A very valid question, Lee - that I was thinking of as I learnt about the latest gizmos to e-read books! For quite some time, I have been using my PC to do so, and now that my LCD TV is also enabled, once in a while, I have laid back & have (uncomfortably) turned pages! While each person may have their own good reasons or logic, for the huge price (which will easily fetch me two/three dozen or more choicest books!), I will surely not use them for now. As the price comes down, perhaps I will reconsider... Lending libraries and public libraries - besides borrowing or exchanging books - also reduces the need for this gadget - though the amazing on-line collection of material will always remain a gold mine to me for very readable information, books, articles, pictures or news!
As with the first portable cell phone, transistor radio, "Compaq" computer the "e-book" will need time to mold, shape and find it's fit for the "feel" of the hard back, paper back and newspaper. Like the addiction and the feel of a cigarette, pipe, coffee mug or the chewing on a tooth pick, the e-book will probably go through several evolutions before it finds itself. The cost will have to be an incentive and will not move at the same price of the "physical book." If you try to compare to the MP3 it is similar, but the demand is not as prevalent and more listen to sound than read print. There will have to be a driving force to invigorate the demand, a price, an availability and a major supply force that makes it available with such ease, that it will force/entice the switch like the change from the electric typewriter to the PC.
At the college level, the swing from a $50-100.00 text will be motivation at a nominal fee.... this might be motivation. A new release of a popular medium item, like a best selling series, news magazine, daily paper.... will have to be the catalyst.... then all the pieces of the universe will fall into place and something not seen today will become the new hot item.....
I have had a Palm since 1997 - I read lots of ebooks on my Palm (now a 700p). I would never think of carrying a separate device just to read a book - if I'm going to do that I'll carry the paper kind.
Amazon and Sony better hope Apple doesn't show up, because the one tipping point feature that trumps price, killer "app-titude" or usability, i.e., ?design cool" just ain't there. No eye appeal in either e-book package. These things are both butt ugly; they scream prototype even though they aren't.
Nobody reads 170 books at one time, so who cares, capacity is a non-starter at this point. Add to which they're way out of the price range of the one market they make the most sense for, the poor beleaguered students who have to cart dozens of monster textbooks around in their groaning backpacks. If my kids could replace all their textbooks with the one device they plug into their school's server or the net, I'd jump just to save them the backstrain and myself the doctors? bills. But for now, fuggedaboudit!
Back to the drawing board kids, but don't take too long. Mark this. Apple will sit out a couple of cycles, then jump in with a sexy, far prettier face, toss in some of the cool interface doodads they do so well and we will all go oooh and aaah and cue up overnight at our nearest Apple Stores to buy the first ones.. Then they'll further solidify their market by giving them away to public schools along with Itunes textbook downloads and Steve Jobs will finally and irrevocably become William Randolph Hearst.
I've enjoyed my Sony ereader. No longer do I carry a dozen books with me on a trip. Really cuts down on the weight of carry-on luggage. The biggest bummer with the Sony is its limited to books from the Sony store which is quite a limitation. You supposedly can load adobe files but the few times I tried it I got microscopic print even at the highest magnification level. Another bummer is the print size. You get 3 sizes-small, medium and large. I bought a Sony ereader for my dad who is vision impaired but the large print was just a little to small for him to read.
But the Amazon Kindle has corrected both of those problems. The book selection is enormous and you can even get daily newspapers delivered wirelessly to the device. Also there are 6 print sizes and my dad can now read!! It will also accept plain text files. Amazon says if you have something you want converted to the native kindle character protocol they will do so for free.
Another nice feature of the Kindle is you connect to Amazon wirelessly without a computer and books are beamed to you over the airwaves. Really neat!
So now I have a Kindle and Dad has one. Does anyone want to buy 2 used Sony ereaders?
Actually Amazon says they're going to charge for the conversion service. A nominal charge they say! So you're locked into Amazon's business like Apple tried to lock you into the iTunes store. Nobody likes to be controlled, especially technophiles. When this blows up-and it surely will-eBooks will make more sense.
Eventually, change shall favor the ebook, but perhaps never for profitable mass sales, as reading books isn't popular.
