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Old 12-19-2010, 10:31 AM   #46
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My old Loox (600) was 320x200, and I thought that was enough... Untill I got my current Loox (720), with the same screensize, but double the resolution. What a shocker! (but the Loox's are Windows devices, not Palm). Now, I doubt I want a lesser resolution on a screen of that size
That's a very good point.

It is the combination of the pixel density and the size of the screen that defines my "perfect form factor", too. All technologies, both eInk and variations on the LCD/LED theme, with the notable exception of new retina displays on iPhones/iTouches (and I haven't seen those in bigger form factor), have a room for improvement.

Once the pixel density hits 300dpi, the target is a device big enough to cope with A4/letter sized PDF's. And that's ideal form factor for my reader. I am ready to sacrifice mobility over the (needed) functionality, and I don't see letter-sized PDF's disappearing as a target media for tech specs any time soon.
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Old 12-19-2010, 11:17 AM   #47
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My old Loox (600) was 320x200, and I thought that was enough... Untill I got my current Loox (720), with the same screensize, but double the resolution. What a shocker! (but the Loox's are Windows devices, not Palm). Now, I doubt I want a lesser resolution on a screen of that size


My first PDA was a Handspring Visor Deluxe, courtesy of a then employer who decided all IT staffers should have PDAs. It was a mono unit with a 160x160 screen, and a whopping 8MB of RAM. I went looking for things I could do with it that would help me in my work, and one discovery was Plucker, an open source offline HTML viewer for Palm OS. Most of the documentation for the systems I dealt with was in HTML form, so I could convert for the PDA and carry a documentation library in my pocket. I got an expansion card adapter for additional storage and off I went. I didn't think I'd appreciate fiction on the device, but it turned out I did.

The Deluxe got replaced by a Visor Pro, that got replaced by a Tungsten E, and that got replaced by a Tapwave Zodiac 2, which I still use. One of the reasons for the Zodiac was the larger screen, as I did things like work with spreadsheets that needed the additional real estate.

Palm devices had ports of MobiPocket and eReader, plus an excellent open source PDF viewer, and I had viewers for Word docs and RTF files as well as plain text, so there isn't a lot (save ePub) I can't read on the PDA. (And ePub can be converted to Mobi via Calibre.)

The biggest recent win has been FBReader, an open source, cross platform ebook viewer device. FBReader reads Plucker files (as well as ePub, Mobi, and various other things), so my collection of Plucker files is readable on a Linux system (and promptly got transferred to the old notebook I put Linux on.)

I need support for color, and the ability to do other things besides view ebooks, so a dedicated reader doesn't work for me. I'm not one of the folks who has problems reading on and LCD screen, and the longer battery life is a non-issue: I've gotten into the habit of topping of my cell phone and PDA nightly. Adding another device to the list isn't a problem, and chargers for them live in a travel case with other electronic gear.

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I'm still not sure of that. Let's say it was available, if I would be able to get my hand on a 5, 6 or 7 inch transflective touchscreen LCD screen, I'd get it. No matter the OS. But I'd also love a larger screen, 10 to 12 inch.
I looked with interest at the early ASUS eee netbook, but passed because I wanted a larger screen. The fact that it ran Linux wasn't an issue. I've been a Linux admin, and multiboot it here.

Current generations of netbooks have the screen, but what I want is Linux and a solid state drive. The stuff in the form factor I like all seems to have WinXP/7 and a 160GB HD. I don't need the drive capacity, as there isn't all that much that would live on the device.

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But I'd need Windows on that (XP or 7). I'd love to be able to take my National Geographics with me...
Comes on a DVD, with a Windows specific viewer app? On Linux, I'd look at Wine, which is specifically intended to let you run Windows apps under Linux. The issue you'll run into is that Wine is intended for Linux on X86 hardware. The new generation of tablets and other things Android runs on are all based on ARM processors.

You might drop a note to the folks who produced the collection mentioning that there's a whole new market of folks using devices that don't run Windows, and an Android port of their software might be a good idea.

