Cory Doctorow: "Hardware ebook readers are a dead end"

[NatCh]

No one's making dedicated e-book readers in such quantity that the price drops to the cost of a paperback....

Here, I find I agree with him. Not on the paperback price thing, I think $100 would be sufficiently low for them to really gain acceptance, assuming there weren't any artificial bars in play, like DRM and format disputes.

I've long thought that in order to get e-ink costs down a professional device is needed. Something that can display A4/Letter sized pages, and handle hand written annotations -- even if it were still not color -- would be a big hit to professions that are highly paper intensive.

For example:

Legal: they handle ridiculous amounts of text on a daily basis. Much of it comes to them as PDF files, which they print out, mark up, use for a few days and then toss. The cost of even a $2k device would be recouped there pretty quickly in paper and toner.

Medical: those not involved with hospitals probably don't realize it, but there is a massive push to make medical records electronic. Every single day the hospital I work for scans in a stack of pages over six feet high! They save them as .TIFF files, if you can believe it -- they won't comment on how many terrabytes that adds up to each day, but I digress. If the forms they used were electronic in the first place, the devices that let them do it would pay for themselves in a matter of days.

Education: Probably mainly in higher education, this one. Being able to receive, grade, and return assignments purely in electronic format would be a huge boon to any teacher/professor who handles much in the way of grading (most of them, I expect). They wouldn't be recouping costs all that much, but they'd have a lot of added benefits from it. One of the biggest would be being able to keep a copy of the graded work while still returning it to the students (this can be a big deal). Another would be being able to make use of services like TurnItIn (it's a plagiarism check service), without assuming the burden of printing the assignments themselves.

Those are just the low-hanging fruit. I'd expect that pretty much every business of a certain size has at least a few people for whom such a device would be worthwhile. And of course every CEO and CIO would have to have one, just to show they were important enough to rate one.


It's pretty established that people will spend more on business related things than on personal ones. This is how microcomputer prices came down as they did: businesses bought enough of them that the economies of scale kicked in, and now they're a household appliance.

One of the present obstacles to these notional professional e-ink devices is that no one (read: PVI, since they're the only ones) is making panel that large. I think that if someone offered them a big enough contract for A4 panels, they'd somehow figure out how to make them. It would have to be someone with sufficient R&D funds to throw at the thing to catch their attention, so we're probably talking someone like HP or, yes, Sony -- heck, if Palm is looking for a "third line" of products, here's a dandy one for them to consider, it would certainly fit well with their other products.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by radleyp

I am very surprised by these comments. When Steve Jobs said pretty much the same thing, there was on this site a hue and cry about how wrong he was. So, if I understand correctly, Cory Doctorow is more of an authority in these matters than Steve Jobs.

I think the reaction was more to Jobs saying (if memory serves) that nobody reads anymore, not that a dedicated e-book readers weren't going to catch on. That's probably the difference.

Certainly I find what Doctorow is saying here to have more substance than I did Jobs' comments.

[WillAdams]

I can see both sides here, and while I find my Sony useful for reading some books, I can see that I'll continue to read others on my Fujitsu Stylistic --- probably one of these days I'll eventually get a cell phone, and will probably load some light reading / reference material on it.

Three different devices, three different screen sizes, three different niches.

William

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

Yes, but I heard Cory argue (at Worldcon 2007 in Yokohama I think) that devices with multiple functions will probably not succeed as book readers since most people will be distracted by email or other stuff that they can also do on the device. Personally that is totally true and I see the lack of other functionality on my book reader as a great advantage.

Tell that to the Japanese... they remain a huge and enthusiastic e-book market, mostly using multi-function devices like cellphones that also do e-mail and text, and don't seem to have a problem with distractions. If Cory said that in Yokohama, I'd be surprised they didn't laugh him out of the room.

Not everyone has the problem of not knowing how to deal with distraction... or how to silence their cellphones.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Tell that to the Japanese... they remain a huge and enthusiastic e-book market, mostly using multi-function devices like cellphones that also do e-mail and text, and don't seem to have a problem with distractions.