I read somewhere, months ago, that the major state universities, like Ohio State University, have set out to transcribe hard copy books of their libraries into digital text. Google is also doing this. Eventually, there shall be thousands of books that can be read in digital format. To a person whom wants to take advantage of this huge treasure of information, an ebook reader would be one of the best options. Pocket PCs may be nice for reading, but can be a strain on the eyes. For grad students, college profs, etc, the ereader is more for practical purpose than the amusement that is popular with other electronics.
Somebody commented here that a person can put notations in paper books. The problem with notations in books is the inconvenience of retrieving those notes. Excerpts from digital formats can be copied, with notes, and later searched in the reader's archive.
Some of the big problems with digital books is authenticity and piracy. Perhaps somebody whom disagrees with an author, for example, could hack into a library database to change the information. The original information could be lost; Readers may not be certain if they are reading the original. And then piracy I guess could be an issue if the ebooks are duplicated and redistributed. How ebook distribution and piracy would effect the market of book sales, I suppose depends on readers of traditional books and readers whom want assurance of authentic books.
Another possible concern is the surplus of trees from forests that had been planted for the paper industry. If we don't use the paper, then what shall happen to that land? Real estate, etc? I don't know if those trees have quality for lumber, if so, then could be marketed for homes and furniture. Maybe computers with wood construction?....
It's a big market and the country is aging. I have a vision disorder and cannot read print except with great difficulty. I do all of my reading online. If these tools become a trusted resource that is one market that will suck them up. I am surprised nothing was said of it in the article. Maybe even the manufacturers are clueless. Too bad. William
God, where to start with eBooks? Yet another FRAGILE gadget that requires a charger or batteries comes down the pike.... This might be great for Louis L'amour westerns or Danielle Steele or Harlequin, but frankly, any classics I have are going to be marked up, notated, underlined, in short, Revealed!!
Oh yeah, those other books you read on your patio by the pool in the hot sun or in the tub or on vacation, I guess maybe they won't be so great on that fragile eBook either.
The weight issue is frankly a non-issue because anyone carrying that many books around (a student, an academic) probably needs to highlight them and mark them up. And what do you need that many books in a reader for anyway? You gonna plow through 3 or 4 classics or textbooks in one sitting? Just like you do with regular books, eh?
And then there's the eyestrain, just like ear fatigue with mp3s.
Sorry folks, for pure sensory enjoyment, analog eye/ear absorption is far, far better. The world doesn't have to be digital, and I hope people realize what a truly stupid concept this is from the top down. Even people who buy this thing right off the bat will tire of it soon. I guarantee it.
Such a feature can be useful, but I would not want to buy a new device. Why can't one download these things on one's usual wifi laptop and have the same features (magnifying, etc.) offered through a subscription website?
When reading,I annotate my book. I write down words I don't know, phrases I want to remember and ones that are specific to the book. I make other notes on the blank flyleafs and also note certain pages emphasizing a point.
I just don't "read" a book! I make it "mine" and easily reviewed. I also jump back and forth to other books to clarify the one I am reading.
That would all be difficult with an e-book, so far. But, it is appealing to think about all of that in an e-book.
In Britain there is a rip off culture. All such gadgets are sold at twice the price in US. $=£ has been the practice even now though the exchange rate has changed from $1.45=£1 to $2.06=£1. The cost of ebooks would have to be near $0.10 so that when you have bought 1000 or more you might break even on the cost of paperbacks.
I welcome devices that help in saving our woods worldwide and reduce the quantity of paper mills and the important pollution they cause to rivers and the environment.
But the e-book is too expensive, even for hard line ecologists.
I expect to see in the near future a version for newspapers, those piles of valuable paper that last for a single day. I hope that they will become, eventually, mandatory.
Yeah, replace all those nasty paper mills with plastics and solvents chemical factories, and all the landfilled waste pulp with heavy metals like Nickel, Cadmium, Lithium, from expired batteries, and the acids and alkali that accompany their production and decomposition. That's the way to think it through to logical conclusions, and to "see the big picture", dudes and dudettes! Your earth mama would be proud of you. ;-)
Now where did I leave my paperback recharger module?
...the e-book reader vendors figure out that an e-book reader is not a virtual paperback. They need to adopt a subscription model; instead of trying to sell e-books for their readers, they should be selling e-library cards.
