PVI revenues drop - weakening e-paper orders!

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by astra

So, if they announce a new prs-510 coming autumn, or 9.7" reader, you are not going to upgrade and you will stay with 505 for a foreseeable future(a couple of years)?

There would have to be some very significant improvements in a PRS-510 -- by which I do not mean wi-fi or a larger screen -- to get me to upgrade from PRS-505 in the next couple of years. I find the 505 to be good as it is, and although there are areas of improvement I would like, the 505's deficiencies are not significant enough to warrant not using it for a couple of years.

[astra]

Originally Posted by rhadin

There would have to be some very significant improvements in a PRS-510 -- by which I do not mean wi-fi or a larger screen -- to get me to upgrade from PRS-505 in the next couple of years. I find the 505 to be good as it is, and although there are areas of improvement I would like, the 505's deficiencies are not significant enough to warrant not using it for a couple of years.

I am curious what JSWolf has to say about it

[TheLongshot]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

eBook display devices are a luxury that a lot of people cannot afford now that prices for things is being way too high. Cut backs have to be made. And the eBook display device has to be something that's not purchased. If I was looking at the 505 now, I seriously would not be purchasing one. While I like and use my 505 a lot, I don't have to have it. I could use the library to get pBooks like I did before the 505.

I don't know, just having the Baen free library available to me makes up for the cost of the 505. Also, Fictionwise has had some good deals in the past which I still have to work though. Yeah, the library is an option, but I still have to drive out there to get books, and they might not have everything I want.

Originally Posted by RWood

Yeah, I miss the "T" Boston has a great system. The DC area does not have a great system. From here it would be 15 to 20 minutes to drive to the nearest carpark, park, wait for a bus, ride for 30 to 45 minutes to the station, transfer, wait for a metro train, and then 45 minutes to an hour to get downtown. No wonder I have a home office and order a lot of stuff over the Internet.

I guess it depends on where you live. I'm guessing that you are probably up the route 7 corridor, where you don't have many options. (Thanks Fed for killing the Dulles rail. ) If you are more down I66 and I95, you have more options.

Jason

[BlackVoid]

The strategy of concentrating on the US market and punishing other customers by higher prices (think 350 EUR ebook) BACKFIRES.
The other BIG (HUGE!!!) issue is ebook prices. Ebook devices have NO CHANCE to become mainstream with dozens of unique formats, DRM protection and ridiculous pricing.

What ebook makers should do:
- remove DRM
- drop ebook prices at least 30% below paper book prices
- use a standard format
- do not discriminate non-US customers

Absent of these changes, this will remain a niche market FOREVER.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rhadin

There would have to be some very significant improvements in a PRS-510 -- by which I do not mean wi-fi or a larger screen -- to get me to upgrade from PRS-505 in the next couple of years. I find the 505 to be good as it is, and although there are areas of improvement I would like, the 505's deficiencies are not significant enough to warrant not using it for a couple of years.

I think the primary lack in the Sony these days is lack of dictionary support. I know that doesnt matter for many people, but the Sony is the only mainstream bookreader not to support dictionary lookup now, and I think it's got to be hurting it, especially in the educational market.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by astra

My thoughts exactly. They need a fresh market.

JSWolf


So, if they announce a new prs-510 coming autumn, or 9.7" reader, you are not going to upgrade and you will stay with 505 for a foreseeable future(a couple of years)?

Yes, I would. The problem is that money is tight at present. Can't afford to be spending on things I don't really need.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by slayda

Look at the bright side of the "high cost of gas". Pbooks still have to be shipped, i.e. as gas prices go up, pbook prices must also go up. Ebook shipping, on the other hand doesn't need gas, just electrons & bits so their cost should remain constant.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's not the case. The case is that eBook prices are based on pBook prices. So if pBook prices go up, so will eBook prices.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

You know, The weakening US market might get Sony and Amazon to get off their backsides and launch the Readers outside the US.

After all while the economic slowdown is affecting the whole world, it is mainly concentrated in the US.

