"Friction" is why e-books adoption is slow

[Kilarney]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

There are many ebooks available. They just aren't all that convenient to find and purchase.

I agree. There are many e-books. There aren't, however, that many compared to the overall number of books out there.

I re-checked my Amazon wishlist. Of 20 or so books, 2 are available as e-books. (I checked Connect and Fictionwise.)

I'm Joe casual. If I spent an hour or two looking into the Sony reader, and found that only two of the books I want are available, I'd pass on spending $300 for the Reader. I'm sure that there are many others like me.

I want to steer the device. I don't want it to steer me. In other words, I want to tell it what I want to (and can) read, and not vice-versa.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Unfortunately, the onus for promoting e-books really should lie with the publishers and authors... and they are exactly the ones who are keeping silent. Sure, Sony can promote its reader, or for that matter, so can iRex, Mobipocket, eReader, MS Reader, etc, but what's the point if no one knows what an e-book is?

We're caught in a vicious circle: The publishers won't promote e-books until the public demands it, and the public won't demand what it doesn't know about. The only way to bust out of this circle is for groups like MobileRead to keep preaching, helping, hacking, and demonstrating, until they reach a critical mass that breaks out into the mainstream. Or, to fit my earlier analogy, groups like MobileRead have to keep gathering enough weight of members and supporters to lean against the wall of e-book ignorance... and when the wall finally comes down, the largest and most important point of friction will be gone.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I think "nothing wrong with the current format" is the key fact. My original question "So what are the compelling reasons to buy ebooks and ebook viewers" got largely the responses I expected. They may be compelling reasons for the folks who hang out here. They are unlikely to be all that compelling to the majority of the book reading public. Until that majority gets a compelling reason. ebooks will remain a niche market.

I think the important point is that many of the groups I mentioned largely don't know that this is an option for them. How many older people with failing eyesight, who buy what large-print books they can find, know about e-books' print variability? How many parents know that their kids don't have to ruin their backs if they get their texts on e-readers? How many Mac users don't know that they can get e-books?

If they are told, through marketing, that a better way exists for them, I believe many of them will be compelled to check e-books out.

[radleyp]

As DMcCunney notes, here we talk to the converted, so we take as obvious what is clearly not obvious to the non-ereading public. My brother is a unix expert who spends most of every day in front of three on-all-day-and-night computers, and he would not think of reading an ebook (and never has), though he does read news on the web. I have never been able to convince him that ebooks have certain advantages. And when he hears that people like many of you spend $350 for a reading device, he thinks you are crazy. The very idea of having to charge some device to be able to read seems to him insane. If I can't get him to try ebooks, what chance will I have with the non-computer-literate?

Folks, we are trying to get people to ABANDON the normal book: this is a battle we cannot win at present. Books have been around too long and done just fine, thank you. Moreover, the Sony reader is far from an intelligent device: it's good only for reading a limited number of texts, and it does not do obvious things, as pointed out by NatCh. A better device would help, especially one that displayed in color.

Frankly I am sometimes embarrassed to pull out my Q to read, people look at me as if I am weird. That sense must disappear before ebooks go anywhere.
And I agree with McCunney that price is critical.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'd offer the very minor quibble that there are a number of improvements that e-readers offer over p-books. I say minor, because the vast majority of folks seem to find those improvements supremely uncompelling. The Sony Reader, in particular, has arguably taken a step back in a couple of aspects there, no search is the most glaring example, but annotation and a number of others are out there too.

I began using my PDA as an ebook reader primarily for reference material, like documentation for systems I dealt with professionally. Having stuff in a searchable electronic form that could be annotated was the big win in having it in that format.

I didn't see myself reading any substantial amount of fiction that way. As it happens, I do read a lot of fiction electronically, too, but I think paper books still have the edge.

The fact the the Sony Reader lacks a search makes it completely unusable by me. I want stuff in electronic form so I can search it.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think the important point is that many of the groups I mentioned largely don't know that this is an option for them. How many older people with failing eyesight, who buy what large-print books they can find, know about e-books' print variability? How many parents know that their kids don't have to ruin their backs if they get their texts on e-readers? How many Mac users don't know that they can get e-books?

