Update: Well, roughly a year later the cat is out of the bag. $50 would have been too good to be true. For more, join our Kindle discussions (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=140)

Rumors are that the Kindle, Amazon's leaked E Ink e-reader, may be heavily subsidized to push the online retailer's e-book sales. Quoting Nick Hampshire of Afaics:

This may only be a rumour but it certainly is a viable option, an analysis of the manufacturing cost of the device indicates that a subsidised retail price of about US$50 is possible. And, from market research we know that this would probably be low enough to create a sufficient demand for e-books and e-reader devices to ensure that the company not only recouped its subsidy cost but created a growing market. However, this would mean subsidising the sale of several hundred thousand Kindle readers.
Related: Amazon E Ink reader? (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7569) (with specs), Remember Kindle? (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8111) (with pics)

If that is true then it may be that a rising tide lifts all boats. However it is more likely that it could become another Beta vs. VHS battle.

Given reviews like the recent one in Forbes, it would seem that they will value number of available texts and total number of features over all other things. Remember that the press is still in love with Amazon.

Rumors are that the Kindle, Amazon's leaked E Ink e-reader, may be heavily subsidized to push the online retailer's e-book sales.

I would worry about the Kindle supporting non-proprietary formats then.

If Amazon prices the Kindle with the idea that they will "make up for their loss" with eBooks sales, then they will have to do something to force (or at least make it preferable) people to buy eBooks from Amazon.

Support for non-proprietary formats would make Amazon lose money on the Kindle. Of course, support for only DRM-emcumbered eBooks will also make it lose money.

Even at that price I don't see many people who'd want to be caught with such a poorly visually designed piece.

yvan, don't be fooled by the pics. It's possible that what we see is just a prototype handed over to the FCC to test the internals of the device, but not the final design.

I hope so because I love the idea of a keyboard and bluetooth!

It can not be, except if they have developed their own operating system.

Maybe this is why it's not out yet?

Hmm, I think this would be quite "do-able" given some favorable conditions. The proven model has certainly been around a long while (sell 'em the razors and they'll buy the blades etc.) And, the expensive R & D end of things is pretty much done - e-ink is a purchase-able commodity for manufacturers at this point.

Lately I've been musing about why Sony didn't just partner with Amazon in the first place - make Mobi-read a supported platform and voila - instant vast storefront, neat software, software support etc. I'd have loved it (I like the mobi-reader platform anyway) and the book selection would have been amazing.

Will never know the negotiating stuff that goes on behind closed doors of course.
Personally I *really* like the form factor of the Reader vs what is pictured as the Kindle, but being a fickle guy to the core, show me a better product and I'll switch in a heartbeat...

I would love anything amazon offers...if it isn't quite as ugly as the kindle shown on the pics...^^

Amazon is one of my favourite shops EVER and i'm very sad that you can't even buy a single ebook on amazon.de at the moment.
I hope Amazon will not go Sony-way and offer their new ebook reader + software + library in the US only...

About the 50$ thing...I'd rather pay 500 for the device and then get the books cheaper...the amount I read makes that solution a lot cheaper for me in the long run. Also, a subscription service like the Zune-thing that is rumoured to come sometime (of course, US only once again...) would also be cool...a book-flatrate...^^

It sounds good!
If it is true, it will be the best news in the ebook world~ :)

It can not be, except if they have developed their own operating system.About that, I remember that the manual (the one we snaked before they noticed we were looking ;)) listed .PRC as one of the supported formats ... anybody else wonder if this could be a Palm OS device?

About that, I remember that the manual (the one we snaked before they noticed we were looking ;)) listed .PRC as one of the supported formats ... anybody else wonder if this could be a Palm OS device?
I don't really expect it to be. Heck even Palm doesn't seem to want to run Palm (the 6.0 OS was never picked up by the hardware makers, and now the OS people are looking to put the Palm GUI on Linux), though since I currently read on Palm, and most of my tools and software work on Palm, I wouldn't be upset if it were.

More likely, though, it just reads the PRC doc files, which used to be called Palm Doc (though I think it was more accurate to call them Aportis Doc files). The format does not support formatted text, but it compresses well, and just about all handhelds can read it, so it makes a nicely portable alternative to plain text.

Jack

On the other hand they could subsidize in a different way: to ask, say, for $500 and to redeem $450 in Amazon coupons for any product, or to ask for $200 and redeem $150 in Amazon coupons for e-books and e-music only. No problem then about supporting open or popular formats.

They could even have more subtle strategies as a monthly subsidy during one year, so that they are sure you connect to Amazon at least once per month.

Amazon should rather focus on pushing the ebook price to 25% of the paperbook price, the rest will happen automatically.

Quoting Nick Hampshire of Afaics....Say, isn't this the same guy who said Sony sold $.5 mil in Readers in the first week (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8168&highlight=Nick+Hampshire)?

We couldn't really figure out where he was getting his math then, and this time he says he's reporting rumors .... I'm not sure how much weight we should give what he's saying. :shrug:

We're pretty sure the displays alone are in the $150~200 range right now, so even if he's in the right solar system on the price, what sort of long-term cost of ownership would Amazon have to bind its customers to in order to stay alive? ~$50 up front and $30 a month for the next 2 years?

I hope that's not what they're thinking, 'cause I don't think it'd go over well with the general public. I don't like th sound of it, anyway. :shrug:

Amazon should rather focus on pushing the ebook price to 25% of the paperbook price, the rest will happen automatically.


Unfortunately unless they start their own serious publishing business (not a halfbaked attempt like Amazon shorts) and then damage their relation with the big publishers, it ain't going to happen how much I would like that.

I have my profound doubts on the possibility of a subsidized cheap ebook reader since that model does not work with content as conclusively proved before (gemstar, librie....any device that allows only proprietary content will either get hacked or die).

On the other hand pushing a cheap but breakeven or slightly profitable hardware which allows nonproprietary content may be doable by Amazon to build business as they do with many other programs of that type. I have no idea how much it would cost, but I see a 100-150$ range possible.

Liviu

if you have no idea how much the "subsidy" will be
-- or, just as importantly, the exact form it takes --
isn't it simply irresponsible to repeat this "rumor"?

like david rothman, nick hampshire has made "predictions"
about the imminent debut of unreasonably cheap machines,
and is now trying to salvage some semblance of sensibility,
but he's just digging himself deeper into his own black hole.

let's be smart enough not to believe this nonsense, ok?

if you want to know what a machine like this _really_ costs,
look at the ones actually for sale -- the sony and the iliad --
both of which are _also_ actively seeking means of subsidy...

then ask yourself -- in a time when $300 laptops are the
loss-leaders of the season -- whether a dedicated device
makes sense. you will come to the position that has been
the only possible answer all along: it makes no sense at all,
except to capitalists who'll lock you to their money machine.

-bowerbird

... ask yourself ... whether a dedicated device makes sense. you will come to the position that has been the only possible answer all along: it makes no sense at all....I beg to (respectfully) differ, bowerbird. I think whether a dedicated device makes sense, depends on the circumstances and sensabilities of the person evaluating said dedicated device. I don't think this question is one that has an absolutely correct answer, there are simply too many variables and circumstances that potentially affect it that just can't be accounted for. :shrug:

For instance, as of this moment, there are at least 194 (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7878) MobileReaders to whom it made sense enough. :grin:

Hmm, I think this would be quite "do-able" given some favorable conditions. The proven model has certainly been around a long while (sell 'em the razors and they'll buy the blades etc.) And, the expensive R & D end of things is pretty much done - e-ink is a purchase-able commodity for manufacturers at this point.

Lately I've been musing about why Sony didn't just partner with Amazon in the first place - make Mobi-read a supported platform and voila - instant vast storefront, neat software, software support etc. I'd have loved it (I like the mobi-reader platform anyway) and the book selection would have been amazing.

Will never know the negotiating stuff that goes on behind closed doors of course.
Personally I *really* like the form factor of the Reader vs what is pictured as the Kindle, but being a fickle guy to the core, show me a better product and I'll switch in a heartbeat...

Actually surprise they did not partner with Apple. Jobs had the Sony top person on the stage a year are so ago.

whether a dedicated device
makes sense. you will come to the position that has been
the only possible answer all along: it makes no sense at all,
Thank you for showing me the light, bowerbird. Just moments ago I threw away my toothbrush, electric razor and hair dryer. Now can anyone tell me where to buy a razorbrushdryer? Preferably under $20. ;)

natchi said:
> For instance, as of this moment, there are at least
> 194 MobileReaders to whom it made sense enough.

i hope 194 customers is enough to make sony happy! ;+)

look, i really believe a $50 machine is a pipedream, and
that continuing to foster this myth is counterproductive.

here's my reasoning...

any dedicated machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

a multi-purpose machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

given these two(?) lists, i don't see where
the dedicated machine can squeeze costs.

there might be _tradeoffs_ that can be made.

the most obvious one is battery-life, but
as sony's machine shows, you could also
"opt out" of some capabilities (like search).

another one (which took us by surprise, eh?)
is the speed of screen-refresh on page-turns.

take away enough of these "niceties" and
maybe you could cut the cost enough, but
you've also cut the appeal of the machine.

so i'm not saying that it's _impossible_ that
someone could build a dedicated machine
that _might_ come in at a lower price-point,
and actually make enough sales to register.

but that advantage is likely to be shortlived...
so i don't think you'll _ever_ get critical mass.

it doesn't give me a great deal of joy to say it,
but a dedicated e-book-machine is unlikely
simply because there aren't enough readers
left out in our world to make the thing pay...

so the best hope for e-books is to piggyback
on some other form-factor that _is_ viable...

-bowerbird

I think it depends on what you consider "dedicated." A reasonable sized device for reading books isn't probably what most people are looking for in a work machine (or a game machine), but might have overlap with the PDA market. I could actually do most of what I need to do with a computer on the iLiad, if the right software were available for it. Very few of my usual computing tasks require a high framerate or fast processor. In most cases I'd happily trade those features for the ability to read the screen outside.

