Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Stripping down image sizes is the wrong approach for the very same reason that DRM is wrong: it causes you to never be free of the company you buy from, because you will need to redownload each and every book you have, any time you upgrade or switch your device, either to get the correct image size, or to get the book to work.
The general population doesn't read a lot. According to this data from 2013, the average American reads 5 books a year. Let's be generous, and make it 12 books a year, assuming that people reading only 5 books a year won't buy an e-reader. In 50 years, these people will read 600 books.
What does it matter if a book is 10MB in size because of images? The library will take up around 6GB. So what? A SINGLE 5 minute song in FLAC format takes up around 25MB, an album being 350MB+, easily. Installing a game on a computer nowadays takes op 30-60GB. The average computer nowadays has 500GB+ of storage space (if you have a very cheap off-the shelf desktop), and every phone that is not ultra-budget has 16-32GB on board, and/or an SD-card slot.
It would be very easy for Amazon to stick 16GB+ into an e-ink Kindle. Kobo's can actually be upgraded by cloning the internal SD-card to a larger one and extending the partitions. So, there is no reason to sell an e-reader with less than 16GB of storage space, which would easily accommodate 1000-1500 of my very large books, which is plenty for any but the very heaviest readers; the device stores up to 2,5 times the number of books read by a normal reader. (And this is assuming that every book contains huge covers, maps, and illustrations, which will not be the case.)
What is more, you will need to use the device for 50 years, after filling it up, to be able to read all those books.
Thus, the only reason making the size of an e-book an issue is because manufacturers put only 2-4GB in an e-reader, and use very slow USB controllers. Why can't my Kindle transfer ebooks at a rate of 25MB+ a second (even over USB2)? My 16GB USB-stick, costing $10 at a grocery store can. The only reason is that Amazon, and other manufacturers have something to advertise with: "Transfers ebooks 30% faster!", "Now with 4GB instead of 2GB!" and so on. |
If I was in the ebook business I am not going to worry about pleasing the 5 book a year person because they probably do pbooks and are not my target audience.
I would want my readers which is the ones that buy ebooks to have what looks best on their device.
My readers would not be average. Oh and on averages, there is no real average.
I could find 9 people that read no books a year and 1 person that reads 50 books a year. So doing those numbers as an average, you could say the average person reads 5 books a year.
Someone can pretty much make statistics look like anything they want.
Now as to locking in because of formatting, most ebooks you get have 6 licenses so one can read across devices. The book does not look the same across devices. I have been known to read a book on my Fire (inside at my mom's), ereader (outside) and my pc to look at all the pictures.