Comments on: Why e-book readers don't stand a chance

Don Reisinger thinks e-book readers don't stand a chance. Is he right?

[muddg]

I use to think I will never read newspapers online. It is not the same as curling up on the couch on the weekend with a cup of coffee or glass of wine and spend 2 hours reading the newspaper. Now I hardly ever pickup a newspaper...because I am always on the go. And I used to think...an ebook..never! But I am going to be on the road for the next 6 months and I can't carry all my reference books with me...the ones I used to do my work. I just wish Kindle worked in Europe and Asia. Still...I am going to get a kindle in the USA. Load it up with all my reference books (about 30 regular ones) and I can still do my work. Not to mention how much easier it will be to find text....I am forever thinking....where did I read that...this book or that book. With Kindle...I can search for keywords. Will I read novels on it? Maybe while I am traveling but I'll never give up paper back books.

[Aelwrath]

Another unsubstantiated rant by Don! Woo hoo!

"The economics of the e-book reader industry are off and so far, no one in the business has realized it. It's time they wake up and see what's really going on."

Sorry to have to tell you, but the economics involved in most of your articles are far more off.

[jimafrost]

I guess it's fun to be a curmudgeon, and it's true that at $400 the Kindle isn't going to be mass-market. It's not hard to envision the price dropping substantially over the next few years, though. Another thing to consider is that books are not simply $10 each; that's true of recent releases (which in hardcover tend to cost around $20) but average prices are more like $6. If you're a fan of the classics there are around 20,000 *free* books at Project Gutenberg. What happens in a few years when e-book readers are $100, or $50, or even given away for free when you agree to a subscription? It really isn't a question of "if" this is going to happen, it's "when."

I don't believe that paper books will ever die, but to believe that e-books aren't going to have a significant impact on publishing (and in the relatively near term -- less than ten years!) is to completely ignore the changes that have taken place in publishing over the last decade or so.

I expect that paper book publishing is going to move to an on-demand print system (that's already been happening) and I for one encourage this. It means there will be boutique book printers again. I would love it if I could order my favorite book in a new leatherbound hardback edition, whereas today I'm lucky if I can find it on the used bookshelf in paperback. That kind of thing will obviously be a niche market, but it will be *possible* when books are widely available in electronic format.

Another nice thing about e-books is that, once digital, books never go out of print. I don't know about you but I have lost books that I have been utterly unable to replace given limited print runs decades ago. As the back-catalog of books is digitized it will me a vast expansion of titles that you can actually buy. This is good!

It's also good that bulk reading (the stuff of cheap paperbacks) will not require paper. I have thousands of books in my house -- on bookshelves, sitting on the floor in various places, and in stacks of boxes in the basement. There really aren't that many of them that I love enough to read a bunch of times, much less store prominently on a bookshelf, but I like being able to go find that odd book I read a few years ago. E-books would take up a heck of a lot less space, and they're searchable. Bonus!

If you want a prediction, my prediction (made back in 2003 actually) is that e-books will be mainstream by 2015. So far I'm doing well on my predictions, I said the first successful e-book reader would hit the market in 2007. The Kindle would appear to be it, given how substantially Amazon under-projected its sales. As available content expands (and Amazon has already expanded title availability as much in the last MONTH as the whole e-book market made available in the first seven years) and prices for readers drop through the floor it's going to be a very popular product.

[zac_in_ak]

Most here are missing the point of this article. Don is not saying that e-book readers cannot be viable he is saying that there needs to be either free ebook readers and or cheaper ebooks before it will really take off and that no ebook reader can match the tactile experience of a real book. Full Disclosure I am a Don Reisinger fanboi but only because he has well reasoned articles and will say his opinion weather its popular or not.

[AppleSuxLeo]

You don`t know squat. That is why Jeff Bezos is a success , and you are writting a second-rate blog.