Amazon spends a huge amount on shipping. They know it's one of the things that sometimes drives their business to local retailers -- shipping costs and time. Take a look at the deals they've been offering on shipping all along -- no shipping for a certain order size, flat 2-day shipping fee for a year ("Amazon Prime"), etc. If Amazon can get their huge customer base to switch to a device that is easy to read on and can provide more or less instant gratification to customers with no shipping costs, they'd be fools not to jump at it, and I don't think they are fools. I could easily see the device priced at the same cost as the "Amazon Prime" plan, for marketing reasons-- plus some amount that you get back as a "rebate" coupon for Amazon digital goods. Amazon makes up the cost on those goods. (Which means they probably won't be much cheaper than they are now.) I also think Amazon has the leverage to "encourage" publishers to offer more of their inventory in eBook format, if they can show the market is there.

Would this be the be-all, end-all for eBooks? Probably not. But it could be a big step forward, in terms of popularizing the idea of eBooks. A later generation may be able to make both the books and the readers cheap.

The latest posts promt me to jump on both sides of the fence at the same time. OUCH! :knife:

Do you remember a very very very few years ago when it was told that that $600.00 printer you bought actually costs $35.00 to produce?

Last week I bought a new LI Ion battery for my Xacti at a store near here. It's about the same size as the one pictured in the Kindle manual and cost $43.00.

You can never trust a price unless you see the company's internal numbers, and that can also be fudged.

From what I have heard (here's another story with only a little, if any backing) the e-ink screen alone costs the manufacturers over $25. If we assume a 4:1 markup from materials to sales price for the battery mentioned above, that adds another $4 to the mix. $2 for the case and another $3 for the box, instructions, and inserts. That leaves $16 for electronics, manufacturing, shipping, R&D, and manufacturer's profit if Amazon is to sell them at cost.

As for the dedicated reader aspect, I have a small laptop, I bought a Reader. I have a Palm equiped phone that I have used for reading, I bought a Reader. I voted for the Reader with my wallet.

I don't think Amazon needs any subsidy at all. Consider cellphones: dealers will give them to you free, provided you sign up for some service contract. Amazon could do exactly the same thing: a free reader with a one-year subscription, say, to their ebook library. The cost of the reader is absorbed into the service contract.

look, i really believe a $50 machine is a pipedream, and
that continuing to foster this myth is counterproductive.

here's my reasoning...

any dedicated machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

a multi-purpose machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

given these two(?) lists, i don't see where
the dedicated machine can squeeze costs.
The dedicated reader's cpu is probably a Motorola Dragonball or Intel PXA255, clocked between 33-200 Mhz. Its screen is a 6-10" e-ink or greyscale LCD. The operating system is likely a simple proprietary interface or some type of embedded linux. A dedicated reader's chassis is probably much smaller and lighter, maybe at most 10-15 ounces.

The typical notebook computer is using an Intel Pentium M, clocked at 1-2 Ghz. Its screen is between 10-15" color TFT. The operating system is likely Windows XP Home. A notebook computer's chassis can weigh between 4-8 lbs.

Are you honestly saying that you cannot see a massive difference in cost of materials between these two?

When the dedicated e-book reader is priced at $300, its because the company is making a $150 profit selling it. When a notebook computer is priced at $300, its because the retailer is clearing obsolete stock, and its probably being subsidized by an ISP contract.

Would be nice....

People are grumbling about the look of the kindle.

as long as:
- it features an e-ink display
- it has less than 100 dolar pricetag
- I can upload my plain text file into it (unlike original Librie)

I do not care how it looks, how much memory it has, what material the body is made of.

If it costs $50 I do not care if the body of the device is made from cardboard and the reader needs an external power (I would connect a holder for a few standard AA accumulators.)

Not so long ago I have been using an "ebook reader" that had 2MB of store memory. I was able to load in 4 average books. I do not need more for READING.
I have been reading books from Cassiopeia A-11 and A22 for years and I have never had the need for
- fancy controls except for a) selecting the book, b) selecting the font, c) page-up + page-down
- dictionary
- text search
- touch screen
- mp3 player

Now I have a 16MB Flash card that can hold staggering number of books (more than 32! ;-) and I am happy.

I think there is big market potential for a "barebone" lowcost ebook reader for bookworms like myself that devour book after book after book after book. There are also quite a few people that buy several Harlequin paperbacks a week. That is some potential.

i hope 194 customers is enough to make sony happy! ;+)I'm sure it's not, but not every Reader owner is a MobileReader, and I was using the MobileReaders who are Reader owners to point out that your conclusion that a dedicated device doesn't "make sense" isn't as clear and inevitable as you were claiming it is.

But you knew that already. :nice:

look, i really believe a $50 machine is a pipedream, and
that continuing to foster this myth is counterproductive.

here's my reasoning...

any dedicated machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

a multi-purpose machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

given these two(?) lists, i don't see where
the dedicated machine can squeeze costs.You're leaving out some reduced cost due to a simpler control set (buttons and such), but that's fairly trivial. :smile:

In any case, I agree, I don't see any way they can get the cost down enough to make any money on the hardware in the $50 range.



From what I have heard (here's another story with only a little, if any backing) the e-ink screen alone costs the manufacturers over $25.I've been trying to get a bead on this for some time. The best guess (and it's still a guess) is that the 6" screen is somewhere between $150 and $200. The folks over at the Baen Bar (http://bar.baen.com) have been trying to design their own e-reader. They couldn't say specifically what costs what (due to an NDA with PrimeView) but they did say that if they bought some of the more common parts themselves and did their own assembly, they could get the cost down to around $300 -- I think that was for a lot of 1000 units. I specifically asked the Sony guys what the cost of the displays was when we were at the Blogger's Day thing -- they wouldn't tell me a number, but did venture the opinion that the ~$350 that iRex was quoting to replace their 10" display was not out of line. Like I said, I don't have hard numbers either, but I've been puzzling over this for some time, and have gathered a few data points. :shrug:


I don't think Amazon needs any subsidy at all. Consider cellphones: dealers will give them to you free, provided you sign up for some service contract.That kind of is a form of subsidy, radelyp. :grin:

Amazon could do exactly the same thing: a free reader with a one-year subscription, say, to their ebook library. The cost of the reader is absorbed into the service contract.I'd be a bit leery of this sort of thing, speaking for myself. If it costs them even as little as $250 to make the units, then they're going to have to recoup that cost in order to stay in business. They'll also have to not lose money on the content they're "subscribing" you to. I have nightmare visions of a new round of "Columbia Record Club" type things for e-books. I don't want to climb in that particular type of pit if I can help it.

Maybe they can come up with an arrangement that would be fair all around (and I, personally, don't doubt that they'll sure try), but I'd want to read the fine print very carefully before I agreed to it. :shrug:

But, NatCh, if you own a cellphone you are already in that kind of situation, limited by some service contract. I completely agree that any such Amazon agreement must be read with GREAT care, as is the case with cellphone contracts. In any case, I was only suggesting the possibility.

Bowerbird's point about standalone reader devices certainly resonates with me: while I wouldn't mind packing a standalone reader when going on a trip, I don't want to carry two devices all the time, and that is frankly the main (though, as you already know, not the only) reason I have not bought the reader.

Well, there you go then, another case of nothing is everything. :smile:

The catch is the e-Ink displays are probably where LCD were about 7 to 8 years ago. In price and defects... ANd if you price a replacement LCD pannel for a laptop. Major sticker shock!

So they would be expensive. But after using it. Its darn well worth the price. ^_^

IIRC, Amazon ran at a huge loss for years in order to build the brand and the company. Now, they are doing fine because they (and their investors) took the chance. Amazon does not seem to be scared of taking a loss for a while in order to profit in the future. Maybe something like this would work.

But, NatCh, if you own a cellphone you are already in that kind of situation, limited by some service contract. I completely agree that any such Amazon agreement must be read with GREAT care, as is the case with cellphone contracts. In any case, I was only suggesting the possibility.

Bowerbird's point about standalone reader devices certainly resonates with me: while I wouldn't mind packing a standalone reader when going on a trip, I don't want to carry two devices all the time, and that is frankly the main (though, as you already know, not the only) reason I have not bought the reader.
Choice is obvious! Take the reader and leave the phone! :happy2:

If I could actually buy the kindle (I'm in Canada) without getting completely hosed, I would.

I paid $500 for my Librie. I'd pay $500 again for the kindle if several hundreds of those dollars got rebated or subsidized by Amazon, assuming I could load my own content - it isn't like I wouldn't spend the money there *anyway*.

If there were no rebates, I couldn't load my own content, and I could buy it for $50 I'd STILL buy it, cause at that price it'll be hacked anyway...

People fighting the "Stand-alone" reader concept either don't read enough material "online" (computer/pda/etc) already, or have never used an E-ink device for any time period.

1) Laptops are way overkill - too big, too heavy, too hot, too hard to read (sunlight, backlight induced eyestrain, poor ergonoics for just *reading*). The only thing they do better would be high-res content like PDFs.

