What do you think the Amazon Kindle means for the Sony Readers?

[Penforhire]

William, I assume he means legally buying it in some format like LIT that can be DRM-stripped (again, so-far legal where I live) and converted for use in the Sony or any other e-reader. That seems to be the obvious path for DRM-haters like me.

That way neither Sony nor any other vendor (thinking Amazon here) could kill my personal library access down the road with a DRM change.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

William, I assume he means legally buying it in some format like LIT that can be DRM-stripped (again, so-far legal where I live) and converted for use in the Sony or any other e-reader. That seems to be the obvious path for DRM-haters like me.

That way neither Sony nor any other vendor (thinking Amazon here) could kill my personal library access down the road with a DRM change.

I'm sure that's what he meant. I know it's the route I'm taking things for now with my books.

[Xtremegene]

I am one for hoping that the Kindle makes Sony come up with some (highly) competitive distribution model for their ebooks. The 6 device authorization thing is nice, but practically has some built-in hurdles (unless you like reading on a PC).

I don't think I would mind expiring content, if it were geared mainly towards short-term items in the first place (like news and blogs) and if it were priced accordingly. What would be cool if there was some sort of eLibrary thing where there is a reasonable subscription cost and a number of books you can 'check out' at one time (a la Netflix)...

[Vienna01]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I imagine the properous future of e-books is the Netflix/Blockbuster Online subscription model. Change me a fixed monthly fee and allow me access to "x" number of texts at a time that I never actually own. the Kindle would allow this sort of model, beaming me new books and killing old ones remotely. I'm not saying it is ideal. Many of us like to "own" books and this is just renting. But I think it'd be a feasible model for economic success in the e-book world.

The online subscription model was mildly popular in the US many (maybe 60 years) years ago. You paid to rent books. Free Public Libraries killed that concept. Yes, some public libraries do rent best sellers but that is a small % of their traffic.

Do you think that using today's technology will make paid loan of ebooks sell well? We have music analogies: Ipod vs Rapsody for example.

In all these discussions there hasn't been much mention of the role of Public Free Lending Libraries in a world of ebooks. What role will they have?

[Amalthia]

William G -- while I generally agree with most of your conclusions, I hardly think Sony lost. Until Kimble is opened to 'load your own' in some open reader format, it doesn't meet my basic requirements. I suppose I am in the minority, but at least 90% of my content is managed by Book Designer, and not purchased from a store. FanFiction -- yeh!

I'm probably with you in the minority. I read mostly fan fiction on my Sony Reader and I don't like that Kindle is such a closed system. I hope it drives down prices with the competition but the main thing I love about Sony is that they have the option to add your own content to your ebook reader.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Amothea

I'm probably with you in the minority. I read mostly fan fiction on my Sony Reader and I don't like that Kindle is such a closed system. I hope it drives down prices with the competition but the main thing I love about Sony is that they have the option to add your own content to your ebook reader.

You're joking, right? I can't tell.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by edsohsmith

This is the main reason I am disapointed with Amazon's offerring. Though not expected, I was hoping they might make their ebook catalogue available to other devices. I was also hoping for some indication that the would support an epub standard.

Instead we get a closed book store and another DRM format (at least for now).

I was also dissapointed that this is what they had to offer. I thought if anyone could make ebook selling a big thing it would be amazon. wish they'd just have options for multiple formats like Baen bookstore. As it is there is no point even buying the kindle books because they won't work on my Sony Reader.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

You're joking, right? I can't tell.

I wasn't joking. I don't like the way Amazon is selling Kindle books. It's a closed system to me. Right now Baen is the only online bookstore I buy books from because they give you options on how you want to download your books.

Basically, Kindle doesn't support RTF so I see no need for it.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Amothea

I wasn't joking. I don't like the way Amazon is selling Kindle books. It's a closed system to me. Right now Baen is the only online bookstore I buy books from because they give you options on how you want to download your books.

Basically, Kindle doesn't support RTF so I see no need for it.

But so is the Sony Reader. At least the Kindle also reads a common format (Mobipocket). And there is a readily available converter for that format. What did Sony provide for conversion? Bupkiss.

I admit there are reasons not to like the Kindle. But claiming it is more closed than the Sony Reader is not one of them.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

But so is the Sony Reader. At least the Kindle also reads a common format (Mobipocket). And there is a readily available converter for that format. What did Sony provide for conversion? Bupkiss.

I admit there are reasons not to like the Kindle. But claiming it is more closed than the Sony Reader is not one of them.

the Sony Reader can accept more formats BBeB, PDF, TXT, RTF, JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, MP3, ACC7, while the Kindle can only accept AZW, PRC/MOBI (non DRM), MP3, TXT. To me that's just not enough for the Kindle.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Amothea

the Sony Reader can accept more formats BBeB, PDF, TXT, RTF, JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, MP3, ACC7, while the Kindle can only accept AZW, PRC/MOBI (non DRM), MP3, TXT. To me that's just not enough for the Kindle.

