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Why Nobody Likes E-Books 436

Posted by michael from the charging-more-money-for-less-product dept.
CybrGuyRSB writes: "In today's Chicago Tribune, there is an interesting article about the total unpopularity of e-books. It seems to partly tie their failure into their copyright protection and briefly discusses the Skylarov case."
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Why Nobody Likes E-Books More

Why Nobody Likes E-Books

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  • Why I don't want an eBook (Score:4, Redundant)

    by pq ( 42856 ) <rfc2324&yahoo,com> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:40PM (#2111054) Homepage
    • I can't flip through it.
    • I can't dog-ear it, or use my bookmark collection.
    • Books smell good and feel good (okay, this is nostalgia).
    • Screens hurt my eyes, paper works fine.
    • eBooks run out of power, books don't.
    • eBooks might have access control, books don't.
    • I own a book, not a license to it.
    • Books are cheap - I can forget one at the beach and not lose too much cash on it.
    • I'm unlikely to be mugged for a book, even on the NYC subway.
    • Reading in bed doesn't get in the way of hot sex.
      (Hold on honey, let me unplug my eBoo - bzzzzzzzzt aaaaaagh!)
    • And finally, with a book, no one can take away my right to read [gnu.org].
    What did I miss? :)

    • I agree with you and I've got to wonder -- does anyone at the book publishers use ebooks? I would be amazed if their editors aren't still reading paper books.

      Maybe at some point it will occur to corporations and VCs to ask themselves before committing millions, "Would I pay for this?"

      Eazel investors: Would you pay to remotely store an insignificant amount of data?

      Online film investors: Would you pay to watch your crummy movies in a tiny window over a 56K connection?

      Sure, if I were climbing K2 I'd bring one ebook reader. But for normal use -- what would I want one for today?

    • Well, in a just and sane world, if you accidentally drop your copy of Saul Bellow's _Herzog_ overboard, it's gone forever, and you'll have to purchase the book again.

      But (again, in a just and sane world), if you lose your ebook reader and your harddrive craps out, you could download your book collection again.

      Of course, the current crop of publishers don't seem to want to allow you to do this.

    • I can't flip through it.

      Flipping through pages is crap! The scrollbar (and a good interface to it) is a far superior browsing method, and it never sticks together: it is many times more granular and thus keeps place much better. Same goes for being able to resize a window. Regular expressions also provide far superior searching capacity than the "look at stuff until you find it" method. Copying and pasting is good stuff, too.

      I can't dog-ear it, or use my bookmark collection.

      Actually, unlike paper, digital text documents have an "infinite" capacity for any bookmark you want.

      Screens hurt my eyes, paper works fine.

      Get a better screen. A quality LCD [apple.com] or a trinitron/diamondtron CRT at >= 85Hz is be fine (although what I really want is a pair of HUD-style glasses). Also, you can read it in the dark, which I find far more pleasant. I also like being able to change the font of whatever I'm reading, instead of having a publisher pick one for me.

      eBooks run out of power, books don't.

      Books require light (usually electric) during non-daylight hours.

      I own a book, not a license to it.

      Of course you don't. You are not at all entitled to reproduce and resell copyrighted material without the author's permission.

      eBook technology is clearly not there yet, but digital distribution of works which would be traditionally distributed on paper is a good thing.

      • He owns the book, he can do anything he wants to with the book. He can rip pages out of it and post them on the bulletin board at work. He can loan the book to a friend. He can scratch out words in the book. Hell, he can even use OCR to read all of the pages of a book into a computer if he wants. I don't think you can do any of that with eBooks (maybe some of them let you print out a hardcopy of a few pages).
    • You missed:
      • Stepping on or dropping a paper book doesn't destroy it (paper doesn't shatter when stepped on, unlike LCDs). Even immersion in water doesn't completely destroy a paper book, but I'd be suprised if an eBook would survive that.
      Otherwise, you hit all the most important points. I've been saying this for years, every time someone brings up the whole eBook canard: There may be a very few instances in which eBooks make sense for the consumer, but, in general, paper is a much better technology. It doesn't have much to do with rights, but with ergonomic and economic concerns.

      Until I can buy an ebook reader for $5, which will survive a fall from 6 meters onto cement (or being struck, repeatedly, with a sledge hammer, for that matter) and subsequent dunking in salt water, can be folded in half or rolled into a tube, doesn't need batteries or a power cord, and can be as easily read in bright sunlight as in a dimly lit room, I just don't see that paper has any competition.

  • The consumer loses too much fair use and convenience for the meager gains in search capability. eBooks are a move toward pay-per-veiw, which is a take-away for the consumer.

    I used an eBook in a college course. Today, I have no reference for that course. I will avoid courses which rely on ebooks in the future.

    It boils down to this. The book business was not broken. This "fixes" it. Most people know a raw deal when they see it.
  • We've gone from writing words on huge tablets of stone to etching microscopic paths on electrically charged (albeit purer) stones. Not all that far off, it's just that the infrastrucure they're putting in place is radically new. You have to really love books to bend that far over and give up your rights for the publishing industry. Somehow that goatse.cx guy is appropriate here.
  • Quite simply, reading a piece of text onscreen and reading words printed on a page are two *totally* different things. I have a eCopy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on my computer, aswell as a paperback version on my bookshelf, and 19 times out of 20 I'd rather go for the paperback. Why? Because reading a book isn't just putting information, words, descriptions etc, into your head, its an experience in and of itself. I can't wrap a blanket around myself and snuggle up with a good text file, can I? I can't *thumb* through a text file looking for my favourite paragraph and get distracted by another piece that can keep me enthralled for hours. I can't throw my text file into my gym bag to show my frields on the way back. What I'm trying to say is that a book isn't just words; its something which cannot be simply replaced by pixels on a computer screen; an actual real experience.