2) PDA screens are too small and low resolution. The biggest screen you'll see on a PDA is around 4", VGA resolution, and they share the poor qualities of the laptop LCD - eyestrain and readability issues. The battery life is generally better than a laptop but not great, but you can still run into heat issues. (the bigger the screen, the higher end the PDA, the bigger the processor and the more heat you get out of the backlight. How popular are LED backlights now? None of my devices have one...) PDA's also tend to be clunky and un-ergonomic for reading, even if the weight is in the right range. Add field of view issues for the LCD and it looks even worse. They are more portable and handier than the laptop, while making higher resolution content available (but usually not very well)

3) Other, like cell phones (worse *everything* than PDAs, save for portability), other ebook readers (mostly not bad, save for LCD, battery, and availability), dead tree formats (loss of convenience, bulky, not reusable, relatively expensive to print off or buy everything you'd ever read otherwise...), computer (less mobile than a laptop, uncomfortable to sit in front of for hours on end), etc

Don't get me wrong - I own several laptops, PDAs, and cellphones, and at some point I've read an electronic text on every last one of them and have done so for years. Web pages, documentation, online-only (no dead tree edition) text, books, magazines, manga - the works. Not a single one of the other readers comes anywhere close to how nice it is to read on the Librie. I still read a lot on my "other" devices, but if I have a choice, or I'm going to read for pleasure - it's now on the Librie.

So if you don't read much, have no disposable income, only read in pitch darkness,don't want to carry an extra 255gram device, or if you have no interest in anything that's only available online, it may not be the device for you.

Otherwise you'll find the reader is generally easier to read than a book (no holding pages open), most people find that the refresh doesn't bug you after using it for a while, and the size, shape, and weight beat out most other hand-held electronic devices for reading, hands down. Add that to a low-eyestrain 6" screen with a guaranteed 180degree FOV, and you've got a winner. :) You just have to try it for a while to realize it.

The manual for the Kindle gives an interesting hint as to exactly how Amazon plans to market the device.

P26
Q. I lost my Kindle. How to I cancel my account?
A. Customer service can help you with that.


It reeks of "subscription" to me. If you lose a non-subscription device, why would you care about cancelling your account? You just stop using it.

Subsequent pages also talk about replacing purchased material that you accidently deleted. They mention that all the data you've ever bought will be visible in the "home" screen on the kindle itself, and anything you buy automatically downloads itself directly to the Kindle. There isn't any mention of managing purchases on a PC. (Although, I would imagine that you'd purchase though a web browser in the first place...)

It mentions a Kindle Companion (PC only) program that lets you convert your own data, or being able to load your data directly onto the Kindle when it's mounted like a USB drive, but nothing about purchases on or working with the computer.

Interesting.

this was originally mis-posted into another thread,
so i apologize if some quotes are from elsewhere.

***

nekokami said:
> I think it depends on what you consider "dedicated."

i can answer that in one word -- e-mail.
if you can read e-mail and write responses
on it, that machine will be "good enough",
at least for a good percentage of people.

if you can throw in general web-browsing,
then i think you'll satisfy almost everyone.
(mapquest on the go is a _big_necessity_.)

on yeah, has to be a phone/mp3 player, as
otherwise, we'd have to carry two devices.

there are machines out there that do this!
i don't know why nobody ever talks about
the sidekick. everyone i know who has one
raves about it. but look at what they cost!
(and then up that price for a better screen.
and notice they are subsidized with plans.)

but on ebay, a used sidekick holds its value,
because people are willing to pay that much
for a machine that can do what it does, and
no profit-minded company will sell for less.
(and anyone who thinks they will is wrong.)

***

jashsu said:
> are you honestly saying that you cannot see
> a massive difference in cost of materials
> between these two?

i'm saying if you can build a dedicated reader
that you can profitably sell for $50, _do_it_!

do it _now_, for crying out loud, you'll sell millions!


> When the dedicated e-book reader is priced at $300,
> its because the company is making a $150 profit selling it.

ya know, i'm cynical about corporate greed -- really cynical --
but even i cannot be _that_ cynical. not even close. you win!

the machine sony sells for $350 _costs_ $350 to make and sell,
once you figure in all the corporate overhead, which you must.
(selling the thing -- which includes support -- costs more than
its manufacture in the first place, often _quadruple_ as much.)

that $50 "credit" that sony gives new purchasers now is the $50
they're willing to lose now so as to get customers for the future.

the $650 iliad probably costs $750 to make and sell (because
the spin-off doing it doesn't have sony's economies of scale).
they're burning the parent-company's money as an investment.

***

radleyp said:
> I don't think Amazon needs any subsidy at all.
> Consider cellphones: dealers will give them to you free,
> provided you sign up for some service contract.
> Amazon could do exactly the same thing: a free reader
> with a one-year subscription, say, to their ebook library.
> The cost of the reader is absorbed into the service contract.

um, except that's exactly what a subsidy is.

and i'm sure they'd be happy to do just that, but
their 1-year plan would likely require you to buy
four dozen books -- just 1 book a week, folks! --
at a price of $25 each, which works out to $1200.

which might not seem _that_ bad -- especially to
those heavy readers out there -- until they realize
the books from which they're allowed to choose are
the ones that sell in the bookstores for $8.99 each...

and don't forget the d.r.m., which means that you
cannot pass the e-books on to friends or relatives,
like you can with those $8.99 bookstore p-books.

(ironically, it will be the d.r.m. which sky-rockets
calls to tech-support, raising that price sky-high,
which is why everything will cost so damn much.)

oh, maybe we forget to mention that, because of
the extra special deal you got on this "$50 reader",
we had to disallow loading "unauthorized content".

and none of your _personal_ content is "authorized".

sorry.

but you _can_ purchase our "blanket authorization",
which we have on sale (this month only!) for $398,
regular price $599, meaning you save _over_$200!_

do you get the picture?

anyway, in summary...

any scheme to "give them the razor for free and
charge them for the blades" is simply impossible
when so many people are giving away free blades.
(more content than you could read in your life is
already available free of charge on the internet.)

so you're chasing a pipedream, folks.

i'm sorry to bear this bad news. but anyone else
who says something different is trying to rob you
by giving you a "deal"... you're too smart for that.

-bowerbird

p.s. however, since i hate to leave you on a sour note,
take heart in the fact that _eventually_, full computers
will weigh less than 6 ounces and have screens that
are visible in full daylight _and_ also glow in the dark,
and can be folded just like a piece of paper and put in
your pocket. (technically, it will _be_ a piece of paper,
one that has had a special electrical grid painted on it.)
and, wonder of wonders, it will cost you a mere $389.
(that might sound like a lot now, but when this miracle
comes to pass, that will be what a loaf of bread costs,
so it'll actually be quite affordable, even to the masses.)
you just have to live for 57 more years for it to happen.
but i'm gonna live until i'm 191, so i'll be _stylin'_... :+)

i'm saying if you can build a dedicated reader
that you can profitably sell for $50, _do_it_!

do it _now_, for crying out loud, you'll sell millions!Now that I agree with whole-heartedly! :yes:

While Amazon did lose millions of dollars in their early years, they made a "profit" on each item sold. Their early problems wer they were not selling enough items to cover the fixed expenses. At no time did Amazon sell goods below what it cost them except to clear old stock from the shelves.

Their business model is to make a profit on each item. For something like this they may shave their profit toward zero at the start to get people to buy it and then to come back for more books. There is also a huge market for selling maintenance contracts and insurance for devices.

...Their business model is to make a profit on each item. For something like this they may shave their profit toward zero at the start to get people to buy it and then to come back for more books. There is also a huge market for selling maintenance contracts and insurance for devices...
Almost the lost leader model.

Here is the real catch... Not the reader but how many book are available in E format

In the Razor blades-Handles concept... it was not untill Gelette figured hot how to make blades so cheep and in vast quantity.

Like a video game unit. Normally sold at a loss but made up on games. But if very few games for unit are available then its a looser even if its the best avaiable.

In the Razor blades-Handles concept... it was not untill Gelette figured hot how to make blades so cheep and in vast quantity..
Actually they figured what to do and how to do it. It was a new concept in metalurgy.

Actually they figured what to do and how to do it. It was a new concept in metalurgy.


Thats right... Had something to do with ribbon steel and putting a edge on it.

if they undercharge for the machine,
they will overcharge for the books...

and if they undercharge for the books,
they will overcharge for the machine...

what we really want (or _should_)
is for them to charge the fair price
for the machine and for the books.

that's why we need to stop all this
ridiculous twitter on $50 machines.

even if it was realistic (and it's not,
by a longshot, not even close to it),
it simply wouldn't be a _fair_ price...

that's not to say that a _bookseller_
-- especially one as big as amazon --
wouldn't dangle it out there as bait...

but you know what happens to the
fish who go for the bait, don't you?

-bowerbird

that's why we need to stop all this
ridiculous twitter on $50 machines.
If there's any chance that the machine can read non-drm material (and i'd be pretty surprised if there weren't), then there's reason to hope for a $50 device.

If there's any chance that the machine can read non-drm material (and i'd be pretty surprised if there weren't), then there's reason to hope for a $50 device.

The issue that I see is that there is no way for the device to be $50 and be able to read non-DRM material.

They simply cannot produce a usable device for $50 (today, at least) and break even. They have to sell it at a loss. Which means that they have to make up for that loss somewhere.

The obvious place is in the eBooks. If the device can read other formats, then there is little incentive to buy eBooks specifically for the device. Also, DRMed formats have very low value to the reader (remember, you never BUY an eBook with DRM - you LEASE it), so it would take alot of eBooks - or they will have to overprice the eBooks - to make up for the loss.

Not a good business model.

I agree with the previous poster: the reader should not be sold at a loss. At cost, maybe, but not a loss.
Then sell the eBooks at a reasonable price.

Generally good points, but they don't take into account the overhead of handling paper books: storage, order assembly, shipping, etc. For a local bookseller, the savings would be good, but for Amazon the savings would be astronomical. The infrastructure to sell the eBooks is already in place, an investment since payed off by their pBooks business. Amazon stands to benefit hugely if they can get even a substantial fraction of their customer base onto eBooks.

I wouldn't expect Amazon to sell a reader for $50, but I could see them taking something of a loss per unit initially, or offering a substantial coupon in the at-cost price of the unit toward books/music, just to get the market primed. This would be a "limited time" kind of deal, like the free Amazon Prime trial they offered last year. But they've got to get the volume of ereader sales up to get the unit cost down and to realize those savings in book order fulfillment, and they need to build a critical mass of customers in the eBook arena if they want to be able to leverage publishers to put more of their inventory into digital format.

