Missgivings..

[jackhammer]

I am a happy owner of the prs-505, Since it's purchase i have been going book mad finding out of print titles, doing various conversions of my existing books and purchasing loads of new books also.
My worries started when I thought about where i have been spending my $$, I have purchased from the sony-connect store exactly 4 books. everything else I have been buying from fictionwise,diesel books and others doing the nessary conversion to get them onto my reader. i have spent at least $200.00 on new books in just the last 2 months, and am about to make another large order from fictionwise that will bring the total up over $350.00 not a dime of it is going into sony's pockets.

granted I am in the tiny Ebook geek slice of there market, I can't help but think that sony may vary well think this whole ebook thing is a flop ..

Am I a little silly to be worried about this?

[WillAdams]

Given that Sony can't even be bothered to make a client which will work on Mac OS X or Linux, one would think they'd be aware of the likelihood of people purchasing the reader, but not buying any books.

Moreover, they've explicitly chosen to support a format (.pdf) which they don't support DRM on.

Also, they don't need to subsidize an on-going cost like the Kindle's wireless network.

So I would hope it'd be okay --- I'm certainly not helping things by not purchasing anything (can't since I don't have a sufficiently up-to-date Windows box)

William

[dhbailey]

It's a complex picture and worrying won't help. Sony is selling Readers. They're trying to sell more. As with any piece of computer hardware, content is important as well. Sony has never been good at selling content to match their hardware, but that's a corporate shortcoming and hopefully it will be remedied. They learned their lesson with Betamax (which they couldn't get people to provide content for to rival VHS) so before DVDs came out, they bought Columbia pictures so they would have a huge library to market on whatever format they chose to support. That lesson seems to have been lost in the recent HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle, and it seems to have been lost in the Reader market, which they realize no matter how large it grows will stay a small niche market.

So Sony is at the mercy of the people who provide the content. I have been in touch with a lot of my favorite authors, some of whom had a book or two show up at the Sony Connect store, and others with no books there yet. From the replies I received, it is apparent that there is great disarray on the author/publisher side of things. Some of the authors wanted ebook versions but their publishers (who hold iron-clad contracts) don't want to do that, while others who had a book or two show up at Connect were totally unaware of that and were going to contact their publishers to find out what was up. Still others hate technology and are big enough names that they can dictate to their publishers and have no intention of ever releasing ebook versions.

So it will be important to contact your favorite authors (or their estates, if possible) as well as the publishers and give a two-pronged attack to convince them there really is a market for content for the Sony Reader.

There is a potential down-side to buying books in different formats (such as Microsoft's LIT format) and then converting to Reader format. The publishers will say to themselves "Gee, we're selling TONS of LIT format books but very few Sony Reader format books. I guess there just isn't any market for Sony Reader format books so we won't waste our time with it." So they don't provide books to Sony Connect bookstore to sell. Then Sony says, "Gee, there's not much content, so there may not actually be much of a continuing market here, despite the numbers of Readers we've sold, so it might be time to pull the plug on the whole thing."

Meanwhile, since LIT format books are designed only for the Microsoft Reader software on computers, the researchers will be able to look at the numbers and say (totally erroneously) "People seem to prefer reading ebooks on their computer screens by a margin of 3-to-1 [or whatever the ratio of sales really is] so it seems as if there really is no market for handheld ebook readers at all."

So while I'm not saying we all need to rush to Sony Connect to buy books, I do feel that we should all be buying some books from them just to show that we didn't just buy the Reader and then are leaving it on the shelf and have abandoned it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dhbailey

Meanwhile, since LIT format books are designed only for the Microsoft Reader software on computers, the researchers will be able to look at the numbers and say (totally erroneously) "People seem to prefer reading ebooks on their computer screens by a margin of 3-to-1 [or whatever the ratio of sales really is] so it seems as if there really is no market for handheld ebook readers at all."

I don't quite follow you, David. Why would these researchers not think that people were reading books on their Pocket PC, for example? Reader isn't confined to desktop Windows. I read on various Pocket PCs for many years before buying my Sony.