I'm a geek, and I read a lot for pleasure as well as to keep up technically. For casual reading, I've been an Audible subscriber for about as long as there has been an Audible. Audio books are great while traveling, and at night after I've taken my contact lenses out.
For technical reading, I've depended on O'Reilly books for about as long as there has been an O'Reilly. The problem with technical books is that I need so many of them, and new versions come out almost yearly.
It is cheaper for me to subscribe to O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf than to buy a stack of books I might need only for a short time. I love the service, but I hate reading on my screen. I'd like to be able to take my "bookshelf" with me when I'm on a client's site. If Amazon or Sony (preferably Sony because of the quality of their reader) would team up with O'Reilly (or offered a reasonably-priced subscription service for mainstream content), they'd have my order within minutes.
I have always been an avid reader and am also a "gadget" enthusiast. I started reading ebooks several years ago on my 1st Palm - a Palm E; graduated to a Tungsten and now use a Treo 650.I have a 2Gb SD card in it and have hundreds of ebooks on, using eReader. I still have several bookcases full of old friends, but the convenience of the Treo means that I use it far more now. I recently went to Tuscany on holiday using one of those "low cost " airlines which limit the weight of your baggage so taking paper books wasn't an option. With my Treo, my library went with me, not to mention bibles, sat-nav, mp3s, currency converter, phone, etc., all in one covenient package! I find the Treo so easy to read on that I can't see me buying a separate gadget just to read with, and certainly not at those prices! Incidentally, living in Scotland, I find ebooks still a great deal cheaper than paperbacks, so thats an added incentive! Vive la ebook!
I find the Kindle as described in the Kingsley-Hughes review to be a very exciting prospect. I wouldn't use it for bestsellers, but I would like very much to download a large number of older books about a topic I am interested in researching and using the note taking capability to create o series of observations about the topic and to point out links between points in the subject matter. To have a large body of literature to search for phrases and to point out the connections between thoughts and events would be the most powerful addition to researching a body of literature going. It would be a little easier if the Kindle (I use that example because I haven't seen reviews of the Sony product) could handle .pdf files, but One of the talkback comments on the Kindle review did say that it was possible to create files from scanned and OCRed books in .MOBI that the device would work with. This opens the possibility of endless new work on history or other topics.
I've had my Sony Reader since March '07, and I love it! I can't recall how many books I've read on it, but I do know that I've read many more ebooks than paper books since I bought it.
One point reviewers never mention is the huge library of wonderful books, most of which aren't available in paper any more, all free and all easy to download at Project Gutenberg. I have read many of those in addition to commercial books I have purchased at the Sony Connect Store. These Project Gutenberg books can be read on computers, cell phones, ebook readers like the Sony and the Amazon Kindle.
I find the screen of the Sony Reader very easy on my eyes, the weight and form factor fit my hand very nicely in much the same manner as a paper book, and I sincerely hope that more publishers hop on board and make their titles available.
One other factor which will become more important as publishers wake up to the huge potential of the ebook market is that complete back-lists of authors can be made available once again with very little effort, absolutely no storage fees and no printing costs, and I am convinced will increase the sales enormously when they're made available. And if they are ONLY available in ebook format, many people who discover an author's 10th or 20th book will have to buy an ebook reader of some sort to be able to read that author's first books.
It's a typical technological issue of hardware or content -- we need the hardware to get the content, but large-scale sales of the hardware only start to happen when content becomes available.
But one thing makes me happy in these early days of ebooks -- with both Sony and Amazon in the market and more titles becoming available every day from major publishers, we may finally have reached the critical mass necessary to move the ebook marketplace forward to where more devices become available and more publishers open up more of their catalogs to ebook sales.
But regardless of whether publishers ever really wake up to the huge potential of the ebook marketplace, Project Gutenberg has made enough great books of the past (many from authors I had never heard of before discovering them at Project Gutenberg) that I will never want for content for my Sony Reader.
And that makes me happy -- now it's time to get back to reading!