[creig999]

e-books have a very selective customer base if you even consider the e-book a viable enterprise in and of itself. e-books may be a convenient source for a very specific topic or topics of reference but with just a search engine one can most likely find the reference that pertains to the specific topic anyway.
if one wants to read for the sheer pleasure of reading a book that you can be manipulated from marking a page to marking remarks in the margins or underlining passages.
a much more viable avenue for the e-book industry to navigate perhaps would be instead of carrying around the equivalent of 200 books to read would be to have the ability to listen to the books. i am personally not a huge fan of listening to music when i'm traveling as a passenger or waiting for any length of time. i can only sit in font of my computer and read for a comparatively short time as opposed to curling up with a good book to read for enjoyment.things i read on the computer are short and to the point types of informative stories like news,sports or blogs.
if i am traveling in a car,plane or train i can se where it may well be worth having a virtual library to chose a book to listen to while i was on my journey or even if i were at home and just did not feel like reading because i wanted to lay back and tune out the world and listen while one of my favorite authors or some unknown author told me their story.
whatever the story may be, one of the e-book challenges will be to match the book with the voice telling the story or to give the reader/listener a choice of voices which the consumer can choose for themselves which voice best fits the story for them.
overall though, without some kind of new approach the e-book as i've experienced it will never replace the book. the idea of having a library of hundreds of books at your disposal is still a very appealing one but a way of getting the books content to the consumer will be the challenge .

[rgonzalezvh]

Everyone is lost on this one, the real question IS: Why would you spend $300 on an e-Book reader...and here it is...if ANY computer, PDA or Smartphone, you already own adn HAVE to take with you in every trip, has FREE e-book reading software in it ! and YES you can store 200+ eBooks in any os these if not thousands, your storage capacity is the limit !, plus movies, music, pictures, documents .... I guess the rest is up to your imagination.

[jimafrost]

"Why would you spend $300 on an e-Book reader [http://...|http://...] if ANY computer, PDA or Smartphone, you already own adn HAVE to take with you in every trip, has FREE e-book reading software in it !"

I can enumerate a number of reasons. First, the tiny displays on PDAs and especially phones leads to a poor reading experience, both in terms of how often you have to page and how small the font has to be (think: eyestrain). I used PDAs for this purpose since 1998 and while I certainly read a lot of books on them it was not as nice as a "real" book.

Battery life is also a huge issue. A laptop battery will rarely last more than 3 hours, which is maybe one leg of a cross-country flight, and nowhere near enough to go all the way. I carry a couple of batteries to do this but even so it's not enough given any kind of layover. A PDA does better: My Palm T|X will run for about 6 hours. That is still not enough to get across the country.

Compare this to a Kindle. In its most power-hungry mode, with the cellular radio enabled, I can read for about two days (I got 46 hours last time I tried). Turn off the radio and I get 6 days. With intermittent radio use (eg to download the daily paper) it pulls 4 days.

With the PDA I used to run it empty on every flight. With the Kindle that just doesn't happen.

The other big advantage of the Kindle versus every other e-book reader is simply content availability. Amazon has a whopping three times as much content as the nearest competitor, and growing really fast. In the last month they added half as much content as Sony's e-book store has all together. I don't expect this discrepancy to last a long time, but that's the way it is right now.

I think the principal market limiter right now has to be unit cost. $400 is too much for a Kindle, even if it represents the best value (between function and book availability) on the market today. It won't stay that expensive though. I expect the cost to drop significantly by end-of-year and in every subsequent year for at least several years. As costs drop you're going to see a whole lot of these things around.

[aubrey_q]

E-books don't have the traditional backlight that HURTS your eyes like LCDs or other displays do. It's e-ink. Easier on the eyes.

[aubrey_q]

I meant to say "e-book READERS" instead of "e-books".

[nickbirke]

Living in NYC and riding the subway all the time, this device is like a dream. Ever ride a packed NYC subway train at rush hour and simply read a newspaper... not only is it very difficult- you look like a fool.

I won't even begin to talk about the pain in a neck it is to carry books back and forth to work. For urban dwellers this is a godsend. I get mine tomorrow (ebay) I am looking forward to just how good it is... or isnt.

[EditorAnnie]

Great post! People don't need to spend $300 to $400 on a reader to enjoy ebooks. We offer them for only $3.99. Why? Ebooks cost less to produce - they should sell for less. Ebooks should allow the 1.3M rejected manuscripts a chance to be read. They should allow the voracious reader a chance to feed their passion without taking out a second mortgage. All the Kindle does is make it harder for ebooks to gain acceptance, just as $30 price tags on books keep many from reading. Ebooks offer an ecologically friendly, 24/7 way to read. They offer readers voices beyond the cookie-cutter, publisher mandated choices that must sell 50k copies to make it to print. Publishing is mass-production - I understand that. But literature shouldn't be. Once the got-to-have-the-latest techies are through, I expect Kindle & Sony to go the route of ink jet printers -really cheap 'cuz they'll get us in the selling price of the product. That won't do anything to build readership either.

