"Friction" is why e-books adoption is slow

[Lemurion]

In comparison to a pBook, an eBook provides you less and so should cost less. That's the common feeling and one reason why they haven't taken off.

1) It's incomplete: you need some sort of reading device, which costs money.
2) No collectible value: there's no way to have a shelf of first edition eBooks.
3) No resale value: because it's not tangible, you can't take it to the used bookstore when you're done with it and trade it in for credit on a new one.
4) Possible DRM restrictions: if you bought a DRMed eBook you have limits on what you can read it on, possibly when and how you can read it. You can't read it and pass it on either. Everyone has to buy their own copy, they can't share.

There are advantages to eBooks as well, but people will often look at the disadvantages first, then the advantages.

From what I've seen on both Webscriptions and Fictionwise, the sweet spot for price seems to be between four and six US dollars for an eBook. That's the price at which a single unencumbered eBook sells. Fictionwise makes no bones about the fact that it's their multi-format books (the DRM-free ones) that keep them afloat, and that's their normal price range.

It's not free-- it's about 50-75% of the cost of a paperback in the US for a book that can be downloaded in multiple formats and read on any device of the purchaser's choosing.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Your point about "collectible value" is one of the main reasons why we will probably always have paper books... specifically, hardbacks. They are the highest-quality format for a book, and therefore collectible. But for those who aren't interested in first edition collectibles, they can still buy e-books.

Some of your other points would be satisfied by the earlier idea of a card with the e-book embedded on it. It could be sold and resold, hold multiple formats, and be played on the device it was loaded on (read-only, not easily copied and disseminated, satisfying most piracy issues for publishers, and therefore a reasonable form of DRM). And you can save the cards, collect 'em, trade 'em, or throw 'em away when you're done (or if the book proves to be crappy).

And yes, an e-book reader costs money... but as you may already have a device that can also be your reader (like your PC, PDA or other device) this really isn't an issue. It's only an issue to the e-reader seller who wants to convince you to buy a dedicated reader, and they'll just have to come up with a value-added feature to compel you to buy one.

[petermillard]

Hi

Originally Posted by Kilarney

I wouldn't, for a couple of reasons:
1) An E-book reader costs money. Your eyeballs don't. I'd want to recoup some of the cost of a reader, so paying full-price for an ebook would not entice me to buy a reader. (Not that the publisher cares.)

Fair enough, but if you carry that logic along, then should you expect Microsoft to sell you a copy of Office at a discount just because you've already bought a PC from Dell to run it on?

If you want to read eBooks, you have to have a reader of some kind; as Steve Jordan says above, this doesn't have to be a dedicated reader, but somewhere along the line you have to jump in and buy the hardware; to expect discounted books from a publisher just because you've bought the hardware to read them on from a third party, is a little optomistic IMHO. Your "not that the publisher cares" comment sums it up nicely, I think.

Seriously, if there's a book you want to read now and it's only available in a certain format, your choice is to pay the price, or not read it (ok, there's borrowing from friends or libraries, but we're talking about purchases here, right?) - would you really not read something you want to, just because the price was too high?

2) A tangible book is mine to keep. I can pass it on to my kids someday. I can go back and reread it 50 years from now. A DRMed ebook is essentially a lease. Therefore, it is worth less to me.

Well, I wasn't referring specifically to DRMd books, and yes, I agree, I also like the sense of ownership of a physical product. As for DRM being a lease, I'm not so sure - I really haven't studied mobipocket's EULA; perhaps I should!

Certainly with music, you may buy a physical CD and own it, but with regards to the music it contains you are only buying the right to listen to it. I don't know about other countries, but here in the UK those rights are also only for personal use; you can't legally play a CD you 'own' at your place of work. Software too, of course, is only a 'license to use'; are DRMd eBooks only a 'license to read' or do they simply tie a downloaded book to a specific reader or (group of) readers, much like iTunes Music Store downloads?

And bearing all this in mind, it's really no surprise that publishers (and the ones I've come across professionally aspire to being mired in the 19th century, if indeed they had any aspirations) are dragging their feet. It needs a real shake-up from a company that could do the hardware and the content; any takers??

Cheers, Pete.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Yes, if Sony wants to sell readers, they need to stock them... everywhere. And advertise and promote them, for heavens' sake.

