06-24-2006, 09:55 AM | #1 | ||
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Are e-books trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist?
So says Franklin's chief Barry Lipsky. Remember Franklin? They distributed the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook, one of the first dedicated e-book reader devices, in the late 90s. It was followed by the eBookMan device, which boosted an awe-inspiring 200x240 LCD display, fast USB 1.1, and spacious 8MB of built-in memory. Marked by its failure to catch on, the company then sold the e-book business to Ectaco, another company who specializes in selling dictionary hardware and software.
And today, while many of us are still desperately waiting for a decent e-book reader to come out, Mr. Lipsky thinks the situation for e-books has fundamentally remained unchanged. From a recent article by Mark Evans of the Canadian National Post: Quote:
Quote:
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06-24-2006, 10:51 AM | #2 |
Books and more books
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Hi,
What problem does BlueRay and the other new hi def dvd format solve that current dvd's do not? If you put the question this way, I think I can come up with derisive things about any new tech. Why replace horses and buggies with cars that go 20 km per hr and are so unreliable, as it was until Ford say came up in the 20's? After all horses were tested through human history... This question about ebooks is so ridiculous that it does not deserve an answer. If you want to predict that SonyReader will be DOA, it is a different issue, but at say 350$ I think it is priced at the upper end of acceptability, and that the price needs to come down to the 100-150$ range for broad acceptance. But technology is getting better, tablets/laptops are getting cheaper, so I see the price coming down significantly on eink too. Also even though still mostly drm'ed, there is much more content available, and with the spread of the Net everywhere it is far easier to propagate that content whether legally or not. Liviu |
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06-24-2006, 01:28 PM | #3 |
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Nice response Liviu 5
I remember buying a printer some 15 years ago. I paid around $1000.00 for it, only to learn the following year, that it cost $35.00 to manufature; wages materials r&d and infras included. This is when mistrust towards tech companies set in. Sony is in any market for big bucks. This is why they always steer towards niche markets to ensure temporary non competitivity. Yes prices will fall, but not for a good while. We have to buy the prs-500 in great numbers to ensure that small players, like Samsung or others, get in the playing field. I'm afraid, as you judiciously point out that e-book reader fans will have to bite the bullet or be verry verry verry...patient. |
06-24-2006, 04:08 PM | #4 |
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It's all about the money.
The last time I checked, for a $7 paperback book, the author gets about $0.55. So let's assume that all costs for an eBook (plus author's cut) amount to $1 for a paperback. That means my technical books (which run about 5-6 times the cost of a paperback) should be about $5-$6 each. Now, looking at my bookshelf, I figure I have 70 technical books. Times $5.50 is $385. I probably spent about $2695 (My God! I spent THAT much?! ) for the paper versions. Now, if the eBook reader is only $700, and assuming that I can get my techinical books in eBook form for $5-$6 each, I would save over $1000 on my technical book costs. Plus I would have the benefits of having my whole eBook library in one convient, portable form. Plus updates for my technical books would be able to come out very quickly - because there's no longer a need for the physical creation of the book. And that's just my technical books - if you factor in the manga and other "entertainment" reading that I do, my savings is substantial. All this comes at a cost, though: The irrelevancy of publishers. |
06-25-2006, 08:41 PM | #5 |
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Most of my fun reading is public domain stuff. Downloading the Plucker ebooks from gutenberg.org (Project Gutenberg automatically generates Plucker format ebooks from all of its texts now!) saves me 100% of the per copy cost.
I don't know about the userfriendliness of books. My arms would fall off if I physically carried the four bookshelves worth of books that I normally have in my pocket in an 8 oz package. |
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06-26-2006, 01:02 PM | #6 |
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The trouble is that the authors don't dare sell their books as ebook deirectly even though it would increase their personal profits tremendously.
