Will the Amazon Kindle cost US$50?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

Not sure, but I think Nick Hampshire reported that there will soon be a ramp up to allow production of 60,000 e-ink displays per month.

Hopefully he's actually somewhere close on that report ... he's had a bit of a questionable track-record lately.

[bowerbird]

yvan said:
> Eink is a serious company with a great future.

perhaps -- as natch put it -- "eventually"...

but in the many years that eink been making big promises,
their press-release vapor far outstrips what they've done...

and my word, have they burned through the investor cash!
i'd think they're a laughingstock of the v.c. world nowadays.

in my humble opinion, unrealized expectations have been
the downfall of e-books so far, and the hype and marketing
of eink has been the single cause that is most destructive...

-bowerbird

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

in my humble opinion, unrealized expectations have been
the downfall of e-books so far, and the hype and marketing
of eink has been the single cause that is most destructive...

-bowerbird

Commercial e-books did not succeed until now because it is not in the interest (and not unjustifiably so I think) of the publishers/distributors/bookstores to compete with print books, so they use drm and unrealistic pricing to kill the market. As long as there is no external force to compel the publishers to change, there will be nibbling here and there, basically using e-books to sell more p-books, but no serious attempt to try to expand the market beyond the 1% that occupies now (even if that).

Both the music and movie/tv experience demonstrate that. Until mp3's and Napster, and more recently broadband and time-shifting, there was a similar lack of interest from the music and tv/movie studios in online selling.
Now it's all the rage, and though the business models are still evolving, there is innovation at least...

Liviu

[bowerbird]

there was a lot of hype put out that
the age of electronic-books had arrived.

indeed, it's the same hype that is
being put out to this very day...

"eventually" it might come true, but
you'll excuse me if i laugh at it today.

-bowerbird

[yvanleterrible]

When and only when the sheet and thickness sized eink readers come out, will there be populism about ebooks. The current crop of readers is a transient from the PDA movement, which is today popularly considered the actual standard e-reader.

When these "sheet format" ereaders come out, they will be "silicon printed" , making them more affordable ie. more acceptable.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

there was a lot of hype put out that
the age of electronic-books had arrived.

indeed, it's the same hype that is
being put out to this very day...

"eventually" it might come true, but
you'll excuse me if i laugh at it today.

-bowerbird

I remember when the HP 35 scientific calculator came out in 1972. There was no programability, it required 12 ICs, had LED display of only one line & cost $395 in 1972 dollars. That was only 34 years ago. Today you can get a cheap computer for $395 in 2006 dollars. Quite an advance in very limited time. So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird. Be patient & it will come.

I realize we live in the age of "instant gratification" & "What have you done for me lately?", but be patient. The Sony Reader is a large step forward.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by slayda

I remember when the HP 35 scientific calculator came out in 1972. There was no programability, it required 12 ICs, had LED display of only one line & cost $395 in 1972 dollars. That was only 34 years ago. Today you can get a cheap computer for $395 in 2006 dollars. Quite an advance in very limited time. So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird. Be patient & it will come.

I realize we live in the age of "instant gratification" & "What have you done for me lately?", but be patient. The Sony Reader is a large step forward.

I'm about your age. I've got to tell you that nature won't permit me to wait an other 35 years!

[slayda]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

I'm about your age. I've got to tell you that nature won't permit me to wait an other 35 years!

I understand, yvanleterrible. Maybe that's why I am enjoying the reader so much now.

[bowerbird]

slayda said:
> So don't be too pessimistic, bowerbird.

i'm not being "pessimistic", i'm being _realistic_.