If they are told, through marketing, that a better way exists for them, I believe many of them will be compelled to check e-books out.

They may, but it's a "Catch-22" situation.

There needs to be more stuff available for it to become a more compelling solution, but without more demand, there won't be more stuff.

I see us in one of the early stages of any technology. It starts out complex, expensive, and the province of a few early adopters. It gradually becomes simpler, cheaper, and more widely available.

But the keyword above is "gradual". This will not, and cannot happen quickly.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by radleyp

As DMcCunney notes, here we talk to the converted, so we take as obvious what is clearly not obvious to the non-ereading public. My brother is a unix expert who spends most of every day in front of three on-all-day-and-night computers, and he would not think of reading an ebook (and never has), though he does read news on the web. I have never been able to convince him that ebooks have certain advantages. And when he hears that people like many of you spend $350 for a reading device, he thinks you are crazy. The very idea of having to charge some device to be able to read seems to him insane. If I can't get him to try ebooks, what chance will I have with the non-computer-literate?

<chuckle>.

I'm a *nix admin. One of the things that got me into ebooks was the prospect of a device in my pocket with searchable electronic versions of the big, fat, heavy manuals I had at my desk. Since the vast majority of stuff I needed to refer to was in HTML or PDF format, and I could convert the first and read the second directly on my device...

Folks, we are trying to get people to ABANDON the normal book: this is a battle we cannot win at present. Books have been around too long and done just fine, thank you. Moreover, the Sony reader is far from an intelligent device: it's good only for reading a limited number of texts, and it does not do obvious things, as pointed out by NatCh. A better device would help, especially one that displayed in color.

Personally, I'm not trying to make normal books go away. I see ebooks as an additional format, not a replacement.

And with all due respect to those here who own them, I largely agree with your brother about dedicated readers. They simply don't do enough to justify the money I would spend on them.

My current device is PIM, MP3 player, multimedia viewer, programming tool, and games device as well as ebook reader, with Wifi and Bluetooth conectivity, two SD card slots, on-board stereo and a few other features, including a full color display. It fits in a pocket. It cost me about two thirds of what a Sony Reader goes for, and that only does ebooks.

The advantage the Sony Reader has is a larger and more easily legible display.

Frankly I am sometimes embarrassed to pull out my Q to read, people look at me as if I am weird. That sense must disappear before ebooks go anywhere.

I haven't had that problem. I have had people looking on in fascination when I pull out my folding keyboard and start writing on my device.

And I agree with McCunney that price is critical.

Right now we are in early adopter stage. Early adopters expect to pay more. If production volumes ramp up enough, I expect prices to drop: it's the nature of the electronics industry. I just don't expect to see it soon.
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Dennis

[mogui]

The major friction factor for me was space. I was an engineering contractor and had to store my pBook collection in between trips. As I traveled further afield, I kept downsizing my collection. When I started living internationally, I just couldn't move more than a few books. The Reader was a major lifestyle solution for me.

For those of you back home, I notice a trend. Many developers are selling "miniature" housing; that is, homes which are maybe 600 square feet or less. They were cute and remarkably compact -- and cheaper! As real estate prices escalate, paper books will become more and more of a burden.

I don't bemoan a dearth of eBooks. I have more eBooks now than I ever had pBooks, and my to-read list is much longer. Just the Gutenberg collection alone is reading for a lifetime. And more is coming all the time -- brave new world!

[mogui]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

My current device is PIM, MP3 player, multimedia viewer, programming tool, and games device as well as ebook reader, with Wifi and Bluetooth conectivity, two SD card slots, on-board stereo and a few other features, including a full color display. It fits in a pocket. It cost me about two thirds of what a Sony Reader goes for, and that only does ebooks.

I googled the Tapwave Zodiac and found a good review. I guess it would be an UMPC. The screen is wide enough to be a good eReader. I was happy to read that it ran the Palm OS. How does it stack up against the Palm T|X?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by mogui

I googled the Tapwave Zodiac and found a good review. I guess it would be an UMPC. The screen is wide enough to be a good eReader. I was happy to read that it ran the Palm OS. How does it stack up against the Palm T|X?

