TIMES: The future of books and electronic reading

[Moejoe]

Interesting article from the Times:

Random House has just launched the UK’s first “enhanced” electronic book list. The Book and Beyond project brings together 10 of its authors — with more to come soon — making their new books available, unabridged, for digital download to phones, computers, PDAs and e-book readers. This, in itself, is nothing remarkable. The e-book market has been with us for nearly a decade in one form or another. What is significant is that it is the first download list to feature books embedded with “rich media” content. (Video, pictures, music, games and computer apps to you and me.)

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6336372.ece

Personally I don't want any bells and whistles attached to my books, it just seems wrong somehow.

[wallcraft]

From Book and Beyond

What are Book and Beyond premium ebooks?
Book and Beyond premium ebooks are a selection of titles from Random House that contain extra material, which can be video, audio, a quiz or just extra text. The extra content is designed to be used with Adobe® Digital Editions on a computer, as they require extra processing power to display! The extra content cannot be used on the Sony Reader or other hand held devices, as they do not have the capability to display the material.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

From Book and Beyond

I just don't see how it can get any more pointless. If I wanted a multimedia experience on my computer (and I think they tried this one before) I'd want a CD-ROM or something like that. They're just confusing the market with attaching the words e-book to these bloated monstrosities. What we're really paying for is bundled 'marketing'.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i think there's good and bad in this article.

i agree that the "books and beyond" proposals seem like a step backwards. however, one day we will have devices with multi-media capabilities, which won't require you to view these types of books on your pc. for a novel, i'm not sure many people will be interested, but think of the possiblities for textbooks and reference books : you could have a biography of a musician with music embedded in the book to play, or science books with films showing various scientific phenomena, or books about filmmakers with clips from their films... i wouldn't mind having a book talking about the golden age of film from the 30's with short clips of all the great films of the time to illustrate the text...

and this part seems particularly encouraging, with some solid numbers as well.

Last Christmas was the turning point for e-publishing. More Sony Readers, Kindles, iPods and iPhones were sold than even the optimists anticipated: sales of e-books rocketed on Boxing Day as a result. Up to 1,300 a day in the UK are being sold currently. In America, there were 2.5m such legal downloads last year and more than 500,000 e-book readers sold. And with electronic readers being enthusiastically taken up by Britain’s schools and FE colleges, the e-book experience may, at last, be about to have its moment.

The man who developed Book and Beyond for Random House is a former marketing executive for Sony BMG Records, Jonathan Davis. He wanted to ensure the giant publisher was ready for the digital tsunami. “I lived through it once, and I like to think we’ve learnt from the mistakes made by the record industry. It was freefall. Big mistakes were made early on. The download was demonised, and all they really succeeded in doing was to stifle a new market for a year or two. Publishers need to listen and look at what people are actually doing and respond with the kind of books and reading experience they want for the way they are living.”

Most significant of all for Random House is the launch, today, of its own app. Download it to your iPhone or iPod and any book from the Random House e-book list can be yours. The app allows you to customise the size of the text and the colour of the text, the font, the look, the feel of the electronic page. It’s reading all right, but not as we know it. With 2,500 Random House titles available by the end of the year, many with “rich” content, these steroidal “super-books” are making a serious play for literary attention and our cash.

Publishers are eager to do with books what iTunes has done for music downloads. Hundreds of thousands of titles, all searchable by author, subject or title, are being digitised in an attempt to beat the likes of Google and Yahoo to the online punch. Even big-selling authors are hauling themselves onto the e-bandwagon with their own apps. The Grisham Widget, for example, pops up on your iPhone or laptop, offering thoughtfully selected chunks of the legal thriller writer’s latest book, interviews with the author and the chance to link straight through to Amazon.

whether we think the book and beyond offer is misguided or not, the guy behind it does seem at least to have the right attitude. and random house launching their own reading app is also en encouraging announcement, although since they are apparently partnering with stanza (and therefore amazon...) i do wonder where that will go.

[dreams]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

SNIP SNIP ...

Personally I don't want any bells and whistles attached to my books, it just seems wrong somehow.

Me neither. I still remember books with ad pages and how much I enjoyed ripping them out.