I bet you copied that info from the manuals.

First of all, the DRMed BBeB (LRX) is only sold by Sony and they have not released any info on the nonDRMed BBeB (LRF). With the Kindle you can at least convert to a supported format with Mobipocket Creator. It's Windows only, but better than nothing.

From what I have seen on my 500, Sony does PDFs so bad that you can't honestly claim it as a supported format. For the Kindle, Amazon will convert it for you for free.

The image abilities of the Sony Reader is nothing to write home about either. At one point, I was using the same SD card for my 500 and my digital camera. Out of curiosity, I looked at some of the lower resolution images. They did not look good.

The audio capabilities are a wash because both support two formats. The second format for the 500 is Sony's proprietary wackjob nutcase format that no one in their right mind would use. (If someone here actually uses it, I apologize.) The second format for the Kindle is the Audible.com format.

I will agree that the Kindle does not directly support RTF. But that is a very small plus when set beside the Sony Reader's negatives.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I bet you copied that info from the manuals.

yeah.

The audio capabilities are a wash because both support two formats. The second format for the 500 is Sony's proprietary wackjob nutcase format that no one in their right mind would use. (If someone here actually uses it, I apologize.) The second format for the Kindle is the Audible.com format.

I will agree that the Kindle does not directly support RTF. But that is a very small plus when set beside the Sony Reader's negatives.

For my uses, the Sony works perfectly. I don't listen to music on it and mostly I'm converting html documents to RTF because neither device supports html.

Since what I'm mostly reading is fan fiction the Kindle just isn't going to work for me. I like the html formatting to stay in place when I'm reading my books and don't want to spend more money getting my fan fiction converted into the Kindle format.

I only bought one book from the Sony Connect store and that was the last one because the formatting was so messed up. (font too small margins too big) But at least I was able to find another copy of the same book via IRC and get that into RTF and read it comfortably.

At this point I really HATE drm formats but Sony's saving grace is how easy it is for me to upload RTF files.

I also don't like the mini-keyboard on the kindle. Don't get me wrong, I do realize the Kindle has some good stuff happening. It's just not meeting my needs enough for me to be willing to spend 400 dollars when I already have a reader that does everything I want it to do and since I'm not really buying books as much as downloading tons of fanfiction it's not going to help me much.

Also, I don't read PDFs on my reader. you're right they look god awful.

The best thing the Kindle could do to make me interested is start selling mangas formatted and ready to read or at least support .zip. I'm not sure if they are doing it or not already but I haven't found anything to answer this question yet.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by vrf

I think the Netflix model would make more somewhat more sense. You can keep the book for as long as it takes to read it. Then when you want more, the old one(s) expire.

Actually, the Safari Bookself is like this. You have 10 slots on your book shelf. You can put any book from the Safari library into a slot. However, once you put a book on your self it has to stay there for at least 30 days. This is only for tech books...where it makes alot of sense. You also have the ability to search the full text of all the books.

BOb

[eppythacher]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Hmmm....

Sony for YE 2007 (March) made $1,073,788,000 Net Income that's $1.07 Billion on $70,513,408,000 (70 Billion) in revenues.

Amazon for YE 2006 (Dec) made 190,000,000 Net Income that's .19 Billion on $10,711,000,000 (10.7 Billion) in revenues.

So, Sony made like 9.5 times the income (profit) of Amazon in only 7 times the revenue (sales).

Plus, Sony has $6.8Billion of Cash with total Assets of $1Trillion while Amazon has about 1.02Billion of Cash with total Assets of about 4.4Billion.

So, I think Sony really is the one with the "deep pockets" compared to Amazon... and if they wanted to do this, they could!

BOb

BTW: These numbers all came from Yahoo finance, you can check them yourself.

This would mean something if Sony wasn't in in deathmatch with Microsoft over Blue ray / HD DVD and PS3 / X Box. Sony seems to be able to concentrate on only one thing at a time, unlike Apple that can put out a good OS, then Ipod, then Iphone. Sony has bad management while Apple has good management. Microsoft throws money at problems until they go away. Hmm Sony could bribe the book publishers to go exclusive with them like they do with the game publishers.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Amothea

Since what I'm mostly reading is fan fiction the Kindle just isn't going to work for me. I like the html formatting to stay in place when I'm reading my books and don't want to spend more money getting my fan fiction converted into the Kindle format.

Sorry - I'm completely baffled by what you're saying. There are LOADS of free tools out there to completely trivially convert pretty much any format you care to name into MobiPocket format, which your Kindle will happily read. You certainly don't have to spend ANY money converting your fan fiction. The Kindle is just as "open" as the Sony Reader - considerably more so from the viewpoint that Mobi is by far the most popular eBook format out there, with innumerables DRM-free titles available for it.