[William_Lake]

I think your article, while it voices your personal opinion, doesn't really address the market issues. There is a need in the market that has not yet been filled. There is a market that wants highly portable documents in a very easy to read format. The problems that have plagued the market may seem like minor issues - but they are major barriers to success:
1) as readable as paper: meaning bright, low power, and of sufficient size to satisfy the documents purpose. We want color pictures, readable text, natural light, visibility in all lighting conditions, etc. 8x11 docs on a Kindle screen don't work, for example, and Sony's high contrast ambient light screens are good- but not good enough. Paper is still better.
2) the cues need to mimick closely the cues you get from reading a paper document - this is really tough. We know instantly that we are halfway through a document by feeling it. We get a sense for how long a read a paper back is by weighing it in our hand and flipping some pages to scan text size. We can feel when we are 2 hours away from finishing a novel. We thumb-flip pages to the point where we left off , or to find something familiar, etc. The digital conventions for this still leave people wanting. These are critical elements of the user experience.

All that said - I want a book reader that allows me to take all my reference books with me, all my books that I am reading, all my work related documents that I haven't gotten to today, etc., and put them easily into a device that I can take with me on a plane, on the beach, in the bathroom, to bed, or wherever I decided to read.

[Fritz the cat]

Mr. Reisinger,

As an old instructor once told me, Pull your head out of your rear end and look at the bigger picture. book has been around in many diffrent forms, from stone, to scrolls, to the book form we use today, The ebook reader has been around in many diffrent forms as well, from LCD to the recent digital ink screens that are here. And if you also want to include PDA's and Smartphones sure they've been around as well to use for ebooks.

"If you like to own books, wouldn't it make more sense to pay the $30 and leave it on your bookshelf when you're done with it instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a device that will then allow you to buy e-books for an additional cost? How does that make any sense?"

The Kindle isn't the greatest but it has improved where other devices have failed. You think paying $200-400 dollars for an ebook reader is that bad? tell me how many bookshelves you have and how much they all cost? then think of the prices for the books you bought. You'd pay about the same amount for one, two, maybe 3 bookshelves? You throw in the added expenses added for the paper back or hardback book, you've spent 2x to3x more than you'd ever have payed for an ebook reader and maybe free (Mainly from Project Gutenberg) , $3, even to $14 dollar ebooks.

That's all it really is, an electronic bookshelf for collection of Digital books.If you got more ebooks than the 180mb free that's on the Kindle you just pay an extra $40 to get a 4gb SDHC card that's meant specifically for the kindle. Sure it's added costs but think of it as adding another bookshelf to a room, accept on a device that can go anywhere with your entire collection of books.

"But at their very core, e-book readers are not nearly as useful and worthwhile as some may think for one major reason -- they cost too much money."

expensive? yes. but you've saved costs on books instead, right through the kindle or any other ebook reader for that matter. Obviously you don't look beyond the fence. I go back to the bookshelf metaphor. How much did you pay for those bookshelves and those books? probably more than you'd have ever payed for the Kindle or the free ebooks from project guttenberg and the the $3 to $14 ebooks on amazon.

"For years, the book has been a vessel of knowledge and entertainment for people and I simply don't see how a small piece of plastic can change the connection people have to holding a book, flipping the pages and marking notes on the paper."

Now while I do agree theirs nothing like sitting back and kicking back with a good hardback or paperback book sometimes you just carry it around when your traveling. it's just impossible to do. You cannot carry 10 to 30 books on an airplane. That's just a really heavy bag and You wouldn't be allowed to board the plane with that many books on you. With an ebook reader you don't got worry their.

When you got the last part you obviously can do the same with an ebook. I know the kindle can do it and with the mobipocket software on my lifedrive, and phone I can easily do the same thing.

"But I digress. I just don't understand the rationale behind owning an e-book reader. Sure, some may want to use the Kindle as an expensive RSS reader and others may like the idea of having 200 books and a dictionary in their pocket, but I don't see it."

I don't see the problem only thing I see is your blind. If you want to stay up to date with the news it's a great thing if you don't have a cellphone with internet or if you like to read what's latest in fashion or tech as well yet don't want to waste money in the typical supscription to the typical piece of paper or stuck to your computer screen all day. Great feature of the kindle that no other ebook readers got right now besides phones.