I don't think a reader will sell for anything close to cost unless it can accept non-DRM books/user content, but I would not be surprised if the only DRM supported on an Amazon reader is Mobi, and other formats may need to be converted to Mobi unsecured to work. (I personally would not buy it unless it can support PDF, even though I think PDF is far from ideal as an eBook format -- I have too many academic papers in PDF format that I'd want to be able to read. But not everyone is an academic.)

Amazon occupies the historical feat of being the first commercial internet book reseller. I'm not too sure if they are still the biggest but my point is this. Being internet only it would be a matter of pride to sell e-books and being the biggest at it. A loss leader like the Kindle is the perfect stepping stone to achieve this.
As a reminder of this marketing concept here is a definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
My previous comment was a joke.:)

The issue that I see is that there is no way for the device to be $50 and be able to read non-DRM material.
I can see your point here, but I contend that it would be very difficult to market a media player device at any price if it cannot play back the user's content. I don't think any digital audio player has been released that could not play mp3 or a proprietary format that the user could create from his existing mp3s.

So that leaves a motivation for Amazon to price it at $50. My initial inclination is that the actual pricing will be something like $200 with a $150 ebook credit.

I don't think a reader will sell for anything close to cost unless it can accept non-DRM books/user content, but I would not be surprised if the only DRM supported on an Amazon reader is Mobi, and other formats may need to be converted to Mobi unsecured to work. (I personally would not buy it unless it can support PDF, even though I think PDF is far from ideal as an eBook format -- I have too many academic papers in PDF format that I'd want to be able to read. But not everyone is an academic.)The manual we lifted from the FCC site (before it was pulled -- and can now be found here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=37735&postcount=28)) listed a number of formats.

Assuming it's still accurate (from page 43):Formats natively supported are: .AZW, .PRC, .MOBI, .MP3, .AA, and .TXT.So no RTF, no HTML and no PDF. Presumably there will be some sort of conversion software for 'personal files.'

Since it has the same 6" screen that the Reader has, I wouldn't expect A4 PDFs to be any more pleasent on it than they are on the Sony Reader anyway. :shrug:

My wife, who is also an academic (her collegues love it when I say I'm getting a 'Marital B.S. in English Literature' -- I'm planning to print my own diploma! :)), says to let her know when there's an A4 e-ink device that supports markups. She likes the idea of getting papers turned in electronically, then reading, marking up, and sending them back the same way. With the bonus that she keeps a copy of the paper and her comments.

I think they'd sell extremely well, so I plug the idea whenever I can. :grin:

The manual we lifted from the FCC site (before it was pulled -- and can now be found listed a number of formats.
Formats natively supported are: .AZW, .PRC, .MOBI, .MP3, .AA, and .TXT.

Never heard of .AZW (and can't Google anything on it either).

PRC is not a file format. It's a Palm Resource. So it depends on what's in it. Although Mobipocket content is usually mis-named with a .prc file extention (instead of .pdb which is what it should be).

So, it looks like the Kindle will be no better than a Palm/WinCE with an eInk screen (as far as content goes).

That being the case, why buy the Kindle over a PDA?

I'm guessing that .AZW is a proprietary AmaZon(something that starts with "W") format. It seems to me that I did locate an AZW extension for something, but it was totally unrelated (like medical engineering or drafting or something -- sorry, really don't remember :shrug: )

I think that Palm executables usually have a .PRC extension, is that what you mean by "Palm Resource?"

The list is a bit short, but not really shorter than the Sony (please don't let me start you on a rant on that, rlauzon :grin: )

That being the case, why buy the Kindle over a PDA?

Why buy a Sony Reader then? What does it bring as extra content capabilities since on the Kindle you will get drm prc and those are far more around than drm BBeB, while pdf on Sony Reader as everyone mentions is no better than pdf on pda.
Everything will depend on unknown as of now details. Price, capabilities..., so until we have official word everything is speculation. Personally I think that a "cell phone" like model, cheap device plus 1-2 year subscription plus personal content, makes sense and Amazon is in a good position to try it. But again, that's just my opinion...

Liviu

Just a side note: we don't know that Kindle will support DRM'd PRC files, only that they planned for it to support PRC files. Unless you found a statement to that effect in the manual (I haven't looked), I wouldn't assume that it supports any DRM except perhaps .MOBI :grin: As you say, Liviue_5, there are a lot of unknowns here. :shrug:

jashsu said:
> So that leaves a motivation for Amazon to price it at $50.

"motivation"? what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?

sure they have "motivation" to sell a $50 machine, but if no one can
_build_ a machine at that price, what good does that "motivation" do?

***

on the question of mounting your own content, _no_company_
will ever sell a machine on which you can't load your own stuff.
since no one would even take a second look at such a machine.

since the first e-book-machine -- the rocketbook -- was released,
the #1 f.a.q. has been "can i put my own content on this machine?"
if it's not possible, at all, you're not gonna make very many sales.

however, i could see a company attempting to _charge_extra_
for the "privilege" of loading your own content. of course, they
wouldn't be so stupid as to piss us off by phrasing it that way.
instead they'd offer a "steep discount" for a hobbled machine that
only accepted their own content (overpriced, to offset the subsidy).

and for _some_ people, that particular tradeoff might be worth it.
(specifically, people who had no desire to load their own content,
and only wanted to buy the bare minimum from that company.)

whether it would be _enough_ people to make it worthwhile for
the company, i'd have _serious_ doubts. but who really knows?

after all, this _is_ the model that the game consoles are using, and
they seem to be making lots of money. except for the wii machine,
the other big ones (sony's ps3 and microsoft's xbox) are _heavily_
subsidized. the ps3, which sells for $500, actually costs over $800.
sony expects to make the money back when customers buy games.

and microsoft has lost billions (literally) on its xbox over the years
-- hardware-wise -- although, if i remember correctly, they have
finally turned the corner on profitability by selling enough games.

and here's where we get to the crux of the matter.

sony and microsoft are the only parties that can sell the games that
play on their systems. that is, they have a monopoly on the content.
so they can charge (or overcharge) whatever they want for the games.
sure, nobody has to buy a game. but what good is the console then?

that monopoly is the reason they can overcharge for the games,
and that allows them to use the games to subsidize the consoles.

but that approach will not work for e-book-machines, because
the makers of the e-book-machines have no content monopoly.

even if you could force all the publishers to go through you
-- even if you gave them a big enough share of the money
that they were _completely_ecstatic_ to work through you --
the end-users would _still_ want to load their own content...

some of them might _never_ buy one thing from you. _ever_.

so you'd have to require them to make at least some purchases
from you, enough to make up for the discount on the hardware.

***

there's another set of important variables running around here,
but this post is long enough, so i'll save them for the next one...

-bowerbird

I think that Palm executables usually have a .PRC extension, is that what you mean by "Palm Resource?"

By convention, yes. .prc files are usually programs and .pdb files are usually data files.

But for the Palm, .prc and .pdb extensions are for show. The files themselves contain information telling the Palm what they are.

It's just a bit of a peeve for me. pdb is NOT an eBook format. It's a Palm Database. The data in it may be anything, not just an eBook.

The list is a bit short, but not really shorter than the Sony (please don't let me start you on a rant on that, rlauzon :grin: )

Well, it's shorter than most. At least the Sony supports PDF. And I thought it supported HTML as well.

A short list isn't bad, if many of the items on that list are standard formats.

The Kindle seems to support formatting only for its proprietary Mobipocket format. The only open format that I can see is text.

What does it bring as extra content capabilities since on the Kindle you will get drm prc

1. PRC is not an eBook format. It's a Palm Resource file (and it's probably mis-named since it should be a .pdb).
2. DRM has no value to the consumer. DRM makes content worth less to the consumer. So saying that a device supports DRM is certainly NOT a selling point.

So, why buy a Kindle if you already have a PDA?
Even if you don't have a PDA, why would a Kindle be more vaulable?

but that approach will not work for e-book-machines, because
the makers of the e-book-machines have no content monopoly.
-bowerbird

That's definitely true and the reason the Librie/Gemstar failed and Sony Reader or Ebk1150 as their reincarnations with personal content allowed are selling ok. However, Amazon as opposed to Sony/ETI is a big book seller, the biggest online and has probably 5-10% of the total book market here in the US. Also they own Mobi.

These 2 factors may allow them to offer a cheap ereader with some subscription included. The big issue that I think will determine whether they do it or not, is how will publishers react to this since one thing Amazon is not going to do is sour their relationship with them. Amazon Upgrade has been a dud until now beacuse of publishers, so Kindle may not appear soon, but again who knows.

So let's wait and see...

Liviu

But for the Palm, .prc and .pdb extensions are for show.Ah, just a convenience for the wetware to understand it more easily, then. :nice: I hadn't looked at the Palm files enough to figure that out, but then I haven't really needed to either. :shrug:

At least the Sony supports PDF. And I thought it supported HTML as well.Not natively, it doesn't, but it's not that hard to convert to RTF -- if you don't have a lot to convert, of course. :wink:

1. PRC is not an eBook format. It's a Palm Resource file (and it's probably mis-named since it should be a .pdb).
2. DRM has no value to the consumer. DRM makes content worth less to the consumer. So saying that a device supports DRM is certainly NOT a selling point.

So, why buy a Kindle if you already have a PDA?
Even if you don't have a PDA, why would a Kindle be more vaulable?

Completely agree with point 2, while about prc I have no idea what is, just that as long as is unencrypted, Fbreader reads it, and BookDesigner converts it and that's good enough for me to know :)

Again, why buy Sony or Iliad, or Ebk1150? I would not and did not for any proprietary content, but for capabilities and price. So the same will apply to Kindle if and when it appears.