  • Not everybody ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FormerComposer ( 318416 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:39PM (#2114262)
    I wouldn't think of trying to read a book on my laptop. My Handspring, however, is a different story ...

    Last summer, out in the woods with the new popup camper, it was very enjoyable to reread Huckleberry Finn (which I do every few years) whenever I could grab a few minutes. I carry it anyway (work, spreadsheets, phone #s, etc.) so I might as well load up a book or three for those spare moments.

    I purchased and read all the installments of Stephen King's The Plant (first time I've ever read anything by him). I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the work (if he ever decides that the 6-figure _profit_ he made from the early portions justifies writing some more).

    Specialized readers? NO! Useful and/or entertaining documents? SURE!

    I carry around the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, FIFA Soccer Rules, Unleashing the Ideavirus!, and others ...

    Having the exact quote at your fingertips is sometimes quite handy ...

  • instead of every book me and my family has ever read taking up whole walls with shelves, I could have a microdrive about the size of a matchbox.
    most of my reading is done from a computer monitor anyhow. But then again, I haven't tried reading a novel this way (unless you count How-Tos)
  • If while reading on the throne you run out of TP, the already-read pages of a cheap paperback are very handy. Your ebook display device is a little too expensive to be used that way.
  • Ebooks have failed primarily because they provide an inconvienent way to access content online as opposed to a convienent way to access the same information offline, without adding any value to the product.

    People like books. I don't care how wired you are, a paperback book will keep you busy for hours without the need for batteries or rechargers or crashing operating systems. Its a medium that has stood the test of time and its unlikely to be replaced entirely for a long LONG time.

    So offer to those people the option to read the exact same text on a screen thats hard on the eyes and needs batteries, then throw into that the fact that they're gonna have to read fast so they get it all in in their 10 hour limit and screw around with publishers so their can play their games to prevent any IP theft. They'll sooner go to a book faire and buy the damn thing for 50 cents and be done with it. And what have we accomplished?

    Ebooks have an opportunity to offer a more fulfilling multimedia experience. I've seen fan fiction sites on the web that have pictures and play music while you're reading that matches the setting and mood of the story as you read through it. Publishers could have drawn quite a following from this, but instead they choose to quibble over how many people are going to steal their precious works to even bother noticing that nobody is reading them anyways.

    -Restil
  • I can agree with sentiments that ebooks with copy-control are lame. Thats why I really like Fictionwise (http://www.fictionwise.com). They offer all their etexts at extremely reasonable prices (most are around $1 to purchase). Additionally, and this is the biggest plus for me, all of their texts are downloadable in a ide variety of formats: .PDF, .PDB for Palm Readers, and more. I love the fact that I don't have to limit myself to one lame reader program that only runs on select platforms to read my books. Further, they allow me to download any of the formats at any time from the My Bookshelf section of their web site.

    It's a quite convenient way to get some new short stories (my favorite form of fiction) or even something longer. I check back with them once a month or so to find new stories to put on my Visor Prism.

    For anyone frustrated with the copy control and invasiveness of ebooks, I'd recommend checking out Fictionwise. Pretty much the only thing I dont like about them is they are mostly science fiction/fantasy. They have some other works on there, but by and large it is sci-fi or fantasy. They do have a lot of great stuff on there though, and they offer a wonderful selection of Hugo/Nebula award winners (including a selection that have won both awards).

  • No more stereotypes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Pheon ( 65392 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:38PM (#2119202) Homepage
    There was one quote that i especially liked in this article.

    "A Russian graduate student named Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested"

    I was happy to see they used the term "graduate student" and not the ever to popular term "hacker" in their article.

    • 1 down, 1 more to go.

      The only thing I didn't like about the article is that after reading it, I got the impression that Sklyarov is the person repsonsible for the programmer. I don't know if Elcomsoft is incorporated or not but (I think) that alone would clear him from being personally responsible for the ebook processor. Even if it isnt there surely has to be another person who is equally liable for the program. I don't know shit about programming but I do know that unless it's a homebrewed app it's always written in teams. And even if it was written only by him, the COO, or even whoever gave him the ok to persue it is more responsible for this (bs) violation then Sklyarov! Anyway, it's obvious he's being targeted, that's all I'm trying to say.
  • his little device...

    It needs a light source. where am I going to get a light source thats always on?
    we'll have to conform to a spelling standard! probably controlled by that power hungry church!
    They're expensive!
    they make my eyes hurt!
    we'll have to pay a lot of money for one, and if I drop it in the mud it will be ruined!
    • Gutenberg's device was successful because it made information much more accessible and less tightly controlled by central authorities, and much less expensive than the alternatives (hand written volumes that scribes would write).

      we'll have to conform to a spelling standard! probably controlled by that power hungry church!

      The spelling standard was much later....

      The basic problem with the more modern ebooks is actually that they are tightly controlled. We are not including in this discussion Project Gutenberg, the whitepapers published by the NSA on network security, or freely available technical scecifications. These things do not have the same problems and can be printed out. We are only talking about ebooks published with the idea of making a profit by charging for the right to read them. This is the business that is dying, not the low-cost free distribution that some other entities have used.

  • Old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @01:16PM (#2120526) Homepage Journal
    The exact same article ran in the August 6 LA Times [latimes.com].

    I've referenced it a couple times here already.

    The Vonnegut comment at the end is great!
  • It's your choice:

    Pay $20 for an electronic book that:

    Can only be read on the one device

    Can't be loaned to a friend, unless you give them the device too

    Can't be resold to a used book store

    Won't necessarily be readable 5 years from now if the technology has changed.


