[tt] CHE: Between the Lines of a New e-Book Reader

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I'm waiting for the price to drop to $100. Onto which of these devices can 
one load up text files? How much do they cost?

Between the Lines of a New e-Book Reader
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=2560
November 20, 2007

Theoretically appealing though they may be, e-book readers haven’t lived 
up to the hype, say most campus librarians who have chatted with The 
Chronicle. Will the Kindle, Amazon’s new version, change that perception?

If not, the price tag might be partially to blame. "I’m going to have to 
reserve judgment until I try it out myself," writes Rob Hof, of 
BusinessWeek. "And at $399, I’m not sure how soon that’s going to be."

And David Rothman, of TeleRead, mentions a survey which argues that lower 
prices, not nifty new devices, will drive the e-book market.

Even if the Kindle were $100 cheaper, though, it would still have its 
critics. Mr. Hof wonders if the device’s heft—it weighs 10.5 ounces—will 
prove problematic: "I’m doubtful that I’m going to hold that sucker up 
over my head lying in bed." And Valleywag offers a tongue-in-cheek chart 
comparing the Kindle with the hardbound books it might replace. (A book 
might give you a paper cut, the blog notes, but a Kindle threatens you 
with "death by electrocution.")

Any thoughts on the Kindle, or on the state of e-book readers in 
general?--Brock Read
Posted on Tuesday November 20, 2007

Comments

1. I love technology, and I’m not averse to reading text on computer 
screens. But will I buy and use the Kindle or any e-book reader currently 
on the market? No. Here’s why: 1) I love reading, and read often (I’m a 
librarian; it comes with the territory), but most of my reading is done on 
the cheap (read "free") online on blogs, news sites, or in books and 
magazines I can check out at both public and university libraries. Up 
until now, I’ve never come across a title I’ve really wanted to read that 
I could only find for purchase as an e-book. Paying $.10 to send files to 
the Kindle, paying for a subscription to a blog (who would do that?) 
paying to have otherwise free news stories beamed to your Kindle, and 
paying even $2.00-$9.99 for full-length e-books for the Kindle is simply 
not worth my money. And then there’s the $399.00 entrance fee. Way to 
steep for me. 2) Carrying more than one "book" in the Kindle is desirable, 
but you can only read one thing at a time, so a book still wins, as long 
as you are willing to overcome the slight inconvenience of not having an 
entire library at your fingertips at any given time, or of leaving one of 
your books in your suitcase on a plane trip while you read the other in 
your hand. 3) E-ink technology is great, but you can’t beat ink-on-paper 
technology for cost, efficiency, convenience, or permanence. And you can’t 
beat that new-book smell (I wonder what the new Kindle smell is like, and 
how long it lasts, and will it give you cancer?). It must be daunting for 
little e-ink, competing with a 500-year-old technology that still has good 
legs in the digital age. 4) Kindle will not supplant my need to bring a 
cell phone and laptop with me on business trips. These are the tools of 
the trade, and of many people’s trade. Why would I buy another gadget to 
further encumber me, and that does less than my laptop can do? Would I 
bring the Kindle to the beach or pool? Is it waterproof, or at least 
water-resistant? 5) Surprisingly for such a hi-tech device, there are 
lacuna in the feature sets for both the Kindle and Sony Reader that cause 
me to scratch my head. Why won’t the Kindle support the PDF format? If the 
Kindle can connect to Amazon’s "Whispernet" (when you see the quotes, they 
mean italics—thats the way the word is typed throughout the Amazon 
website: weird, huh?), why can’t it use its WLAN to browse the open Web 
instead of just Wikipedia and the Amazon Kindle Store? Even though one 
would use the USB 2.0 cable to download audio books onto the Kindle, why 
can’t you use the same method to transfer text files to the machine, but 
must pay Amazon to have them use a special email address to beam the 
materials to the Kindle every time you want something added? The Sony 
Reader is less encumbered by the "Whispernet" functionality of the Kindle, 
but is crippled by not having any kind of Wi-Fi. 6) The industrial, 
ergonomic designs of both the Kindle and Sony Reader need a lot of work. I 
could see Apple coming out with a better product that does everything a 
reader should, but perhaps the company is too smart to jump into a nascent 
market that has failed to generate much revenue despite many attempts in 
recent years. It would be great to have a device like the iPod Touch with 
a slightly larger form factor and touch screen, with Wi-Fi connectivity, 
the ability to send and receive emails/update blogs, download text and 
audio files from Project Gutenberg and other sites, as well as PDF 
versions of journal articles, OpenOffice document formats, e-books, etc., 
and still be able to listen to some sweet tunes while you do it. And every 
now and again, watch a video on You Tube or look through a few photos of 
friends and family. I wouldn’t even mind having to recharge it more often 
than the Kindle, especially since having that glorious touch screen 
(color! and back-lit!) would be such an improvement over the monochromatic 
display of the Kindle. I would pay $400.00 for that, but we’re talking 
about something more than an e-book reader, now, aren’t we. It sounds like 
a PDA, all of which now have most, if not all of these features, minus the 
Apple touch screen and software. Those go for $99-$400. In the end, I 
think that v1.0 of the Kindle may do some good by increasing awareness of 
the e-book marketplace to casual consumers (it has generated an amazing 
amount of press in the last few days), but we’ll have to wait for future 
iterations of the device (and its competitors’ devices) before passing 
final judgment on the concept. Now if there was a way for libraries to 
lend out e-books without being actively connect to the Internet, with data 
that became automatically unreadable after a certain circulation period, 
that would really be something
--Steve Nordstrom Nov 20, 05:35 PM

