Ebooks are better in ALMOST every way than Paper Books (though I prefer paper books for personal reasons not technological)
The problem is its VERY HARD to buy ebooks (and they are expensive relative to what your getting)
You see most of the time you CAN NOT buy ebooks. You can buy ENCRYPTED Ebooks but they are not the same thing as ebooks.
Ebooks are digital books. you can read them on anything copy them print them modify them reformat them e-mail them etc.. Very Nice Very Convenient.
Almost every single one of these advantages goes POOF with PURCHASED Electronic books because of the application of DRM.
IE that WILL be the demise of DRM'd ebooks.
When I have a real paper book FIRST you have physical ownership. Second its your physical property to do with as you please.
There are only 2 disadvantages to Paper books.
#1 you can not easily copy/manipulate them (you can not do this with DRM's books either)
#2 they take up physical space - a LOT of it :-) this is not necessarily a bad thing. I pride myself on a large collection of books.
The major advantage of paper books besides holding it physically is that its your PROPERTY unlike with DRM'd ebooks.
I bought $50 in ebooks from sony for one reason and one reason only. They gave me $50 in credit to use.
Short of that or an insanely cheap price (they have some $3 books etc..) I don't forsee buying many books from sony or anyone else for that matter.
I find DRM offensive and immoral and consider it theft of my PPR Personal Property Rights.
DRM'd material is significantly inferior to non DRM'd material yet they charge a premium for it. paying more for less.
the reason CD was and is so successful is that its first a significant perceptable upgrade in all aspects and its WIDE OPEN and UNENCUMBERED with stupid limitations.
the reason MP3 Players took of is NOT because of ITUNES its because they played MP3 a format that was a significant uprade to current formats and again WIDE OPEN AND UNENCUMBERED with limitations.
That asside an ipod user is an ipod user for life if they use itunes. Think about it you spend $500 on itunes songs.
What's your next mp3 player going to be (oh did I forget to tell you that $500 invnstment is worth SQUAT unless you have an ipod)
Yeah that's what I though you were going to buy (another ipod)
Eventually (hopefully) people will realize how crazy DRM is and they will abandon it like some nasty hot potatoe.
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/