[Jaime_Astorga]

Most of this sounds like a bad idea, but I don't think I would mind video on textbooks where appropriate (for example, a chemical demonstration in a chemistry textbook) or perhaps some music in a musical theory textbook. We include pictures in textbooks already, after all, right? Of course, this assumes internet connections go up on par so that the extra media won't be a bandwidth problem, or there are at least alternative versions to use in that case.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

Most of this sounds like a bad idea, but I don't think I would mind video on textbooks where appropriate (for example, a chemical demonstration in a chemistry textbook) or perhaps some music in a musical theory textbook. We include pictures in textbooks already, after all, right? Of course, this assumes internet connections go up on par so that the extra media won't be a bandwidth problem, or there are at least alternative versions to use in that case.

This is just an extension of what we've already seen with CD-Roms in the early nineties. Rich-reference books. But until the e-reader's themselves are up to par to afford this kind of interactivity, what's the point? The internet took over as that 'rich-reference' fucnction where all these things are already doable. To me it seems like a thinly veiled ploy to lock-down, restrict and extend the idea of 'digital renting' instead of 'digital owning'. A Random House bundled application that you can't format shift, that's tied to a singular device or reading application -- oh, and bonus, you get all that cruft you already pay extra for with DVD's (marketing crap, behind the scenes rubbish nobody even cares about, interviews.)

No thanks. It's very simple for me. Give me a novel with cleanly formatted text that's portable, without DRM and at a reasonable price and I'm your customer.

If I wanted a rich-multimedia experience, books would not be my first port of call.

[Renaldo]

I think it was Sony that tried to do this with their music CDs in the late 90's, early 2000's. Buy a CD, put it in your CD player, it played like a CD. Put it in your computer and it became a full multimedia experience. Sometimes. When it didn't completely crash.

This has got to be one of the worst ideas ever. I'd rather publishers spend more time and money in getting a decent quality ebook on the market at reasonable price than all this other garbage.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

Most of this sounds like a bad idea, but I don't think I would mind video on textbooks where appropriate (for example, a chemical demonstration in a chemistry textbook) or perhaps some music in a musical theory textbook. We include pictures in textbooks already, after all, right? Of course, this assumes internet connections go up on par so that the extra media won't be a bandwidth problem, or there are at least alternative versions to use in that case.

Some kind of multimedia wiki format strikes me as generally better suited for the information we're currently putting in textbooks, rather than trying to maintain them in book format at all.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

If I wanted a rich-multimedia experience, books would not be my first port of call.

For fiction I agree. For a textbook, history book, computer/programming/tech book I can see where some multimedia might, MIGHT, be something worthwhile.

[gerraldo]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

For fiction I agree. For a textbook, history book, computer/programming/tech book I can see where some multimedia might, MIGHT, be something worthwhile.

ACK and we already have lots of this on CD/DVDs for our PCs...

BTW: I have never and will never use(d) the MP3 function on my eReader!

And personally, I don't want my eReader to become some kind of InternetTablet (but with color, touchscreen and WiFi I see this coming...).

[K-Thom]

With the current technology available, this "rich media" content may only displayed on PCs or notebooks. It's nothing any of the dedicated reading devices could handle.

So what's the point? I didn't ever like to use my PC for reading, additional content won't change that. There's plenty of content for a PC if I want to enjoy a "rich media experience".

Although, given a future reading device, with full color in 16M, high resolution, I wouldn't mind a nice trailer or some animated illustrations in the inside. Adding some video interview, why not?

But right now, nope? Just the delusions of some marketing managers.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

So what's the point? I didn't ever like to use my PC for reading, additional content won't change that. There's plenty of content for a PC if I want to enjoy a "rich media experience".

It bears repeating on this forum: more people (48%) view ebooks on a PC or laptop than any other kind of device.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It bears repeating on this forum: more people (48%) view ebooks on a PC or laptop than any other kind of device.

Of course they do. There are a billion+ internet, and more PC users, and there are perhaps a million eInk devices sold.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It bears repeating on this forum: more people (48%) view ebooks on a PC or laptop than any other kind of device.

But *how many* ebooks?

Half of ebook readers being on laptops is meaningless, as a marketing datum, without knowing how many they're reading, how many they're buying.

If that half is reading 1-4 ebooks/year, and the people with dedicated ebook readers are reading 10-50 ebooks/year. How many of those PC/laptop readers are only reading free ebooks?

I think of myself as "almost only reading free ebooks." I don't think I've bought more than a dozen ebooks in the last year--a small handful from Baen, and another cluster from Fictionwise, some of which are short stories. But in my office of 40+ people, I believe I'm the only one who's bought *any* ebooks--although I know a couple of them have downloaded & read publishers' freebies, and one is taking classes online that involve downloading & reading PDF textbooks (which are heavily DRM'd; he has to put his name & password in to unlock the view; they can't be 'ported to a mobile device.)