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On a basic reader, I wouldn't mind Android that much. But as stated above, if I had a larger screen, I'd use it mostly for my National Geographic collection. And that would require windows...
I have no problem with Android at all. It's Linux based, and there is a flood of software being developed for it. One lack at the moment is FBReader: there's an Android version, but it's based on a rewrite in Java, and the Java app doesn't yet support all the formats the original C language version does.

Something like a 10" tablet with a touch screen and a folding BT keyboard might be just the ticket.
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Old 12-19-2010, 11:23 AM   #48
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Once the pixel density hits 300dpi, the target is a device big enough to cope with A4/letter sized PDF's. And that's ideal form factor for my reader. I am ready to sacrifice mobility over the (needed) functionality, and I don't see letter-sized PDF's disappearing as a target media for tech specs any time soon.
Nor do I. I get content in other forms than PDF if at all possible, simply because PDFs are a poor fit for mobile device form factors, but I do have stuff in that format I need occasional access to.

Mobility is a variable. While my PDA can be carried in a pocket, it's at the high end of pocket sized, and I usually don't. I normally carry a shoulder bag it lives in, and the bag could just as well accommodate a tablet. The critical factor would be weight, not size.
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Old 12-19-2010, 09:09 PM   #49
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I am not unhappy with my current readers form factor and use any number of mine every day. Still I'm disappointed with the failure of the industry to provide an device large enough to read books which absolutely have to have a 11" or larger screen or the device becomes an impediment to the purpose of the book itself so all you think about is trying to manage the device not absorbing the content. I don't care if it is a gray scale display as long is it's giving me the size to shot images inline w/o needing to zoom or any of that other annoying crap the current devices consider acceptable. I know that is a big polarized but it's how I see my individual needs long term or if I am to say invested in the ebook market. I just see no reason to keep buying expensive devices and paying top dollar for ebooks when I can buy used or remaindered versions of the same books for pennies on the dollar. For that I can read them and give them away like I always have, I only keep my reference books. So unless the device makers start making these things worth my investment I, and I suspect more than a few others, will just return to print books, it is that simple.

More to my point, I know the arguments pro and con, but we are talking about what makes an acceptable device here and for me that is a small reader as well as a large screen device which I would prefer be color but can live with gray scale.
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Old 12-20-2010, 04:41 AM   #50
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My first PDA was a Handspring Visor Deluxe, courtesy of a then employer who decided all IT staffers should have PDAs. It was a mono unit with a 160x160 screen, and a whopping 8MB of RAM. I went looking for things I could do with it that would help me in my work, and one discovery was Plucker, an open source offline HTML viewer for Palm OS. Most of the documentation for the systems I dealt with was in HTML form, so I could convert for the PDA and carry a documentation library in my pocket. I got an expansion card adapter for additional storage and off I went. I didn't think I'd appreciate fiction on the device, but it turned out I did.

The Deluxe got replaced by a Visor Pro, that got replaced by a Tungsten E, and that got replaced by a Tapwave Zodiac 2, which I still use. One of the reasons for the Zodiac was the larger screen, as I did things like work with spreadsheets that needed the additional real estate.

Palm devices had ports of MobiPocket and eReader, plus an excellent open source PDF viewer, and I had viewers for Word docs and RTF files as well as plain text, so there isn't a lot (save ePub) I can't read on the PDA. (And ePub can be converted to Mobi via Calibre.)
I only read mobi on my PDA... I still haven't found a reader application that works for me except mobipocket (I like to highlight mistakes in my books so I can correct them later).

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Current generations of netbooks have the screen, but what I want is Linux and a solid state drive. The stuff in the form factor I like all seems to have WinXP/7 and a 160GB HD. I don't need the drive capacity, as there isn't all that much that would live on the device.
They only have half the screen... Only the transparent part, not the reflective part. And I've given up all hope on any PixelQi screens in the near future in a form factor and processor type device that I'd like to have...

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Comes on a DVD, with a Windows specific viewer app? On Linux, I'd look at Wine, which is specifically intended to let you run Windows apps under Linux. The issue you'll run into is that Wine is intended for Linux on X86 hardware. The new generation of tablets and other things Android runs on are all based on ARM processors.