Like I said Kindle is not the greatest. I don't got one besides why would I need it if I already have an old Palm Lifedrive and a Windows Mobile PPC phone? But in the same respect though the idea still applys to both. I carry several ebooks on my Micro Sd card in my phone just to read when I got nothing to do. I add notes to the books I have in ebook format, I sit back and the read the latest in RSS feeds on my phone.

Maybe an ebook reader isn't your thing. But to come up and give a blog post about how you think the ebook reader isn't going to succeed cause the paper back book is a timeless piece of our history that will never go away, and how expensive what you call a piece of plastic is a complete and utter waste of a blog post. If your going to leave your head in your rear be my guest but don't waste our time with such dreck.

[Skylonda]

OK - I agree with you up to a point. I love the idea of ebooks and ebook readers.

But a $300 ebook reader - absolutely no interest there for me at all. But even if they lower the cost of the readers to almost free, I'm still not on board. Why? The cost of the ebooks. They want as much or even more than the cost of the paper version.

Does this make ANY kind of sense??

Why do paper books cost what they do. It's mostly due (we are told ) to the cost of paper. The cost of paper rises, books go up in price. Plus you have printing, distribution, the mark up from the middle man to pay for his overhead and profit margin, etc.

This all goes away with electronic distribution. And yet there is no change in the price of the ebook even though all these costs are no longer relevant.

The book companies are pushing this format big time because their profit margin goes up astronomically if they can sucker you into paying these inflated prices.

The same argument holds for the electronic distribution of music and movies, but don't get me started on that topic.

This is why ebooks and ebook readers will continue to fail.

But then again, look a the bottled water industry. There was a time when no one in their right mind would have ever thought people would pay outrageous prices for something that falls out of the sky for free.

Never underestimate the gullibility of the average consumer with too much disposable income. But the bottom line for me - I will never own an ebook or an ebook reader until the pricing of said items is changed to reflect reality.

[cole169]

I have great hope for this new tech, but I cannot commit to its total cost yet. Portability, limited environmental impact(paper, paper, paper) and convenience are all wonderful, but you literally put all your eggs in one basket. CFW123 says he has 500 books stored on his---total investment of $5400 ($400 for Kindle and 500 books @$10). Any problem with his Kindle, loss, damage or other and he loses $5400 (ok, only $5000 if the Kindle is on 1 year warranty) If I lose my current paperback, I'm out a max of $10. With the current frailties of electronics I don't see this as a viable solution yet.

[roettcher]

As a parent of 2 teenagers I'm a bit incredulous to think no one wants to mention the use of ebooks for students. Why are not the textbook publishers not jumping all over this? The benefits are huge for students and educators. No need to carry heavy backpacks, instant search, frequent updates (especially for recent history texts), connections to online tests, and more.

Famous computer names like Apple and Microsoft have long ago discovered, getting your product into the hands of young students at cheap prices will create customers who will later purchase these company's products long into their earning, and paying, years.

This is a young market that may die on the vine for lack of a basic vision to give the product to the right customers. If manufacturers of ebooks want to avoid this channel for fear adults will see this as a children's product, they need to get over their prejudices and create a two tied product, one for students and one for pure book readers.

Textbook publishers certainly need protection in the form of DRM, but this can be addressed by smarter minds than mine. I don't think tech students are that interested in cracking codes of books they really don't want so the demand to crack will be diminished.

If the world can produce $100 notebook computers for children in Africa, certainly something similar can be done here. Ask Negroponte.

[smanger]

[philipcjohnson]

Give me an ebook reader with an 8 1/2" x 11" screen for readability, a removable permanent memory device, easy access to already published literature, and an easy standard way to create and download my own documents. I want something big enough to read dense technical print and drawings. Something with the capacity to contain a technical library when I am traveling so that I do not have to drag half a dozen or more 5" binders full of of manuals with me where ever I go. Something that will let me swap out my technical library for my classics library so that I may pick and choose during my downtime. Something that will let me create my own technical library of emails, technical reports, and white papers in PDF, Word, and other formats. Do all of that at a reasonable price, be able to demonstrate it to me, and I will try to be the first one in line to buy it.

