Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Mostly the article seems to make clear how little the author thinks of e-books from any company, not to mention approaching the subject as if A and B&N are the only e-book choices out there. Though it does point out differences between the two services, it says little of substance about them, or your real alternatives. To me, it comes off as kind of vacuous and pointless.
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Mr. Pogue can at times tend to oversimplify things, and he does in this case lead with some of the controversial bits, but then isn't that typical of what's expected of a well written news article? If you're writing for a newspaper, you have to grab the reader, they frequently only read a paragraph or two, and then move on. I myself can go on too long in posts, and they can be bland, so topical brevity is something I tend to admire.
Mr. Pogue also doubtless understands that there is more to eBooks than Company A and B, he's written or contributed to other articles in the area. But I think he grasps the basics well enough here. We have one company, Amazon, that's dominating the eBook field at the moment, if not totally so in sales, certainly in interest levels and visibility. With apologies to Sony, in the U.S. it's just not very visible. No big screen variant, no cell phone connections, kind of yesterday's tech. And Kindle is very obviously a bigger part of what Amazon is up to than Sony's eBook readers are to that company. So anything new that comes along, is going to be compared to Amazon. They're the trendsetter, they have the mind-share.
The Barnes announcement, while NYT correctly points out is "not exactly" at the moment, stands out as being significant to me on several levels. Barnes clearly gets that it cannot sit out eBooks indefinitely. Time to start building the infrastructure and market presence. Borders of course stocked Sony readers, so in the Bricks and Mortar space, the Barnes announcement positions it to go after mind-share, and directly compete. Second, the Plastic Logic connection, while that's turned to the Waiting-for-Godot device, gives what looks like a very good hardware device a very-good backend bookstore to partner with. This pairing is of benefit to both. Think iRex (albeit with better firmware), for the prime example of what happens to good hardware without a good backend. Granted BN went the Sony route of artificially inflating its book count, but that's just marketing, harmless enough, presumably they'll fix that as time elapses. And third, the article touches on this but somewhat in another context (the BN Mac software is obviously not-ready-for-prime-time), BN got something very definitely right that
Amazon still has wrong, the need to be able to read an eBook on a PC. eBooks need to be readable, anywhere, which means at least 4 platforms (arranged, more or less, in order of screen-size/portability):
- Phones (iPhone, Blackberry, 3-5" screens,etc.) - Uber portability/convergence, but not the place to read War and Piece (unless you like giving business to your optometrist)
- Dedicated eBook readers (ala Kindle, 5-13" screens) - long battery life with wireless download
- Netbooks (with apologies to Microsoft, but 9-12" screen PCs, Apple's upcoming appliance)
- PCs (Laptop and Desktop, 15-30" screens)
It is the last two where BN seems to have found a chink in Amazon's armor. Kind of surprising, given Amazon's obvious thoroughness in developing/buying eBook capabilities, and stated intention to go multiplatform.
I kind of look at the BN announcement as just their foot in the door, for now, but more significant in that what's a very big Bookstore presence has concluded they cannot let Amazon dominate the eBook field any further. This is a significant milestone. If there were any questions remaining, eBooks have arrived. BN will make Amazon (and Sony) better, the competition has been joined.