You might drop a note to the folks who produced the collection mentioning that there's a whole new market of folks using devices that don't run Windows, and an Android port of their software might be a good idea.
They hardly update the windows and mac versions even though they're not really perfected yet... Let alone other OS's!

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I have no problem with Android at all. It's Linux based, and there is a flood of software being developed for it. One lack at the moment is FBReader: there's an Android version, but it's based on a rewrite in Java, and the Java app doesn't yet support all the formats the original C language version does.

Something like a 10" tablet with a touch screen and a folding BT keyboard might be just the ticket.
It's not that I have a problem with it, I just don't know it and have no idea how it would fit me (considering everybody always talks about android together with internet access, which is something I won't have, except some wifi at home).
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Old 12-20-2010, 06:41 AM   #51
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I just see no reason to keep buying expensive devices and paying top dollar for ebooks when I can buy used or remaindered versions of the same books for pennies on the dollar. For that I can read them and give them away like I always have, I only keep my reference books. So unless the device makers start making these things worth my investment I, and I suspect more than a few others, will just return to print books, it is that simple.
Excellent point.

Ebooks and pbooks are totally different, but there's just got to be some digital mechanism that can model the used and overstocked book market. You can buy used and overstocks for low prices right down to literally one cent (plus $3.99 shipping) at Amazon, not to mention the local flea markets. Something must fill in this gap.
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Old 12-20-2010, 03:09 PM   #52
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I only read mobi on my PDA... I still haven't found a reader application that works for me except mobipocket (I like to highlight mistakes in my books so I can correct them later).
Okay. As mentioned, I use Plucker predominantly. One advantage is storage size. Plucker will let me create ebook files with optional gzip compatible compression, resulting in a 70% size reduction, as opposed to the 40% given by the default compression method used by Mobi. That makes the difference between getting everything on a 2GB SD card and having to move to 4GB cards.

Mobi for Palm OS has a quirk or two, like losing track of what category a book has been placed in, but for the most part it works well enough.

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They hardly update the windows and mac versions even though they're not really perfected yet... Let alone other OS's!
You mean the National Geographic app? When was the last update?

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It's not that I have a problem with it, I just don't know it and have no idea how it would fit me (considering everybody always talks about android together with internet access, which is something I won't have, except some wifi at home).
That's fair.

Most of the Android devices do assume connectivity, via wifi or 3G, but how usable they'll be without it will be a matter of software.

I've no idea if an Android device will fit you. I'm reasonably sure it will fit me because I have some idea of what's available for Linux, and with the flood of Android based devices coming out, if it hasn't been ported yet, it likely will be soon enough.
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Old 12-20-2010, 03:14 PM   #53
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Excellent point.

Ebooks and pbooks are totally different, but there's just got to be some digital mechanism that can model the used and overstocked book market. You can buy used and overstocks for low prices right down to literally one cent (plus $3.99 shipping) at Amazon, not to mention the local flea markets. Something must fill in this gap.
Must?

Don't hold your breath. First, someone has to see a way to make money on it. Second, there are pesky rights and permissions issues. Who owns the rights to the book? Who has authorization to issue an electronic edition such as you imagine?

The publisher may not. When a publisher allows a book to go out of print, the author can ask that the rights revert, and most do.
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Old 12-20-2010, 06:16 PM   #54
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Must?

Don't hold your breath. First, someone has to see a way to make money on it.
The reseller, just like with pbooks. Or any other intermediary.

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Second, there are pesky rights and permissions issues. Who owns the rights to the book? Who has authorization to issue an electronic edition such as you imagine?
It doesn't matter how complex the legal/contract issues are. Digital texts are marketed as "books," not "licensed software plugins" that you "access" with a program. That means people think of them like books... and when done with a book, a lot of us hand it to someone else to read, or resell it.

They can remove the "resell" option from the legal realm; they can't remove the ability to hand it off. (They're trying really hard with DRM.) What they're managing is to keep word-of-mouth promotions of ebooks down to furtive, backroom conversations while killing real publicity, because "I love this author--you should fork over $10 and find out if you like him too" has never been how books got a foothold into a new audience.