I do not know if the e-book market is huge. Nearly everybody I saw on trains using there Mobile phone seemed to either play a game or participating in some discussion forum. How many people do you know that reads from a computer and reads without doing anything else hours in a row? I think this is a rare "skill".

[radleyp]

NatCh, your memory does not, I am afraid, serve you correctly. Jobs said that nobody was reading BOOKS anymore and so a book-reading device was by extension not in his plans. What Doctorow is saying, however, has been said on this site many times and in different threads, and that's why I don't understand this reaction. As for putting many functions on such a device, that can work, it seems to me, only when we have expanding screens because a phone is a pocket device that must be able to be held in one hand.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by radleyp

NatCh, your memory does not, I am afraid, serve you correctly.

Heh, it wouldn't be the first time!

Originally Posted by radleyp

Jobs said that nobody was reading BOOKS anymore and so a book-reading device was by extension not in his plans.

We're talking about this thread, yes? If so, the quote I was thinking of was this one from the first post:

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

He may have meant books, but in that comment, at least, he didn't actually say books.

EDIT: Following the quote back to the full source, he did reference books:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

However, I think most folks were reacting to the partial quote that appeared here. /EDIT

Originally Posted by radleyp

What Doctorow is saying, however, has been said on this site many times and in different threads, and that's why I don't understand this reaction. As for putting many functions on such a device, that can work, it seems to me, only when we have expanding screens because a phone is a pocket device that must be able to be held in one hand.

You're quite right, the discussion of the relative merits of dedicated versus multipurpose devices has been a frequent one around here, and it's always an interesting one because there are really good points on both sides of it. Like anyone else, I find some of those compelling, and others not so much so, but I also realize that most of those points are going to have different levels of importance to different people.

Personally, I don't think that either the "all convergence" nor the "all dedicated" views are correct. Some things make sense to combine and others just don't, and what those things are varies from person to person.

Until we get to some new level of understanding in some areas of material science and physics, so that we get more control over the stuff we make things out of, we're probably not going to see anything that's truly all-in-one.


Another possible reason that Jobs' comments might have gotten such strong reactions, is that the man just seems to incite strong reactions in folks no matter what he does.

[radleyp]

It's important to look at full texts, as I'm sure you know: in the NYTimes interview, Jobs said (in those spots where we see ".....") that 40% of Americans read one book or less last year. His comments were about a book-reading device. I agree completely with you on multi-function devices: they can, among other things, get complicated to use and thus cripple their usefulness. I've read entire novels on my MotoQ and now, after getting the Kindle, can't believe that I did. The screen is ridiculously small and all that scrolling is a royal pain. The Kindle's screen, after all, is only 6" and that's hardly huge but it's far better than a phone's. The Japanese have habits and abilities I simply don't understand: the NYTimes had an article a short while ago on how the Japanese actually WRITE novels on their phones though the result is, to judge from the views expressed in the article, pedestrian (simple love stories) and more like a long text message. But that's another subject entirely: if we start composing on those little screens, the nature of the writing will definitely change.

[GeoffC]

The article makes a very strong case that dedicated readers may be a relatively short-lived phenomenon. Whilst I can accept some of his arguments it places a certain amount of worry on those of us who wish to replace our paper-based libraries (especially fiction) with e versions, only to find in 5 or 10 year's time that there may not be anything around that can read the files.

OK, multi-purpose machines may come along, but there is no guarantee they will support the file structure of your books in the long term ....
and here and now, my 'need' is for a dedicated bit of hardware ... something like me - simple that allows me to pick and choose a 'book' and read it without interruption, very portable - and because it tends to be easier on the eye ( ? ) black text on white .....

[NatCh]

It's by no means a definitive point, but find it remarkable that these dedicated reading devices, which are frequently dismissed as having no future, have managed to hang around in various forms for so long, both as physical devices, and much longer as notional ones in fiction: for something with "no future," the idea seems to have surprising staying power.