[danneauxs]

Personally, it's something you either lover or don't. The same argument could be made for owning a DVD player. Why sit home and watch a huge budget movie which is produced to be watched on a big screen on your dinky little tv at home. Sure you might have a plasma screen and surround sound, but again why pay $2000 for a tv and $500 for surround sound ( or cheaper versions etc) when I can go to my local theater and spend $20 to see a movie in stupifying size? Same argument for spending $300(?) for a Kindle. I have been reading e-books for the last 6 years. I don't read them on some horrifcally exspensive device; I read them on a PDA that I bought USED for $50. The BIGGEST drawback to e-books is that although the publisher does not have to cover printing fees, material costs, shipping, etc. they sitll charge the same amount for an e-book as a printed book. Electrons are cheaper than paper, duh. $3 for an e-book, I'd probably buy 10 at a time and NOT deliberate if I should or shouldn't be spending the money as I do when I see a dozen books I would like that each cost $8-12 dollars. Ever walk into a book store and not find a book that interests you or that you haven't already read? I have. When my favorite author has a dozen books out and there are only 3 on the shelf what do I do? Order the book. Be much nicer to simply go online buy the book and put on my PDA or better simply wirelessly download it to a dedicated e-book reader. $300 or even $200 is way too much for such a device to be commonly owned, but pick up a cheap PDA and get the same results, plus listen to music, watch a movie or play a game on the same device. Do that with a book. That said, I have a HUGE book collection. That same collection takes up walls and walls and though loved is becoming troublesome. $8 for a paperback, more $$ for book cases. Using my PDA I can even read in bed without bothering the missus by having to have a light on and book lights are a pain. I never have to strain to see my backlit screen and in the dark even the lowest level of brightness is more than sufficient. Even acts as a nightlight for my 2 a.m. treck to natures calls thus again saving switching on a sleep disturbing light for my journey. E-books will probably not die out and eventually someone will hit on the right system, delivery and cost combination to make it work. Willl it kill print? No, not in my lifetime probably. I still want cookbooks in print, DIY books, etc. Some things you like to hold or have very large. I wouldn't want say my Handyman magazine on an e-book; it probably wouldn't look right - photos and print wouldn't fit on the screen like a magazine layout does; something would be too small. My on a Tablet sized screen yes. It all boils down to what you are comfortable with and the right combination to make e-books acceptable and comforatable.

[grounder10]

I have been actively using a Rocket eBook for ten years now. I think eBoooks make a lot of sense, but they clearly are not for everybody. After ten years I have only one friend who will now occasionally read on his PDA.
While I agree that I like owning the real paper book, there is a practical problem with that. My den is about as full of books as it can get, and my wife will not let me expand outside of that room. I needed to find a way to collect books that will not take up any physical space. The other main point for me, is that there is a fair amount I want to read that is only published online, and never makes it to paper, and I don't want to do all that reading in front of my PC.
I stick with the Rocket over a newer eBook because of the built in back lighting. While I would like a Sony Libre or Kindle, I do not want to go back to needing a book light to read at night when my wife is asleep. The main reason I went with the Rocket over a PDA is battery life. The Rocket will allow me to read 20-30 hours between charges, which is enough to cover a whole travel day when I'm on trips.
I also agree that eBooks will never completely replace print. There are just too many cases where having the physical copy is preferable. However, I do believe that the eBook experience will continue to improve and start to replace print some places (like students having to carry around 4 or 5 text books), but it is not there yet. I keep hoping for more publishers to support eBooks as much as Baen does.

[cbjames]

Who wants a bookshelf full of books anymore. I like having mine all in the space the size of my Kiddle.

[djcaseley]

I'll second what everybody else has said. This article appears a little out of touch.

Amazon had a foray into e-books years ago - at the same price as paper books. That business model doesn't work, nor will it until e-books become more popular than paper books.

My mother-in-law is disabled. She owns around 100,000 books and another 20,000 e-books. She now reads more e-books than she does standard books. For someone with mobility issues, e-books are a good medium for reading. This applies not only to the disabled, but those abroad on holiday, in the services, or just living in countries where Amazon doesn't deliver, those miles from bookshops, and those who are lazy.

Also, the suggestion that the required gadgetry should be cheap to the point of being disposable is dangerously ecologically negligent by the author. Would he have the price of a new gadget included in the price of the first book? A new device per book perhaps, so he can keep each on a shelf?

The price of the gadgetry is still, I agree, prohibitively high, but it's come down a lot in the last 18 months. We're already in a position where mobile operators are handing out Windows Mobile 6 devices with their contracts. In 18 months time, an e-Book reader should be a chunk less than an iPod.

The e-book will supercede paper eventually. It's merely time standing in the way.