Sony Connect Store and Borders: is this the beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?

[NatCh]

If I were a betting man, I'd take that bet: there isn't a mobile version of DE yet, or at least not that anyone's heard of.

[Dan1123]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Now it's y'all's turn. What did I miss? Where am I wrong? And what should I be thinking.

One thing I think is severely lacking in the ebook world is the fact that you cannot load a paperback into your reader.

Think about it. When the iPod first came about, iTunes sales were way behind the capacity of iPods sold. Where did all that music come from? People's CD collections. But you can't rip a book into Sony Reader format like you can with a CD to MP3/AAC. The early limitations of music selection were alleviated by the fact that anything on CD could be played by the iPod after importing it into iTunes.

Ebook readers have nothing like this though. Books can be scanned and edited, but this takes a long time and cannot be done without tremendous effort by someone on their home computer. In a way, books are locked down much more than music ever was. Furthering the problem is that the concept of a "book player" that separates the content from its realization is nonexistent in popular culture. The book is the player.

For ebooks to catch on widely, there needs to be a reader that is cheap enough to sell as a single book. Maybe it could be subsidized and books for it could be sold as add-on cards, but people need to think they are buying a nice book rather than a computer or PDA.

[BobVA]

Originally Posted by Dan1123

But you can't rip a book into Sony Reader format like you can with a CD to MP3/AAC.

I think that's where the analogy with the iPod breaks down in my case. I buy a CD expecting to listen to it many times, but I buy most books with the intention of reading them only once. So, the ability to "rip" a book is really only of importance to me if it's the only way to get fresh content.

If fresh content is reasonably available from other sources (Borders, manybooks, etc), the ebook would be a sale for me.

Originally Posted by NatCh

They've been watching RIAA get their head's handed to them, and the general disintegration of the various DRM schemes in the music industry -- I can only hope they draw intelligent conclusions from those shows.

Maybe...DVD is still is effectively locked down in the US. How many people do you know that rip movies compared to music? The issue isn't how well the DRM works, it's that the process is illegal in the US, which means there will be no big-box store solutions for Joe Consumer (or even technically adept users who want to stay on the right side of the law).

And notice this hasn't impacted DVD sales. Why? Most people don't even know DVD's are copy protected. They work on any player they have, so who cares? I think the problem with ebook DRM isn't the DRM itself, it's the tower of Babel of competing standards. Think about how DVD sales would be impacted if there were five or ten different DRM schemes.

So, if epub can achieve the kind of market penetration that DVD CSS has I don't think it will be much of a sales hindrance. Before the whole Kindle/Amazon thing, I'd have said Adobe was going to finally round this mess up, but now it looks like we've got to wade through the literary equivalent of the HD/DVD vs. Blu-Ray mess. Ugh.

Great discussion! Thanks for your insightful post Nate - hope you're right in your predictions!!!

Regards,
Bob

[igorsk]

Apparently Harelquin also plans to offer their ebooks in "Sony format". I wonder if they'll use encrypted BBeB or go the Fictionwise way.

[da_jane]

You know, I don't think its publishers that are for DRM. It's the authors. I think for many authors, DRM is in their contract so the publishers must do this. I've actually talked to some editors who think that the DRM is confusing (even for them) and that it is holding ebooks back but authors are very resistant to their work being so easily pirated. Even when you try to explain to them that the work is already easily pirated, there seems just to be a huge resistance from the creators of the work themselves who have the right to control the manner of distribution.

[THJahar]

Well I'm fully supportive of the eink cause,and this announcement can only help the adoption of the technology so that it becomes more than 'fringe'.
Although I do have a small suspicion that this is a knee jerk reaction to the impending launch of the kindle.
Lets face it, borders have been selling a device for over a year that essential did result in LESS business for them (They didn't sell ebooks)
So Amazon who have comprehensively stolen a large chunk of Borders client base, are about to launch an integrated eink/ebook offering.
So Borders/Sony reluctantly launch this 'co-operation'.
Hmmm..ah..well, they say competition only makes you stronger.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

True, this is likely a reaction to the release of Kindle, but that could still be a good thing.

With the huge volume of books at the disposal of Borders (and Amazon), we're looking at the possibility of introductory "book clubs" that will subsidize a discount on the reader and sell e-books at a price lower than print books (at least for a time).

We can also hope that ePub will become standard issue for both stores and readers, not to mention all readers created in the future, tying us all into one big combined library of books from both sources.

I also agree that, if this is expanded beyond the U.S. market, it will be a huge step in international use of e-books.

On the downside: These two book powerhouses' dominating the market will make it a lot harder for the independents to make it. On the other hand, a proliferation of readers and standardized formats should help the independents as much as the big stores.

[vivaldirules]

Does anyone have a good idea of how many titles are available from the Sony Connect store - either now or at some time in the past? I think it would be a useful figure to monitor over time especially if ebooks take off as we all hope they will.

I did a (blank) search in each category at Sony Connect and the totals sum to 16,342 offerings. There are some double counts here but surprisingly few in number. Ebooks that you would think would be found listed in multiple categories are few and far between. "My Life" by Bill Clinton is in Biographies but not Politics and Government. But Hillary's "It Takes a Village" shows up in both. Ebooks by Edgar Allan Poe are found in Fiction and Literature but not Horror.

Does anyone have any other data? I can't wait to see what happens after Borders comes online. And then after competition with Amazon. Boy, this could be fun!

[igorsk]

The PR mentions "20,000" for the number of books at Connect.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Dan1123

One thing I think is severely lacking in the ebook world is the fact that you cannot load a paperback into your reader.

Though I don't really believe the ability to convert books into e-books is required for e-books to succeed, I can understand that. I have a few hundred books that I would love to be able to convert to e-books, just to make space in my house, and to consolidate my collections (all in one place, as opposed to some in this room, some in that room, some in a box under the stairs...).

It would be nice to think that, if we wait long enough, all of those old books will be converted to digital media by someone. But then, the pain of paying for hundreds of e-books that you already own in print form is a significant one! Maybe if we could get the books for a significant discount by sending in the cover, the way print shops handle returns, might work...