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Originally Posted by radleyp
NatCh, actually, I saw the Sony several months ago, as my friend V-P at New York Public Library showed it to me: the Sony folks had come to make a presentation. He thought, and I do too, that it's a beautiful design both in size and finish. But he thought the Sony marketers who showed it to him were, frankly, idiots: they never asked about NYPL's experience with ebooks, were not interested in how many people had downloaded ebooks or what the books were, and were unable to explain to him - who does not read ebooks - why he should give it a try. That's not encouraging.
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I'm a bit bewildered as to why they would even talk with a library, actually. It just doesn't seem to me to fit very well.
I'm not surprised by their reported disinterest in what books were downloaded, and only slightly so over their disinterest in the numbers. Seems to me that they'd trust their pitchee to know those things and evaluate for himself whether the numbers justify interest in the product. But as a library doesn't sell anything, I'm kind of at a loss as to why they should
want to invest money in e-reading
devices. Like I said, it just seems like a bad fit.
I'm curious: were they unable to explain why he should try such an e-reader, or were they just unable to
convince him to do so? I don't know if that's something you'd be able to tell or not, as it sounds like you might be getting it second-hand? That sort of thing always makes it hard to tell.
In any case, I can certainly understand his being unconvinced, for the reasons I've just commented on if nothing else.
If they were trying to convince him to offer books in a format that was compatible with the Reader ... well that
would make sense to me. I see that NYPL seems to carry PDF and Mobi (both presumably secured), neither of which would work with the reader, of course. But that doesn't fit with what you're saying, because the NYPL clearly
does see some reason to offer those two e-formats, so your friend presumably wouldn't
need to be convinced as to "why he should give [any e-version] a try" when they're already doing just that.
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Originally Posted by radleyp
You say you won't now read on your Palm, but if the book in question is available for the Palm, but not the Sony, then what? Both books I am reading now are so available, but are not downloadable to the Sony. This is the question that puzzles me: are you going to let the convenience of a device dictate what you read? Isn't that going about it backwards?
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When I read on my Palm, I was faced with exactly the same dilemma: some books weren't available, and others were. You might point out that I had several choices of format on the Palm, which is true. And I now have several choices of format for my PRS-500, just a different
set of choices. (shrug)
In that case, I expect I'll make the same choice I used to make before when I can't get a text in a format that will work with my reading platform: paper. I won't let the convenience of a device dictate what I read, but it might affect the
order in which I read what I read. And certainly if I can get a format that works with my new toy, I pretty likely will.
I've already decided that I'm only buying future Baen releases electronically, for example (they don't do DRM).
A large part of the electronic reader world right now is speculative. Has been for a long time, actually. So those of us buying any reading device, or any locked e-book for that matter, are doing so partly in hopes that the industry will grow, and it has done so, if quite moderately.
The difference
now is that we're seeing a milestone in the industry, the overcoming of one of the two great obstacles in its path. The obstacle that's being overcome is the need for a serviceable hardware, in terms of things like battery life, readability and such. The Sony is argueably an example of that triumph, and it's only a forerunner of an entire generation of devices.
The other obstacle, is the one you seem to be focused on, namely availability of electronic texts. You're quite correct that there's less point in buying a device to read e-books if you can't
get e-books. But there's similarly slight point in buying e-books if you don't have anything decent to read them on. (Yes, PDA's work, but if they had been the answer to widespread adoption, we wouldn't be
having this discussion
)
You see the problem, they're intertwined. Why sell ebooks when there's nothing anyone wants to read them on? Why make an e-reader when there's nothing anyone wants to read
on it?
With the advent of these new, usable Readers, one half of that dicotomy is broken, and it's encouraging to those of us who've been watching, waiting, and hoping for 20-ish years, because it's a huge change in what has been.
Whatever anyone thinks of Sony's Connect store, it and the Reader are clearly a concerted, out-on-a-limb attempt to take on
both of those obstacles at once, and get things
moving. Whether I happen to like the particulars of the deal or not, it's a sharp, brave move, that shows they recognize the things that have held e-reading back, and are trying to do something about them. The fact that they aren't
forcing BBeB on us seems, to me, to be a recognition that the more open they are about such things the better it'll be for everyone,
including Sony, as opposed to trying to keep all the marbles.
They don't have any
rights to use anyone else's
proprietary format (unless they pay for them, and what might
that do to the Reader's price?), and I don't hold it against them particularly that they've chosen to use their own -- it allows them to sell books that they
couldn't sell without throwing the Pubs a DRM bone, and there
is no standard presently. If they were using their proprietary format in the face of a 'standard' one, then I'd be pretty disgusted with them, but they're not. The fact that they are allowing several openly available formats as well, further reassures me that they recognize what needs to happen for long term success.
Can it all still fail miserably? Yup, it sure could. But exactly what reason do we have to hope for it to fail? On the other hand, we have lots of reason to hope for success, and, finally, we're seeing reasons to think it might actually happen this time.