), overcharged for their titles, and just generally hassled the consumer as if he was a theif who should feel honored to have limited access to stuff he paid for.

Thanks, but no thanks.

More publishers should pay attention to Jim Baen. Not only does he release titles you buy in open formats; not only does he give away free books [baen.com]; but he bundles CDs with many hardcover books that are chock-full of eBooks (such as the entire Honor Harrington series). In addition, the license on the CDs state that you can make copies and give them away [thefifthimperium.com] to friends and family. No restrictions, as long as you're not making a profit.

Now THAT, is how you grow a business. Not by treating the customers like criminals, but by treating them like valued friends. =)

e-books redux... still not going to happen.

[yagu]

e-books, what's holding me back?

• price (seems only fair the prices should be competitive à la less expensive than the same back in hardback (they're NOT!)).
• compatibility - until and unless I know I can move my book around to different readers/computers to read without being fingered a criminal and with minimal fuss, I'm not interested.
• convenience - related to previous comment - If I have to jump through a bunch of DRM hoops to stay clean, I don't have the energy to do so (though if this does take off I cringe at the number of hours I'm going to spend "supporting" my non-technical friends and family).
• quality - I still haven't seen a device or reader that approaches the quality of print (even the e-ink doesn't), nor have I found something that comes close the the ambience and ergonomics of a book.... heck none of the e-readers even come close to smelling like a book.
• portability - I don't know the state-of-the-art for things like printing portions of an e-book, but I want it to be easy, and again, I want it to be unencumbered.
• selection - I don't want to make my decision on e-book reading based on what's available and what I have to do to get it.
• price - did I mention price?

I think there's a general misconception by the idiots making decision in their conference rooms about rolling out these products. They clearly have misidentified their priorities as technology first, customer experience second (if that). Invariably the emphasis is wrapped around protecting content to the detriment of any pleasure and easy-to-use experience for customers. As long as the e-book industry continues down this path (and all other future e-media) the long term impact is negative for the content providers. It only takes one or two disasters (reader stops working, customer can't get the "rights" transferred to new reader, etc.) for customers to pretty much wash their hands of the experience.

Other than that, it's all good.

I know this list closely matches the article's prediction... but it bears repeating... (I actually wrote up my list before going to the "read more", unaware the read more had the list.)

couple of more reasons...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. it's just easier to flip through a book and jump around then it is with an ebook.

2. if i'm printing out the ebook i'd just adding to the time/cost and end up with a book that's 8 1/2" by 11" (larger than a regular book and only printed on one side), that just defeats the purpose.

3. i also like to get away from a computer. i'm already on a computer at least 10 hours a day with work and everything, reading a book is a nice way to get away from that

4. cant fold over pages, highlight for easy retrieval (i'm sure there's similiar tasks in an ebook - but with the physical book it logs better in my memory - i would see myself getting lost if having multiple ebooks on the same topic)

5. Screen dimensions - books are portrait, monitors are landscape - when i open up a PDF of a book it's always cut off and its actually really aggrivating :)

Personally whenever I get a PDF the first thing I do is print it out (at work so it's their dime to print :) - I just don't like viewing things of this nature on the computer screen.

Incompatibility

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I've got a very nice e-book reader on my PDA, actually potentially three of them, but two are so crippled as to be esentially useless.

1. It's a WinCE PDA, so of course it's a surprise that Microsoft Reader is one of those rare "Microsoft did it right" applications. Unfortuneately, nice as the UI is, they fscked it up with their DRM'd .LIT format- it's damned hard to find free or even cheap e-books in that format (I personally see no reason why any e-book should cost more than the paperback equivalent- and preferably a lot less).

2. I also have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed- unfortuneately the version I have has no "reformat to fit screen" option, and most PDFs are designed to be read or printed to 8.5x11 paper- not exactly a format readable when zoomed down to fit on a 240x320 screen. I'm stuck with either side scrolling (not something you want to do with an e-book) or trying to read 4x4 pixel characters on the screen (also not possible, though quite entertaining seeing what happens to certain fonts when shrunk to that size).

3. I also of course have Pocket IE installed- but that's the same problem as Adobe Acrobat, minus the zoom feature. Good for reading smartly designed HTML 1.0 files that don't have any tags more complex than paragraph and line break, horrible for anything else.

Worse yet, the only .txt reader I've got is Pocket Word and Pocket Notepad, neither of which designed for anything close to the task and both have horrible page scrolling controls that have a tendency to change the text.

So that's my list- not horribly useful, though I do carry around the standard set of Microsoft Rights-Free books.

Re:Straightforward answer

[Daniel_Staal]

Take a look at Fictionwise [fictionwise.com]. They have a very good selection, much of which (though not all) is avalible in multiple DRM-free formats. They also let you redownload files if you lose them for any reason. (Though if you bought a 'secure' file you can't change DRM schemes on a file. Other files you can switch formats with impunity.)

