eBooks - What's Holding You Back? 589
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?
What's holding me back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why I like books (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite part about books, it that you can put them on your bookshelf. That way people think that you're deep and intuitive because you read pretty, leather-bound books. It also creates an ambience that ebooks just can't.
A few reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Paper is easier on my eyes.
2) Paper makes it easier to rapidly flip pages.
3) Most of the e-books I have are PC based. This means that I have to keep switching windows if I am reading a technical book while I am working.
E-Books are nice because I can carry them around without all of the bulk of paper, so I usually keep a few with me if I'm working on something away from my bookshelf, but otherwise, I tend to stick with paper.
Eye strain (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is market research... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have several gripes with eBooks.
The first is that many are just PDF conversions of regular books, and you have to have a large, high-resolution screen to view everything in full detail. I want something that fits on a small screen.
Second, paper is much easier to read. If I stare at a computer screen, intently focused as I tend to be when I'm reading for absorption and retention, for the amount of time it takes to read that in a paper book, not only have I wasted more time with scrolling and futzing with controls and commands, but I also have a lot more eye strain. With a book, minor adjustments are innate motor functions, and there's no refresh rate to contend with and no strain from backlighting.
Third, books are much more durable than any eReader device will ever be able to claim to be. Stuff it in the front pocket of your bag or backpack and the eReader will have a broken screen in a few weeks. The book will simply develop some dents or curvature.
two reasons for me (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Price - non-free eBooks are way too expensive. Free eBooks are not as comprehensive in selection.
2) Device - the Sony eBook Reader looks to be the end-all, be-all of eBook readers, so I was going to look into that when it arrives in April. It would be interesting to see if the new Origami devices can handle multiple eBook formats. Although since it has a full OS on there you could just up your favorite eBook ready software.
Anyways, once these two things are fixed, I could get heavily into eBooks instead of paperback.
On a side note, I did buy the reader from eBookWise [ebookwise.com] and I like it. It is only greyscale and only reads a few formats (not including PDF or images), but it is nice for simple eBooks and Word Docs. I got this until something better comes along.
Z
Probably Not What I *Should* Say... (Score:4, Interesting)
Plucker and a Web Site... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have read Doctor Who books downloaded from BBC website in plucker format.
Three Musketeers books 1 & 2
And several others.
Currently, I have a Dell Axim, but am going to be getting a Nokia 770, mainly for the screen size, and the fact that there is already a Plucker reader. ( Or I can help make one.)
ePaper/eInk whatever you want to call it (Score:4, Interesting)
Either they can figure out a way to light a screen with natural sunlight, or they can create true electronic ink. No reflection like cheap LCD. No backlighting like expensive LCD. No light emission like LED/plasma. We need the ambient light to bounce off a primarily white surface and refract naturally into our eyeballs.
It someone hands me a tablet approximately the size of a paperback, let's say maybe 5" x 4", makes it as thin and light as possible (1" and 5 lbs would probably be the maximum allowed) and gives me a way to load any kind of rich-text format onto it, I will buy one...I'll buy ten...I will throw piles of money at them, and spent the next few weeks of my life copying every single digital document I have onto whatever memory card the device uses.
I have been trying to replace the book in my life for about ten years. I tried Palm (to small, too dim)...I tried PocketPC (too small, too bright)...I tried laptops...(to huge, too bright) I tried Tablet PCs...(ugh, what a turd that design is).
My only hope is that new portable reader Sony has been working on that they are releasing in Japan. If Lik-Sung offers one, I'll probably buy it. Of course, I may have to wait for someone to crack whatever stupid eBook format it uses to allow me to load my own content.
Or maybe Apple will create a real iBook and do for literature what they did for music. Pleeeeeeeeeease?
-JoeShmoe
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wrong question (Score:3, Interesting)
The right question is, for those people who are using ebook technology, why are you doing it? If someone wants to get a book, they can find it anywhere in real book format. It's well understood, easy to use, it's something most have us have been comfortable with since the age of 6-7.
I'm guessing the people who use ebooks do so because
- They want to try out the new format
- They need highly portable references which happen to be published in ebook formats and perhaps other portable devices like a laptop are too clunky or unavailable.