I had high hopes for the Sony Reader, but it's performance/price caused me to reconsider. It now strikes me as a gen-1 product, much like those very first B&W digital cameras from logitech. I only hope enough interest remains for the e-book platform to be refined to the point where it can realize it's potential and take it's place as the third (and final?) format, next to hard cover & paperback. It would be wonderful if a title never went 'out of print' but only to low-volume e-book. It would also be nice to have a suitable platform to read all those .pdf manuals from CD-Rom :)
Why bother when you can read e-books on your phone?
I've been reading e-books for years on my phone. Why bother with an expensive, cumbersome reader when almost any smart phone can hold a library of e-books? Mobi Reader and Ebook Reader are the two best readers you can download for your phone. The narrow column on a phone is just as easy to read as a newspaper column, and you can choose the paper colour, type face and size, line spacing and justification to suit your reading style. I haven't read a novel on paper for months, and have a whole library to choose from on train journeys and in spare moments wherever I am.
I looked into ebooks years ago when my vision started to fail. I wanted the option of increasing the font size, and I liked the idea that we weren't killing trees to make a book. The problem was, once you buy a "book", you can not sell it, give it, transport it to any device. Once the "ownership" and "transportation" issue is solved, they might catch on. Until that, there is no way ebooks are going to fly.
I have used PDAs for several years and i like that i can read my bible on them but I don't like reading books. I can put as many books on my PDA as i like because of the expansion slot. However, I don't like reading electronic books and I would not want an electronic reader. It's just one more gizmo i have to carry and worry about losing. I already have a smartphone, a pda, two cellphones and two notebook computers. Also, the lighting has to be just right to read electronic books. If it's too bright in the room, you can't read it and forget about reading outside. It's great taking them on long airplane trips, but when the power runs low what do you do? Carry another extension cord to charge it on the plane? No, it's just too one more extension cord I have to carry. I put all my cords in plastic bags and label them so I can keep them untangled and identify them quickly but all this stuff takes up a lot of space in my briefcase or my suitcase. Printed books are cheaper, you don't need batteries, you can read them anywhere, they don't set off alarms at the airport and you can give them away when you're done.
I've been using an eBookWise 1150 now for about 4 years, and I love it. It's great for travel and such, and the price of the books has paid the original cost of the eBook off not long after I bought it. The new devices sound even better, but they're still too pricy. Get it down to the $100-$150 range, and I'd think about upgrading, but not at these costs!
No way! There's something about handling a printed item that's visceric. The ability to manipulate a paper produced item will never go away.
As a last resort, what would you rather do - wipe your butt with your $300 e-reader or a few pages from a magazine that you have just read, if you have to?
Sure, e-readers are nice, but I still prefer the tactile sensation of a "BOOK" - the ability of unconsciously running one's finger along the feather of pages - the ability to 'dog-ear' a page - a practice which I personally abhor, but nevertheless is an option to the possessor of that printed tome.
. . . and say you're stuck out somewhere & you need to start a fire? Whatchagonna do? Short ciruit your e-reader or sacrifice a few pages of your magazine/book? The e-reader only short-circuits once whereas you still have a few more chances with your magazine/book & you can still read the remaining pages while you wait for rescue or at the worst scenario, write your Last Will & Testament.
Nope! E-readers are a nice toy, but the printed medium is still my favourite.
Manage updates with the Download App
While each person may have their own good reasons or logic, for the huge price (which will easily fetch me two/three dozen or more choicest books!), I will surely not use them for now. As the price comes down, perhaps I will reconsider...
Lending libraries and public libraries - besides borrowing or exchanging books - also reduces the need for this gadget - though the amazing on-line collection of material will always remain a gold mine to me for very readable information, books, articles, pictures or news!
At the college level, the swing from a $50-100.00 text will be motivation at a nominal fee.... this might be motivation. A new release of a popular medium item, like a best selling series, news magazine, daily paper.... will have to be the catalyst.... then all the pieces of the universe will fall into place and something not seen today will become the new hot item.....
I find I read a ebook in half the time as a paper book, just because of the convenience.
Nobody reads 170 books at one time, so who cares, capacity is a non-starter at this point. Add to which they're way out of the price range of the one market they make the most sense for, the poor beleaguered students who have to cart dozens of monster textbooks around in their groaning backpacks. If my kids could replace all their textbooks with the one device they plug into their school's server or the net, I'd jump just to save them the backstrain and myself the doctors? bills. But for now, fuggedaboudit!
