A Fourth issue for thoughtful debate - what's holding back electronic books?

[Loose_Appeal]

Here's a handy tip: You can buy a book and don't have to keep buying the same book for 18 months because the newer book has better contrast, wi-fi, and faster page turning. Revised editions are exempt because it adds useful updates related to the content, not more ways of accessing an online bookstore to spend more money on.

As for trying to put it into educational programs or giving it away as an exposure to younger users, it's like trying to force a public school system to only let children play with expensive, reprehensible male power fantasy like Warhammer tabletop armies instead of chess, or an older, most trusted, cheap, traditional activity. Nothing beats reading paper, at least not yet. Plus with all that money you might as well chip in a few extra dollars for a more useful piece of technology, like a laptop or a tablet. Sure, e-inks are all the rave, but it's pretty illogical to replace paper print for education, at least for now.

Right now if I didn't receive my PRS-650 as a present I wouldn't care if the e-ink industry lived or died, but since I do have it I just hope they'll drop e-book prices for popular books. It's not like they needed the markup to pay for a printing press machine for all those pages, or they're just gouging digital content because of a niche market. Like lame Warhammer armies.

[DMB]

I am a typical late adopter. I normally wait for bugs to get ironed out and for prices to go down. So it took me a while to move from vinyl to CD and from VHS to DVD. One of the issues was needing to rebuy stuff I already owned in the older format or go through a lot of time-consuming work changing it myself. I only adopt early if I see a big advantage in doing so.

I suppose that with ereaders I am a medium adopter. I thought about getting one a little while back but was put off by the prices. It is only because of two conditions in my own life that I was pushed towards thinking about it at all:

1. having too many books and needing too much shelf space;
2. travelling a lot and wanting to cut down on luggage weight.

Now those conditions are not going to apply to most book readers.

Even with that as motivation I hesitated about the expenditure on an ereader. Amazon's launch of the relatively cheap Kindle 3 swung it for me.

For people who are not gadget freaks and who just buy the odd book as the fancy takes them, an ereader is just not a must-have toy.

[Bro Pete]

To the anti-DRM folks, I've read your posts and I understand your frustration. I don't copy files to share. I've removed DRM from just one book. I purchased an important one that was not available in my format, I "liberated" it and translated it into a usable file. Since then I haven't even looked at sites that sell ebooks in other DRM protected formats.

Without judging others, being honest and working within the rules is how I sleep at night.

I don't want to derail the discussion, and I don't have a dog in this fight. For me that is my only example of DRM holding back the success of ebooks and readers.

[Selzernium]

For me it is
1 Geographic-restrictions
2 Price
3 DRM

[hal2814]

Originally Posted by DMB

So it took me a while to move from vinyl to CD and from VHS to DVD.

You skipped cassette altogether? You are a late adopter.

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Technology:
The screens still aren't as reflective as paper.
The screens are lower resolution than paper.
The screens are more fragile than paper.
The screens aren't a quick to turn (or flick through) as paper.

Economics:
Ebooks aren't as cheap as they should be.
Ebook readers aren't cheap (although they're getting there.)

Business Practises:
Ebooks are encumbered with DRM.
Ebooks aren't as widely available as they should be.


Mostly though, I suspect it's the usual inertia. Most people see no need to change, or may not have noticed that ebook readers are now a practical proposition (despite the drawbacks listed above).

Practical ebook readers really haven't been around for very long. I ordered my first E-Ink ebook reader, a Bookeen CyBook through NAEB on 1st January 2008, and receive it in late February/Early March 2008.

In other words, even an early adopter, like me, has only had what we'd today recognise as a proper ebook reader (paper-like screen, long battery life) for nearly three years. (And the CyBook cost me just over $400 — about three times the cost of the Kindle 3!)

New technology, increases in volume, and competition, will all work over the next five years to make ebook readers really mainstream and more affordable.

But it's simply the time for people to now become aware of them that I think will make the most difference.

Thats true that they aren't as reflective as paper, but my Kobo compared to most paperbacks has better contrast. And I can turn a page faster on my Kobo and with less work than a P-book, But that is true that you can't go through the book as fast as you can't turn more than one page at a time. But then with a Kindle has way faster page turns so you can flip through a book really fast on those and they have go to page.