As such most companies are looking to diversify their holding outside the states to limit their losses.

ditto

It took Sony about 2-3 years to bring their device to Canada?!?! WTF????
It serves them right, both Sony and Amazon, to have lower sales when they simply ignore most of the world. Nothing against US; just hate this obsession with the US market and such a neglect of the others.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think the primary lack in the Sony these days is lack of dictionary support. I know that doesnt matter for many people, but the Sony is the only mainstream bookreader not to support dictionary lookup now, and I think it's got to be hurting it, especially in the educational market.

True, But Personally I feel that the major thing hurting E-readers in the Education market is the lack of content formatted for it, at resonable prices.

Most text for education is not avaliable in digital format. What little is, is in PDF, and that too iften DRM'd or password protected. Even The Illiad, which appears to provide a resonable PDF experience is not that great, and the price premium is huge.

If the content (Especially text books priced at $100+ each) were offered at a discounted price along with or instead of hard copy in digital format along with the reader, demand would surely increase.

Heck, forget that, Just market the Gen3 or one of the other 6'' readers along with all the classics that are in the public domain to literature students in a nice convinent package. Once they have the reader and get used to the idea and convinence of digital texts, provide them access to more current books online that they can easily download.

There is a ton of ways in which readers can be marketed and sold even in a depressed climate, you just need some imagination and the willingness to try something new. Unfortunately by and large most of the parties involved have shown a lack of both

[JSWolf]

The current batch of eink devices doesn't have good software to support the educational market. NONE of them will do. They would need to be at least 9.7" screen sized and the software would need to be considerably better in order to do what is needed to be done. So as it stands, even if the book were in some other format then PDF, they would still not work. The hardware for most is not good enough either. The iLiad while the closest so far doesn't even cut it. Battery life needs to be significantly increased. IMHO, I think the reader would need to be retooled from the ground up and then the software written to handle the new hardware and do it right. But that would take a lot of development time and I don't think anyone will be doing that any time soon.

[tirsales]

@JSWolf: I guess a 9,7'' device with touchscreen and wifi would be perfekt for an educational usage.
Why the wifi? It makes it so much easier to e.g. distribute stuff.
Why the touchscreen? Should be fairly obvious. You simply need to be able to annotate your books, papers, etc
Think of the possibilities!

And ... reader software needs to be adopted to the way people read long papers. When you e.g. have a large bundle of paper and you know "somewhere in the middle is that freaking page".
You thumb it ub and shuffle through. You dont want to load every single page.
So you would need "page thumbnails", jumping via pressing on a line (more to the left or more to the right?), bookmarks with your own keys, etc - and the option to upload those bookmarks to another ereader. Lets say 20 people are working on a single project. They have some kind of "project paper folder" with ~1.000 pages. Now ... if person A inserts a bookmark or a comment - he needs the possibility to share this bookmark automatically with the team.
Talk about an interface to a document-management-system.

Like that idea? Give me a reader with touchscreen and I develop such a system...
Dont like that idea? Give me a reader with touchscreen and I can figure out why it is not such a good idea

No, seriously, let me explain what I meant with an exemplary usage.
Imagine a federal (or universitary or whatever) commission who needs to review project application. Lets say the commission consists of 12 persons. Everybody needs to review every application and they meet once per month to discuss those applications.
Lets say they have x00 applications per year, each having between 12 and 1200 pages.
Now .. an eReader would give those persons the possibility to have those applications with them wherever they go, annotate those papers and share those annotations with others quite easily. It would in fact allow a much faster and cheaper handling then normal paper.
But - those persons wouldnt want to worry about battery power over the weekend. They want to be able to flip pages, insert (and read) bookmarks, wildly jump between applications, etc
They dont care about SD-cards - they wanna get those applications easily without any hazzle. They wanna share their notes without the need to run some strange scripts. etc
Then we have someone running that commission, doing all that daily stuff. Well, this person perhaps has to shortly review applications for correctness before the members of the commission get the paper? Perhaps he uses a database to handle the applications - and he surely want the eReader to interact with this database.
And yes, this I a real commission I based my example on. The average commission member is nearly 60 years old, is not interested in computers and has too much to do to accept any kind of errenous interface.
Keep them in mind if you think about a new eReader for professional usage. If they accept your device - and that commission can use it - I know thousands of people who would use such devices for professional use.

Sorry for the OT ..

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Not to be annoying, but you have to consider that once the Kindle expires - and who knows, 2 years is probably expected to last, maybe up to 5, but for more you have to be really lucky - you have to buy another one to read your ebooks unless you dedrm them.