    Or Pay $20 for the hardcopy version of the book that:

    Has none of those drawbacks and

    Depending on the hardware, is probably lighter in weight

    I would gladly pay $5-7 for the electronic version of a $20 hardcopy book, but I sure won't pay the same price for a 'limited license' version of the same material. It costs money to print, bind, pack, ship, unpack, sort and shelve a hardcopy book. It doesn't cost that much to run an ecommerce website (based on the roughly 2.836 x 10^9 SPAM mail messages I receive each month).

    If the publishers would make ebooks affordable, then people wouldn't be so anxious to pirate them. I'm a voracious reader, I can go through 5 pocket novels in a week, easy. Since most new novels are at least $6 (and I've them seen as high as $8) I have to limit myself to shopping at used book stores, and whatever fiction e-books I can scrounge from the newsgroups, otherwise I'd have to turn to a life of crime to be able to afford my reading habit (ok, that's a slight exageration).

    People want to pirate books for the same reason they pirate music or satellite TV, it's so damn expensive in the first place.

  • Cheap, quick. I wish there were more titles.
  • My value in an e-book would be better left only to text books for college. I'd rather have all of my text books placed into a single portable. The whole market would be based on crazed college students with educards readily buying e-books so they don't have to walk out to their 120 degree car to swap books mid day. E-books, rather E-textbooks should be where the market plays out. I'd surely appreciate it rather than carrying a digital circuits book and a thousand page logic gate reference book to class.

  • My thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BradleyUffner ( 103496 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:36PM (#2123667) Homepage
    I think the reason that eBooks are unpopular is that they are not books. Books are portable, easy to use, easy to store, last for a long time, and have a fantastic "Refresh rate". I can't stand reading large amounts of text on a computer monitor, or LCD screen. Teh screens are ether too bright, and glare and reflections, or are just plain too flickery. With a book you can read it in bright light, low light, and by flashlight. The batteries never go dead ether. It's just so nice having an actual physical book there to look at, and reference whenever you need it.

  • Publishers shooting selves in foot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jaed ( 99912 ) <jaed@jaedworks.com> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:50PM (#2124228)

    I've said this before, but publishers are only hurting themselves with this insane obsession with spending millions on consumer-hostile "protection" schemes.

    Look at Baen Books [baen.com], which (in addition to dead trees) publishes books in electronic format, which uses good old documented and portable formats such as HTML and RTF with no passwords, encryption, "digital rights management", monitoring, locking the book to a single computer, or other nonsense, and which seems to be the only publusher of e-books that's actually making money at it.

    I don't believe this is a coincidence. It may be time for other publishers to remove their heads from their asses, stop paying buckets of money to the concocters of baroque DRM schemes and various Congresscritters, observe Baen's experience, and learn. Imagine! A company that makes money, not by threatening its customers with legal action and hamstringing them with Evil Code, but by providing them a useful product at a reasonable price that yields a profit!

    • I *love* Baen!! Almost all of the fiction I read nowadays is from Baen, read on my PocketPC. If publishers started getting works out there, and removed all the stupid copy protection, I would probably never buy another paper book. I'll gladly plonk down my cash for eBooks. My perfect world consists of being able to go to Amazon, or wherever, select a few books, download them and start reading instantly. No more having to go to the bookstore, no more waiting for my books to be shipped. I could carry a whole library around in my pocket. I'd especially love to see more reference books in this format.

    • Baen Gets It (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SteveM ( 11242 )

      I went to the Baen books site and checked out the link to the Baen Free Library [baen.com].

      Jim Baen and Eric Flint get it when it comes to ebooks and intellectual property.

      Check out the site, it's worth the read.

      Steve M

    • Baen is a great example - I've read a few of their free samples, and one month's worth of their new releases (it had an author I was particularly interested in, and I read 3 of the other 4 books it came with because I got into them after the first chapter) - and all for $10. I read these all (mostly) on an old monochrome (486) laptop, in HTML format. Worked just fine, but in the end it was a bit of a strain on the eyes. And it definitely wasn't as easy as having a novel you could carry around and curl up on the couch or bed with. But I enjoyed the books anyway!

  • O'Reilly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaSyonic ( 238637 ) <DaSyonicNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:47PM (#2124483) Homepage
    When discussing E-Books, we should look at O'Reilly [oreilly.com], and how they do E-Books. While true, it's just on a CD-ROM, it still very much applies. Yet O'Reilly doesnt encrypt it in any way. They make it very easy and portable to read the content, and they are successful. Then you look at why. They dont have to force stuff down our throat, or force us into submission, or tell us how we can read the book that we pay for. They just have good informative content, and give it at an acceptable price, and people respect them and buy the product. Now if all E-Books decided to work in this way, they would be much more successful.
    • I second this. Actually, I was able to combine 3 of their "bookshelves" (Unix, Perl, and Networking) into a single CD, as they each only take about 90MB.

      One disc to carry around 18 O'Reilly books! Now, thats ebooks done right.

    • Re:O'Reilly (Score:3, Informative)

      by ucblockhead ( 63650 )
      The article missed the boat by not looking at O'Reilly. They talked about horrible Amazon sales rankings. A more clueful reporter might have noticed that the unprotected Perl CD bookshelf [amazon.com] has a sales ranking of under 1500.
  • If libraries were routinely able to convert their collections to digital formats, and then offer their patrons remote access to that material, they would essentially become and maybe even replace publishers.

    Sounds like a system that's a hell of a lot better than what we have.
  • It would be nice to have all of my references on a single pad that I could take anywhere with me and easily read or search. If the screen resolution were good enough, it may even be worth reading them there too.

    For small paperbacks, however, I usually only read them once anyway, so E-books aren't that hot an Idea for them. But if I could get my full collection of perl/apache/mysql/linux/security, etc books on a single tablet with a nice crisp display, and that tablet was in the $100-$200 price range? Hell yeah, I'd buy into that!

