Information is constantly pouring in from multiple sources and sometimes it's difficult to tell right from wrong. Last week we heard (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8550) from a Swedish newspaper that many readers who were involved in the De Tijd e-paper trial returned their iLiad devices within the first two weeks. But according to our well-placed inside source at iRex this is not true. Moreover, he shared with us some of the findings made by the De Tijd e-paper project leader IBBT (http://www.ibbt.be/site/index.php?id=127&L=1):


Almost 90% of the test persons would decide to join the test again, when the prototype issues were addressed.
Almost 50% of the test persons would decide to buy the product when the prototype issues were addressed.


By mere coincidence I stumbled upon this recent IBBT presentation (http://www.ebf-eu.org/documents/presentation_epaper_EBF_05102006%20-%20nico.pdf) (PDF) that discusses the outcome of the trial in detail. You should check it out, especially if you are interested in learning more about the possible future business models involving e-books (B2B vs. B2C).

Interesting...apparently people were already complaining about battery-life then...:-)

It was still 4 hours at that point according to the presentation...

No wonder they were complaining!

Look at us: 10 hours and we're still complaining!

And right we are :D

Not to mention it also expresses concern over the boot-up times.

They were also asking for zoom and complaining about navigation. Zoom has since been addressed, at least.

Some of the models proposed don't look that attractive to me. (I wish people could see beyond DRM.) And newspapers are only of marginal interest to me. But I was glad to see the comments about the "long tail" idea. Offering publishers a way to make money from existing-- but out of print-- content may be the sweetener needed for the deal.

In the previous discussion on this, I mentioned that hardware issues clearly needed to be addressed. (Okay, that's all the patting myself on the back that I'll do here!) ;)

That Amazon quote-- "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." --left my head swimming! Who writes for these guys, Groucho Marx? But seriously, folks, I like the Long Tail concept... anything that would make the readers more useful and practical.

Anyway, I think they're spot-on in expecting (hoping for?) a new selling model that will put the device in demand, and give paper-lovers a reason to switch. Maybe we need to get a thread started debating that new selling model?

Long tail is one idea.

Another I think is interesting is chopping off the tail. Make the publishers pay a per title, per media format copyright tax per year. This would help get titles into the public domain to make them more easily available to everyone.

Capitalism only flourishes when there is competition. When copyrights/patents are used to create a monopoly everyone suffers.

Jak Boumans has some more information on the outcome of the De Tijd experiment:

http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-2.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-3.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-4.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-5.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-6.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-close.html


His final thoughts:
So far the iLiad has proven that it the screen is an absolute pleasure to the eye. But from De Tijd experiment it is also clear that the iLiad is something of the remote future. It is not a break-through for the publishing industry like the iPod was for the music industry. The big question is now how remote is remote: short term, middle long term or long term?

The First part: http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006_11_27_buziaulane_archive.html

Jak Boumans has some more information on the outcome of the De Tijd experiment:

http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-2.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-3.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-4.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-5.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-6.html
http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-close.html


His final thoughts:
So far the iLiad has proven that it the screen is an absolute pleasure to the eye. But from De Tijd experiment it is also clear that the iLiad is something of the remote future. It is not a break-through for the publishing industry like the iPod was for the music industry. The big question is now how remote is remote: short term, middle long term or long term?

Oops... thank you! ;)