For ebook publications to thrive in the future, instead of remaining a weird crossover of "geek hobby" and "luxury entertainment," they need a parallel to the used pbook market.

I don't know how it can work; I just know it needs to show up, or ebooks will remain as they are now--great for people who can afford to pay full price for every book they read, great for people able to scrounge the internet for rec lists of obscure titles or links to unauthorized copies, but useless for students, the poor, people in hospitals, and other large categories of people who support the joy of books without buying new copies.
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Old 12-20-2010, 06:38 PM   #55
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The reseller, just like with pbooks. Or any other intermediary.
Sure. How?

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It doesn't matter how complex the legal/contract issues are. Digital texts are marketed as "books," not "licensed software plugins" that you "access" with a program. That means people think of them like books... and when done with a book, a lot of us hand it to someone else to read, or resell it.
Publishers aren't all that upset about used book stores. If the book shows up in the UBS, it already sold once, and generated revenue for the merchant who sold it and the publisher who published it. It's not stealing sales of new books. It's a fair bet that in most cases, buy the time it shows up in the UBS, it's already off sale most other places. People who wanted it that badly bought it new. People who were willing to wait for it to hit the UBS wouldn't have bought it new.

There are nascent lending programs for ebooks, such as the one implemented by Barnes and Noble on the nook - you can lend a purchased ebook to another nook owner for two weeks. The significant part is that while it's on loan, you don't have it.

This is one major stumbling block to used ebooks. If I sell you, or give you, a printed book I own, I no longer have it. How do you enforce that with ebooks?

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They can remove the "resell" option from the legal realm; they can't remove the ability to hand it off. (They're trying really hard with DRM.) What they're managing is to keep word-of-mouth promotions of ebooks down to furtive, backroom conversations while killing real publicity, because "I love this author--you should fork over $10 and find out if you like him too" has never been how books got a foothold into a new audience.
Speak for yourself. Getting a copy passed along by a satisfied reader is only one way books find an audience. Word of mouth is critical, but it depends upon whose word. I may very well buy a book without sampling it first depending upon just who recommended it.

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For ebook publications to thrive in the future, instead of remaining a weird crossover of "geek hobby" and "luxury entertainment," they need a parallel to the used pbook market.
That's questionable. I'd make a fair bet that ebooks will take over the mass market PB segment, and they won't need an equivalent of a used book market to do it.

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I don't know how it can work; I just know it needs to show up, or ebooks will remain as they are now--great for people who can afford to pay full price for every book they read, great for people able to scrounge the internet for rec lists of obscure titles or links to unauthorized copies, but useless for students, the poor, people in hospitals, and other large categories of people who support the joy of books without buying new copies.
How large a segment of the market do you assume that is? I knew very few people who read at all that don't buy some new books, even if the majority of their purchases are used.
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Old 12-20-2010, 07:46 PM   #56
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Sure. How?
Same way ebooks are sold now. "Here's my server; pay me and you get access to the download options."

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Publishers aren't all that upset about used book stores. If the book shows up in the UBS, it already sold once, and generated revenue for the merchant who sold it and the publisher who published it.
Used ebooks have been sold once, too. Making it possible to sell an ebook and remove copies from one's own hardware is a tech issue; it should be just as legal to sell used ebooks as pbooks, which can also be photocopied before selling.

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There are nascent lending programs for ebooks, such as the one implemented by Barnes and Noble on the nook - you can lend a purchased ebook to another nook owner for two weeks. The significant part is that while it's on loan, you don't have it.
If this were possible (1) with every book, not just the ones bought through B&N where the publishers granted permission, and (2) any number of times, for any length of time, it could fill that niche in the digital book culture. The fact that it's not, shows that publishers *don't want* book sharing. It's not harder to make it loanable any number of times. It might be harder to have a variable loan length, but if they got rid of the # limit, you could just re-loan the book to the same person.

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This is one major stumbling block to used ebooks. If I sell you, or give you, a printed book I own, I no longer have it. How do you enforce that with ebooks?
They same way they "enforce" it with pbooks, and with used CDs and videos. Nothing prevents anyone from making a copy before selling those.