  • Why does the electronic copy require more (inhibiting) protection than the paper? Of course, it's because the electronic copy is much more easily transmitted, changed and reformatted than the paper. But still, if you're going to charge a premium price, and only let me read it using propritary hardware/software... then I'll take the paper. Thanks anyway.

  • well duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by duncanIdaho.clone() ( 457271 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:35PM (#2128768) Homepage Journal

    People who read lots of book, those that would see the greatest benefits of a portable reader, actually love books themselves! They like personal libraries, the weight of a good book in their hand, and honestly have some kind of tactile fixation with page turning. Most everyone but the geeky fifteen year-olds (god bless their hearts) mentioned in an article below are actually trying to get away from the monitor at the end of the day.

    • Re:well duh (Score:5, Informative)

      by JeffL ( 5070 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:57PM (#2119845) Homepage
      the weight of a good book in their hand, and honestly have some kind of tactile fixation with page turning.

      I consider myself someone who reads lots of books, and I completely disagree with this statement. I think the people who say they like the feel of a book in there hand have never tried any type of e-reader. They weight of enough books to last me for a two week trip is not pleasant. I would much rather put a few books on my Palmpilot, which I have with anyways, than carry around an extra few pounds of paper.

      I have been reading books on my Palmpilot for several years now, and I am completely addicted to it. I even have a Palm III with the old low contrast screen, so I would probably like it more if I moved to a V or 500 with a proper display.

      I think people who don't like reading e-books have never tried it. (This is making the assumption that the books these people want to read are available in an usable format. I can completely understand people not wanting to read e-books because they have no interest in 100+ year old stuff from the Gutenberg project [gutenberg.net] or whatever annoying thing the publishers have decided to make available.)

      • I have done this as well -- my Palm IIIxe has carried some of the worlds best literature on it, and I've used iSilo to read it, and loved it. It's especially great to read in low-light (or even in the dark), because you can turn the backlight on and continue reading under the stars without a 400 watt sodium lamp spoiling the atmosphere.

        But, I also like my well stocked and well-thumbed library, which I intend to keep adding to. When I'm looking for a book to read in bed, or in the tub, or indeed in the hammock on a lazy spring day, I browse better in the library than on a computer. Plus, I enjoy the feeling of knowing that on my shelves are dozens of friends that I can call on at anytime to whisk my brain away to another place, another time.

        My thinking is, put your novel or text online, and let me try it on ebook for a buck or two. If it's particularly good, and worthy of being a long-time friend, give me the opportunity to buy a nice hardbound copy at a reasonable price. You'll get two sales from me! Winner!

        Remember those books on demand machines [slashdot.org]? Here's the perfect opportuninty for authors -- put a better binding and stock in the machine, and I can take my e-book on my Palm to the local Borders and get it printed immediately for $10-15, maybe even with a credit for the ebook I already bought.

        The opportunity is there, it will take a brave company to truly embrace the concept in order for it to work. I have no doubt that Random House will *not* be the company to do it. I doubt it will be some failing dot.bomb either -- but some visionary will do it, and will convice a real author to participate, and it will happen.

    • Re:well duh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KelsoLundeen ( 454249 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @01:20PM (#2121547)
      Add to that this: the "book" as we know it has been around for over 500 years.

      There's a reason for that. In fact, there's many reasons for that. Me, I've got 2000 books in my house. Sure, I've got a 40 gig hard drive, too -- in fact three 40 gig hard drives -- and could easily fit my books on one (probably less than 1) of those hard drives.

      But why? Why would I want to sit and stare at a computer screen or Palm or PocketPC or iPaq or Rocket eBook reader or whatever is the gadget du jour?

      I actually enjoy the physical book -- the paper, the way it smells, the way I can use it, abuse it, tote it, and carry it around. I also like the fact that I won't be arrested if, say, I decide to backwards engineer it -- if I take a peep at the binding, wonder if the leaves are glued, and even spot a couple pages that haven't been cut.

      I can't do that with an eBook. I can't do that because Adobe and Microsoft will make sure I end up in jail. They'll claim that my "crime" is nearly as bad as murder -- more so, in fact, because I'm infringing on their "intellectual property" which, as we all know, is more important than anything else these days.

      Yeah, eBooks rock, all right. Go ebooks. Wonderful.

      And all these "screen reading" software that Microsoft is pioneering? Yeah, it's wonderful. Sit me down in front of a bigass monitor with Microsoft's Reader software. Software, by the way, which hasn't been updated in nearly a year. Software which is slow, buggy as hell, and won't even let me "register" more than twice.

      Oh yeah, ebooks rock all right. Let's see. Don't get me started. How about the one time I decided to purchase an ebook? I filled out all the forms -- nearly had to give my driver's license number -- and then submitted all my credit card information only to -- get this! -- get a 500 Server Error when it came time to issue me the "digital verification" that I then had to "click" on then RESUBMIT just to prove that I'm who I said I was and that my reader was registered.

      Love it! Let's see, now how does that compare with this:

      Live in Ann Arbor (or any good college town with lots of bookstores). Go to Dawn Treader Books (or any good used bookstore piled high with thousands of books). Buy book. Buy another book. Bring book up to counter. Chat with clerk who says, "Hey, if you're into Thomas Pynchon, have you tried Gaddis?" "No," say I. "You recommend him?" "Oh yeah," says clerk who, within seconds, drops a copy of _The Recognitions_ and _JR_ on top of the nicely dog eared copies of _V_ and _Gravity's Rainbow_ that I'd already decided to purchase.

      So exit I do, ambling down Liberty Street (or whatever street in your college town of choice that is lined with your used bookstores of choice) with my newly purchased used books. I can read these books anywhere. I can underline them. I can lend them to my friends. And -- imagine this! -- no matter what I do to these books -- read them, underline them, xerox a few pages from them for a presentation -- the FBI DOES NOT GET INVOLVED!