Personally I want fast navigation, 1GB min storage (my main problem with Ebk), one handed usage, as high a resolution as possible with minimum 100 words per screen at acceptable font, and then 2 device sizes, one pocketable and one book. Ability to do any nondrm pdf well would be gravy, but that is unlikely in a dedicated reader because the computing power and sharpness of screen required are out of reasonable price reach for now.

Liviu

The manual we lifted from the FCC site (before it was pulled -- and can now be found here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=37735&postcount=28)) listed a number of formats.

Assuming it's still accurate (from page 43):So no RTF, no HTML and no PDF. Presumably there will be some sort of conversion software for 'personal files.'


It says that on page 28 on the copy of the manual I've found in these forums. However, I notice on page 15, under the heading Connecting to Your Computer, it confirms your presumption of conversion software.

When you connect Kindle to your computer you can transfer books, newspapers, music, and other files. You can also convert and transfer personal MSWord, PDF, and other documents.

jashsu said:
on the question of mounting your own content, _no_company_
will ever sell a machine on which you can't load your own stuff.
since no one would even take a second look at such a machine.

Remember a small, insignificant company called Sony
and their first e-paper e-reader e-product "SONY Librie"?

I know, their special format got cracked eventually, but the at the beginning you had to buy the content. What is worse, the content you have "bought" expired after 60 days. There is no wonder the device was a failure.

kacir said:
> There is no wonder the device was a failure.

yeah. but as you pointed out, they _did_ try...

of course, as you also pointed out, their format was cracked,
which meant that then people _could_ load their own content.

so maybe we should "play along" with a locked machine,
knowing we can break the lock whenever we really want.

i've wondered whether to do the same with d.r.m., act like
"it works" until all the content companies get fully on board,
and then pull the rug out from underneath them... :+)

-bowerbird

so maybe we should "play along" with a locked machine,
knowing we can break the lock whenever we really want.

Bad idea - at least here in the U.S. The DMCA forbids it.

Sony also has a history (remember Aibo?) of going after fans who enhance their products by hacking them.

...

so maybe we should "play along" with a locked machine,
knowing we can break the lock whenever we really want.

i've wondered whether to do the same with d.r.m., act like
"it works" until all the content companies get fully on board,
and then pull the rug out from underneath them... :+)

I would rather like to see that the content suppliers realize that d.r.m. won't work with every customer that uses his head. Too bad that the average customer doesn't realize, that he is locked to Sony, until he would change the platform/hardware.
But if they don't seem to learn it that way, the alternative obviously is to do it like you said.

hi ,
when will the amazon online book service begin ?

When comparing paper with ebooks, if you deduce stock-up fees and warehousing and transport and wages and...whatever, it makes quite a bundle! That is a lot that you can invest in a loss leader. If they figure that with their proprietary format they can get captive buyers, (as shown in the format list) it is highly probable that they could offer a reader at that price. Stuff made in Asia is very cheap and I'm sure that a deal could be cut with Eink for a cheaper display made there. The idea of a $50.00 reader is not that far fetched, just a good marketing exercise.

If someone could find the numbers I'd be curious to know how many ebooks each Rocketbook or eBookwise owner has bought in the life of the device. Take a cut from all of them and add it up and I'm sure you'd get an appeciative figure.

when will the amazon online book service begin ?Shucks, bugs, we don't even know when they're going to release the hardware. :grin:

I'd expect them to come at the same time. :shrug:

> The idea of a $50.00 reader is not that far fetched,
> just a good marketing exercise.

sigh. the desire to believe is _so_ very strong, isn't it?

perhaps the fact that it never happens will _eventually_
teach you it is indeed "far-fetched". or maybe it won't.

-bowerbird

Oh, I think it will probably happen eventually, bowerbird, just very eventually. :grin:

One question I have that could impact this is exactly how many e-Ink/e-Paper display can be made per year? This could be the limiting factor on this and other readers.

If they did wonder if it will flop like the Unbox?

One question I have that could impact this is exactly how many e-Ink/e-Paper display can be made per year? This could be the limiting factor on this and other readers.Not sure, but I think Nick Hampshire reported that there will soon be a ramp up to allow production of 60,000 e-ink displays per month. That would mean that there are many less right now per month, and they have to be shared by the various device makers. Probably price, large commitment and early commitment were factors in who gets what. At 60,000 per month capacity, however, I'm not sure how much of a scarcity that leaves, nor when that capacity is supposed to be available. I'm pretty sure it was sometime between now and end of next year. Anyone else remember?

Tnks! ^_^

Kind of hoping the 50 reader may be true. Be fun to "modify".

Eink is a serious company with a great future. It is now in a position to act on the success and new maturity of their invention. Believe me growth is a killer, If they are as serious as their image now is, they will have manufacturing in Asia. Then everything will click and the ball will roll, giving cheaper displays,good profits and a wider amount of customers. All is left is for us to buy.

Not sure, but I think Nick Hampshire reported that there will soon be a ramp up to allow production of 60,000 e-ink displays per month.Hopefully he's actually somewhere close on that report ... he's had a bit of a questionable track-record lately. :sad2:

yvan said:
> Eink is a serious company with a great future.

perhaps -- as natch put it -- "eventually"...

but in the many years that eink been making big promises,
their press-release vapor far outstrips what they've done...

and my word, have they burned through the investor cash!
i'd think they're a laughingstock of the v.c. world nowadays.

in my humble opinion, unrealized expectations have been
the downfall of e-books so far, and the hype and marketing
of eink has been the single cause that is most destructive...

-bowerbird

in my humble opinion, unrealized expectations have been
the downfall of e-books so far, and the hype and marketing
of eink has been the single cause that is most destructive...

-bowerbird

Commercial e-books did not succeed until now because it is not in the interest (and not unjustifiably so I think) of the publishers/distributors/bookstores to compete with print books, so they use drm and unrealistic pricing to kill the market. As long as there is no external force to compel the publishers to change, there will be nibbling here and there, basically using e-books to sell more p-books, but no serious attempt to try to expand the market beyond the 1% that occupies now (even if that).

Both the music and movie/tv experience demonstrate that. Until mp3's and Napster, and more recently broadband and time-shifting, there was a similar lack of interest from the music and tv/movie studios in online selling.
Now it's all the rage, and though the business models are still evolving, there is innovation at least...

Liviu

there was a lot of hype put out that
the age of electronic-books had arrived.

indeed, it's the same hype that is
being put out to this very day...

"eventually" it might come true, but
you'll excuse me if i laugh at it today.

-bowerbird

When and only when the sheet and thickness sized eink readers come out, will there be populism about ebooks. The current crop of readers is a transient from the PDA movement, which is today popularly considered the actual standard e-reader.

When these "sheet format" ereaders come out, they will be "silicon printed" , making them more affordable ie. more acceptable.

there was a lot of hype put out that
the age of electronic-books had arrived.

indeed, it's the same hype that is
being put out to this very day...

"eventually" it might come true, but
you'll excuse me if i laugh at it today.

-bowerbird

I remember when the HP 35 scientific calculator came out in 1972. There was no programability, it required 12 ICs, had LED display of only one line & cost $395 in 1972 dollars. That was only 34 years ago. Today you can get a cheap computer for $395 in 2006 dollars. Quite an advance in very limited time. So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird. Be patient & it will come.

I realize we live in the age of "instant gratification" & "What have you done for me lately?", but be patient. The Sony Reader is a large step forward. :thumbsup:

I remember when the HP 35 scientific calculator came out in 1972. There was no programability, it required 12 ICs, had LED display of only one line & cost $395 in 1972 dollars. That was only 34 years ago. Today you can get a cheap computer for $395 in 2006 dollars. Quite an advance in very limited time. So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird. Be patient & it will come.

I realize we live in the age of "instant gratification" & "What have you done for me lately?", but be patient. The Sony Reader is a large step forward. :thumbsup:
I'm about your age. I've got to tell you that nature won't permit me to wait an other 35 years! :happy2:

I'm about your age. I've got to tell you that nature won't permit me to wait an other 35 years! :happy2:

I understand, yvanleterrible. Maybe that's why I am enjoying the reader so much now. :happy2:

slayda said:
> So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird.

i'm not being "pessimistic", i'm being _realistic_.


> Be patient & it will come.

well, first of all, i've been "patient" for over 25 years now.
after the first 15, it gets to be quite easy, to be honest...

however...

e-books are already here... they don't need no stinking
hand-held machinery to make them "real" to me, no sir.

millions of people now trot over to wikipedia every day,
people who probably haven't looked in a p-encyclopedia
more than once or twice in the past year. and they aren't
just _reading_ this e-encyclopedia, they are _writing_ it!

and even 10 years ago, who would have predicted that
more-or-less ordinary people would be writing up their
more-or-less ordinary thoughts of interest to them and
having other people read these "blogs", and this would be
one of the most widely-talked-about aspects of the web?

if you do a word-count on an active blog, you'll see that
over the course of a year or two, they've written a book!

nor is this the only form of creativity that is flourishing,
what with myspace and youtube attracting millions of
people, then being sold for $800 million to 1.6 billion...

there's a lot of action out there happening...

so i'd advise anyone who is being "patient" and "waiting"
to schedule themselves a wake-up call, and start _moving_,
or you're gonna miss the jet-plane flying out of this dump...

-bowerbird

If an Amazon Reader can search texts and is easy to hold in my hand and has a bookstore that I know won't go out of business I would be willing to waste $50 just to try it out AND not care what it looks like. For me reading books is not as style conscious an activity as listening to Christina Agulara on an i-Pod.

Of course, I'd want to try it out on free books such as those that were offered by blackmask.org. OR I'd want to use it with cheap books. I don't think I'd ever be into spending full price for a DRM restricted book. I can understand why publishers and manufacturers would want to use DRM (electronic formats can be shared much more easily than paper).