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Speak for yourself. Getting a copy passed along by a satisfied reader is only one way books find an audience.
It's not the only one, but it's a substantial part of literary culture, especially youth literary culture. High school kids can't buy ebooks without adult supervision from most places online, but they can buy & share pbooks with each other, and they'll share ebooks if they're interested in those.

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That's questionable. I'd make a fair bet that ebooks will take over the mass market PB segment, and they won't need an equivalent of a used book market to do it.
They don't need it to take over mmpb's market--they need it to compete with torrents and filesharing sites. The longer publishers wait to figure out how to allow ebook sharing and used ebook gifts, the larger the pirate market will be. Especially because a growing number of people are learning to crack DRM so they can read their already-purchased Kindle books on their new Nook, or vice versa, with no intention of sharing--but when their cousin says "hey, I'd like to read that," they happen to have a copy available.

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How large a segment of the market do you assume that is? I knew very few people who read at all that don't buy some new books, even if the majority of their purchases are used.
I buy some new pbooks, even now... a handful of religious & gaming books every year. Tiny niche genre presses.

The market segment for used books is nonexistent, from the publishers' perspectives. They can't see it; it makes them no direct money, so they're pretending it doesn't exist and doesn't matter to ebook sales. They believe they've found a way to make money without the "leakage" of used books.

They have no idea how many of their customers are also used book buyers, and that removing used books from the equation removes new book buyers as well.

Refusing to offer cheap, non-DRM'd music for years worked so well for the music industry; I'm sure the same tactics will be equally successful for book publishers.
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Old 12-20-2010, 07:55 PM   #57
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This is one major stumbling block to used ebooks. If I sell you, or give you, a printed book I own, I no longer have it. How do you enforce that with ebooks?
Yes, ebooks and pbooks are different, so the model must change. The question is how. I've been wrestling back and forth with that.

Here's one possible model. There are no used book sales since used books are indistinguishable from new books and the supply of new books is limited only by website bandwidth. Therefore ebooks end up with a lower price, almost an average of new and old.

Of course sellers won't do this out of the kindness of their hearts, but if they have wiped out an entire market, they have to do something to recapture those sales. Lowering the price would be a logical way to do that. As with all sales in a free market, the price will gravitate to the prices that generates maximum profit, which will probably be below current prices.

Another model would be that after a few months or years of sales at a high price with DRM, the books are sold with no DRM at a greatly reduced price. The lack of DRM opens up the market to people that passionately hate it or have technical problems, and the lower price reduces the incentive to steal.
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Old 12-20-2010, 08:01 PM   #58
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Used ebooks have been sold once, too. Making it possible to sell an ebook and remove copies from one's own hardware is a tech issue; it should be just as legal to sell used ebooks as pbooks, ...
Ah! You're suggesting a technical solution to keep the model the same for ebooks as it is now for pbooks. That is, build the capability for resale into the DRM scheme.

That's an interesting possibility which I hadn't thought of. And, yes, I agree that is a technical problem which could be solved.

I hate it, but it might transpire.
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Old 12-20-2010, 09:25 PM   #59
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Used ebooks have been sold once, too. Making it possible to sell an ebook and remove copies from one's own hardware is a tech issue; it should be just as legal to sell used ebooks as pbooks, which can also be photocopied before selling.
It is indeed a tech issue. I'm a tech. I don't know a good way to do it without measures a lot of folks won't like. The B&N scheme works because the nooks connect to the network, and the lending scheme can disable access to the book on the lender's device for the period of the loan. Lots of folks aren't thrilled by that kind of remote control, and I'm not sure I blame them.

Just waving your hand and saying "It's tech issue" doesn't magically make it solvable. Some tech issues aren't.

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If this were possible (1) with every book, not just the ones bought through B&N where the publishers granted permission, and (2) any number of times, for any length of time, it could fill that niche in the digital book culture. The fact that it's not, shows that publishers *don't want* book sharing. It's not harder to make it loanable any number of times. It might be harder to have a variable loan length, but if they got rid of the # limit, you could just re-loan the book to the same person.
Or, just maybe, it's not because the publishers don't want to, but rather because it can't be done. See above.