[The Old Man]

eBook devices are all in a state of transition. None are perfect and new ones will be introduced replacing those now being sold. The content, no matter what format, will eventually be phased out or die out for lack of support. Any book I buy, lrs, LIT, prc or whatever may continue to be read on some old device but a new one will come along, probably with a different format, that will be “better” than the old one.

If you want to be able to read a book 10 or 20 years from now, buy a paper copy!

Actually I think the future in eBook devices lies with newspapers and magazines. Kindle has a great idea with wireless delivery, although I have no idea how well these are reproduced on the kindle. I think this is the primary route for eBook devices. Now I use libprs500 to download several papers daily and they are my primary 505 reading.

[DrMoze]

I predict that an upcoming new generation of Sony Readers will have wireless delivery. (Within 2 years) heck, I'lll go out on a limb and predict that it will look a helluva lot better than the Kindle and will have much better battery life. Sony is good at those things.

[dhbailey]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't quite follow you, David. Why would these researchers not think that people were reading books on their Pocket PC, for example? Reader isn't confined to desktop Windows. I read on various Pocket PCs for many years before buying my Sony.

Isn't a Pocket PC a computer with a screen? That's all I meant -- researchers will be able to draw the incorrect conclusion that all these LIT books are being read on Windows machines (desktop, notebook or pocketpc) and not on Sony Readers or Kindles.

So the data could easily look skewed against the amount of reading being done on Sony Readers, if one just looks at the sales figures, and it would be easy for publishers to say "We're selling far more LIT versions of our books and far fewer LRF (or LRX) versions, so we'll stop providing the LRF versions." And then Sony could easily say "No content is soon going to equate to no sales, so let's bag the hardware by lowering the price on the exisiting stock and not making any more and cut our losses." Which would be horrible, since many of the LIT books being sold are being read on Sony Readers.

[HarryT]

Yes, I see what you mean - thanks for clarifying it!

[revmike]

I must be in the minority since most of the books I have purchased have come from the sony store.

[Taylor514ce]

I plan on buying the Sony Reader, but do not plan on purchasing my books from their store.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by revmike

I must be in the minority since most of the books I have purchased have come from the sony store.

Since I have purchased my Sony 505 Reader, I have purchased ALL my books from the Sony store. I only buy 2 books at a time to read. Actually, most of my reading is on my 24" HD LCD Monitor using Sony eBook Library. I only do supplementary reading on the 505 when away from my house for some reason.

I only read non-fiction political and historical works with occasional historical fiction. I have found far more books I like in the Sony store than I ever did at the MS Reader sites.

I would never convert an MS Reader book to Sony if I did find one I like. I would read it in MS Reader. I read all my PDF files using Adobe Reader 8.

I believe Sony is way ahead of Amazon here. Their Kindle books can NOT be read on a PC. Readers like me will never buy the Kindle in its present configuration. I far prefer my PC for reading everything to any offline Reader. I read all my magazines using Zinio Reader on my PC. Nothing beats that for magazines with all the Internet links intact and accessible while one reads them.

In fact, if my Sony 505 ever broke, I'd continue to read my books from the Sony store using their eBook Library.

[Ervserver]

I don't buy books from the Sony store, to me its disappointing as well as the Sony software, I do love the reader though. Sony seems to be that way, doing some things good but never everything great.

[mollybo]

I bought far more books from Sony before I got my 505 than after. I read them on my TabletPC dreaming of the day when I would have my reader ... and then Sony's store somehow got even worse. The search barely works at all now and I can get to my wishlist perhaps a third of the time. If they're going to make it so darn difficult to buy the books, I'll just go elsewhere.

The crappiness of Sony Connect is a big part of the reason I steer some people towards the Kindle, ironically enough. At least Amazon's store works.

[BobLenx]

Actually I haven't purchased any eBooks from Sony or anyone else for my 505 - nor do I plan to. Everything I have is free from a variety of sources. When I want to read a book that is not yet out of copyright, I hit the library. Free is good. The advantage to the 505 is that I can download all those magnificent novels from the 18th and 19th century authors who really knew how to craft a lengthy intriguing novel with fascinating characters and plots.

Bob

[Lilly]

Originally Posted by revmike

I must be in the minority since most of the books I have purchased have come from the sony store.

Same here; most book I purchased has come from the Sony store.