2. As a librarian, I tire of articles and blog posts that give every 
conceivable reason as to why NOT to use a technology rather than trying it 
out and giving the technology a chance to find its market. As a confirmed 
user of the Sony eReader, I offer a relatively short response to Steve’s 
too-long posting about the Kindle. 1. If you want free stuff on your Sony 
eReader you can load your own Word documents, PDFs and free e-books (e.g., 
from Project Gutenberg). Library ebook services also have supported other 
e-book formats in the past and will probably support these new ones as 
well. Finally, if you want to buy books, they are much cheaper 
electronically than in print. equivalent. 2. I travel a lot for work, 
often on long flights. I want multiple books with me so when I finish one 
(or tire of one, or if I want to read multiple books simultaneously) I can 
do so. With the luggage weight limitations on planes, stuffing the printed 
books into your suitcase these days can lead to hefty overweight charges. 
3) I don’t know if Steve actually has used a device with e-ink for an 
extended period of time, but the screen is very readable. And, I don’t 
know of anyone who got a sneezing attack or a mold allergy attack from 
reading an eReader, but there are certainly many librarians who have 
complained about book dust, mites and the like. 4) No, the Kindle will not 
supplant a cell phone or a laptop on business trips, and it also won’t 
replace a briefcase or a spare pair of socks. Who cares? Would you have 
made the argument a few years ago that you wouldn’t carry a cell phone on 
a business trip because it wouldn’t supplant the laptop? And, by the way, 
when was the last time you bought a waterproof printed book? I brought my 
eReader to the beach and it did just fine. Does it smell like a book? No, 
but my iPod also doesn’t smell like a vinyl record. 5) I hardly know where 
to start with this one. Suffice it to say that failure of the Kindle to 
load your PDF documents wirelessly is a pretty abstruse reason not to use 
it to read printed books. 6) The technology isn’t perfect yet, but let’s 
not assume that Apple will make it perfect. Did you not own your first 
cell phone before this summer because the iPhone was not yet invented or 
wait to get your first MP3 player until this fall because the iTouch was 
not yet available? Furthermore, Apple has had their share of duds in the 
past. (The Apple Newton didn’t exactly set the PDA market in motion -- the 
Palm Pilot did.) So, while waiting for perfection to arrive I will 
continue to enjoy reading many more books on my eReader and have enjoyed 
the experience, and I will do so in a way that is not possible with a 
printed book: reading hands-free while resting the eReader in my lap, 
while reclining in bed, or running on a treadmill.--Arnold Hirshon Nov 20, 
06:22 PM