      Now, compare that with digital books. Compare that with encryption, validation, verification. You tell me which is the better deal for readers?

      Now, don't get me wrong. Maybe ebooks have their uses. You're Pre-Med, say, and can get a semester's worth of ebooks on a CDROM. Maybe that's a good deal. Or you're a law student and can get what you need a couple CDROMS and don't have to scout out estate sales of dead lawyers just so you can build a library of outdated law books. All right, fair enough.

      But for book lovers -- and actual readers -- readers who like to discover an old Modern Library edition of Thackeray that was used by someone in 1941 who dated the book and even stuck a few interesting notes on the margin -- there's nothing to compare with actual, phsyical text.

      My own opinion -- after years of haunting used bookstores and 'Friends of the Library' sales -- is this: that people who claim that ebooks are the best thing to come around since, er, the invention of the book are not readers. They simply don't read. They like to have the books. Or they like to have the electronic versions of books that they've read (I mean, really, how many copies of Joe Haldeman's 'Forever War' or Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation Trilogy' do you really need? If you check out the ebook groups on usenet, these are really the only books traded, posted, and pirated -- Haldeman, Asimov, some Sterling, Gibson (of course), and Heinlein. And the same pirated texts are posted day after day after day after day after day. But that's not the point, is it?)

      • Re:well duh (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

        The problem with most e-books is that the format they are published in is quite literally a value subtracted format. You can't share them, you can't market them up, and the FBI is likely to show up at your door if you develop a tool to read them on your Linux box.

        Plain text and its derivatives HTML, XML, etc. don't have any of these drawbacks, and they have considerable upside as well, like being able to use grep and find to search your collection of books. If e-books were in a text-based format then annotations, bookmarks, and a whole list of other physical book benefits would be taken care of automatically (Emacs, for example, would allow you to mark up your texts in ways you never dreamt of with a paper book). You would also maintain all of your fair use rights.

        Publishers, on the other hand, would lose a fair amount of control.

        Because of this most publishers (besides O'Reilly) are not interested in plain text e-books because they think that people will just steal them. Maybe they are right too. All I know is that e-books are not going to take off as long as these issues are not sorted out. People are not likely to purchase e-books as long as the format is closed, and publishers are unlikely to release more books in open formats for fear that people will just steal their work.

        It sort of makes me wonder how well O'Reilly's electronic manuals sell.

      • Re:well duh (Score:5, Informative)

        by friscolr ( 124774 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @02:31PM (#2151588) Homepage
        Add to that this: the "book" as we know it has been around for over 500 years.

        Storytelling via word of mouth has been around much longer. When i want to leave work and stop staring at a computer screen then i'll be biking up and down liberty/state/main/s. university street, maybe stopping in Ashley's or Leopold's for a quick pint, seeing who's there, finding out what's new, listening to tales of happenings past and present, meeting new folks and learning from their stories.

        I agree that most people's negative reactions to ebooks are due to their newness - your own examples particularly bring this to light, as well as other's "if they were as convenient" statements. When books first came out you'd have to wait a while for a monk to make a copy for you, or wait for Gutenberg's invention. Give ebooks some time and the rough edges will hopefully get smoothed out appropriately.

        Personally, i wish i had an electronic copy of every book i've ever read (yes, i read too - i'll stop in Old Towne for to sit and read with a pint on occasion) so that i could easily grep out a certain phrase or name or example from the text.

        But i'd also like an electronic copy of every bit of data that passes through me, so the next time i'm at the Fleetwood and someone's telling me about their Seattle WTO experience i could quickly reference it against the newspaper articles and tv news i heard and read. Sure my notebooks handle this functionality too and i wouldn't give up making them for anything, but as i open up my notebook i can't help but think 'grep -i seattle' and wish i could have written down full transcripts of what i heard.

      • Re:well duh (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SteveM ( 11242 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @03:33PM (#2156528)

        Let's see if I've got this right ...

        You don't like the current legal environment for intellectual propery, including ebooks. Me neither.

        Of course there have been laws about paper books as well. Copyright was originally granted by the king to let you publish. The church had the list of forbidden books. In the US there are people that want Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter banded from school libraries.

        Of course this has nothing to do with paper books or ebooks in and of themselves. But I could see story tellers arguing that they didn't need permission to tell their tales, so the hell with these new fanged paper things.

        You don't like the current hardware. Me neither. Of course the first 'books' were done in stone (think rosetta stone, an early ASCII to EBCDIC type reference manual). Ok so mabye that is stretching it. But in the same fashion I don't think that computer screens or palm pilots deserve to be called ebooks. As far as I'm concerned the 'e' equivelant of a book hasn't been developed yet.

        You don't like the current software. Me neither. But have you looked at old hand printed books? Yes some are gorgeous, clear text wonderful illustrations. But some are unreadable scribble.

        You don't like poor service. Who does? But the experience of buying an ebook has little to do with the ebook itself. If I visited a book store with surly clerks, badly stocked shelves, damaged books I wouldn't shop there. But this has nothing to do with the books.

        You don't like the current sales infrastructure. No browsing the stacks. No recommendations from clerks or fellow shoppers. I agree with you here. Amazon type user reviews just aren't the same. Is the trade off to be able to find any book ever published, download it, and start reading in minutes versus hours spent driving to the local bookstore and hoping they have it (I know, but I never call first) or days waiting for it to be delivered. I don't know, since we aren't there yet. I do like going to the bookstore. I also like the convenience of shopping on line.

        So if you are arguing that the current state of the ebook leaves much to be desired I wholeheartedly agree. But we part company if you are saying that ebooks will never be as useful as paper books. Don't confuse the potential with the current implementation.