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They same way they "enforce" it with pbooks, and with used CDs and videos. Nothing prevents anyone from making a copy before selling those.
Media makes a difference. It's a lot easier to copy a CD or video than a printed book. More printed books don't get copied before sale because it is a time consuming PITA to do.

Printed books are analog. Music CDs and movie DVDs are digital. Once it's digital, the genie is out of the bottle. Until it is, well, they don't call things bottlenecks for no reason.

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It's not the only one, but it's a substantial part of literary culture, especially youth literary culture. High school kids can't buy ebooks without adult supervision from most places online, but they can buy & share pbooks with each other, and they'll share ebooks if they're interested in those.
And they are probably savvy enough to share ebooks in any case. DRM isn't much of a block. It just takes on sharp kid with the tools.

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They don't need it to take over mmpb's market--they need it to compete with torrents and filesharing sites. The longer publishers wait to figure out how to allow ebook sharing and used ebook gifts, the larger the pirate market will be. Especially because a growing number of people are learning to crack DRM so they can read their already-purchased Kindle books on their new Nook, or vice versa, with no intention of sharing--but when their cousin says "hey, I'd like to read that," they happen to have a copy available.
Again, speak for yourself.

eBooks are perhaps 10% - 12% of the current US book market. What percentage of ebook readers do you think are aware of torrent sites and pirate editions? (Especially people coming to ebooks via things like the Kindle and Amazon, where the Kindle is seen as an appropriate, easy to use device for Grandma who hasn't gotten this whole computer thing down yet.) If you think it's a majority of current ebook readers, I'll be doubtful.

Now extend it to the roughly 90% of the market that hasn't yet adopted electronic literature and tell me how many of them you think have that awareness? If you specify any large amount, expect me to laugh at your foolishness.

Don't assume you are representative of the market, or that what you know is known by others. By definition, people who hang out in places like MR are early adopters, with more knowledge than the rest of the market. We wanted to learn more, which is how we wound up here to begin with.

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I buy some new pbooks, even now... a handful of religious & gaming books every year. Tiny niche genre presses.
I buy rather more than that, and not from tiny niche publishers. eBooks are an additional format here, and not a replacement for print.

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The market segment for used books is nonexistent, from the publishers' perspectives. They can't see it; it makes them no direct money, so they're pretending it doesn't exist and doesn't matter to ebook sales. They believe they've found a way to make money without the "leakage" of used books.
I very much doubt they consider used book stores in thinking about this at all. You're right: they can't see it. They certainly know used book stores exist, but have no way of knowing what used book sales are or what the effect is on their market.

You can make a good case that used book sales spur new book sales, by introducing people to things they might not otherwise have tried, simply because they can try it cheap, but there is no way to measure what percentage of those trials result in new book sales down the road.

I'm certainly going to be reluctant to make business decisions based on stuff I can't measure.

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They have no idea how many of their customers are also used book buyers, and that removing used books from the equation removes new book buyers as well.
Does it? Only if you assume that having previously read an author in a used book edition is the only way people discover authors whose books they buy new. And it's meaningful only if you can quantify it, and generate verifiable numbers to back up the claim.

Until you can, it's wishful thinking. You may be right, but you haven't proved it.
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Old 12-20-2010, 09:49 PM   #60
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It is indeed a tech issue. I'm a tech.
Are you a tech? Or a wizard? Techs use science. Wizards use magic.

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I don't know a good way to do it without measures a lot of folks won't like. The B&N scheme works because the nooks connect to the network, and the lending scheme can disable access to the book on the lender's device for the period of the loan. Lots of folks aren't thrilled by that kind of remote control, and I'm not sure I blame them.
That's why I hate it--the control. But that doesn't mean the publishers won't love it.

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Just waving your hand and saying "It's tech issue" doesn't magically make it solvable. Some tech issues aren't.
Do you seriously think this would be too hard to solve?
You can't solve it. OK. Maybe I can't either.
Could you have come up with the current adept scheme?
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