With ebooks, every half-wit could cobble together a story, make a PDF or whatever and then sell it (making a webshop is easy too...all you need is either somebody who does it for you or a package like the one 1&1 offers here in germany...it probably doesn't look too professional but it works). The trouble is, that most authorsare still heavily dependant on the whol publishing and advertising industry. New, startup authors or those who couldn't get a publisher before might try it, others will meekly ask their publishers for permission. And I don't think many publishers would be willing to sell ebooks for cheap because that might eat into their paperback profits. The dilemma is, that unless the ebook market is large enough, authors won't dare venture into it for fear of angering their publishers and losing the paperback sales without having adequate "recompense" through ebook sales. But where do you get the large market if nobody dares to enter it... Maybe some day there will be a big revolt...all the people (or at least a significant amount) will refrain from buying paper books for 4 weeks and instead just download whatever they want to read from emule/kazaa/bittorren/whatever. If something like that happens, authors and publishers will feel the urge to change something. If something momentous like that doesn't happen, then it'll take a long time for the ebook market to grow, a long time for ebook prices to drop and for eink devices to become commonplace and cheap. And believe me...i'm an Optimist..^^ |
06-26-2006, 01:37 PM | #7 | |
Books and more books
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Hi,
I tend to agree a lot with the quoted comments, and some authors commenting here and there expressed exactly the same sentiments (even the top selling ebook authors that are published in print, say like David Weber and John Ringo at Baen still make no more than 10-20% of their money due to ebooks and this with very favourable ebook deals they get from Baen, which other authors may not get from other publishing houses). The math is very simple: (fiction) ebooks ain't go to sell for more than 10$ (and that's optimistic I think, maybe 7-8 would be closer) for something new and 5-6$ for something older than 1 year, unless you throw in big incentives like earcs (and that term depends of course of a print date existing), while hc sell for 25$ or more of which the publisher gets 40-50% at least. From here you can go to argument, returns vs piracy and so on... Also how libraries are going to be handled will be very important in any viable ebook model (let us not forget that here in the US publishers make tons of money of libraries, and for many hc titles the library sells are a very significant part of total sells). To me though it seems obvious that as of now no current pure ebook business model has any shot at decent profitability, so what is needed are different business models to be experimented until some that work are found. Liviu Quote:
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04-21-2009, 12:23 AM | #8 |
I'm Super Kindle-icious
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An interesting blast from the not so distant past.
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04-21-2009, 02:19 AM | #9 |
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there is a problem ebooks do solve - the problem of having so many books that your house is too full and there's nowhere to put anything. for me, this was one of the two reasons to get into ebooks. it may sound funny to some, but to us it was a real problem. books are 2 layers deep on all our shelves, sitting on tables, desks and chairs - and it's not like i was going to give up reading. but i know plenty of readers with this problem. heck, there's a used bookstore down the street that started because the couple who now own it had so many books they had no room at all any longer.
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04-21-2009, 02:33 AM | #10 |
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The good in ebooks and having an eReader is that you can take it anywhere and read it anywhere. But before you get to read the books you want, there are various format that you need to deal with -- KINDLE, EPUB, PDF, LIT, and MOBI, etc. This again falls into money and protection of some publishers and authors with the copy of their books....
Wish we could have just one format that any eReader can read.... but I guess this will not be ..... oh well... we just have to deal with it. |
04-21-2009, 02:41 AM | #11 |
The me that I am
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Hrm, as it happens "being able to carry a small library on a portable device" is exactly the problem that my iRex DR solves for me.
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04-21-2009, 02:53 AM | #12 |
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I'm really not sure that there's much point in "reviving" a three year-old thread.
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04-21-2009, 02:55 AM | #13 |
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04-21-2009, 03:04 AM | #14 |
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Kris77:
I agree. Add that, ironically, the situation has not improved all that much software wise in the previous 2-yrs. The same issues and concerns are still there for us as cconsumers. And the market has not seened all that much movement hardware wise either, except for size and lower power displays. I sense the lack of competition as the reason. Little innovation and the UI & OS seem to be a bolt-on after thoughts. I do like your little Jetbook though and if I had not made myself a promise to wait until at least November before picking a reader, I would likely go with one. |
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