It's the one of the best media PDAs on the market, and it came out either 3 or 4 years ago. The company who developed it, Tapwave, went under just about two years back. Production stopped when the company went under, of course.

Your comparison with a UMPC struck me as hilarious. A number of Zodiac owners upgraded to a UMPC when their Zod died (it was more of a sideways move).

[mogui]

Yes. if you turn a PDA sideways it becomes a UMPC

I hadn't realized the Zod was that old. I haven't lived in the west for almost four years. That explains why the Zod lacks WiFi.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by mogui

I googled the Tapwave Zodiac and found a good review. I guess it would be an UMPC.

I don't think of it that way. I depends on how you define things.

The screen is wide enough to be a good eReader. I was happy to read that it ran the Palm OS. How does it stack up against the Palm T|X?

Since I don't own a TX, that's hard for me to say authoritatively.

The major differences between the Zodiac and the TX as that the TX builds in Wifi, the TX has one card slot, the TX uses NVFS instead of normal RAM, and has a faster processor.

Tapwave was trying to create a device that was a handheld gaming device as well as PalmOS PDA. So it had things like an ATI W4200 chip with on chip display memory driving the screen, and Yamaha stereo sound with actual (tiny) stereo speakers on the device. The CPU is a 200mhz Motorola iMX, and the Zodiac 2 has 128MB or RAM. It has Bluetooth, but not Wifi. However, one of the SD card slots is SDIO, and mine has a Sandisk 256MB+Wifi card I can use when connectivity is needed. The SanDisk gets about 120-150K/sec download performance. Unfortunately, the available drivers only support WEP encryption, so I'm out of luck connecting to a site that uses WPA.

Because of the hand held gaming orientation, the Zodiac defaults to landscape mode. and substitutes a left-side joystick for the 5 Way Navigator found on things like the TX. It uses "old style" Palm PIM apps.

Most of the ebooks I have on the Zodiac are conversions from HTML for Plucker, an offline HTML viewer for PalmOS, but I also have eReader and MobiReader for material in their respective formats, plus PalmFiction, an open source viewer from a Russian develop, for Palm doc files, zText files, ASCII text files on a card, and RTF files (which it renders as text), as well as PalmPDF, an open source Palm PDF viewer for PDF files, and Documents to Go for handling Microsoft Word and Excel files.

The "killer app" for the Zodiac is TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), a cross-platform, open source media player that hanfles AVI and MPEG video, MP3 and Ogg audio, and a variety of other things. The Palm port has support for the ATI chip in the Zodiac, and there are reams of information on Zodiac sites on the best way to rip DVDs to play on the Zodiac.

I have two 2GB cards in mine, but I also have the FAT32 driver installed, so I can upgrade to 4GB cards when needed, for 8GB of storage.

I got the Zodiac when my old TE was dying. I wanted a larger screen, more RAM, and a faster processor. Anything else was gravy. Correspondence with another Zodiac user convinced me it was a good candidate, and I got a used device on eBay. Getting things set up as I preferred took a little fiddling, as the gaming device background of the Zodiac caused some quirks. To produce a gaming device, Tapwave needed game developers to write for the platform. To allay developer concerns about piracy, Tapwave implemented a form of DRM. Apps that used advanced features of the Tapwave API had to be digitally signed to run. Once installed, they were locked to the device they were installed on, and could not be beamed to another Zodiac and run. For teh most part, this has not been an issue, but I have a few things I ran on the E that bombed on the Zodiac because they did something it didn't like.

Overall, I've been delighted. Had the TX been available when I was looking, I might have bought one. As it is, I'm glad I got what I did. Glad enough, in fact, that I bought two more when Tapwave's former third-party service center had a clearance sale, offering a reflashed demo unit and a unit sent back on an RMA as a source of spare parts for $125. I have three, just in case...
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Dennis

[mogui]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Overall, I've been delighted. Had the TX been available when I was looking, I might have bought one. As it is, I'm glad I got what I did. Glad enough, in fact, that I bought two more when Tapwave's former third-party service center had a clearance sale, offering a reflashed demo unit and a unit sent back on an RMA as a source of spare parts for $125. I have three, just in case...