- They want to save shelf space? This doesn't seem very valid as one would imagine a small percentage of books are published as ebooks and most non reference books are read once materials anyway so you either don't need to keep them or do because you like have a shelf full of books.
- Improved searchability of references? This is a neat aspect, BUT an electronic version of a "BOOK" format is not an optimal electronic reference. For example, most knowledge webs link between related information while a book is far more linear/narrative.
Any other reasons? Usability perks? If you're sitting at an airport with wireless, can you just buy and download a book instantly right from your reader?two things (Score:3, Interesting)
but fur everything else... a document distribution and management framework combined with a flash based tablet that runs on AA batteries and linux, 7 inch screen. call it the NOTWEN (newton backwards). it needs wireless, bluetooth, bittorret, email, pdf reader, and mp3/ogg player, boot from SD and storage on a USB flashdrive. set up an effective gui for subscribing to online document libraries and getting updates to docuements delivered automaiticaly (RSS/bittorrent??). users will be able to set up corporate and personal document libraries and the device will mesh them together to help them manage access to written documents. its a PDA and a document organizer. my boss will get one and he wil leave it on his desk for weeks useing it as a digital picture frame, then he will pull it from the cradle and plug in his usb flash drive and read docs while riding to some meeting or use it to listen to podcasts.
Three out of four (Score:1, Interesting)
2) There's no way I could stand reading a book from any kind of computer screen.
3) DRM can eat my ass.
Re:Straightforward answer (Score:4, Interesting)
"All my Tor titles with electronic versions are going to appear as Baen Webscriptions [http://www.webscription.net/%5D [webscription.net]. This is due in no small measure to Geoffrey Kidd, who did the scanning and proofing on a couple and was the conduit to Baen Books on all. Thank you, Geoffrey.
It's still up in the air as to whether electronic versions of all Tor titles are going to go up as Webscriptions. The CFO of Tor's parent company appeared to have killed the deal because Jim Baen puts books up without encryption (which I've been told to call DRM, a stupid acronym for a stupid concept). Yes, that's true: Baen Webscriptions can be read on any browser than can get you to the site. It apparently doesn't compute in an accountant's mind that ease of using Jim's system might have something to do with Jim's electronic income being well into six figures and everybody else's electronic income being squat. Now, tentatively, the deal is back on.
Given that we live in a world where people blow up places of worship in the name of religion, I guess this degree of narrowness shouldn't surprise me. I think it's all right for me to be sad, though.
By the way, my books are going up because I asked Tom Doherty, not the CFO. Tom is a very smart man."
Re:Eye strain? Cholesteric display! (Score:2, Interesting)
Missing the point (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Made the first paper book that you bought from them cost $300 or so (to cover the cost of the 'reader' you know).
2. Made sure that they fingerprinted each purchaser of each paper book (DRM) and stamped the fingerprint on the purchaser's copy of the book so that later on the lawyers could come and find out if the person with the book was the 'legal' owner.
3. Made sure that each paper book cost at least as much as their ebook offerings, i.e. the hardback price.
4. Made sure to print the book license at the front of each book with a requirement that each time you opened the book you HAD to look at it.
5. Forbid the book's purchaser from lending the book out to a friend.
6. Forbid the book's purchaser from selling the book to a used bookstore.
7. Forbid the purchase of used books, obviously with lawyers inspecting each used bookstore.
8. Probably would forbid libraries from purchasing paper books
9. Made sure that the lawyers sued occasional violators as though they were murderers.
Perhaps after the publisher had done all this and quickly gone out of business the reaminder of the industry would get a clue about what customers want, rather than what the publishers want...
Screen Quality (Score:1, Interesting)
Some people and institutions are major users of books (public libraries, universities, dedicated readers) and for them, e-books are a big win.
Advantages of e-books for the serious user:
The main disadvantages of e-books are currently display quality (at the moment, quite poor), power technology (battery life is still way too low!), and social acceptance issues (restrictive notions like "copyrights", DRMs, and nostalgia for paper books get in the way to moving ahead).
There will soon be no reason, in principle, why we can't give everyone in the world an e-book reader, and the entire Library of Congress on a shelf in their home. The reasons we won't decide to do it will be increasing social and political, not technological.
--
AC
Re:Straightforward answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Jim Baen ran the SF line at Tor before he started his own company. Publishing is a small world; SF publishing even more so.