> Be patient & it will come.

well, first of all, i've been "patient" for over 25 years now.
after the first 15, it gets to be quite easy, to be honest...

however...

e-books are already here... they don't need no stinking
hand-held machinery to make them "real" to me, no sir.

millions of people now trot over to wikipedia every day,
people who probably haven't looked in a p-encyclopedia
more than once or twice in the past year. and they aren't
just _reading_ this e-encyclopedia, they are _writing_ it!

and even 10 years ago, who would have predicted that
more-or-less ordinary people would be writing up their
more-or-less ordinary thoughts of interest to them and
having other people read these "blogs", and this would be
one of the most widely-talked-about aspects of the web?

if you do a word-count on an active blog, you'll see that
over the course of a year or two, they've written a book!

nor is this the only form of creativity that is flourishing,
what with myspace and youtube attracting millions of
people, then being sold for $800 million to 1.6 billion...

there's a lot of action out there happening...

so i'd advise anyone who is being "patient" and "waiting"
to schedule themselves a wake-up call, and start _moving_,
or you're gonna miss the jet-plane flying out of this dump...

-bowerbird

[jlong7]

If an Amazon Reader can search texts and is easy to hold in my hand and has a bookstore that I know won't go out of business I would be willing to waste $50 just to try it out AND not care what it looks like. For me reading books is not as style conscious an activity as listening to Christina Agulara on an i-Pod.

Of course, I'd want to try it out on free books such as those that were offered by blackmask.org. OR I'd want to use it with cheap books. I don't think I'd ever be into spending full price for a DRM restricted book. I can understand why publishers and manufacturers would want to use DRM (electronic formats can be shared much more easily than paper).

But publishers and manufacturers have to understand that I'm not going to pay full price for a library that slams shut every time my wife takes a book off the book shelf. Or a library that disappears every time I leave a reader in the pocket in front of my airplane seat. Or that makes me worried every time my hard disk goes out. Or that I can't buy for half price at a used ebook store. Or sell for some money once I've finished reading it. Or check out at the library if I just want some quick information. Or give away when I'm done reading it. Or can't return if someone buys me a book I already have.

Paper books are just so much cheaper when you consider how many times they can change hands for free. Let's take a popular best seller like "State of Denial" that really rakes in the cash for publishers. The book retails for $29.95. Joe Blow buys the thing for $16.50 new at Costco or Amazon. He reads it and gives it to his Dad for his birthday. Dad never reads it, but appreciates the gift. He sells it at Half-Price Books. Jane Doe picks it up for $10, reads it and loans it to her mom who reads the first chapter before getting bored and returning it to Jane. Jane then donates it to the school library where it is read one more time in the next decade. That's five reads for $16.50. During that time it has served two people with information, one as a gift, one as a curiosity, and another as a source for the two page paper he has to turn in for High School History on Monday. Out of these five people, only one of them was willing to pay the publisher. But the publisher still made a killing.

An e-book, on the other hand - I buy the book for 75% of the discounted price ($12). I either can't get into eink as I thought I would, I don't like the book (and can't figure out how to give it away), I loose my e-reader or my hard disk fails (and I can't stand figuring out how to reconfigure my windows and/or online profile and/or e-reader profile to reauthorize my book [or deauthorize the second reader my wife bought but never uses]), or the company selling the book looses the format war and stops manufacturing replacement parts after five years. Multiply $12 by the 50 or so books I've purchased in the last year and that's allot ($600). I don't read 50 books a year. But they are always there waiting their turn.

That's my pre-buyer's remorse syndrome keeping me from taking the plunge into e-books.

Jonathan

[jlong7]

The reason e-books never caught on with the Amazon crowd is that you can't print the things and no one wants to read an entire book (anything you can't finish in one sitting) on a computer screen.

I have a hazy notion that it's not the publishers who don't want e-books to take off. Its the printers, distributors, and bookstores. I know that many publishing houses are vertically integrated (they publish, print, distribute, and retail). But if you look at publisher's core competency, it's finding, editing, and marketing good books to customers. Amazon's competency is providing the marketplace. I would imagine that Amazon and a publisher, if they stick to their core competencies would be happy to sell e-books and pass along a large percentage of the savings on to consumers in order to steal the rest of the percentage from the middle men. The only thing holding the innovation back is consumer reluctance to buy a book they can't print (e-readers solve this) and some fixed costs (publishers having invested vertically). Of course Amazon could solve the first problem with subsidized e-readers. It could really take over allot of the bookstore chain business if it gave the instant gratification of downloading and reading a book within seconds rather than the minutes it takes to drive to a bookstore or the days it takes to ship. Just imagine the shipping costs Amazon would save by pushing the adoption of e-books.