3. Kindle DOES support PDF. Email the file from your computer
 Amazon 
converts the data and sends it along to your reader. See 
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/19/many-details-about-the-kindle/ Color 
would be nice, but the battery life would drop by 50 percent or 
more.--Bill Sodeman Nov 20, 06:25 PM

4. I’ve been purchasing and using ebooks for the past several years, and I 
see the biggest challenge not being ergonomics, which continues to rapidly 
improve, but rather a stable DRM platform. The current situation is a 
disaster, with the two major platforms: Microsoft Reader and Adobe’s DRM, 
leaving us with nothing less than a train wreck. The platforms are 
primitive and are given little support by the two companies. The licensing 
with these two platforms are highly volatile and bug-ridden. They 
currently embed a license activation that is tied to your current PC 
configuration; any changes to your hardware or your operating system will 
likely render your ebooks unreadable, with no recourse to reactivating 
their licenses. The blogosphere is filled with legions of frustrated ebook 
consumers who have been left in the lurch by retailers like amazon and the 
platform providers Microsoft and Adobe. Many have threatened a 
class-action lawsuit in their frustration, not knowing they would lose 
their books at the first change in their computing environment. Neither 
the retailers of ebooks or the two software companies accept 
responsibility for the situation; their basic stance appears to be that 
you should quickly read the book and not worry about keeping around a 
copy. Under the current DRM model, ebooks are ephermeral; they are not 
intended for building a ‘library’ as one does with music and iTunes. Until 
a retailer like Apple enters the arena, I don’t see the situation 
changing. I lost some $200 in ebooks when amazon abruptly decided to stop 
supporting Adobe ebooks shortly before the Kindle’s introduction—is this a 
company you would trust with a $400 outlay just for the reading device? I 
complained to amazon, but they sent a form message, which I’m sure was 
sent to many many others, stating, essentially, sorry but tough luck. I do 
own the Sony Reader, which I really like, and clearly demonstrates the 
potential for a robust and ergonomic reading platform. But it is a closed 
platform and the selection is relatively limited. The Sony Reader had no 
problems permitting me to work with my Reader Library after reinstalling 
everything with the Vista upgrade.--Roger Brisson Nov 20, 06:52 PM

5. I read ebooks on my Dell Axim, most of which come from free 
e-libraries. I have purchased a few ebooks but stopped for two reasons:
    1. The price of the ebooks I purchased was no different than buying a 
print version, so there was no incentive.
    2. As someone above mentioned, DRM. I cannot read Adobe ebooks on my 
Microsoft-based device. I prefer reading on the hand-held device rather 
than the PC screen. Until those two items are fixed, I won’t be buying 
many, if any, ebooks in the near future.--R. Mitchell Nov 21, 07:55 AM

6. Someday electronic book readers will take off. Take a heft of my 
Highschooler’s back back if you want to know one reason why. What’s 
needed, in my view: - Color. - A business plan that includes textbook 
publishers. - Much less expensive devices. I’d say $99 in today’s money at 
the most and $49 would be a whole lot better. To succeed, I see readers 
being sold at cost with all of the profit in the book sales margins. That 
means the device seller -- probably Apple, Google, Amazon, and/or 
Microsoft -- have to own the bookstore and sell books that only work with 
their their device (and books in the public domain). This means 
DRM.--Peter Hess Nov 21, 09:33 AM

7. I am in the education technology business. I have worked with Project 
Gutenberg, World eBook Library, RocketReader, eTAP, ExamView, and Sony. 
The biggest complaint I hear from educators is that textbooks are too 
expensive. Electronic textbooks and ebooks should eventually cost no more 
than $1-$10 each. They are not because demand is too low. A practical 
reading device will increase the demand for content. For a reading device 
to be practical, it must handle graphics, must connect to the Internet, 
must have a long-lasting battery, should allow interactivity, should 
handle audio and video, should be less bulky than a laptop, etc. This is 
starting to sound like a large screen iPod touch. Hmmm. A good textbook 
capable reading device would save money in other ways as well. Students 
wouldn’t have to lug heavy textbooks around saving young backs. Schools 
wouldn’t have to install lockers or store and replace printed texts. State 
standards tests could be administered electronically. Other ideas? I agree 
with Peter about the business model. Like the phone industry, the device 
will either be given away or sold at cost, but it will be the content 
companies that will subsidize the cost to make it happen.--John B. Nov 21, 
09:52 AM