But publishers and manufacturers have to understand that I'm not going to pay full price for a library that slams shut every time my wife takes a book off the book shelf. Or a library that disappears every time I leave a reader in the pocket in front of my airplane seat. Or that makes me worried every time my hard disk goes out. Or that I can't buy for half price at a used ebook store. Or sell for some money once I've finished reading it. Or check out at the library if I just want some quick information. Or give away when I'm done reading it. Or can't return if someone buys me a book I already have.

Paper books are just so much cheaper when you consider how many times they can change hands for free. Let's take a popular best seller like "State of Denial" that really rakes in the cash for publishers. The book retails for $29.95. Joe Blow buys the thing for $16.50 new at Costco or Amazon. He reads it and gives it to his Dad for his birthday. Dad never reads it, but appreciates the gift. He sells it at Half-Price Books. Jane Doe picks it up for $10, reads it and loans it to her mom who reads the first chapter before getting bored and returning it to Jane. Jane then donates it to the school library where it is read one more time in the next decade. That's five reads for $16.50. During that time it has served two people with information, one as a gift, one as a curiosity, and another as a source for the two page paper he has to turn in for High School History on Monday. Out of these five people, only one of them was willing to pay the publisher. But the publisher still made a killing.

An e-book, on the other hand - I buy the book for 75% of the discounted price ($12). I either can't get into eink as I thought I would, I don't like the book (and can't figure out how to give it away), I loose my e-reader or my hard disk fails (and I can't stand figuring out how to reconfigure my windows and/or online profile and/or e-reader profile to reauthorize my book [or deauthorize the second reader my wife bought but never uses]), or the company selling the book looses the format war and stops manufacturing replacement parts after five years. Multiply $12 by the 50 or so books I've purchased in the last year and that's allot ($600). I don't read 50 books a year. But they are always there waiting their turn.

That's my pre-buyer's remorse syndrome keeping me from taking the plunge into e-books.

Jonathan

The reason e-books never caught on with the Amazon crowd is that you can't print the things and no one wants to read an entire book (anything you can't finish in one sitting) on a computer screen.

I have a hazy notion that it's not the publishers who don't want e-books to take off. Its the printers, distributors, and bookstores. I know that many publishing houses are vertically integrated (they publish, print, distribute, and retail). But if you look at publisher's core competency, it's finding, editing, and marketing good books to customers. Amazon's competency is providing the marketplace. I would imagine that Amazon and a publisher, if they stick to their core competencies would be happy to sell e-books and pass along a large percentage of the savings on to consumers in order to steal the rest of the percentage from the middle men. The only thing holding the innovation back is consumer reluctance to buy a book they can't print (e-readers solve this) and some fixed costs (publishers having invested vertically). Of course Amazon could solve the first problem with subsidized e-readers. It could really take over allot of the bookstore chain business if it gave the instant gratification of downloading and reading a book within seconds rather than the minutes it takes to drive to a bookstore or the days it takes to ship. Just imagine the shipping costs Amazon would save by pushing the adoption of e-books.

There is every reason for Amazon to want to push e-books. They have the customer base. They understand virtual products and virtual shopping. They have the above mentioned incentives. And they have the brand name and the staying power associated with it. I can't see them not taking a stab at it. The question is how much of the savings can they pass on to consumers?

Let's think about the savings. No paper, no distributors, no warehouse, no shipping. They pay for the writer, the publisher (editor), marketing costs, servers, and bandwidth. Surely they could increase revenue and pass along some savings too. Of course they have to either pay an e-reader subsidy or sell enough that economies of scale bring down the per unit cost. With the size of their market, I don't see it as an infeasible investment.

Here's a model Amazon already seems to be playing with. Buy the book and download the e-books for $3 more. Or what about the model that online music stores/cell phones are using: access to 10 million books for $20 a month (tiered subsidized e-reader with a 12 or 24 month contract). Or the PS3 model/Amazon used books model: book publishers have to pay Amazon a royalty to use their platform which includes a subsidized e-reader. Or a Yahoo/Google model: discrete advertising in e-books subsidizes the e-reader. Or an Steve Jobs/i-Pod model: tell the publishers to drop their prices or else. Or the Microsoft model: Amazon uses their platform to push it's own publishing house. Wow, I can see why publishers are nervous now that I think about it. But give it 5 years and it's impossible that Amazon would not launch a loss leading e-reader.

Or what about the model that online music stores/cell phones are using: access to 10 million books for $20 a month (tiered subsidized e-reader with a 12 or 24 month contract).
Actually, I've been thinking about it, and I could live with this, if the proportion of the Amazon stock list available in eformat was high enough. I spend $20 on books per month already (maybe more). If I could have *any* book at Amazon for that price, whenever I wanted, I think I could overlook the DRM. Heck, I'd get a reader for each member of my family if the unit price was low enough. I wouldn't care if I couldn't share books with another member of my family, because we'd all have access to all the books anyway.

I'd still need to be able to put my own content on, though.

... I think I could overlook the DRM. Heck, I'd get a reader for each member of my family if the unit price was low enough. I wouldn't care if I couldn't share books with another member of my family, because we'd all have access to all the books anyway...

Submitting so easily is dangerous thinking. This is the how big outfits gain their way with anything. Slow accustomizing to private rules. When they put their foot down you're cooked! :uhoh2:

Submitting so easily is dangerous thinking. This is the how big outfits gain their way with anything. Slow accustomizing to private rules. When they put their foot down you're cooked! :uhoh2:
I see your point. One has to be ready to change if the rules change. For example, I used to have a regular cell phone plan. The rates went up, and I don't use a cell phone much, so I dropped the plan. Now I have a "pay as you go" cell phone for emergencies, which is much less expensive for me.

I'd be willing to try an Amazon plan, but I'd also be prepared to drop it if they changed the rules. I also think I'd continue to buy anything I really cared about in hardcopy. :D

I'd be willing to try an Amazon plan, but I'd also be prepared to drop it if they changed the rules. I also think I'd continue to buy anything I really cared about in hardcopy. :D

A frog, when placed in a pot of boiling water, will immediately jump out.
A frog, when placed in a room temperature water, will stay - and as the heat is slowly cranked up, will allow himself to be cooked.

Just because Amazon doesn't have bad rules today, doesn't mean that they won't tomorrow. That's the problem with DRM - the companies control what DRM controls and what it means - not law.

DRM + DMCA has effectively given the authority to modify copyright law to the corporations.

The only acceptable DRM to me is none. The seller of the eBook must be able to guarantee that I will be able to read that eBook 10 years from now - without repurchasing it or accepting new restrictions on how I can read it. Just like a paper book today.

If the seller cannot do so, then I am not "buying" the eBook. I am leasing it and I will not accept a purchase price for a leased object. The value of a leased object is far less than the value of a purchased object.

If the seller cannot do so, then I am not "buying" the eBook. I am leasing it and I will not accept a purchase price for a leased object. The value of a leased object is far less than the value of a purchased object.
Yes, that's my point. An online "library access service" is something that I would be willing to pay for. I'm under no illusions that I'd be buying the books. If I wanted to buy the book, I'd probably buy the paper version.

I'm not saying this should be the only model for eBooks, or that anyone else should be satisfied with this model. I'm saying that *I* might be satisfied with this model-- if the price was right, i.e., the quantity of books I would read per month would reduce the cost per book to a reasonable rate for a lease.

I'm not saying this should be the only model for eBooks, or that anyone else should be satisfied with this model. I'm saying that *I* might be satisfied with this model-- if the price was right, i.e., the quantity of books I would read per month would reduce the cost per book to a reasonable rate for a lease.

There's also the issue of who owns culture. If all books were effectively free, but locked up by corporations forever, the corporations end up owning culture.

Here's an example:
Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950. But only about 32 of his books have fallen into the public domain. You can get them on Project Gutenberg.

The rest of the books are sitting somewhere. Now, whether it's his estate or his publisher's fault I don't know, but none of the rest of his books are being republished. Not that you can't get these other books. You can get them usually through a used book store.

But what would happen in the eBook world? There are no used book stores because you can't "sell" your eBook. So if a publisher decides to no longer lease an eBook, you have no alternate way of getting a copy.

The publisher effectively controls what people can/cannot read.

With DRM it gets even worse, because a publisher can revoke your right to read the eBook you just acquired.

That is what I find frustrating. The publishers are sitting on tons of older material, still under copyright but not being published. If they sold it in electronic format, they could make some money from their back catalogue instead of making no money from it just sitting there. The Burroughs estate gets nothing from the books not being published. If they released the books in paper format, the profit would not be massive because most of the fans of his work have the books already (I know I used to). An electronic release would not cost them much and would result in more profit for the family. And the publishers.

You know, why do we even need publishers anymore? You could have editor groups that would choose books and edit them and guarantee that the books are of a higher standard. Then the author could do with them as they will. Sell them to a printer, or a print on demand or a electronic company. Or there could be companies that would do this for him for a cut. This is probably why the publishers don't want to go with electronic books. They know their business is obsolete in the future.

There's also the issue of who owns culture. If all books were effectively free, but locked up by corporations forever, the corporations end up owning culture.
It's a valid point (and a good example). Perhaps I'm relying too much on the darknet to keep the books available regardless of what the publishers want.

But I'm not sure this is as radically different from the situation we have today as you are saying. Yes, one can resell paper books (and the publishers and some authors hate this, btw). But many people don't resell them, they get pulped or burned, and valuable works are lost as a result. Did you know A. A. Milne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne) was an accomplished playwright? Fewer than half of his plays are still preserved in sources such as Project Gutenberg, though. They weren't considered interesting enough (compared to his tremendously popular children's books) to save.

I'm not saying I think the scheme I've outlined above would preserve books any better -- I don't think it would be even as good as the paper system currently in use. But I think it's a matter more of degree than kind.