There is every reason for Amazon to want to push e-books. They have the customer base. They understand virtual products and virtual shopping. They have the above mentioned incentives. And they have the brand name and the staying power associated with it. I can't see them not taking a stab at it. The question is how much of the savings can they pass on to consumers?

Let's think about the savings. No paper, no distributors, no warehouse, no shipping. They pay for the writer, the publisher (editor), marketing costs, servers, and bandwidth. Surely they could increase revenue and pass along some savings too. Of course they have to either pay an e-reader subsidy or sell enough that economies of scale bring down the per unit cost. With the size of their market, I don't see it as an infeasible investment.

Here's a model Amazon already seems to be playing with. Buy the book and download the e-books for $3 more. Or what about the model that online music stores/cell phones are using: access to 10 million books for $20 a month (tiered subsidized e-reader with a 12 or 24 month contract). Or the PS3 model/Amazon used books model: book publishers have to pay Amazon a royalty to use their platform which includes a subsidized e-reader. Or a Yahoo/Google model: discrete advertising in e-books subsidizes the e-reader. Or an Steve Jobs/i-Pod model: tell the publishers to drop their prices or else. Or the Microsoft model: Amazon uses their platform to push it's own publishing house. Wow, I can see why publishers are nervous now that I think about it. But give it 5 years and it's impossible that Amazon would not launch a loss leading e-reader.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by jlong7

Or what about the model that online music stores/cell phones are using: access to 10 million books for $20 a month (tiered subsidized e-reader with a 12 or 24 month contract).

Actually, I've been thinking about it, and I could live with this, if the proportion of the Amazon stock list available in eformat was high enough. I spend $20 on books per month already (maybe more). If I could have *any* book at Amazon for that price, whenever I wanted, I think I could overlook the DRM. Heck, I'd get a reader for each member of my family if the unit price was low enough. I wouldn't care if I couldn't share books with another member of my family, because we'd all have access to all the books anyway.

I'd still need to be able to put my own content on, though.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by nekokami

... I think I could overlook the DRM. Heck, I'd get a reader for each member of my family if the unit price was low enough. I wouldn't care if I couldn't share books with another member of my family, because we'd all have access to all the books anyway...

Submitting so easily is dangerous thinking. This is the how big outfits gain their way with anything. Slow accustomizing to private rules. When they put their foot down you're cooked!

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Submitting so easily is dangerous thinking. This is the how big outfits gain their way with anything. Slow accustomizing to private rules. When they put their foot down you're cooked!

I see your point. One has to be ready to change if the rules change. For example, I used to have a regular cell phone plan. The rates went up, and I don't use a cell phone much, so I dropped the plan. Now I have a "pay as you go" cell phone for emergencies, which is much less expensive for me.

I'd be willing to try an Amazon plan, but I'd also be prepared to drop it if they changed the rules. I also think I'd continue to buy anything I really cared about in hardcopy.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I'd be willing to try an Amazon plan, but I'd also be prepared to drop it if they changed the rules. I also think I'd continue to buy anything I really cared about in hardcopy.

A frog, when placed in a pot of boiling water, will immediately jump out.
A frog, when placed in a room temperature water, will stay - and as the heat is slowly cranked up, will allow himself to be cooked.

Just because Amazon doesn't have bad rules today, doesn't mean that they won't tomorrow. That's the problem with DRM - the companies control what DRM controls and what it means - not law.

DRM + DMCA has effectively given the authority to modify copyright law to the corporations.

The only acceptable DRM to me is none. The seller of the eBook must be able to guarantee that I will be able to read that eBook 10 years from now - without repurchasing it or accepting new restrictions on how I can read it. Just like a paper book today.

If the seller cannot do so, then I am not "buying" the eBook. I am leasing it and I will not accept a purchase price for a leased object. The value of a leased object is far less than the value of a purchased object.