Simon Jenkins in praise of dead trees

– LINK –

I think Simon (like many people) is missing the point. For one thing, it’s generational - there are many young people (and not-so-young) growing up staring at screens all day. It’s not a big deal. The screens these days aren’t going to burn your eyes out with radiation, and the quality means that reading black text on a (adjustable) white background is not going to put a strain on your eyes - unlike trying to read small grey text on an off-white page.

For another thing, it’s about ease of use. Who wants to trail up to town to buy a book? Or wait until Amazon and their chosen ‘delivery partner’ get around to dropping the book through your letterbox? When you can press a couple of buttons, and hey presto! The book is there, ready to read.

One thing holding back the groundswell of eBook adoption is price. Most of the stuff people in bulk want to read is expensive. Sometimes more expensive than a hardback book. How is this possible? Publishers and e-tailers need to get their act together pretty soon, or else the internet connections are going to be buzzing with pirated copies of eBooks. It happened with music, and it’ll happen with eBooks too.

The iPad is here. Well, almost.

Boy, did this thing take an age to come out.

The general concensus is not overly positive. It seems to fall into a gap between the iPhone / iPod Touch and the laptop. As a result, it can’t do phone things, and it’s too darned big to fit into a pocket; and there’s several omissions, which make its use as a laptop replacement questionable at best.

But here’s the thing. It’s an Apple. It’s got the Steve-meister fully behind it. And that means the i-Marketing teams are going to go all out to convince us that this is the product we want to buy. Not because it makes sense by any traditional measure. But because we’ll just want the thing.

It has an iBook store attached to it, which is good. The price of the i/eBooks is going to be $14.99. Which is bad. But this can change, as can the price (although at $499 is a good deal less than many were expecting). As can the specs, which will surely improve.

What remains to be seen is if Steve Jobs and Apple can pull off the marketing coup of the decade - to convince enough people that they want this thing to create a critical mass; once your mates have one, then you’re going to have to have one. And who wouldn’t bet against Apple?

Rory Cellan-Jones - interesting

Interesting piece by Rory Cellan-Jones about ebooks, and the upcoming Apple announcement - see LINK

Rory’s makes the point that sharing possessions has always been easier with the written word - books can be lent to friends easily, perhaps far more easily that ebooks can. And he’s right, to a certain extent. But that’s not to say that digital technology can’t do likewise.

Imagine a wireless-enabled e-reader, on which you have the latest blockbuster. You’ve read it, you think it’s great, you tell your book-reading friends. They want to borrow it. Technologically, it’s not difficult to do this, even in the current state of Digital Rights paranoia. And what’s the problem? You read a book, you want to lend it to a friend, you meet: either you physically hand something made from dead trees over, or you bring your readers into close proximity, establish a connection, select “TRANSFER”, and the deed is done. I say again - what’s the problem?

And this is the only quoted reason that Apple won’t be experiencing an iPod moment this Tuesday, apparently.

Well, I’m not so sure. You need to factor in that ‘books’ may well be very different in a couple of years, with the ability to follow links in the book to more information. How great would it be if, having finished our electronic book, we could read all about the author and his inspiration. And for this, you need something more than the current crop of ereaders. Do you need an iSlate? Whether you need one or not, I’m guessing it’s going to be the “must-have” of 2010.

Video of Que from from CES

As the title says, really.

CLICK

As with most ereaders, the display latency (from screen press to display update) is not good. But the design is pretty neat.

'Cost to download' comparison - books & music

For those that are hyper-concerned about ebook piracy, and say that it’s not about the cost of the ebooks, and people would ’steal’ them anyway:

Let’s compare the download / physical prices for the fledgling ebook industry, and the mature music industry (that went through piracy traumas some years ago)

Firstly, from Amazon.co.uk, MUSIC:

Lady Gaga - “The Fame Monster”: CD £8.98, download £5
Black Eyed Peas - “The E.N.D.”: CD £8.98, download £5
Robbie Williams - “Reality Killed the Video Star”: CD £8.18, download £5

Secondly, from Waterstones, EBOOKS:

James Patterson - “I, Alex Cross”: Hardback £9.49, ebook £11.65
Patricia Cornwell - “The Scarpetta Factor”: Hardback £9.49, ebook £13.30
Robert J Sawyer - “FlashForward”: Paperback £4.89, ebook £5.60.

Where’s the justification for those daft prices?

What can we learn from this? That the music industry, from experience, knows that the way to stop piracy is to provide the goods at a reasonable price. A purchaser can save 40-odd percent by downloading an album rather than buying the CD. The actual price, too, is interesting. £5. Simple, no nonsense, none of this 98p stuff. The psychological message is: downloading is easy, simple, straightforward.

