what is Sony thinking?

[DougFNJ]

I asked my Aunt who's a published writer of books on Writing, if there was a device a little bigger than her Dell Handheld that would have a screen with a look close to that of a book page, and does nothing but designated reading with a long battery life, would she get one? She said absolutely without a doubt.

She knew about alot of the failed readers out there, but knew nothing about Sony's Reader.

Read my lips Sony, you have to spend money, to make money. Buy some shelf space in more than 3 stores, make it a little easier to find it on your website, and maybe throw a commercial out there. I have another idea, get some more Writer's to talk about it publicly. The only buzz I hear about on this device is from us mobileread members.

If there is a higher demand for these devices and content, we'll see more buzz develop, more updates, and more publishers taking Connect seriously.

Before the Ipod was developed, there were quite a few failed devices. Nobody even knew what an MP3 player was until Ipod came along. Like Ipod, Sony took a great idea that was out there, made a much better product, but they continually fail to market this thing.

Originally Posted by BruceW

We need to be willing to buy content.

It would be a safe bet that you will find few here to argue about that point. Most of us have no problem paying for content. We might vary in the price of the content but not for paying for it. It seems that the "cost of the paperback version" seems to be the most prevalent as worth buying (as opposed to most places charging "hardback" prices).

But something else you might think on is what if the content you want to buy is unavailable. Here you are wanting to give someone money for their merchandise but they don't really have what you are wanting to pay for. That is the other limiting factor in most ebook vendors. This leads to the massive amounts of unauthorized and copied ebooks in the digital ether since once they're made they have a tendency to slip outside and take walks.

Which leads to such lovely publishing logics. "Online, badly formatted copies are killing our ebook business." "Oh, well let me buy my ebook from you." "We don't carry that one. Nobody wants it." "Guess I'll have to get it online then." "What? That's why we don't sell that ebook! You will just steal it anyway. Online, badly formatted copies are killing our ebook business!"

[yvanleterrible]

When one buys a device objectively, considering that this reader is not free, everything about it has to be known beforehand. That said it is not fair to come back against the maker for the choice made; it was a user choice.

On the other side, this choice wasn't really an enlightened one because with eink there are so few devices available yet; then again the maker is not at fault. We had to acquire the reader knowing that we have to deal with shortcomings as to our wish list. But this device can be expanded on and I'm sure software upgrades will maintain it the better choice it is.
And again, the 'ebook' as a media can not belong to any entity. Ebabel is plainly wrong.

[ultim8fury]

I'll say it now for any publishers that read this.

I don't get all my books legitimately.

I do and will continue to replace my non-legal content with legal versions as and when they become available. So far ConnStore has replaced 63 books. I want to replace the rest and have my entire library legit. Just like my paper library is.

Help me out and publish your back catalogues.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

And again, the 'ebook' as a media can not belong to any entity. Ebabel is plainly wrong.

It's a model that's worked successfully in many other fields.

When you buy music from Apple's iTunes store, it will only play on an iPod - you can't use it on any type of music player.

When you buy a game for your Microsoft XBox 360, you can't play it on a Sony Playstation 3 (and vice versa, of course).

If you buy accessories for a Canon camera, you can't use them on a Nikon camera.

It's in the manufacturer's commercial interest to "lock" you into their product line, by encouraging you to spend a lot of money on things that you can't use with any other manufacturer's products.

[grimo1re]

I'm happy to buy content if there's no DRM (man I've been burned by DRM more times that I care to remember. I mean what good is it to buy music legally only to end up downloading it illegally due to DRM issues? What *are* they thinking??) and if it's cheaper than it is now. I am not willing to pay paperback prices for ebooks.

[astra]

Originally Posted by grimo1re

I'm happy to buy content if there's no DRM and if it's cheaper than it is now. I am not willing to pay paperback prices for ebooks.

Ditto.

[RSaunders]

Originally Posted by NatCh

But what Apple did was say, "okay, here's a really cool music player that'll play whatever music you have electronically -- oh, and by the way, we've got a service that sells music too, but that music can only play on our players."

Actually, iTunes is more than the iTunes Music Store. It can convert your legacy music on CD into the format that plays on your iPod. You could do this with MP3 (even using iTunes), and you can import other MP3s into iTunes. iTunes also organizes your music into playlists and gets album data from online databases.

CONNECT cannot organize my other documents, because it doesn't do organization. It cannot process my existing library, either the paper books or the other electronic books I have, because Sony doesn't feel like it.

Frankly, in the book world we are better off than the music world. Though copyrights are far too long, there is a substantial volume of useful writing with expired copyright. We have an organized effort to collect it in Project Gutenberg. Music doesn't have lots of pre-1913 recordings to work with. My iPod has never played a piece of public domain music.