It's a valid point (and a good example). Perhaps I'm relying too much on the darknet to keep the books available regardless of what the publishers want.

The problem with relying on the darknet is that it breeds a lack of respect for the law (which isn't that respectful today, but still...). Having a free, open market is usually the best way to ensure access to works.

But I'm not sure this is as radically different from the situation we have today as you are saying. Yes, one can resell paper books (and the publishers and some authors hate this, btw). But many people don't resell them, they get pulped or burned, and valuable works are lost as a result. Did you know A. A. Milne was an accomplished playwright? Fewer than half of his plays are still preserved in sources such as Project Gutenberg, though. They weren't considered interesting enough (compared to his tremendously popular children's books) to save.

Yes, that problem happens. Some other famous authors come to mind as well.

But what is worse? Knowing that a work used to exist, but doesn't due to human short-sightedness? Or knowing that a work exists, but the company that held the keys to unlocking it is gone - along with the keys?

I wonder has the kindle been resubmitted to the FCC yet? That would give us an indication of the release date of the device.

That is what I find frustrating. The publishers are sitting on tons of older material, still under copyright but not being published. If they sold it in electronic format, they could make some money from their back catalogue instead of making no money from it just sitting there. The Burroughs estate gets nothing from the books not being published. If they released the books in paper format, the profit would not be massive because most of the fans of his work have the books already (I know I used to).

A (frightening)thought here. How many classic book would not be published today because they don't fit in the marketing tastes and plans now in favor?

You know, why do we even need publishers anymore? You could have editor groups that would choose books and edit them and guarantee that the books are of a higher standard. Then the author could do with them as they will. Sell them to a printer, or a print on demand or a electronic company. Or there could be companies that would do this for him for a cut. This is probably why the publishers don't want to go with electronic books. They know their business is obsolete in the future.

I've been saying that for quite some time now.

Today, in the pBook world, publishers have value in that they make printing books cost effective. Remember from history class, before the printing press, if you wanted a copy of a book, you paid someone to copy it by hand.

But in the eBook world, the cost of "printing" an eBook is almost zero. What value does a publisher bring an eBook? I can't see any.

I do see the value that a publisher may bring an author, but as a reader, why do I care? For the author, that's a cost of doing business and it's not a reason for me to pay more for an eBook.

My view of the eBook publishing industry is that the author writes the eBook on his word processor, saves it into a standard file format (like ODF) which he sends to a place like Fictionwise to handle the transactions with the readers.

I do see the value that a publisher may bring an author, but as a reader, why do I care? For the author, that's a cost of doing business and it's not a reason for me to pay more for an eBook."Cost of doing business" is traditionally passed on to the customer in one form or another, rather like a retail business's taxes, the customer really pays them. There ain't no tax fairy, and there ain't no 'cost of doing business' fairy.
http://www.cadet-world.com/cwforums/images/smilies/fairy.gif

If there is a benefit to the author, then it translates to a better product (at least better than it would have been :)). If product X is better for my purposes than product Y, but costs more, then I have to decide whether to pay more, or make do with less. :shrug:

Of course, there is a limit to how much cost can be passed on, but if the business person can't pass enough cost on to his customers that he can still put food on his table ... well, then the business closes and nobody's really served by that. :shrug:

I do see the value that a publisher may bring an author, but as a reader, why do I care?
Leaving out the obvious benefit to the reader of having a book proofread before one reads it, some publishers develop habits of purchase that help to indicate what their books are like, which can be useful in deciding whether to purchase -- or even spend time reading -- a book, especially by an unknown author. For example, Baen books has a certain "style" of sf. I like some of their stuff, but not being much into military stories, I don't like all of it. However, I know more or less what to expect from a Baen book. Other publishers similarly can have certain trends in their books.

A good review service could potentially replace this, and I'd like to see more of those. I don't mean just Amazon style popularity contests, but reviews by critical readers whose opinions I trust. But what is the benefit to someone reading through the "slush pile" of self-published eBooks and rating them or writing reviews? Web page ads just don't generate that much. Some reviewers might be paid by magizines (including webzines), but that in itself might not be enough compensation if one has to read 100 eBooks to find one worth recommending. Perhaps if there were a way of providing reviewers with a commission on sales, it could be worthwhile for people who have critical reading and writing skills to take on this task. (And if you think this would be a conflict of interest, it's no more so than traditional publishers already have.) But in any case, I think some alternate model will need to be developed to compensate for this function of publishers before they can be eliminated from the process.

But what is worse? Knowing that a work used to exist, but doesn't due to human short-sightedness? Or knowing that a work exists, but the company that held the keys to unlocking it is gone - along with the keys?
To me these two situations are pretty much the same thing. My hope is that at least with an encrypted file, there's a chance that someone will be able to unencrypt it later (in some happy, more enlightened time). Then again, perhaps no one would even save a copy, just as no one saved copies of some of Milne's plays.

Don't get me wrong, I think DRM is a bad idea, and I'd prefer that Amazon offer a service for a monthly fee with no DRM.

Maybe every US publisher should have to provide one unencrypted copy of each book published to the Library of Congress. (Isn't something like that being done in the UK?)

"Cost of doing business" is traditionally passed on to the customer in one form or another, rather like a retail business's taxes, the customer really pays them. There ain't no tax fairy, and there ain't no 'cost of doing business' fairy.

But when you buy a car, there isn't a line item on the receipt saying 'fee for the dealer's mortgage'. Yes, you end up paying for it - but not 100% of the cost. The dealer only passes on part of the cost to keep competitive.

This kind of stuff is what I call a "fuzzy cost". The consumer ends up paying for it (at least partially), but it's not explicit (like sales tax) and it's not 100% passed on.

A good review service could potentially replace this, and I'd like to see more of those. I don't mean just Amazon style popularity contests, but reviews by critical readers whose opinions I trust.

These already exist on the web in various forms.

We don't need a commercial entity to review books - as a matter of fact, I would not trust such an entity to provide accurate reviews. The only good reviews come from other readers.

Maybe every US publisher should have to provide one unencrypted copy of each book published to the Library of Congress. (Isn't something like that being done in the UK?)

But now you have the gov't controlling culture - which may be a bad thing as well (especially in light of the U.S. gov't using security clearances to censor newspapers (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/23/1827241) ).

Yes, you end up paying for it - but not 100% of the cost. The dealer only passes on part of the cost to keep competitive.
<snip>
The consumer ends up paying for it (at least partially), but it's not explicit (like sales tax) and it's not 100% passed on.I respectfully disagree, rlauzon. For a business, 100% of the revenue comes from the customers, therefore, 100% of the costs have to be paid with money that comes from the customers -- that includes the owner's 'salary.'

If the business cannot bring in enough money above and beyond the costs for the owner to make a living, then he stops doing that business and goes on to something else. The pressure to stay competitive, has to be balanced against the pressure to eat.

Of course, most businesses lose money in the beginning, and you're quite right that the owner might accept a lower 'salary' than he'd consider ideal, but if it drops too low, he can't afford to keep at it, precisely because he does have to pay that mortgage, and buy milk and eggs, and put gas in his car.... :nice:

I respectfully disagree, rlauzon. For a business, 100% of the revenue comes from the customers, therefore, 100% of the costs have to be paid with money that comes from the customers -- that includes the owner's 'salary.'

It seems that I'm not being clear. Let me try again with a simple example:

We start with a widget. The cost to produce it is $10. It sells for $20.
So, as a customer, I pay $10 (the cost of the item) plus another $10 for profit of the producer.

Now, someone comes out with a new process that will chrome plate the widget. It costs $2 to chrome plate it. As a consumer, a chrome plated widget is only worth $21. I won't pay $22 for a chrome plated widget. So the producer must make a choice.

Option 1: Don't chrome plate the widget (avoiding the extra $2 cost).
Option 2: Chrome plate the widget, eat the extra $1 cost, dropping the profit to $9 - in the hopes that more widgets will be sold now that they are chrome plated.

My point is that as a consumer, the full cost of chrome plating is NOT passed on to me simply because I won't pay for it and I will go get my (better value) widgets someplace else.

Bringing the discussion back to eBooks: The cost of producing an eBook is extremely small. If the author decides to employ a proofreader, that's fine. But in passing the full cost of that on to me, I may decide that his eBooks are no longer a good value and go someplace else. Therefore, he may not be able to pass the full cost on to me and has to make the same decision as above.

I predict that eBooks are going to be very cost sensitive simply because they are so cheap to produce. Extra costs will have a very large impact on sales.

Oh, I I understood what you were saying, rlauzon, I'm just pointing out that if the producer has to eat enough of those little bits then the remainder gets too small to be worth his while to do the work. :nice:

I.e. if he chrome plates 5 different types of widgets and eats $1 of the cost on each of them then his profit drops from $10 to $5. If that $5 isn't enough for him to mess with, then he stops messing with it. That's all I was getting at.

Because he eats that $1 he takes home $1 less per widget. If his 'salary' is $50k and he makes/sells 10k widgets and eats $1 on each of them, then his salary drops to $40k. If he can live on that, and is willing to do so, then fine, if not ... well, nobody gets widgets from him, chrome plated or otherwise.

For widgets, that's not that big a deal, usually someone else is making something comparable. But books are a bit different, usually a given book is only going to be written by a given person, so this would mean it just didn't get written at all. Imagine if Shakespeare had decided that he just couldn't make enough money from writing that "Romeo and Juliet" thing. :sad3:

As you point out, e-book margins are pretty thin, but I don't know that they'll be that much thinner than p-book margins, from the author's standpoint anyway. So a lot of folks might be dissuaded if we the consumers expect the prices to be too much lower than the paper price. I guess that's my overall point. :shrug:

As you point out, e-book margins are pretty thin, but I don't know that they'll be that much thinner than p-book margins, from the author's standpoint anyway. So a lot of folks might be dissuaded if we the consumers expect the prices to be too much lower than the paper price. I guess that's my overall point. :shrug:

Since eBooks effectively cut out the middle-men (i.e. publishers and retailers), they can be priced significantly lower than pBooks - with the authors and retailers making the same.