Back to the drawing board kids, but don't take too long. Mark this. Apple will sit out a couple of cycles, then jump in with a sexy, far prettier face, toss in some of the cool interface doodads they do so well and we will all go oooh and aaah and cue up overnight at our nearest Apple Stores to buy the first ones.. Then they'll further solidify their market by giving them away to public schools along with Itunes textbook downloads and Steve Jobs will finally and irrevocably become William Randolph Hearst.
But the Amazon Kindle has corrected both of those problems. The book selection is enormous and you can even get daily newspapers delivered wirelessly to the device. Also there are 6 print sizes and my dad can now read!! It will also accept plain text files. Amazon says if you have something you want converted to the native kindle character protocol they will do so for free.
Another nice feature of the Kindle is you connect to Amazon wirelessly without a computer and books are beamed to you over the airwaves. Really neat!
So now I have a Kindle and Dad has one. Does anyone want to buy 2 used Sony ereaders?
Seth
Seth
Nobody likes to be controlled, especially technophiles. When this blows up-and it surely will-eBooks will make more sense.
I read somewhere, months ago, that the major state universities, like Ohio State University, have set out to transcribe hard copy books of their libraries into digital text. Google is also doing this. Eventually, there shall be thousands of books that can be read in digital format. To a person whom wants to take advantage of this huge treasure of information, an ebook reader would be one of the best options. Pocket PCs may be nice for reading, but can be a strain on the eyes. For grad students, college profs, etc, the ereader is more for practical purpose than the amusement that is popular with other electronics.
Somebody commented here that a person can put notations in paper books. The problem with notations in books is the inconvenience of retrieving those notes. Excerpts from digital formats can be copied, with notes, and later searched in the reader's archive.
Some of the big problems with digital books is authenticity and piracy. Perhaps somebody whom disagrees with an author, for example, could hack into a library database to change the information. The original information could be lost; Readers may not be certain if they are reading the original. And then piracy I guess could be an issue if the ebooks are duplicated and redistributed. How ebook distribution and piracy would effect the market of book sales, I suppose depends on readers of traditional books and readers whom want assurance of authentic books.
Another possible concern is the surplus of trees from forests that had been planted for the paper industry. If we don't use the paper, then what shall happen to that land? Real estate, etc? I don't know if those trees have quality for lumber, if so, then could be marketed for homes and furniture. Maybe computers with wood construction?....
Don
Oh yeah, those other books you read on your patio by the pool in the hot sun or in the tub or on vacation, I guess maybe they won't be so great on that fragile eBook either.
The weight issue is frankly a non-issue because anyone carrying that many books around (a student, an academic) probably needs to highlight them and mark them up. And what do you need that many books in a reader for anyway? You gonna plow through 3 or 4 classics or textbooks in one sitting? Just like you do with regular books, eh?
And then there's the eyestrain, just like ear fatigue with mp3s.
Sorry folks, for pure sensory enjoyment, analog eye/ear absorption is far, far better. The world doesn't have to be digital, and I hope people realize what a truly stupid concept this is from the top down. Even people who buy this thing right off the bat will tire of it soon. I guarantee it.
~Brad
I just don't "read" a book! I make it "mine" and easily reviewed. I also jump back and forth to other books to clarify the one I am reading.
That would all be difficult with an e-book, so far. But, it is appealing to think about all of that in an e-book.
Shollyman
But the e-book is too expensive, even for hard line ecologists.
I expect to see in the near future a version for newspapers, those piles of valuable paper that last for a single day. I hope that they will become, eventually, mandatory.
Now where did I leave my paperback recharger module?
I'm a geek, and I read a lot for pleasure as well as to keep up technically. For casual reading, I've been an Audible subscriber for about as long as there has been an Audible. Audio books are great while traveling, and at night after I've taken my contact lenses out.
For technical reading, I've depended on O'Reilly books for about as long as there has been an O'Reilly. The problem with technical books is that I need so many of them, and new versions come out almost yearly.