Book publishers have a lot to learn.

Reply to BBC Radio 4 "Point of View"

Reply to Lisa Jardin on Ebooks - “A Page-turning Passion”

LINK TO BBC WEBSITE

My reply:

So, “real readers” don’t use e-readers then? Ms Jardine may have her Point of View on this subject, and there’s no evidence that e-readers will completely replace books made from trees in the near future.

However, there is a growing army of consumers who are delighting in the practicalities of slipping a slim volume into their bag for the commute to work, or packing the same slim volume into hand luggage for a weekend away or a fortnight’s holiday. Same slim volume, huge choice of books to read.

There are issues to be addressed, for sure. The key one, as far as I can see, is that of book price. How publishers can justify charging less for a weighty piece of dead tree covered in ink, than the electronic file from which it was derived, is beyond me. They are in danger of following the head-in-the-sand attitudes of the music publishers of a few years ago. The secret is to understand the psychology of online purchasing, rather than attempt to bolster artificially high prices with legal threats against piracy.

On the other hand, high prices for ‘name’ authors encourages e-reader enthusiasts to seek out new authors whose works attract a somewhat more realistic price tag. Nine of Amazon’s top 10 Kindle book purchases were at the princely sum of $0.00. Free. What does that tell you about the acceptable price point for the e-reading public?

Review in Guardian

There’s a good review in an article from the Guardian today.

The Guardian

The good impressions of the Que continue, albeit out of range of all but the most dedicated private early adopters. The interest in the Apple announcement later this month grows, although the article makes a good point about dedicated readers versus multifunctional devices.

Worth a read.

The Que is launched!

CLICK HERE

So, first impressions? Nice. Very nice.

Two models, available from April this year. A 4GB version, WiFi only, for $649 (£407), and an 8GB version with WiFI and 3G for $799 (£501).

The idea of making newspaper downloads look like newspapers is great, and the automatic subscription downloads (similar to iTunes subscriptions) would make taking the morning paper a breeze.

But, at the end of the day, it’s expensive compared to other readers on the market - understandably, since the touch screen display is so large (A4 / foolscap sized). Quite rightly, Que are targetting their product at the business market initially, where I can see it being the executive must-have of 2010.

The best things in life are free

I talked some time ago about the price of ebooks. In fact, I talk a lot about the price of ebooks.

Yes, you can download free ebooks from a variety of places (see my links on the right for an ever-expanding list of freebook sources), but the majority of these are either technical works, ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes, or out of copyright classics. So, what if you want to read some good, contemporary fiction? Say, something of the bestsellers lists?

How about James Patterson’s “Run For Your Life”? Currently 4th onNeilson’s UK top 50. I like James Patterson, and have read a number of his Alex Cross novels. So I fire up my Kindle (if I had one), and go to the Amazon Kindle store, and find the ebook there at the princely sum of … $12.69. That’s £7.90 in British Pounds Sterling. The paperback version - remember, printed in black ink on dead trees, collated, bound, nice cover, put into boxes, and transported around the country - is $10.19. It’s cheaper than the ebook! Even the audio book is only $13.59, and they’ve had to pay an actor to sit there for hours reading the thing. data from here

So, how many people have downloaded this book to their Kindles? Amazon are tight-lipped about actual quantities of sales, but we can look at the Best Sellers in the Kindle Store. 9 of the top 10 ebooks selling on Amazon’s Kindle Store are priced at: $0.00. Free. No money. The 10th is unavailable, so we don’t know. Interestingly, the first non-free ebook on the Kindle bestsellers list is a James Patterson book - “I, Alex Cross”, priced at $9.99.

So, what does this tell you about the “Acceptable Price” that Kindle owners are prepared to pay?

Skiff newspaper and periodical reader

Ahead of the QUE announcement, another large-screen reader has been announced. The Skiff Reader. At 228mm X 279mm X 6.8mm, it features a display with 4 times as many readable pixels as many other electronic readers. At 498g, it is around twice as heavy as most readers. More technical specs are HERE

Looks interesting.

More piracy scare stories

Another scare story, this time from CNN- LINK

They’re still missing the point. Ebooks are TOO EXPENSIVE. Until you get to the stage of ebooks costing $5 or less (which they should), people will always try to find cheaper alternatives.

Baen Free Library and common sense on the piracy debate

Oh my word. We start the year with a great piece from author Eric Flint on the e-piracy debate. Everyone (especially large publishers) needs to read this.
CLICK HERE