Re:e-books redux... still not going to happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised this hasn't come up more often already.
On-screen reading speeds simply aren't comparable to reading off paper, for anyone, no matter how much of a geek. (Go ahead and Google for the research: books have been found to be anywhere from 1/3 to over 2x faster.)
Moreover, prolonged VDU use, particularly when focussing at the same distance constantly and not making the effort to relax the eyes and switch subject occasionally, increases eye strain. It's less strenuous to read a well-printed book in good light, and doing so doesn't reduce your rate of blinking and therefore dry your eyes out to the same extent while you're concentrating.
All in all, any form of extended electronic reading is pretty much doomed to be niche-only until display devices are far, far better than they are today. Get back to me when you've got at least 5x the resolution of a typical display screen and contrast/brightness that auto-adjust to the surroundings for optimum reading comfort. The cost, DRM, etc. are pretty much irrelevant until that point.
Re:What's holding me back? (Score:3, Interesting)
I love e-books but when I shop for my favorite books, I'll be damned if I'll pay as much as 15 BUCKS (US) for books that I already own (deadtree hardcover editions). I'd be willing to pay around 2-3 bucks...
Personally I'd love to see some kind of deal that when you buy a new book, you could pay a little more to get the download along with it. I buy a lot of paperbacks and I buy a lot of hardcovers (for those series I really enjoy) and it would be so great to pay a premium of 2-3 dollars for a download.
not much holding me back (Score:5, Interesting)
REader : Nokia 770 Absolutely AWESOME display, and right size for reading.
Content: I read non drm files. Legally and illegally. If I find a book I want that is not availabel in a non drm version I either torrent for a cracked copy or get it in audiobook version from audible and crack that DRM myself. (Yes it is easy to crack audible drm.)
Why do I do it this way? If I have to pay $300+ for a reader then I might as well get a reader that can do other things. my Nokia 770 does all that. Books? DRM is what I can not stand. I was burned big time with DRM on the franklin ebook reader as the content is locked to the reader and if you send your unit in for repair and they give you a refurb ALL your content has to be bought again.
So I made the decision to simply break the law. it works great.
Parallels to iPod (Score:4, Interesting)
What's great about the iPod? It lets me listen to a large personal collection of music and is very small. The equivalent of my iPod in previous technology would be a portable CD player plus 200 CDs. So the iPod is smaller, longer lasting, and drastically lighter. Do eBooks have any similar advantage over paper books?
What eBooks do share with the iPod are the drawbacks:
One area where eBooks might have potential is as a replacement for magazines. If the eBook were cheap and durable, then having the equivalent of twenty magazines in my backpack would provide convenient entertainment. And magazines are already filled with advertisements, so the downloads should be cheap and DRM-free. For this purpose, the ideal eBook format might be 8 by 10 inches, 1/8" thick, 8 ounces, and durable.
AlpineR
I like books (Score:3, Interesting)
Books smell like books.
Books can give you paper cuts.
Books can be borrowed and shared.
Books can be marked up (albeit with poor handwriting recognition
Books can be thrown across the room.
Books can be burned.
Re:What's holding me back? (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile (see my sig), there are hundreds of free out there on the web, many of them of very high quality. (I'm not talking about Project Gutenberg, I'm talking about books whose authors have intentionally set them free.) You can read them off the screen, or you can print them out and read them from hardcopies, or, in many cases, you can buy bound copies at a reasonable price. They're in open, DRM-less formats like PDF and HTML. You can e-mail a friend about them, and the friend can check them out and read them for free. Many of them are copylefted, so they're part of a growing digital commons that allows people to build on each other's work.
Re:What a jerk... (Score:3, Interesting)
Q? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll never have to worry about the condition of my books. It will never require a truck to move my library. I'll never worry that a fire will entirely wipe out the collection of literary treasures that I have amassed over decades, and letting go of most of my books will remind me that people and their ideas are more important than the objects that record them. There are a long list of things that motivate me to switch.
Do I treasure books? Yes, I do. Are there some books that I will keep? Yes, there is a small number of books that I revisit frequently and have special significance in my life. In a way, moving most of my collection to digital will make me appreciate the books that I do have even more. Like the value of a real owl in Blade Runner.
Maybe those reasons are no good for you, but I personally have plenty.