        Of course, ebooks may not pan out. I think they will, but I've been wrong before.

        Steve M

      • Re:well duh (Score:3, Insightful)

        by banshee2000 ( 454771 )
        I feel much the same way as you do about books. I grew up in a family that were avid readers and can remember my mother (and sometimes my father) reading to us from the classics. Although we didn't realize it at the time, those reading times were bonding times. Our parents would get us involved in each story by asking our views and opinions of the content after each chapter and answering our questions. For our birthdays, Christmas, and other special occaisions, we could always count on receiving a book among other gifts. We learned to cherish our books and each of us have accumulated impressive libraries.

        I have instilled the same love of books in my own children. Both children are highly literate and have very active imaginations.Instead of being afraid to read or disliking it to the point of avoidance, they look forward to reading a good novel and see it as personal private time. I'm sure they can do the same with ebooks, but it's not quite as tangible.

        I have nothing against ebooks if the technology will encourage more of our youth to read. That alone is quite a feat considering so many children are coming out of the public school system practically illiterate. My concern is more with the quality of content.Will online books be a steady stream of assembly line novels from authors under contract to pump out the books for profit? Will ebooks instill the value real books do or will they just be a steady stream of read it - delete it - forget it? I know I've revisited books after several years and enjoyed them as much the second time. I've also shared books by reading them to my children. I suppose one could store ebooks on cd's for future reads, but IMHO it's just not the same.

  • handling (Score:2, Informative)

    by deathscythe257 ( 309424 )
    people like to hold things
    staring at a computer screen is strenuous
    scrolling can be a bitch
    it's much easier to keep your place on the page with paper
    it doesn't take forever to download a book on paper
    cover art is friendly
    books on shelves are aesthetically and socially pleasing
    closing a window on your browser is not as satisfying as replacing a book on the shelf
    i can throw a book if it is frustrating- i'm not gonna fscking kick my computer or damage it in any other way
    books are cheaper than computers
    bending covers and dog-earing pages are therapeutic activities
    i can go anywere with a book
    i don't have to pay an electricity bill to read a book(except at night when i need light)
    i can fall asleep in bed with a book, but not so easily a mouse and keyboard
    if i spill my tea/coffee/soda/beer/water on a book, it's not the end of the world
    the list goes on

  • I love reading eBooks... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sacherjj ( 7595 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:35PM (#2130946) Homepage
    ...unfortunately I have to "steal" them. Even though I can buy the paperback for $6, the companies wants me to pay hard cover prices for electronic copies. Forget that. I'll buy the paper back, then download a copy of the book from a newsgroup and iSilo it onto my Visor (which I feel that I have a right to use with my ownership of the paperback). It is great reading a part of a book anytime you have a free moment. With my Visor always with me, I always have 4+ books at my disposal. When I finish a book, I delete it and give the paper back to the library. Wouldn't it be much simpler to sell me the electronic copy for $6?

  • Economics For Dummies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:35PM (#2130982)
    But as the stock market drooped and the zeal for all things tech withered last fall, Random House began to hedge its bets. The original low price of $5 for each e-book download was doubled.

    Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....

    • Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....

      They did. Problem was, thos "other business models" prominently included giving away free services.

    • Gee, why didn't some of the other dot.com outfits try doubling their prices? It makes as much sense as their other business models....

      Uh, they did. The problem is that twice zero is still zero. So, it didn't help much.

  • Problems (Score:3, Insightful)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alex.spamcop@net> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:41PM (#2146272) Homepage
    To quote zpengo [slashdot.org]:

    "The biggest problem with [eBooks] is the same one that affects [online comics [slashdot.org]] and other online reading -- Monitors on which reading and viewing are actually comfortable have not yet filtered down to the masses. Joe Sixpack won't read lengthy [eBooks] because it makes his head hurt after a while.

    Paper is still a beautiful medium."

    Right on.

  • e-books suck (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chowpalace ( 166596 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:34PM (#2151191)
    I can buy the book for $14.95... or the reader and the material for $200... pure economics... all geek factor aside... I cant photo copy out of an reader electronic reader either
    • > all geek factor aside... I cant photo copy out of an reader electronic reader either

      "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"
      - Some luzer marketroid who thinks copy control constitutes value-add.

  • EBooks are extremely handy, but... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:51PM (#2151376) Homepage Journal
    I've been reading eBooks since I owned a Newton 100 (The Hacker Crackdown was my first). It's extremely handy, for several reasons:

    1) I can carry around many books in the space of a PDA (currently a Palm);

    2) You can read the book with one hand (get your mind out of the gutter) - I can hold the palm in one hand and turn the pages with my thumb on the scroll button. Sure, it's not much, but that's just that little bit of convenience that paperbacks don't have;

    3) Low light conditions - I can just turn on the backlight, and I have an instant built-in reading light;

    4) It goes where I do - since I keep the Palm with me, it's always right there if I happen to have a few minutes or more free and I didn't think (or feel like) bringing my book.

    However, I have no need of a specialized eBook reader nor Adobe's format. I buy my books and magazines from Palm Digital Media (used to be Peanut Press) at http://www.peanutpress.com/ They have a decent if not overwhelmingly complete selection, they don't overcharge, and everything's quick and easy. I'm not going to give up on paper books any time soon, if ever, but I have easily integrated eBooks into my life.

    =Brian

  • Selling it short (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:58PM (#2151773) Homepage
    I think you are giving up to quickly. There are some circumstances where ebooks work perfectly. I've had a Rocketbook (now EB1100) for a couple of years now, and I've found it easy to use, easy to read, and very convenient. I've read a few novels on it (when they were cheaper than the hardcopy versions) but it's really great for out-of-print and public domain stuff. Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com [fictionwise.com]) sells science fiction short stories (many classics, that you can't find anywhere else) for less than a buck a pop. And novels for not a lot more.