[TheLongshot]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I believe in a strong potential for readers, but only if they are in color, whatever display technology is used. Color will bring online magazines into the e-book mix, and that, I think, will make a huge splash.

I disagree. Most "text" is black and white. Newspapers are still mostly black and white. I see little added value in color that would all of a sudden make eBook readers a hot item.

Personally, I think we are still way in the early adoption phase. The prices are still relatively high for what they are, we have multiple formats competing against each other. Book publishers are still trying to figure out what the best way to sell books online is. Considering that we are still seeing advancements in this area, calling it a dead end is premature.

Jason

[radleyp]

NatCh, two more things: I am a lawyer and I pretty regularly send Amazon a variety of legal documents to convert (from word and pdf, text being readable on the Kindle without conversion), so I quite agree with your view that lawyers find a Kindle-like device very helpful; and with the keyboard I can make notes (I can understand that some would prefer the ability to handwrite them, but this works fine) and indeed have twice taken notes at a meeting (that requires me to set up file beforehand), the downside being that I cannot load them back onto a computer.

[JAcheson]

I have to disagree, there is far too much momentum in the industry to assume that things have reached their terminus. Is there even any sign of contraction in the industry? All I see is new players jumping in and making money.

What I will say, though, is that the ebook readers we wind up with may not resemble the current models all that closely. I think there is still plenty of room for innovation.

Also, I don't think the end result of this will be a single form factor. Rather, I expect to see ebook reading happening on a range of devices, from handhelds and smartphones with hi-res screens, to laptops, to e-ink readers of varying stripes. I expect to see second and third generation Kindles, for instance, but also really cheap black and white readers that run off of solar power.

You'll read an ebook on whatever you have handy, just like people play MP3s on a variety of devices now.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Nobody can question Cory Doctorow's expertise when it comes to writing award-winning Sci-Fi novels and advocating liberalized copyright laws. Whether he is also a good predictor of what the future holds for e-reader devices remains to be seen. From his latest Locus column, "Put Not Your Faith In Ebook Readers":





Don't weep bitter tears just yet. There will always be someone of the chorus sounding the death knell for e-book devices; at the end of the day, though, extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence. So far, e-book devices like the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle are experiencing a growth spurt. And I like to believe that this is just the beginning -- at least until someone convinces me of the contrary.

[via Boing Boing]

He's right that for many people a dedicated ebook reader isn't versatile enough. However, he's making the same mistake of those who decried the radio (Who'd be stupid enough to buy a RADIO when they could just as easily join the family around the piano (fiddle, banjo, etc.) for a good, wholesome night's entertainment?), the TV (Why in samhelltarnation would someone want to watch a moooo-vee when there's the burlesque show right downtown?), and so many other inventions that changed our lives. Right now, only the early-adopters are buying ebook readers. But then, isn't that same drive pushing cellphones to transform into mp3 players and mp3 players into pocket movie screens???

He'd be better off studying history a bit. (In a few years, everyone will have A cellphone, AN mp3 player, AN ebook reader and the early-adopters will have a combination cellphone/mp3/video/ebook/gps/wrist-top PC with integrated bluetooth for the viewing glasses. The INNOVATORS will have one with integrated holographic display!

Derek

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by radleyp

NatCh, two more things: I am a lawyer and I pretty regularly send Amazon a variety of legal documents to convert (from word and pdf, text being readable on the Kindle without conversion), so I quite agree with your view that lawyers find a Kindle-like device very helpful; and with the keyboard I can make notes (I can understand that some would prefer the ability to handwrite them, but this works fine) and indeed have twice taken notes at a meeting (that requires me to set up file beforehand), the downside being that I cannot load them back onto a computer.

That's an excellent point. Yes, I fully agree: being able to re-transfer the files, with annotations back to a computer would be absolutely essential for such a tool.