There's an interesting contrast between Sony, who are trying to sell dedicated eBook readers, and MobiPocket, who appear to be porting their reader to everything with a microprocessor in it, and persuading you to read books on a device that you already own (I half expect to see "Mobipocket Reader for Toasters" any day now...).

It'll be interesting to see if either approach ends up dominating the market. Although it's nice to sit down for a "proper" reading session with a dedicated eBook reader with a large screen, there's also a lot to be said to being able to read a couple of pages on your "smartphone" in the checkout queue at the supermarket.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by petermillard

are DRMd eBooks only a 'license to read' or do they simply tie a downloaded book to a specific reader or (group of) readers, much like iTunes Music Store downloads?

The latter, but some people here like to call it a "lease" because pretty much inevitably the time will come when you can no longer read it, due to either the publisher going out of business, or you no longer owning an appropriate device on which to read it.

In reality, you have pretty much the same rights with an eBook that you do with a paper book - you "buy" the media, not the "ownership" of the contents. The only real difference with eBooks is that there's no 2nd hand market for eBooks, so again some people's argument is that eBooks should cost less to reflect the lack of residual value compared to a paper book.

[Kilarney]

Originally Posted by petermillard

Fair enough, but if you carry that logic along, then should you expect Microsoft to sell you a copy of Office at a discount just because you've already bought a PC from Dell to run it on?

The difference is that I need a computer to use a word processor. I don't need a reader to read books. I just need a book. True, I need a reader for e-books, but my point was that I can just as easily read the book in hard copy without a reader.

I would be willing to pay a premium if I needed books in electronic form, but the vast majority of consumers don't have this need.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I believe there's plenty of room for both... and if they could both read the same standardized format, there'd be more reason for everyone to have one or the other.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I believe there's plenty of room for both... and if they could both read the same standardized format, there'd be more reason for everyone to have one or the other.

... or both, of course, as many of us do have. I can read the same MobiPocket books on my iLiad at home with a nice large eInk screen as I can on my phone or Pocket PC. Best of both worlds!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

... or both, of course, as many of us do have. I can read the same MobiPocket books on my iLiad at home with a nice large eInk screen as I can on my phone or Pocket PC. Best of both worlds!

Excellent point: Having standardized formats means you can choose your reader according to need, say, PDA for commuting, UMPC at the work conference, e-ink device at the beach, etc.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Some of your other points would be satisfied by the earlier idea of a card with the e-book embedded on it. It could be sold and resold, hold multiple formats, and be played on the device it was loaded on (read-only, not easily copied and disseminated, satisfying most piracy issues for publishers, and therefore a reasonable form of DRM). And you can save the cards, collect 'em, trade 'em, or throw 'em away when you're done (or if the book proves to be crappy).

The card idea is a good supplement, but I think it would be better as something to load a book from than a requirement to read the book. The biggest advantage I get from eBooks is that I can get them right now. I log onto my ebook retailer of choice, enter the info and BOOM! I've got the book in moments.

That's one of the advantages eBooks will need to capitalize on, instant delivery.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

True... but if you're away from home, and without an internet connection, it might be nice to be able to discover and buy a book on a card at a store kiosk... again, instantaneous for those who are away from their usual connection. The best part is, people with NO web connection (and there are still a lot of those) can still get and read e-books on cards.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by petermillard

One of the things I've found telling about this thread (and others before it) is that even here on MobileRead, amongst people who 'get' the whole ebook concept, we can't actually agree on what features we want for the concept to reach critical mass - or rather, perhaps, everybody's ideal feature set is different.

Correct.

Why? A book is a book; if it's a book I really want to read, I'll pay the asking price for it. I may have a quick hunt around to see if I can pick it up cheaper elsewhere, but if I want it I'll buy it. If it was available as an ebook, and I didn't want a hard copy for posterity, then I'd happily buy that at the asking price - who wouldn't?

People who understand that the costs of an ebook are considerably lower than for a paper edition, and expect those lower costs to be reflected in a lower price. That is, most of us.

Most of my reading 'for pleasure' is fiction, and I can usually contain myself long enough for the paperback edition of a title to come out; half the price of the hardback, and it's exactly the same words! Publishers produce hardbacks first, because it's seen as a premium product, that can command a higher price.

And makes them (and the authors!) a lot more money. I buy hardcovers of stuff I really like, because I want durable reading copies.