    And the reader is very nice for travelling, since it holds a number of books, and ends up taking up far less room and weight than the equivalent paper copies.

    I can't see paper vanishing any time soon, and I think the download to PC style of ebook is a pain, but the dedicated reader devices are really good, and have their place in the market. And if nobody likes ebooks, why does a Google search turn up more than ten pages of ebook sites?

  • I love Gutenpalm (Score:3, Informative)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @01:49PM (#2152431) Homepage Journal
    I've been using Gutenpalm, a GPL'd book reader that stores text files in zipped form on the palm.

    You get the text (from project gutenberg typically) and use a desktop java program to compress it and put it into a palm db file, then just install it on your palm.

    Since I spend a lot of time on the road, I can take a dozen or more books with me if I'm going on a trip without the weight. The palm's battery life means I have days of reading at a time without charging up (one reason I turned down a color palm from my employer).

    I'v used fancier doc readers, but Gutenpalm is good enough and it compresses the content so I can carry a pretty good sized library around on my Palm. With a 16MB memory module, I could have literally dozens of books handy.

    With respect to the issue of paper vs. e-book, I see absolutely no reason to prefer a paperback over a Gutenpalm book, except if you find looking at the palm's screen tiring, which I don't. The autoscroll feature is kind of useless, so if you like that sort of thing, I'd recommend the free readre "ReadThemAll", which does not scroll the text but "wipes down" the new page over the old one. However you'll have to use doc format books instead of zipped Gutenpalm format books.

    So -- I'm basically a fan of e-books.

    That said, I'll never read a non public domain e-book.

    The reason is I don't want publishers to start treating books as "software" and to put the kind of onerous "licensing" agreements. That would be the beginning of the end of intellectual freedom.

  • This is stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bl1st3r ( 464353 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:32PM (#2152623) Homepage Journal
    There should be no proprietary text formatting options.

    They just limit ease of use and make the world a crappier place.
    • As long as we have the right NOT to buy them (which we still do, last time I checked... *knocks on wood*) let people make all the stupid, encumbering, doomed to fail proprietary formats they want to make.

    • Re:This is stupid. (Score:5, Funny)

      by well_jung ( 462688 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:40PM (#2152990) Homepage
      I couldn't agree more. It's pain not being able to read all the .doc files these strangers have been sending me to review.

  • Well duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joshv ( 13017 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:56PM (#2152748)
    Here is what an e-book reader needs to be to be successful:
    1. Physical dimensions of a closed paperback.
    2. >=200 dpi high contrast display.
    3. Internet/wireless enabled. Should be able to plug in a phone line or ethernet cable, or use 802.11b at the book store to download new content.
    4. E-Books should never 'expire'. I want to be able to re-read a book ten years from now. I can do it with printed books, why not an e-book.
    5. Huge storage capacity - at least 1000 books.
    6. Battery life in the 16 hours range (most people could read two average books in this amount of time).
    7. Should function on it's own. I don't want to HAVE to use a PC to load books onto the damned thing, see #3 above.
    8. Not neccessarily fully voice enabled, but it should be able to listen for something like 'bookmark', 'next page', etc...
    9. The books should cost LESS than normal books. Why? Because it does cost less to make an e-book - you are just shoving bits, instead of printing, binding and distributing. Additionally people need a REASON to switch to E-books, making them cheaper might be a good incentive.

    • The books should cost LESS than normal books. Why? Because it does cost less to make an e-book - you are just shoving bits, instead of printing, binding and distributing. Additionally people need a REASON to switch to E-books, making them cheaper might be a good incentive.

      I personally think that this is the biggest point on the list. I own a Rocket E-Book (now owned by RCA) and am constantly put off on how expensive eBooks are. Dammit! If an eBook is going to cost me the same price as the hard cover, why the hell shouldn't I buy the hard cover? Worse yet, if I'm going to have to pay that much for that book, I'll probably just go check it out of the library instead. Then the book publisher will get no money from me. Currently there really is no incentive for me to purchase eBooks instead of regular books.

      I do feel that I should mention that not all eBooks are outrageously priced. However, the majority of the books that are reasonably priced are usually the classics, many of which are freely available from Project Guttenburg.

    • Actually, I have a better idea......include a secured copy of the e-version with every book. Companies put all kinds of CD's, msot of which are useless. Why not put the exact same thign so if you want to carry 3 UNLEASHED! books you don't get a hernia! Plus you get the same experience, but you don't have to carry the freakin book around all day. OH, Microsoft Reader with clear type looks fuzzy to me.

    • Re:Well duh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SteveM ( 11242 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @01:58PM (#2130647)
      10. Cheap. They should cost about the same as a gameboy. I don't want to worry about losing/breaking a several hundred dollar reader. I could deal with losing ~fifty bucks. I may also want several, one for text books and reference works, one for my scifi collection, one for each hobby, etc.

      11. I should be able to back up ebooks. When I loose one of those cheap readers I don't want to be out a thousand books.

      12. I should have remote access to my complete library. This is a result of numbers 3 and 11. If I need a book not currently installed in the reader that is on my back up server I should be able to get it.

      13. A mechanism to share books. Today I can lend a book to a friend. I would want ebooks to have a lend function that gives the lendee access to a book for a predetemined length of time and that is copy protected.

      Steve M
      • 14. Open standard. I want to get an ebook from any vendor, and view it on any reader. I want to download from Gutenberg and read that. I want to create my own content, and let other people read it - if they want to. It should be the MP3 of the written word!

        What will stifle ebooks more than anything else is a plethora of competing, closed, proprietary formats.

        "Sorry, you can't buy Stephen King in Sony, only Adobe..."