I don't believe that authors believe that they will make more off an eBook sale than a pBook sale. In the short term, that may be the case, but not in the long term. In a capitalistic system, prices tend to drop until they can drop no further. Since the cost to produce a copy of an eBook are effectively $0, we are just paying for the author's and retailer's profits.

Since eBooks effectively cut out the middle-men (i.e. publishers and retailers), they can be priced significantly lower than pBooks - with the authors and retailers making the same.Now that we agree on. :yes: And I hope that your estimation of how much cost that cuts is closer to the reality than my own. :grin:

I don't believe that authors believe that they will make more off an eBook sale than a pBook sale.Nor do I, nor, I imagine do most of the authors themselves. :nice: Although, it may be that they end up making more money on e-books from higher sales rather than a higher per unit profit. :shrug:

Since the cost to produce a copy of an eBook are effectively $0, we are just paying for the author's and retailer's profits.Well, their time and effort are worth something, or we wouldn't be buying the books in the first place. :wink:

...Since the cost to produce a copy of an eBook are effectively $0, we are just paying for the author's and retailer's profits.Well, their time and effort are worth something, or we wouldn't be buying the books in the first place. :wink:I think this was more about the cost for paper and other print material. The content is worth something, but basically ebooks cut out all the "hardware" cost on the publishers/authors side.
We can now go on and say, they will have to include costs for hosting and such in the price tag. But I'm sure this has to be a small fee for the single ebook, that it couldn't lead to prices like for the paper version.
Especially for those books that are only rented (DRM-books) for a unknown amount of time.

We don't need a commercial entity to review books - as a matter of fact, I would not trust such an entity to provide accurate reviews. The only good reviews come from other readers.
Perhaps. Maybe if you distribute the work far enough across multiple volunteers, the slush pile will get read, rated, and reviewed, and the gems will rise to the top. Meanwhile, access to the work has been so broad that there's really no good reason for anyone to pay for a copy of the book by the time the reviews are written. (You might be able to get volunteers to read the slush pile while it's free, but I seriously doubt many readers would be willing to pay for the privilige. And while Baen uses volunteers to help sort the slushpile, ultimately books are read by a paid editor before the author is offered a contract, and the book changes form between the time it is pulled from the slushpile and the time it is published.)

Which means that if the authors who write the books are to be compensated at all for their work, a completely different model would need to be used, e.g. an honor system in which readers pay what they think the book is worth after reading, or an advertising system in which ads are embedded into the book. (These aren't meant as the only two possible models, just two examples.) Perhaps this is where publishing will eventually go, but I don't think it's the next step from where we are now. Nor do I see either of these as a great improvement for either readers or writers from the current system. Your opinion is no doubt different. I think this is an area where we will not agree.

I'm a true believer in making eBooks affordable. I think we can expand both the eBook share of the market and the total reading market if we set affordable prices. That said, I get a really uncomfortable feeling when I read the idea of Amazon pushing for lower prices. For paper books, at least, Amazon demands a 55% discount. It's virtually impossible for small publishers to make money with that kind of discount--even when we set relatively high prices. Mobipocket sets a 50% commission, which is about the industry standard--and since there are minimal manufacturing costs, it's possible to make money. Still, do I want Amazon telling me what prices to set? Not hardly.

Rob Preece
Publisher, www.BooksForABuck.com

Amazon should rather focus on pushing the ebook price to 25% of the paperbook price, the rest will happen automatically.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=amazon%20kindle&btnG=Google+Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn

It seems the Kindle is going to cost upwards of $400. I am very disappointed.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/amazon-kindle-ereader-gets-more-details-pricing-time-frame-features-254048.php
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/20/amazons-kindle-400-for-spring/

don't be disappointed, jaime. it's actually _great_ news for book-readers.

why? the fact that they're charging you a _fair_ price for the _hardware_
means they're not going to try to subsize it on the back of the _content_,
which is the _books_ that you are going to buy. since you're gonna spend
a _lot_ more on books than $400 -- if you're a real book-reader, that is --
you will be spending less money this way in the long-run. and if they are
charging you a _fair_ price for the content (instead of trying to gouge you),
they won't have as strong an aversion to letting you load your own content,
and that will be good for you in the long run too, because it'll pressure them
to keep their prices honest. once they start gouging you, it keeps escalating,
like the price of popcorn in movie theaters, until it's totally unreasonable and
the market collapses entirely, which we _really_ do not want to have happen
with e-books. especially as this was the vicious cycle that doomed p-books.

e-books -- if they're cheap -- let us rediscover the midlist, even the long tail,
and that's the way ideas should be, wild and free. so this is great news, jaime.

sure, it'll be tough to bite the bullet at the start, but that's the (high) price
that early adopters have always had to pay, i'm afraid to say, so that's life.

and yes, you were sold a bill of goods by the constant "news" from places
like teleread, that a $50 machine was "right around the corner", but hey,
-- i hope you'll pardon my french -- that's what you get for being a sucker.
now you know who you can and cannot trust.

-bowerbird

oh, by the way, i think it's hilarious that the web echo-chamber
has announced to itself that this thing will debut "this spring"...

by my calendar, spring is 1/3 sprung already, and i haven't heard
one word of this from amazon itself. have you? i didn't think so.

is it really our opinion the p.r. department for the world's biggest
bookstore has been struck deaf-dumb-and-blind? no sir, children.

i can't say for sure, because i am not them, but if i _were_ them,
i'd announce this along about june and have 'em available september
for positive reviews aimed at the year-end holiday gift-giving season,
when conspicuous consumption is the order of the day, doncha know?

-bowerbird

p.s. the atari-beige one is the $400 model. white shiny one goes $500.

Well, regarding point 1, no it isn't and yes it is.

In the strictest definition, the one made by Palm when setting up PalmOS, it most definitely is *NOT* an ebook format.

However, both Mobipocket (.prc) and eReader (.pdb) have built their ebook files around the .prc/.pdb resource and data file structures and have released enough (can we say *FLOODED* here?) ebooks that many people who don't have or routinely use PalmOS devices make the assumption that the .prc and .pdb file structures *ARE* ebook formats. Sorry, but that's just the way it goes.

Look at Webscriptions and Fictionwise, they both offer ebooks in, what they term, the 'Mobipocket .prc ebook format'. They don't go around sticking up an explanatory paragraph saying that what they *really* mean is they offer ebooks in either text or html format bundled into a PalmOS .prc resource database file structure. In some ways this is like unto whether one should say Kleenex (R) or kleenex - except that Palm never insisted upon enforcing the original definition (trademark) and there's no going back.

Derek

1. PRC is not an eBook format. It's a Palm Resource file (and it's probably mis-named since it should be a .pdb).
2. DRM has no value to the consumer. DRM makes content worth less to the consumer. So saying that a device supports DRM is certainly NOT a selling point.

So, why buy a Kindle if you already have a PDA?
Even if you don't have a PDA, why would a Kindle be more vaulable?

back in april, i said:
> oh, by the way, i think it's hilarious that the web echo-chamber
> has announced to itself that this thing will debut "this spring"...
>
> by my calendar, spring is 1/3 sprung already, and i haven't heard
> one word of this from amazon itself. have you? i didn't think so.
>
> is it really our opinion the p.r. department for the world's biggest
> bookstore has been struck deaf-dumb-and-blind? no sir, children.
>
> i can't say for sure, because i am not them, but if i _were_ them,
> i'd announce this along about june and have 'em available september
> for positive reviews aimed at the year-end holiday gift-giving season,
> when conspicuous consumption is the order of the day, doncha know?

well, it's june. two weeks until the end of "this spring". any new word?
no? well, um, gee, exactly what i thought. heard any good echoes lately?

and if nothing is announced by the end of july, there will only be a lump of
coal in your christmas stocking, no $50 e-book reader-machine for _you_!

-bowerbird

The late Adam Osborne produced an early portable computer that enjoyed popularity for a while. Then he made a mistake that was fatal to his company. He announced a new improved model. Everyone wanted it, so those that had been planning to purchase his current model waited for the new model to come out. And waited, and waited . . .

When Osborne finally put the "Executive" model on the market, it was too little, too late. Osborne's company failed and Compaq inherited the design.

The Osborne effect causes consumers to delay purchases based on the promise of better, cheaper future technology. Using it, some companies can exert a measure of control over market conditions, to their advantage.

Or should we call it the Kindle effect?

the osborne i was my first computer -- one of the great loves of my life.

and your recounting of the debacle around adam's second machine is correct.
(although -- like most people -- you've forgotten to say he had little choice
about pre-announcing his "executive" because he was trying to raise money
to produce the machine by selling stocks to individual investors.)

but notice that that is _not_ what amazon did here. first of all, they didn't
announce this -- and still haven't. second, they have no existing product
that might be accidently cannibalized by a premature pre-announcement.

if you're positing that they deliberately let this rumor slip, so as to sabotage
the sony reader, then that's a different type of strategy, but one that already
_has_ a name -- namely "f.u.d." (for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"), and it's
the specialty of another seattle-area company called "microsoft", thank you.

but i don't think that's what happened. because remember, it wasn't amazon
that blew this thing out of proportion. it was rothman over at teleblog and
some people here and on some other blogs, people who have been telling us
for _years_ that a cheap machine is right around the corner, who are now
_desperate_ that they've sacrificed so much of their credibility on this, and
are looking for _anything_ that might salvage a bit of it. but sorry, charlie...

cheap machines _will_ come. but it won't be sooner, it will be later.

even the o.l.p.c. -- which is pushing the edge of the envelope, what with
their research and development bringing about _