Of course, it would be nice if publishers responded to logic and reduced the cost of eBooks to correspond to their reduced production cost - but why would they? Music downloads from iTunes Music Store aren't cheaper than buying a whole CD, are they? Publishers are in business to make profit, and if they can maximise profits for little extra cost, they will.

iTunes is based on the idea that you don't want the whole CD -- you want to cherry pick specific songs. This is not an option for novels.

Publishers would drop the price if they figured out that lower prices would lead to increased sales and higher profit. With no manufacturing, distribution, or warehousing costs for ebooks, they have a lot of margin to play with in determining the sweet spot.

But publishing has historically been stupid. I've heard a speculation that part of that is a carryover from the old days, when publishing was a trade a gentleman could engage in. Those folks had money and didn't care if they actually made money on books - publishing was a respectable occupation for folks in their social class. Old habits die hard.

Here's a thought (unpleasant); what if publishers decided to pitch eBooks as the premium product, published 6 months ahead of hardbacks; what would people be prepared to pay for that? Hardback price? Hardback price plus 25%? Who knows - and I suspect (hope) we'll never get to find out for real.

As mentioned, Baen books does roughly that with their "Webscriptions" program. It's doing well enough that the chap who set it up and runs it is making a nice living. They don't charge hardcover price, put they charge more than the PB edition will cost.

My two-penneth.
Cheers,
Pete.

______
Dennis

[Lemurion]

That's why I suggest the card as a supplement to load books from rather than a requirement to read the book. If you don't have access to the net you can get a card, pop it in and load the book. I just don't think you should need the card to read the book as that's forcing two formats on us-- one of which is physical.

DMcCunney, I don't see where you're getting the idea that a webscription eBook costs more than a paperback. That's only true for e-Arcs, which cost $15 but are out before the hardcover. Once the book has been released, the eBook cost is lower than that of the paperback, with new release hardcovers being available for $6.00, less if bought in a monthly bundle.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But that doesn't appear to be an issue for online selling.

I see what you're saying about Amazon (I've bought books from Amazon UK myself, when there was a 2 month lag between the UK and US release dates), but the best info we have is that this is precisely the issue that's keeping Sony Connect from moving into, say, Europe.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by andym

If the reader sold at $100 and read all of the available formats (or at least the basics - pdf, mobipocket, html, text, rtf, Word) and has some pda functionality - well I might be interested.

You and a lot of other people, I think. Right now were in early adopter kland, and the hardware is more expensive because there isn't that much of it. If volumes increase, prices can drop.

I don't know whether the future is a super-gizmo that doubles as a phone, MP3 player, video player, GPS and eReader, or separate devices for all or some of these functions - probably a combination of the two.

I doubt you see an all-in-one.

The problem with converged devices is that the form factor is always a compromise. We want our smartphones tiny. We want our ebook readers to have relatively large screens. You won't get that in the same package...

I know people have rightly made the point about the limited range of content, but equally the content available as eBooks does seem to be a lot wider than it was even a couple of years ago. More and more computer books are available in pdf (paper computer manuals are now more or less extinct). Lonely Planet are making available more of their travel guides available. I'm sure the same is true of a lot of other areas of publishing - at least where the books are big and bulky, the content is for reference, and needs updating at regular intervals.

There is still a market for paper computer books, and outfits like O'Reilly and Associates do just fine. Where the electronic versions have taken over is documentation included with software, as prices and margins on software make includng pronted documentation uneconomic.

As far as handheld devices are concerned the ePub standard has got to be the key. I think the mobipocket is a great piece of software ( the look up and annotation facilities for example are just really slick) but I very much doubt publishers ae going to want to replicate what has happened with iTunes and the market for legal music downloads (though that said you wonder what would have happened if it hadn't been for the success of iTunes).

Well, some standard has to be the key. I want all concerned to agree on a standard format for ebooks. I want to download content once, and read it on whatever device I have, without worrying about what content is in what format viewed by what software.

I suspect that publishers will start to jump on the bandwagon once there is an easy way to repurpose content as an e-Book that doesn't tie them into one route to the market. Hopefully Amazon will put its weight behind eBooks - eg a big button 'Want it now?' or whatever, as well as promoting the general advantages of eBooks over pBooks for many types of book.

Books are prepared as electronic content for publication, and it's not that big a deal to generate alternate electronic formats for use as ebooks. (Imagesetters expect PDFs as input to generate the files that are used to make plates for printing.)

Publishers will jump on it if/when they perceive a market, and get past the idea that "electronic format"="piracy".
______
Dennis