Cory Doctorow: "Hardware ebook readers are a dead end"

[MaggieScratch]

The problem with Cory's argument is that he is trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution and there just isn't one at the current time. Right now, dedicated devices do a better job of what they do. I love converged devices--I do a lot with my Treo; it's my main mp3 player, for example, and I even got TCPMP going on it for video. But my music and videos are scattered across several SD cards, and let's face it, nobody would choose to watch a movie on a tiny Treo screen if they had a better option. Would I be better off with, say, a large-capacity Zune with the big screen for those functions? Yes, probably, but is it worth carrying around an extra device? For me, not at this time.

My two year old Canon 6 megapixel digital camera does a much, much better job of taking photos than the pathetic camera in the Treo. But I don't carry the Canon with me on a daily basis, so I do use the Treo camera occasionally.

The Treo used to be my main ebook reading device, and still would be if the backlighting didn't bother my eyes. I read enough that carrying a Cybook in my handbag is not a hardship, and it is infinitely preferable to carrying around, for instance, a copy of Fanny Burney's Cecilia (at 900ish pages in trade paperback size) or the book I'm currently reading, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth (976 pages according to Amazon).

Does all of that mean I wouldn't prefer a converged device, a SuperTreo, if you will, that I could use for all those functions? Of course I would. But everything is a tradeoff. If music is important to you, you don't mind carrying an iPod, even if it has no other function than playing music. If reading is important to you, you'll carry a dedicated book reader if it creates a better reading experience, which my Cybook does for me.

Cory doesn't appear to see his ebooks as replacements for his pbooks. That's why he gives them away. He sees them as sales drivers for his pbooks. But I think that if we get to the point where ebooks are inexpensive and portable between devices, I do think that readers will be willing to buy an ebook reader and purchase ebooks as they now buy mass market paperbacks. Look how much people pay for iPods and other mp3 players. But the price will have to come down to around $200, I think, AND there will have to be inexpensive ebooks (say the same price as MMPs or a few dollars less) and ease of portability between devices. Which is, a little bit, what Cory is saying.

I've never seen ebooks replacing pbooks entirely--but I can very well see them replacing MMPs, if the readers become as ubiquitous as the iPod is now. But they have to provide a great reading experience, and that's harder to do in a portable device than providing a great listening experience, I think. Even among cell phones, "feature phones" concentrate on one piece of media--iPhones are great for music and video, there are Sony phones with fantastic cameras built in, and the Readius will be a great ebook reader. But there's yet to be a phone or portable device that does it all well.

[mores]

eBooks will never replace pBooks.
Just like mp3 will never replace CDs.
And AVI won't replace DVD/BlueRays.

I think most people will want to keep "analog" copies of their favorites for eternity, and the "casual stuff" will be kept only digitally.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by MaggieScratch

Cory doesn't appear to see his ebooks as replacements for his pbooks. That's why he gives them away. He sees them as sales drivers for his pbooks.

I think Cory, like most publishers, hasn't quite come to terms yet with the idea that the content... the actual literature... can be wholly divorced from its packaging, and still have a significant worth. Or maybe he just believes that no one else will accept that idea anytime soon. After so many years of publishers' charging premium costs for hardbacks, then adjusting prices according to the type of packaging, as opposed to the actual content, it's easy to understand why publishers (and consumers) have a hard time thinking otherwise... this site has ample examples of that thinking ("If it's not on paper, it ought to be free!").

Cory is also already inside the print publishing "castle." His opinion supports his intention, which is to make money off of printed books. That also is easy to understand.

But I think that as people run out of space, cannot deal with the increasingly cost of paper production and resultant waste and pollution, and express a desire for more information and entertainment, the logic and value of an immediately-available electronic library will be clear to all, and e-books won't be seen as mere "advertisements" for paper books.

Will that result in hardware readers? If a converged device is not developed that can handle the display, manipulation and storage of an electronic library, I think we will get specialized hardware readers, iPods for books. But if those features are effectively combined in a device such as a PDA, laptop, UMPC, tablet PC, etc, no one will need hardware readers. We'll just see who gets there first.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mores

I think most people will want to keep "analog" copies of their favorites for eternity, and the "casual stuff" will be kept only digitally.

I'd be perfectly happy putting my entire library in a digital file.

I'd gladly give up three stuffed bookshelves and dozens of boxes of material I haven't seen in years, as well as recover all the books I've thrown away because I had no place to put them. I wouldn't keep a single copy of a book that wasn't personally signed by someone special, which would be the only thing to give the hard copy a sentimental value for me.

With a proper display, any image committed to paper would be perfectly viewable to me on-screen.

If I could get a grant that allowed me to take a year off from work, freeing me up to digitize my entire library, I'd jump at the chance.

[NatCh]

Personally, I wouldn't get rid of all of them, but I would gladly dispense with most of them. My dictionary collection aside, because it's a different thing, there are a number of just plain old hardback and even paperback books that I have fond memories attached to which I'd keep primarily for sentimental reasons. But then ... I s'pose those are more of a "collection" than a "library" to me after all.