It is cheaper for me to subscribe to O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf than to buy a stack of books I might need only for a short time. I love the service, but I hate reading on my screen. I'd like to be able to take my "bookshelf" with me when I'm on a client's site. If Amazon or Sony (preferably Sony because of the quality of their reader) would team up with O'Reilly (or offered a reasonably-priced subscription service for mainstream content), they'd have my order within minutes.
Cheers,
Sam
One point reviewers never mention is the huge library of wonderful books, most of which aren't available in paper any more, all free and all easy to download at Project Gutenberg. I have read many of those in addition to commercial books I have purchased at the Sony Connect Store. These Project Gutenberg books can be read on computers, cell phones, ebook readers like the Sony and the Amazon Kindle.
I find the screen of the Sony Reader very easy on my eyes, the weight and form factor fit my hand very nicely in much the same manner as a paper book, and I sincerely hope that more publishers hop on board and make their titles available.
One other factor which will become more important as publishers wake up to the huge potential of the ebook market is that complete back-lists of authors can be made available once again with very little effort, absolutely no storage fees and no printing costs, and I am convinced will increase the sales enormously when they're made available. And if they are ONLY available in ebook format, many people who discover an author's 10th or 20th book will have to buy an ebook reader of some sort to be able to read that author's first books.
It's a typical technological issue of hardware or content -- we need the hardware to get the content, but large-scale sales of the hardware only start to happen when content becomes available.
But one thing makes me happy in these early days of ebooks -- with both Sony and Amazon in the market and more titles becoming available every day from major publishers, we may finally have reached the critical mass necessary to move the ebook marketplace forward to where more devices become available and more publishers open up more of their catalogs to ebook sales.
But regardless of whether publishers ever really wake up to the huge potential of the ebook marketplace, Project Gutenberg has made enough great books of the past (many from authors I had never heard of before discovering them at Project Gutenberg) that I will never want for content for my Sony Reader.
And that makes me happy -- now it's time to get back to reading!
It would also be nice to have a suitable platform to read all those .pdf manuals from CD-Rom :)
with an expensive, cumbersome reader when almost any smart
phone can hold a library of e-books? Mobi Reader and Ebook
Reader are the two best readers you can download for your
phone. The narrow column on a phone is just as easy to read
as a newspaper column, and you can choose the paper colour,
type face and size, line spacing and justification to suit your
reading style. I haven't read a novel on paper for months, and
have a whole library to choose from on train journeys and in
spare moments wherever I am.
The problem was, once you buy a "book", you can not sell it, give it, transport it to any device.
Once the "ownership" and "transportation" issue is solved, they might catch on. Until that, there is no way ebooks are going to fly.
bible on them but I don't like reading books. I can put as many
books on my PDA as i like because of the expansion slot.
However, I don't like reading electronic books and I would not
want an electronic reader. It's just one more gizmo i have to
carry and worry about losing. I already have a smartphone, a
pda, two cellphones and two notebook computers. Also, the
lighting has to be just right to read electronic books. If it's too
bright in the room, you can't read it and forget about reading
outside. It's great taking them on long airplane trips, but when
the power runs low what do you do? Carry another extension
cord to charge it on the plane? No, it's just too one more
extension cord I have to carry. I put all my cords in plastic bags
and label them so I can keep them untangled and identify them
quickly but all this stuff takes up a lot of space in my briefcase
or my suitcase. Printed books are cheaper, you don't need
batteries, you can read them anywhere, they don't set off alarms
at the airport and you can give them away when you're done.
As a last resort, what would you rather do - wipe your butt with your $300 e-reader or a few pages from a magazine that you have just read, if you have to?
Sure, e-readers are nice, but I still prefer the tactile sensation of a "BOOK" - the ability of unconsciously running one's finger along the feather of pages - the ability to 'dog-ear' a page - a practice which I personally abhor, but nevertheless is an option to the possessor of that printed tome.
. . . and say you're stuck out somewhere & you need to start a fire? Whatchagonna do? Short ciruit your e-reader or sacrifice a few pages of your magazine/book? The e-reader only short-circuits once whereas you still have a few more chances with your magazine/book & you can still read the remaining pages while you wait for rescue or at the worst scenario, write your Last Will & Testament.
Nope! E-readers are a nice toy, but the printed medium is still my favourite.