How do I sell ebooks to my friends???
Ever since I bought a liseuse, I've been trying to sell ebooks to my friends. First, because I love to show off my newest gadget!
But also because, heck, the more people have liseuses the better. But when I look how things went since I bought the device, I realise it's a tad difficult to sell it to friends, at least if I want them to remain friends… Here is how it went:
1) My Sony PRS 505 gets delivered to me in Paris in October 2008. The machine is beautiful, I can't wait to start reading on it, so I want install the Sony software to purchase some books. Bad start: I have a Mac, and the software is PC only. Luckily, I stay at a friend's place, and he has a PC. Great. Err, no, not great, Sony bookstore is US only. Oops.
2) I try to find alternative stores, but all sell .lit or .mobi DRMed books. And those format are not compatible with the PRS 505. Argh! I spend a few days going around the net, and find mobileread, and thus Calibre. Moving forward, one step at a time. I discover mobi and ereader protection can be removed, and after some more search, find how to do it. I feel lucky I am decently computer litterate, I doubt most of my friends would have gotten so far.
3) I now have the means to purchase content for my liseuse. It's not difficult, but neither is it practical.
4) Wow, ADE and epub. That seems like a great solution. Except, oops again, ADE on Mac does not allow you to transfer files onto your reader. Back to my friend's PC again. And epub is (back then) not especially widely available, and then mainly in the UK, where book prices are a bad joke. And it's not THAT easy: I still need another piece of software to transfer the files, so now I am juggling between Calibre and ADE.
5) Overdrive removes a bunch of books from my fictionwise library. Mmmhhh. I purchase a Terry Pratchett at Waterstones that is both incredibly expensive and that is so badly edited, it's a complete sham. Overdrive reimburses me, but only after 6 months and after about a dozen mails exchanged. Not a catastrophe, but I have a bad vibe about this.
6) I am now in a groove. I have dozens of good books on my liseuse, I read more than I have for years. Things get better, slowly: epub become more and more available, I deDRM mobi with ease, more titles are available. I subscribe for a fictionwise membership, and love it. New Sony software now supports Macs, and I don't need ADE anymore.
7) Things start going down: fictionwise starts applying geographical restrictions. I manage to overcome them, but only for some time, some of my books become unavailable for download. Geographical restrictions start becoming a problem on other websites. My liseuse breaks in a strange fashion (I haven't sat on it or dropped it or anything), and as I have no other books with me and live abroad, I have to rely on my iPod to continue reading. And that hurts my eyes.
This is my experience of about one year with a liseuse. Not horrifying, far from it, and I have already spent the bucks to get a new 505. But, how in the world do I sell this to my friends? Especially the computer illiterate? The only reason why I managed to enjoy ebooks is because I spent a LOT of time to get it to work. And the current trend, which puts books out of my reach and would force me to rely on expensive UK stores (after I've spent 300$ on the hardware? I don't think so!) isn't exactly positive.
Ebooks, as of now, are only easy to deal with and cheap if you live in the US (and if you own a Kindle, it's even better). For the rest of us, it's an expansive and/or complicated proposition. I've stopped telling my friends about how great my liseuse is: if they get one, I would have to spend hours with them providing support...