  • They need to make changes to e-books (Score:4, Funny)

    by JWhitlock ( 201845 ) <John-WhitlockNO@SPAMieee.org> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @01:05PM (#2152875)
    I've looked at e-books, and I don't think they are ready for mass use yet. They need some changes first.

    With paper books, I can look smart by filling a whole bookshelf with stuff I haven't read. With one trip to the used bookstore, I can cheaply purchase a whole 6 feet of classics from the past, and look like a well rounded person. Ebooks need to include some sort of packaging that fills bookshelf space, like the computer game boxes.

    Technical references are too easy to use in a well-implemented electronic format. Why would I want to search text electronically when I could visually scan for it, page by page? There should be three ways to find something - Table of Contents, Index, and post-it-notes. Oh - and you shouldn't be able to click on the index entry to jump to the page, you lazy bastard. Navigate there yourself.

    It's also too easy to correct errors in electronic books. I have fond memories of spending the first day in class fixing the errors introduced in the 11th edition. Errata should be sent on paper, by mail, so you can make the changes by hand. Think what the children are missing!

    One thing that should be implemented is textbooks that change every year, in such a way that they can't be upgraded. This encourages students to keep their textbooks, since they can't sell them to next year's students. My shelf has many inches taken up with important sounding books like "Elements of Style", "Thermodynamics, 3rd Edition", "Calculus Made Easy", and "Learning Programming (with C)", that protects my shelf from getting dusty.

    The best thing about reading the newspaper is the feeling of getting up, throwing on a bathrobe, getting your slippers wet with dew, and retrieving the daily paper from your neighbor's yard. All ebook media should be delivered by throwing it on your lawn, preferably at 5 AM, so that the dogs can tell you the moment it arrives. Or shipped in two weeks, the way Amazon does it. Again, don't forget the packaging - I want evidence that I've been getting the daily paper in my trash.

    Size is also important - how will the folks across from me on the bus know whether I'm reading Dostoyevsky, Hacking Exposed, Playboy, or Harry Potter? The e-book should be huge, so that it requires a backpack, and should include, in a bright red LCD display on the back, what you are reading. The back-pocket is an unreasonale design goal. Weight is also a good thing - you need a counterweight when you are taking a dump.

    Also, current ebooks are a bit too waterproof, and a bit to easy to backup. If I spill a little liquid on the display, I should see the waterspot five years from now. If I lend it to a friend, I want the electronic equivalent of a marked cover and bent spine. Books are a precious thing, and should be fragile, easily transferable, and should age with an old-book smell. Or, just put mold in a aeresol can, I don't care which way you go.

    Are any design engineers listening?

  • Only the legal E-book business is dying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:46PM (#2152970) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at any of the ebook usenet groups one day and you'll see that ebooks aren't dying, rather they are only viable as an underground were people digitize all of the greatest new releases (and older classics, and older not-so-classics) and distribute them in easily read formats. You can get nearly any modern book from these people in plain old text, which you can slap on a Palm or simliar device and read on the bus/train/whereever you want.

    Contrast this with "official" ebooks, where you have to buy an expensive and proprietary reader for your expensive books from exceptionally obscure authors. Worse, these readers have all sorts of annoying "copy protection" built in that makes you a thief for even trying to give your book to a friend (like you can do with regular old paperbacks), and the publisers treat you like the enemy when you buy one of these.

    I think the truth is in the article. Ebooks are the future, unfortunatly that's a future without publishers, so the publishers of today have every incentive to make ebooks look as bad as possible and makes sure that everybody knows that "everyone else prefers the tactile sensation of books over any of those crappy ebook things that you want to stay away from."

    Of course the publishing industry is slow to change, so we probably won't see the publishing industry die anytime soon.
    • In one sense, publishers are already the 'walking dead' since anyone can easily and cheaply publish their own works, either on paper or the internet.

      But consider how many manuscripts are submitted to publishers. I'd guess there are at least 10 for every one that gets published. I'd also bet that at least half the rejected ones are utter garbage. Publishers hire many editors to deal with these. And they really do have to at least look at them all, since, otherwise, they'd never discover new authors.

      In a world without publishers, would you want to have to start reading 10 books in order to find the one that's half-decent? Do you want to read 200 pages of a book, and then discover that one of the chapters is missing?

      • In a world without publishers, would you want to have to start reading 10 books in order to find the one that's half-decent?

        Of course not. In a world without publishers, you would decide which books to read based on the recommendations of people whose opinions you trust/respect. I'm imagining Slashdot-style "book club" sites where the editors of the sites recommend an e-text a day or so.

        (and who would pay these editors? Well, in many cases the editors would maintain the site just because they are fans and like to do so)

  • E-book problems. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @12:41PM (#2152991) Homepage
    Every E-book I have seen will not let me upload guttenberg texts to it.. I have to use "special" texts from "special" sources. This is what is killing it. How about my technical manuals? not availabie, a haynes manual for my Pontiac fiero? not available, how about some decent science fiction? not available.

    So I can buy a E-book, and it can sit on the shelf with my ever useful sony data-discman... the Ebook of 1987.

    No thanks. Until the solve all the above problems, an Ebook is just a joke.

  • Should be able to buy for whichever format we want (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blang ( 450736 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @04:55PM (#2159729)
    My idea of utilising the network for distributing literature involves getting the book in print as an option.

    I would like to go into a book store, and ask for any book, which would be printed on demand.

    Or, I would like to go into a book store, transfer my ebook token, for which I paid $4 for to the book store. Then for an additional $3, I would receive a cheap pulp/paperback print copy of the same book. Or I could add $11 for a original printed copy from the publisher/printer, which normally would have cost $15 withot the token.

    30 years after, the print copy would still be functional, while all the other gadgets and content delivery schemes would long since have been obsolete and thrown away.

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