I make a point never to buy anything that's got DRM from them, but I still am able to get loads of books and stories from them.

At the moment they've got the Nebula award nominees for free...

I do most of my reading on my Clie at this point, with books from Fictionwise and Baen. (And some from the Gutenburg project.)

Re:Straightforward answer

[KDan]

FYI, for the "precarious balancing between thumb and forefinger" problem, I've found that eReader (eReader.com) allows you to have the PDA display the text upside down, which means you can resume the pistol grip and use the thumb on the buttons which are now at the subjective top of the PDA.

Daniel

E-Book readers

[WindBourne]

Last year, I bought an e-book reader for my ex-wife. She is an avid reader. I thought that I saw that it could be made to work with Linux easily. What a joke that was. It was wasted money. Now, I tell ppl to not buy a dedicated reader until they sort out the issues over DRM and clients. Sadly, That has cost that company about 25 sales, with more to come.

Re:e-books redux... still not going to happen.

[musicon]

I still haven't seen a device or reader that approaches the quality of print

In general, I'm in agreement with all of the points made in your post. However, from actually having held it in my hand, I can tell you that the screen on the Nokia 770 is certainly "print quality". Even bringing it very close to my it's difficult to see individual pixels on fonts.

With a slightly larger screen, the right reading software, and content, I could see using it long-term to replace my existing 1000+ book library.

Rocket eBook

[DavidLeblond]

I use to have the Rocket eBook many moons ago. It was actually excellent to read at night or in dim lighting... no need for a booklight!

- However, you couldn't read outside because of the glare.
- You couldn't read in the bath or on the beach because... well, the thing was friggin $300.
- You couldn't get "used" books on it for cheaper.
- Books cost about as much for it as they did hardback, which is expensive.
- I dropped it once and had to pay $75 to get the screen replaced. I drop a book and its fine.
- Not all books were available for it (when they actually made books for it that is)

I don't see eBooks replacing books any time soon.

Re:Straightforward answer

[Robotech_Master]

Interestingly enough, more publishers are starting to pay attention to Baen.

Or at least Tor Books is, as they're going to start publishing ebooks through Webscriptions [terrania.us] right along with Baen. Including the ebook that I reviewed for Slashdot a couple of years back, A Fire Upon the Deep [slashdot.org]. There's a great quote from Tor's senior editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, about why they came to this decision:

We've tested a lot of e-book waters, including various cockamamie schemes involving overpriced e-books laden with DRM.

Oddly enough, a lot of those "books" didn't even sell enough copies to pay for their file-conversion costs. Meanwhile, it hasn't escaped our notice that Jim Baen has been doing something that works, that people like, and that makes money. I'm delighted to be doing this pilot program; I think Jim has been clueful on this issue for a long time, while almost everyone else in publishing has been staggering around on stage hitting one another over the head with inflated pig bladders.

Funny thing, I was looking back over that review I wrote, right before I discovered this article. (Too bad I didn't notice this article earlier so I could have gotten this post listed earlier without having to piggy-back on a high-ranked one, but oh well. :) In that review, referring to eReader/Palm Digital Media's DRM'd version, I wrote (emphasis added for this quotation):

It would have been nice to have A Fire Upon the Deep in open HTML like Baen's e-books, but it is understandable that Dr. Vinge (or his publisher) might have preferred for the book to be digitally protected. Since that is unlikely to change anytime soon, there is little point to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; as digitally-protected e-book formats go, the PDM format is actually quite decent.

And two years later, here it is changing, and A Fire Upon the Deep is going to be one of the Tor titles coming out in Webscriptions. Guess I'll be buying a third e-copy of the book after all--but that one should be the last one I ever need to purchase.

It's quite exciting that Tor, who publishes 300 new titles yearly as opposed to Bean's 50 or so, and across a broader spectrum of SF than Baen's military/political focus, is taking this step. Maybe more will follow suit. We can only hope.

Re:Straightforward answer

[superpenguin]

Amen, amen, and amen. All the other publishers should take a cue from Baen Books.

The vast majority of my leisure reading is SF, and a hefty chunk of that is books published by Baen. There are several reasons for this.

Probably the first is simply that Baen publishes some of my favorite authors (Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Sheffield). Also, they've done a great job of republishing some of the older stuff that you literally cannot find anywhere (James Schmitz) and more recent out-of-print things (Timothy Zahn's "Blackcollar" and "Cobra" series). Another thing that Baen does that I don't see a lot of publishers doing is printing a lot of omnibus editions. Sure, you'll get it for really popular series from other publishers, like HHGttG, but Baen does it a lot more. If I can get an entire series in one book (Zahn's "Cobra Trilogy"), or a longer series in just a few books instead of half a bookshelf's worth (Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series), I'm happier.