8. My apologies to Arnold for another long post (this one will be shorter 
than his, however). I agree with everyone that the price of the device and 
the price of the content are just too high at this point in time, and I 
suspect it will seriously impair the Kindle’s ability to attract a wider 
audience. Compared to the first-generation iPod, which also debuted on the 
market at $399, IMO the Kindle has at least three things working against 
it: 1) The design is not nearly as intuitive and ergonomically pleasing as 
the iPod’s. The iPod’s click wheel alone has been the envy of every mp3 
player manufacturer. Lesson: you simply cannot underestimate the power of 
intuitive, effective design at attracting new, non-tech-savvy customers to 
a tech product. Kindle v2.0 will need to look sexier and feel less clunky 
in the hands of users before it can start to attract the attention the 
iPod got from day one. 2) The iTunes Music Store sold all content at two 
low prices: $.99 a song, or $9.99 for an entire album. Not only was that 
cheaper than buying a physical CD, and more convenient than going to the 
store to buy a physical CD, but when you bought the item, it was yours to 
keep forever, not tied to a standalone device, but to be stored and backed 
up on your computer for perpetuity. The ability to purchase single songs 
instead of albums was the store’s coup de grace: users could satisfy their 
desire to own a particular song by a favorite artist without being forced 
to buy the entire album (a tactic that almost certainly wouldn’t work to 
try to sell books by the chapter). And if you didn’t own an iPod, you 
could still use the iTunes Music Store to purchase music that you could 
burn to a CD-R, increasing the iTunes Music Store’s audience outside of 
owners of a particular device. The combination of affordability, 
convenience, and ownership has made the iPod and iTunes Stores a success 
where other digital media delivery devices and services (including 
subscription services) have failed. 3) The easily-consumable media 
delivered by the iPod (first music, but now movies, television, podcasts, 
games, etc.) are much more closely tied to American consumer and popular 
cultures than the media delivered by e-book readers (literature, 
journalism, and even blogs). This means that the Kindle will be a hard 
sell as a cultural status device among teens and young adults, the primary 
demographic for handheld technological products such as iPods and cell 
phones. Bibliophiles and traveling businesspeople are a much smaller slice 
of the pie. One last thing: I’m not writing these comments to blast 
Amazon’s attempt to bring a solution to the marketplace for reading 
digital text. I would love to own and use something like the Kindle one 
day, but I’ll wait to see if the price for the device can be lowered and 
the model for content delivery can be refined first.--Steve Nordstrom Nov 
21, 12:36 PM

9. Here’s the bottom line on the Kindle and PDF. The Kindle doesn’t 
support PDF directly. Amazon must convert it, as already noted, and Bezos 
and friends apparently charge you for this (well, unless you use 
Mobipocket Desktop for conversion into nonencrypted Mobi and transfer via 
a memory card). And the conversions may not be flawless. Worse, the Kindle 
cannot read DRMed e-books from sources other than Amazon. And that 
includes DRMed PDF even though many big publishers use the format in its 
"protected" form. For e-book novices, the Kindle might be great, and as an 
e-book booster, I love the fact that E made the cover of Newsweek. But 
from social and technological perspectives, this machine comes with its 
share of flaws, including privacy-related ones. For my latest thoughts, 
see 
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/11/21/kindle-owners-report-amazonian-gift-to-us-snoops-mobis-iffy-fate-aussie-e-reader-and-gloomy-reading-study/
    . Thanks,
    David Rothman
    TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
    http://www.teleread.org/blog--David Rothman Nov 21, 01:23 PM

10. Kindle is an OK first generation device. If they release another 
version, I’m hoping the battery issues will be resolved. Even then, the 
pricing model seems strange. This is the kind of device that should be 
given away, perhaps as part of Amazon Prime, or with a bundle of e-books. 
Asking consumers to pay $400 without a full library of content? That’s a 
leap of faith. Paying a dime to post a PDF file through email? Seems silly 
to me. And $2 per blog feed? That’s doesn’t make any sense at all.--Bill 
Sodeman Nov 21, 08:31 PM #

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