[nekokami]

I've often wondered whether Cory Doctorow really thinks ebooks won't eat into pbook sales eventually, or realizes that eventually the ebook will replace the MMPB but just doesn't talk about it. Certainly for him, right now, free ebooks are increasing his pbook sales. But ebook reading options are improving rapidly and become more common, both multi-function and dedicated versions. I think eventually even he will have to charge for some ebooks-- maybe just the new ones, for a set period of time-- if he wants to stay in business as a writer.

Then again, I notice he's earning money on the lecture circuit now, so maybe he sees that as his future income generator. I don't think all authors are going to go that way, though.

[JSWolf]

One of the major issues with a multi-purpose device is that you use it for all kinds of things so it's ON a lot of the time and the battery gets drained. Then when you need it to do something else, the battery dies on you. Now I use my 505 for reading and my Rio Karma for listening to music. If the battery dies in one of these i have the other still till I can get the battery charged.

[mores]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I'd be perfectly happy putting my entire library in a digital file.

Me too, actually.
I also force my self to use my laptop or my smartphone to take notes instead of scribbling on paper.

With "most people" I meant the people in my surroundings. They like to buy vinyl (???) or buy extra-expensive hardcover editions of extra-special books. They print their digital photos to keep them locked up in the same old "photo boxes" that our grandparents already used, and quite frequently print out PDFs so they can read the content "in it's entirety".

I'll post a picture of our living room once all the junk is removed (I'm redoing our kitchen, so all our kitchen stuff is distributed in the rest of the appartment). My wife has 5 Ikea "Billy" bookshelves with 2(!!) top-addition-thingies to hold all her literature stacked up on one wall ... looks rather nice, but still, a lot of dead trees that would take up no more than 50MB on my hard drive.

EDIT: regarding battery life - I charge my p1i smartphone every 3 or 4 days. Once you have a rhythm, it's no problem to get the most out of your battery. Read X hours a day, talk Y hours on the phone etc ... and then you try to go as low as possible on the LiIon battery and you get a charging rhythm going that works.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by mores

EDIT: regarding battery life - I charge my p1i smartphone every 3 or 4 days. Once you have a rhythm, it's no problem to get the most out of your battery. Read X hours a day, talk Y hours on the phone etc ... and then you try to go as low as possible on the LiIon battery and you get a charging rhythm going that works.

There is no reason to try to get as low as possible with LiIon. It likes to be topped off unlike earlier technologies.

Dale

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mores

My wife has 5 Ikea "Billy" bookshelves with 2(!!) top-addition-thingies to hold all her literature stacked up on one wall ... looks rather nice, but still, a lot of dead trees that would take up no more than 50MB on my hard drive.

At one time, that was our basement. My wife and I forced ourselves to trim 4 shelves on one wall to 2, and use some of those shelves for decoration other than books, to take the visual "weight" of all those books off of the one wall. Everything else got boxed. And as I add books or magazines, I have to figure out what comes down.

Mind you, I'm talking about the finished part of the basement. The unfinished Utility Room holds the boxes, plus three shelves of magazines and comics stretching across a 12-foot space. Lots of paper, that.

As housing prices rise and homes get smaller, space more expensive, I don't see how the average Joe is going to be able to keep up with that. I could recover an entire room's worth of space just by digitizing my collection... the kind of space people in some places in the world call their entire home. How can the majority of people not want to do that someday?

[mores]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

There is no reason to try to get as low as possible with LiIon. It likes to be topped off unlike earlier technologies.

Hmmm, did I mix up LiIon and LiPoly ?
Anyhow, I once tried the "myth" of the modern battery where you can charge anytime, and within a few days the battery life was horrible.
"Conditioning" the battery is pretty important for the System to know when it's empty and when it's full.
It says so in my apple macbook pro manual, it says so in my power toothbrush manual, it says so in my p1i manual ...

[radleyp]

You must be using a battery with a memory, like the old ni-cads. Li-ion batteries have no memory and do not need any conditioning. In fact, in the Kindle manual, to take just one example, the user is told to keep the battery charged to the maximum at all times and not let the battery drain down, and also to charge at any time. It's only as such batteries get older with use that their capacity begins to slip

[Greg Anos]

Ah...Battery life. One of the biggest trade-off today is with batteries is do you go with a li-whatever and have a long battery life (but have to recharge it in place) or used NImh batteries at half the capacity but in a standard form factor (such as AA or AAA), so you can swap batteries when they go flat, and recharge the old ones separately from the device. (And keep on using the device.)

I'm a big fan of the latter, but most of the rest of the gadget world believes in LI-whatever. I wish somebody would make an e-ink e-book reader that used standard form batteries (even with half the capacity). Then, I might think the device will outlive the battery. (And not go flat at an inconvienent time, requiring hours of recharging time to make the gadget functional again.)

[mores]

The LiPoly battery itself has no memory effect like the NiCad, that's true. But the controlling thing gets messed up if you charge it unwisely.

Anyhow, I read it in a bunch of manuals from various manufacturers, I follow the principle and get rewarded with great battery life on my devices. To each his own, I guess, and I see it is right up there with the Mac vs PC and Crumple vs. Fold discussion

EDIT: I noticed, this is not a battery thread.

[searcher]

Sony, Philips (Readius), Amazon....knows better than somebody called "Cory Doctorow"