Physical eBooks

[pendragginp]

You wouldn't have to buy a new memory card for every book. Just keep adding to the first one until full.

Yes, that's what I was thinking.

I understand why some folks may want to shop in a physical bookstore and then buy the ebook, but that purchase could just involve emailing you a download link. There's no reason it has to involve physical media. If your device can connect to a network and synch, you wouldn't even need to do that. Turn on the wireless and there's your book.

Yes, but what I was thinking of was an older group. I work in a library and see a lot of older people who don't have a computer, so 'just email the link' wouldn't work for them. And yet an ereader, with the ability to enlarge the font, with the much lighter weight than a hardcover book, could be a godsend for them. As I said, if all they had to do was 'click the card in here, push this to turn it on, push this to turn the page' - this they could do.

I think most technophobic people would prefer that to SD cards. I'd be annoyed having to swap out the card for every book I wanted to read.

A lot of books would fit on a card, so you wouldn't be swapping out a card for every book you read; and those who preferred to download straight from the internet could certainly go ahead and do that....

[Alisa]

If you don't buy a single book per card, how can you resell it? I'm assuming it's going to have to locked in some way which means you can't freely copy a file off of it.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Alisa

If you don't buy a single book per card, how can you resell it? I'm assuming it's going to have to locked in some way which means you can't freely copy a file off of it.

It's possible that DRM could be made to link the book to the card itself. In that case, you wouldn't be able to resell individual books, just the whole collection on the card. So ebooks might be sold in mix-and-match batches, and a person buying ebooks at a store might have them split onto multiple cards for easy gifting/reselling.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's possible that DRM could be made to link the book to the card itself. In that case, you wouldn't be able to resell individual books, just the whole collection on the card. So ebooks might be sold in mix-and-match batches, and a person buying ebooks at a store might have them split onto multiple cards for easy gifting/reselling.

I'm sorry, but that just sounds so needlessly complex and inflexible to me considering that DRM systems could be made to transfer licenses without the physical media playing a part. That's already done with lending. It's just a matter of transferring it permanently rather than temporarily. It would certainly be easier to give someone flexibility on a per file basis this way. I am just not seeing the value the card adds to this.

[DixieGal]

I must say that I hate this idea. It's just another something to clutter up the house with. I got rid of all of the pbooks, hubby changed out all of the CD jewel cases for the thin plastic sleeves, and there is no way I'm gonna begin collecting disks of books to pile up everywhere.

[Ben Thornton]

I don't think that it would be impossible to make a one-book-per-card scheme work - just like a game cartridge. The only way for it to happen in practice, I suspect, would be for someone in a market-dominant position - like Amazon with the kindle - to introduce this as an option. As they have whispernet already, I doubt there are enough advantages for them.

In ten years' time then, what am I likely to get for my birthday? At the moment, I can guess "that's a CD", "that's a book", "that's a DVD". Will people just exchange envelopes with a 72-digit enabling code instead? "Oh, another code - that's nice".

I think I'd prefer socks.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

I think I'd prefer socks.

Hugo and Lefty agree!

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

No, older ones are no longer available for purchase.
I'm looking for a way to get Populous to play on my Vista machine. My 5" floppy is, erm, not useful here. Would I pay the $15 it originally cost? Probably not; $15 will get me a much more advanced game these days--but I'd happily pay $5.

Older games don't sell to new players because they can't buy them, not because there's no market. Most of the entertainment industries (books, movies, tv, video, music) are under the impression that the public really wants brand-new content every few weeks... when iTunes has proved that no, they want to listen to the 1-hit wonders from their teen years as much or more as they want the new chart-toppers, and the books they heard about in college and never got around to reading, and the comics their friends collected, and the movies that they saw with their first girlfriends.

Digital media has proven that we don't actually want to throw away pop-culture as soon as the broadcast run is over.

There'd be a booming market in older video games--bugs and all--adapted to play on new machines. It's just that it's not believed to be lucrative enough for the game companies to put resources in that direction, but they're too paranoid about losing money to license them out cheaply. (Or, as is often the case, the original company has vanished, and the games are now copyright orphans.)

Even if you look at Steam and other downloadable content retailers that stock older games, they do not have anywhere near the sales of newer games, despite being a fraction of the price. You can still buy many many older games.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Personally, I don't like the idea of tying an e-book to a physical object because you end up with... physical objects. Most of which will eventually end up as landfill material. I especially don't like this with SD cards, as it would just create a new market for landfillable plastic-and-metal objects. No one needs that.

I would suggest that a different media could be a better solution, say, a paper card with a magnetic strip that held the e-book (since e-books don't take up much space, this is eminently possible). If the strip could be made to be fully biodegradable, this would eliminate the waste issues involved with plastics and other materials. And paper cards would cost less to manufacture, could be sold like gift cards on end-caps, easily transported and stored.

But having said that, the biggest benefit to digital material is that no physical media is needed. If customers are uncomfortable with ideas like "e-mailing them the link," sell them a Kindle or a Nook. That would be better than unnecessarily tying e-books down with physical media.

[Penforhire]

The slippery slope is, having wireless connectivity, there could easily come a day when you don't EVER buy an actual e-book. We'll be forced to borrow an 'instance' of the e-book, with only one (or very few) e-books in memory at one time. We would never possess the file.

There are some attractions to a Netflix-like subscription model. If you could read any and all of Amazon's e-books one-at-a-time for, say, $10 a month but never actually own or retain the file, would you? I might. I suppose the value depends on how much you buy-and-hoard or otherwise reread your collection. I tend to keep reading new books so the concept could gain traction with me.

[Fringecup]

Somewhere I read about the possibility of having kiosks where one could download ebooks into your ereader or onto a card that you brought with you. Maybe this would solve the problem - those who like to browse bookstores could do so, then go to the kiosk and download it, while those who really want a physical copy could buy it in the traditional way. I know many people who either don't have a computer or are not very computer/internet savy and, as someone else said, they don't even think of going online to search out sources for their books.

Personally, I prefer to go online, but you never know what you want until you find it, and bookstores are good places to find books that you might never have thought of trying until you see them on the shelf!

[user743]

please everyone keep quite and don't give anyone ideas!! I'm sure Amazon barns-and-Nobel kobo etc. read everything on this website

[HarryT]

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