The reason we don't have a killer eBook is that Sony is our eInk product manufacturer, not Apple. No amount of Sony wishing will change that.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

Actually, iTunes is more than the iTunes Music Store. It can convert your legacy music on CD into the format that plays on your iPod. You could do this with MP3 (even using iTunes), and you can import other MP3s into iTunes. iTunes also organizes your music into playlists and gets album data from online databases.

True, and I completely agree about the lack of features in the ConnStore compared to iTunes.

What I was trying to get at is that Apple's approach of offering the hardware that would also handle "not their stuff" might have reduced folks concerns about the DRM in the iTunes, so that over time, folks stopped caring about it and started buying the DRMed iTunes offerings. And by extension, since the Reader will handle non-ConnStore files, the same sort of psychological process might come into play.

I wasn't trying to suggest that Sony is becoming Apple, nor to make any comment on the ConnStore, either relative to iTunes or even the ConnStore itself.

I wasn't even trying to make a value statement about the mental process I'm trying to describe -- all I was trying to do was point out the psychological process that I think I might see, and discuss it specifically.

Guess I didn't manage to do that too clearly though.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

No, Sony is clearly NOT Apple. Sony IS a product manufacturer that made it big creating compelling hardware, but recently has seen its edge eroded by other manufacturers. They have been diversifying into content (like movies), which is proving to be a very different animal, but which they are dedicated to taming.

Maybe Sony hopes to compel publishers to release their current catalogs (which, by and large, are digital files anyway) in their formats, once they have a popular reader to point to, and glean profits through format or reseller royalties siphoned through Connect. Maybe Sony wants to buy a few publishing houses. As long as their content is lucrative, they will not worry overmuch about the content they do not control. This strategy could be as successful to them as opening the device to others' content... maybe moreso... and it affords them more control. So it's not that surprising how they are approaching the Reader and the Connect store.

I think most of us (and the rest of the public, for that matter) would be happy with the Reader accepting Connect content, and still being open to non-Connect content, as it is now. The biggest arguments seem to be about the high price of the hardware and the content. I think the hardware price will come down, and Reader features will improve, as is inevitable for new products as they develop and mature. At that point, Sony will assuredly be expecting to make it up in content profits. And if they are in the content business, they can exercise some control over content pricing, and therefore, their profit margins.

Once Sony, like Apple, would have been content making good hardware. Now, in many ways, Sony is the opposite of Apple, and their e-book business strategy reflects that. The fact that their strategy isn't an Apple strategy doesn't mean their strategy won't work. It's just working from the other side of the street.

[yvanleterrible]

I agree with most of it Steve.

Being in manufacturing myself I had to wake up to the fact that we can't get a fair, honest price for our work anymore. All this is due to third world wages that affect the cost of everything these days. How many industries have fallen in North America to this? Here we're fast becoming a services economy more than the manufacturing we used to be.

Sony, mighty as it is, is not immune to this. It has switched most industry to these countries, trying to beat others in the game. It worked for a while untill this staging down of industry has started to affect the balance between rich and poor. Middleclass is disappearing fast, moving to one extreme or the other. The greater number moving to the lesser side also moves buying power with it. That in return means less buyers for expensive luxury items, a market usually fed on by Sony.

Where is Sony going now?...Niche markets that it invents and services such as the sale of intellectual works. (music, movies and books)

Any manufacturer, how big it is, will have to switch to a service market. Even the creation, software and sciences domains, intrinsic parts of intellectual markets, will suffer. Third world wage workers outnumber us 100 to 1.

A balance will have to be reattained. But those who have will not give.

The rich will kill the planet and seem quite content do so, for their lives are short and plentifull. It is now a oneway railway...

Sorry about this...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

Frankly, in the book world we are better off than the music world. Though copyrights are far too long, there is a substantial volume of useful writing with expired copyright. We have an organized effort to collect it in Project Gutenberg. Music doesn't have lots of pre-1913 recordings to work with. My iPod has never played a piece of public domain music.

In the UK, a music "performance copyright" (ie a copyright on a recording) only lasts for 50 years, rather than the lifetime of the author + 70 years, as is the case for books. That means that any recording made before 1957 is now in the public domain in the UK. Because the PD "limit" is now encroaching on the start of pop music, etc, there was a concerted campaign by the music industry here to try to get the law changed. Thankfully, the government refused.

[dhbailey]

Of course the copyright on the performance doesn't trump the underlying copyright on the music itself, which has been life-plus-70 in the UK for a long time. So even though the recordings themselves will enter the public domain, all that means is that we won't have to pay the artists any royalties. But we'll still not be free to exchange recordings because the songs are still copyrighted material and will be for quite some time.

[HarryT]

But I believe that it means that many classical recordings, where the music itself is out of copyright, can be freely used, does it not?

[dhbailey]

Yes, that would be the case -- where the music itself is in the public domain, once the recordings become public domain, they're fair game for anybody to use.