Philosophical musings: Inexpensive Sony Reader

[Lov2Read]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's just a matter of educating people that there are tens of thousands of free books out there - PG, etc. Some people have the strange idea that any out of copyright book is "boring" and not something they want to read. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So true! I have over 400 ebooks between my two PDA's. Over 80% of them are books that are now copyright free. I keep coming across new ones I want to read all the time. It is an endless supply.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's just a matter of educating people that there are tens of thousands of free books out there - PG, etc. Some people have the strange idea that any out of copyright book is "boring" and not something they want to read. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I agree that there are interesting books out there that are free (or very cheap) including lots of classics, but I am not talking about you, me, people here who by and large are voracious readers; there are lots of statistics about why and what people read, and while I would not mind (though publishers may) that the vast majority of people who read several books a year switch from reading the latest VaDinci code or celebrity memoir, to reading Dickens or Suetonius, I profoundly doubt that is going to happen; and let us not forget that more and more alternatives to reading appear all the time...

I really do not see a large market for a dedicated e-reading device at current prices, so I still think that prices are going to drop dramatically, or the dedicated e-readers are going to be marginalized.
For me the best bet for a large market and consequent e-book mainstream acceptance and use, are still multipurpose devices like UMPC's, tablets, iPhone, though they are still expensive and have various other technical issues too.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lov2Read

So true! I have over 400 ebooks between my two PDA's. Over 80% of them are books that are now copyright free. I keep coming across new ones I want to read all the time. It is an endless supply.

For me, one of the real successes of the "Book Uploads" forum section here has been the pleasure of "discovering" absolutely wonderful authors that I'd previously been completely unaware of - R. Austin Freeman and Edgar Wallace, to name but two. Other people have said the same about some of the stuff I've posted - H. Rider Haggard, for example. I just can't believe that a few months ago I'd never heard of the "Dr Thorndyke" detective novels of Freeman - they are absolutely wonderful and "classics", to my mind, at least.

[tsgreer]

I have to admit that I was one of the people who thought that the "classics" found in the public domain would be boring. For most of my life, I have always read current fiction (mostly sci-fi).

Thanks to the "Book Uploads" forum section, I've been very happily proven wrong. It started out as me loading them on my Reader to "just try them out."

Now I am totally hooked and want to slap myself for never discovering this stuff before! Right now I don't have any current books on my reader--for the last several months the only stuff on my Reader has been our very own mobilread special editions. I'm on a Mac so I've never even visited the Connect store and I don't really ever have to.

For me, the Reader has been worth the cost because of all the high-quality free stuff that out there. It's paid for itself many times over and it looks like it will be quite a long time before I ever run out of stuff to read.

I did think the price was a bit steep when I first bought my Reader months ago, but Harry had a good point by saying that it was about the price of an iPod. I have an iPod and I think my Reader is way more valuable to me. Of course, I still love my iPod too, but it hasn't given me as much enjoyment as the Reader has.

[aleks]

It seems to be a matter of plane ignorance of what is available. I stumbled onto ebooks years ago. People are surprised when I tell them what is out there for them to read. Being non-profit PG and others do not spend resources in advertising their "product", they rely more on word of mouth.

I always take the opportunity to spread the word about ebooks as I believe it to the future.

Regarding costs, Sony was more reasonable than the iLiad though a little pricey for a large segement of the population. When the price drops, more and more folks will migrate to ebooks.

I am excited by the future!

[nekokami]

I agree that there's lots of great stuff in public domain. (I got sucked into a Louisa May Alcott title just the other day, when I meant to just be checking to see if it was available for someone else.) But it doesn't remove my desire to read new books by favorite authors, e.g. Garth Nix (who does publish ebooks) or even J.K. Rowling (who, as we famously know, does not). I don't think this is an either-or situation.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by aleks

Regarding costs, Sony was more reasonable than the iLiad though a little pricey for a large segement of the population. When the price drops, more and more folks will migrate to ebooks.

I am excited by the future!

Right! My dad would like to get his hands on one even though he hates computers with a vengeance. Right now his pension won't let him afford one and the steps I had to go through to get mine cooled him down quite a bit. Maybe one of my rich siblings could offer him one.