As far as eBooks go, you can't beat Baen's approach. No DRM. At all. You can download any of the eBooks that you've purchased as many times as you want in a couple of formats, including HTML, so you can pretty much read it on any device you want. And of course, the free library is a nice incentive. I've purchased probably 10 eBooks from Baen over the past 5 years, but I've downloaded scads of things from their free library and gotten moderately hooked on a number of different authors. And, amazingly enough, I have then gone on to purchase books by those authors. It's not rocket science. If I can check out an author or series for free, I am likely to read more of their stuff if I like it, and if I don't, I won't be mad that I spent money on it.

One other thing that Baen does right is they actually sell their eBooks for less than the dead-tree versions. This is a complete no-brainer, but I have been amazed how many times I've seen eBooks listed for more than the price of a paperback. That I just don't understand at all.

Now, regarding the actual question. Why haven't I purchased a lot of eBooks from Baen (or anywhere else)?

I read eBooks on my Psion Revo, using MobiPocket Reader. It's fairly convenient (fits in a pants pocket, although it's a little longer than I like in that regard). It has a nice, crisp screen (no backlight, but it's readable in fairly low light and the screen isn't too reflective). Still, I'd prefer to read a dead tree. Aside from eyestrain issues (the Psion has a nice screen, but it can't beat paper), I'm likely not the only one who's going to be reading the book. Now, there are no DRM restrictions on the Baen books, but there are practical considerations. At this point in my life (poor grad student), if I purchase a book at full cover price (which I try not to--used book stores are a favorite haunt), it's likely going to be something that both I and my wife want to read (fortunately, while our tastes in fiction are not identical, there's a very wide overlap). She doesn't want to read an eBook. We only have one PDA between to the two of us, and it's mine and she doesn't care for reading on her laptop, which I can understand as I don't either. If I can get the book for free, I'll certainly read it on my Revo, but if I'm going to spending the money, I'll plunk down the extra $3 (seems to be about the difference in price between a paperback and eBook at Baen) to get the physical copy that anybody can read.

Now, if it's a book that I really want that my wife is going to have no interest in reading, I'll go ahead and save the $3 and get the eBook. I'm cheap. However, as the parent poster has mentioned, Baen is not the entire publishing world, so there are plenty of books that I want to read that somebody else published. And I'm not likely to purchase an eBook from a different publisher due to DRM/format restrictions or price.

So to sum up:

If a book I want is not published by Baen, I'm not buying an an eBook. If it is published by Baen, I'll download it free in a snap, but otherwise I'll only buy it as an eBook if I'm the only one who's likely to want to read it.

Re:Straightforward answer

[iggy_mon]

i like to use www.memoware.com

so many classics, so little time.

bonus: they have a nice, active community that adds books all the time to the collection. you can join and add books if you wish.

did i forget to mention that their books are free. if you go to their sister site you can get recent releases. they have regular sales, backups for your purchaese, etc.

i've read many, MANY classics that would have cost me a fortune otherwise for several years now. extra bonus: many of their books are available in multiple formats.

enjoy!

Re:Eye strain

[Z0mb1eman]

I know this might come as a shock to you... but PDAs are also computers :p

Re:FictionWise

[Daniel_Staal]

Every book that they list as 'Multiformat' is DRM free. Any book they list as 'Secure' has DRM. Simple.

The multiformat books are avalible in the DRM formats, but the DRM isn't used.

Re:A few reasons

[KlomDark]

If you are using WinXP, and your laptop has an external VGA connector on the back, plug in a second monitor to your laptop. Then go to Display Properties, Advanced, Select Display #2 and check 'Extend my Windows Desktop onto this monitor'. Voila, dual monitors with a laptop.

You can do this with Linux as well, but I don't remember the correct tweaking steps that need to be done. Someone else fill in for me here?

websites about ebooks

[bbc]

There are two websites about ebooks and the portable devices to read them on, and I am mentioning them here because they delve much deeper than Slashdot generally does: Mobile Read [mobileread.com] and Teleread [teleread.org].

Disclaimer: I am a Teleread contributor.

Re:Screens can't compare to print

[quis]

Actually, most offset lithography presses run at around 2400dpi, perhaps less for printing on the low-quality paper used in books. So your point is even more valid, and perhaps my main objection to the devices, below cost.

Been using them for decades

[Sloppy]

One of the first things that impressed me about Unix was the "man" command.

Re:Wrong question

[wanorris]

I can read a book in the bathtub. Are any of the ebook readers waterproof? None I've heard of.

I realize that this probably isn't going to win you over, but FYI, you can get
waterproof [thepocketsolution.com]
cases [thepocketsolution.com] for pocket pcs, and probably for other devices as well.