On my next trip back to the world, I will add another gadget to my collection. This spring it was going to be a Nokia N800 UMPC, but I saw the Sony Reader right beside it and was so impressed, I bought the Reader instead. The N800 was attractive because of the potential for VoIP. I also use a Palm M125 as my PIM and occasional reader.

Currently the object of my desire is the Asus 701 EEE. It is (will be) small and light enough to carry in my backpack for travel. I already have a pretty good laptop, but a guy can't have too many computers and anything worth doing is worth overdoing

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by mogui

Currently the object of my desire is the Asus 701 EEE. It is (will be) small and light enough to carry in my backpack for travel. I already have a pretty good laptop, but a guy can't have too many computers and anything worth doing is worth overdoing

Yes, the ASUS looks quite interesting, and followons should be more so.

I've been following the Palm Foleo with bemusement, as it isn't clear who Palm thinks will buy one.

If you already have a laptop, you don't need the Foleo, and I think most of the folks who could use something like the Foleo already have laptops. If the Foleo could replace a laptop, it migh be interesting, but that seems unlikely, and you certainly aren't likely to carry as laptop and the Foleo. I think I agree with the commentator who expected Foleo sales to be "in the high four figures".

If the EEE gets decent third party software support, it might be quite nice indeed.
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Dennis

[phrodod]

I'm a first time poster here. And here's my take on this subject.

In order for e-books to become popular, publishers need to offer SUBSTANTIAL discounts to e-customers. 20-35% off just doesn't cut it. I wouldn't expect to see widespread adoption unless e-book prices were no more than 25-35% of paperback prices.

Right now, the computer reading experience is tiring, so most people won't read at a computer the way they will with a paper book. And electronic ink readers are still EXPENSIVE. If I'm expected to foot the bill for the reader independently of the book, I'd better get a HUGE discount on the book. I can get paper books from the library, and can pick up paperback fiction for under $10 per book new. I can also get them used, and sell them or pass them on when I'm done. Since I can't do any of the above with an e-book, I expect to pay a lot less.

Even if I read 100 books a year, a $300 reader works out to $3/book. I'd have to get a better discount than that to justify my investment. And if most readers are like me, they'll only read twenty or thirty books a year. It generally takes me 1-2 weeks to finish a book. At that price, I'd have to get a rebate on a reader and get the books for free.

With the $60 offer from Sony, I'm going to try out the reader anyway (if they'll ever ship it...), but I'm primarily hoping to use it for those situations where I currently print out a substantial amount of paper documentation. If it saves me a large amount of printing, it will (hopefully) be worth it. I don't expect to use it for most of my pleasure reading, but I might be pleasantly surprised.

It seems to me that the best ways of promoting something like the reader are by hooking commuters who ride buses, subways, etc., and who bring along the current newspaper or magazine. If these were offered in a Reader format, it would be MUCH simpler to page through the newspaper in electronic format than in paper format in this type of environment.

One other thing to note is that with the high price of these devices, people have to be much more careful than with regular books, magazines, or newspapers. You don't want to get them wet or drop them. Where you might read a trashy novel at Starbucks or on the beach, with your Reader, you might be worried about spilling your latte or getting sand or salt water splashed on it.

With all the potential negative issues, the main potential positive issue I can see is price. Publishers using e-media avoid printing, materials, and shipping costs by having the consumer foot this bill. In addition, they don't have to worry about the potential price dilution from ending up in the discount bin. There'd be no reason that books would have to end up there if they were only sold electronically. Finally, there'd be no reason for e-books to go out of print. Once the format is ready, you can keep on selling it as long as people keep buying. For all these reasons, publishers should be eager to make e-books succeed, but to do that, they need to offer customers better incentives. Cheap prices are the key to this.

One possible marketing approach to maximize profits would be to gradually lower the price as the book aged. If you wanted the latest book right away, you'd know that you'd pay more, but if you're willing to wait a bit, you can get a much better price. If you're looking for new authors, and the books are really cheap, you're far more likely to take a chance if the price is minimal.

Phrodod