[Xanthe]

(I haven't read through the entire thread, so please excuse any possible repetition)

As much as l enjoy my ereaders and they meet a visual need that I have, IMO the whole reading experience is really much better with a paper book. The tactile experience is better with a pbook. Turning a page can give a sense of anticipation. It's easier to flip back and forth to check maps, tables, graphs and pictures. You can toss them down without them breaking. If they get wet, they dry out and still work. Color covers are nice and give artists work (don't really need artwork for ebook covers, do we?). pBooks come in different sizes and shapes; the variations are interesting.

That having been said, I think what's holding back electronic books is that the need is currently a niche market. I think that the majority of the buyers now are:

- people with book storage issues
- people who love gadgets
- people who do a lot of reading while traveling
- people who have visual problems
- people buying them as gifts for others
- truly avid readers for whom holding 500 books in their hand is nirvana

Other things holding it back:

- the perception that a digital edition is not worth the price of a paper book
- bad experiences with poor ebook formatting from legit sources
- lack of experience with computers
- disinterest in computers
- viewing an ereader as too fragile to be worth the cost
- not reading enough books in a year to justify the cost
- resistance to new techology
- the preference for paper books
- the perception that ebooks might destroy the publishing industry

[DMB]

Originally Posted by hal2814

You skipped cassette altogether? You are a late adopter.

Nope. But for me cassettes were not an alternative to other formats but an add-on. I mainly copied stuff to cassette so that I could play it in my car before I had a car with a CD-player.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

(I haven't read through the entire thread, so please excuse any possible repetition)

As much as l enjoy my ereaders and they meet a visual need that I have, IMO the whole reading experience is really much better with a paper book...

As you indicated, those are personal opinions; there are those who disagree (I personally prefer the overall experience of a handheld device, and have no interest in any aspect of a printed book).

I wouldn't say that some of the reasons posited so far aren't valid. But a great many of these reasons would be unimportant to the general public if those interested in selling ebooks did a better job of marketing them, and making them more compelling to the public. I've seen essentially no marketing efforts for ebooks that have been at all powerful or attractive to the general public. Most of ebooks' progress (in the U.S.) has been as a fad, not as a valuable and desirable product.

[charmian]

I think e-book adoption is actually going pretty quickly.

The main barriers, in my opinion:

Lack of a used book market for ebooks, and weak library offerings. Note that a lot of libraries offer mainly PDFs and have a meager epub selection.

Publishers pricing ebooks above paperbook prices. Consumers often perceive the value of an ebook as less than that of a physical book because it can't be resold.

Cost of ebook readers. Although they have come down, they are still fairly pricey. If they go below $100, I think there will be a big surge in the number of ebooks sold.

Availability of ebooks. A lot of titles still haven't been digitized.

[Darqref]

What's holding ebooks back? the lack of a critical app (for most people).

For me personally, there is only one reason that made me hunt for an ebook reader. webscriptions. and ONLY webscriptions.

Before Webscriptions started at Baen, I had some vague idea that somebody might read on a PDA (typically a Palm device, at least that's what I saw.) When Webscriptions started, I quickly realized I couldn't read that long at my computer, and went looking for what was available. I found a Rocket ebook, and never looked back (for Baen, anyway, and Fictionwise used to catch a bunch of my book money too). I still buy paper, but my reasons for doing so are dwindling away as drm is cracked, publisher make books available, and prices stabilize.

What will make ebooks roar is some killer app that will make *most* people want to have one. For ordinary voracious readers, those reasons are already around. Ipads and Kindles and such are starting to reach toward that mass "gotta-have" audience, but I don't think it's quite gotten there yet.

It might get there with a sufficient critical mass of periodicals available on a good reader. It might get there with textbooks. It might even take most of another generation. (er, um, sorta, anyway. I used to read that computers wouldn't have there greatest effect until a generation of children had been raised with a computer available as a fact of life. seems to me that just about happened, with young coders dreaming up new ways to use their everyday tools.) True explosions of ebooks and reading devices might take long enough for kids to grow up used to textual content just being another part of the electronic media.