Or Amazon allows you to change formats if they do a newer Kindle-thingy with a different drm. It may happen, but the history of drm is not optimistic on that and since for now each e-book format is a different book in the eyes of the publishers, I would not bet on that.

And regarding samples, well it's really easy to get them either online or browse in the store. I've bought 70+ books e or p this year, and I sampled most of them before easily, even when I ordered them from the UK not being available here, and you can almost always find excerpts online, sometimes a chapter, sometimes much more...

So for me the argument that Kindle or Sony or any other e-book device saves money is not that convincing, at least if you buy e-books. But while 770 is my main reading device, I started using the Sony more now that is summer and I do some reading outside, and if Kindle would have a promotion like Sony had and come down to 50$, or even 100$, maybe when Kindle 2 is prepared, I would buy one too the way I did the 500.

I'm quite happy to dedrm my books for personal use. I rarely reread books so I'm not terribly concerned, though. My husband is considering getting one now, too, and he often rereads so it will be important to us if he does.

As for samples, I have never read an entire chapter of a book standing around in the bookstore. I read a page or two. I estimate 10-20% of the books I bought before did not get finished. Either I didn't end up liking them enough as I read further or my fancy for them passed before I got to them. The latter happened a lot since I tended to buy enough books to last a month and I have the attention span of a ferret. I did a little look back on my spending since writing that last post to see if I was just imagining the savings. I've gone from spending roughly $50-$100 (average ~$80) per month on books to $30-$40. It may not save money for you but it has most definitely for me given my previous (arguably quite wasteful) habits. If I were intensely concerned about finances right now I would be reading a lot more free classics and hitting the library. Luckily, I have a Prius so I'm still buying books.

[seamusfp]

Originally Posted by tribble

Which brings up PlasticLogic again, whose factory in Dresden is presumably ready to produce. I guess we will see first consumer products in Q1 2009.

1. Plastic Logic isn't likely to be competing head to head with PVI (at least at first). In Volume or Applications.
2. Plastic Logic, being a new technology with perceived benefits over glass tft's (and probably lower yields), is likely to be much more expensive and not price competitive with PVI.
3. Regardless of the drive electronics, the electrophoretic imaging film is coming from E Ink either way.

I wouldn't pin your hopes on Plastic Logic being able to introduce price competition for these displays.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Alisa

As for samples, I have never read an entire chapter of a book standing around in the bookstore. I read a page or two.

That's what bookstore cafes are made for

Very good points above though, and I am not saying that the Kindle is not useful in saving money, but most savings would be the same whatever ebook device you are using - and my impression was that the original post referred specifically to the Kindle since I saw other people extolling that Kindle saves money over say Sony 500 since you get to buy a bestseller for 10$ vs 12-15$ at Books on Board...

Regarding finishing books, I am not sure that having 3 chapters as samples helps, at least not in my case - since there are always many more books of interest to me than available time, and while sometimes I try to impose an austerity budget and buy only what I really, really will read next, it works for a week or two and then I still find myself buying the next 5 books of interest anyway, reading 3 and adding 2 to the growing to read pile...

[bob_ninja]

Cost savings are all over place. Depends on what type of use is in question.

As pointed out, many people have to use all kinds of documentation and reference manuals all the time. Not to mention when making many revisions and having to print each time. Often toner savings alone can pay for even Iliad.

That being said, the mass market is about the general literature which today is mostly paperback. In this case we have many options:
1) new books are faily cheap around $10 (not hardcover, of course)
2) used books can be 2x 3x and 4x cheaper, so buck or two
3) library depending on how many books are borrowed and how much memebrship costs is often cheap, buck or two per book
4) borrowing from a friend is usually $0

So given all these options, most of which involve very low costs, it is difficult for any $300+ device to compete with them. So during a weak economy these devices will certainly not sell as well as before. Perhaps when their cost drops down to around $100 then their appeal might improve.

Also, as others pointed out, publising industry is not helping. The educational market is the worst. Due to very high margins you can expect the least availability of eBooks for educational uses. Although they make the most sense there and are very useful, the lack of content is/will block their use.

The bottom line is eReaders have a tough road ahead. They'll prosper but the sales volume will be volatile.