EBooks suck

[andrewducker]

I have an ebook reader.  I love it to bits, and I'm 3/4 of the way through reading Anathem on it, which is much better than carrying around a massive hardback all the time.  So far my favourite feature is that it remembers what page I'm on, something I find very handy when I'm reading in three minute bursts.

I'd be perfectly happy to pay for more books on it, but some looking around makes it clear how unlikely that is.  I've just gone through the first 20 pages of what Waterstones have on ebooks for SF, and the first book I've found that I've actually paid for recently was Terry Pratchett's Nation.  So, let's say I had bought it in EBook format rather than as a hunk of dead tree.

Price on Waterstones for the hardback: £10.19 - that's with a 40% discount apparently
Price on Waterstones for the ebook: £15.63 - and that's with a 20% discount.
Prince on Amazon for the hardback: £8.49
Chances of me paying for an ebook this year: zero.

Comments

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I will aim to raise that chance above zero this year.

[andrewducker]

Might one ask how?

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

Well, I suspect talking to publishers in my day job would be the main way.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

How does copyright work with the ereader? I assume you can't buy a 'book' and give it to someone after you've read it?

[andrewducker]

Yup, which is another strike against them.

ebooks should so clearly be _cheaper_ than real books, but are bizarrely priced much higher.

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it just needs a little time for the novelty value to wear down for the prices to come to a sensible level. That or the whole concept'll die as no one's going to be willing to pay that much extra just for a little more convenience I guess.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I won't comment any further (popping out), but we feel very keenly that we need more and cheaper books as soon as possible. Here's the official line, feel free to message me if you want an official reply. I'd better clock off and enjoy my weekend.

[andrewducker]

That official line is fine by me :->

The only books that tempted me were the Oz books - £4 for a book seems reasonable to me when I can't resell it, etc.

Oh - the site doesn't make it clear what limitations are on the epub files, how many readers I can stick it on, etc. I refused to pay for music until I could buy it without DRM - but I've done so on several occasions since then. I'm not paying for books that will vanish into the ether when my reader breaks next year, or I get a new PC.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Literary agent Nathan Bransford is keeping a very close eye on e-books (http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com) and I don't know that he's broken down the cost of publishing a book, but IIRC he did recently point out that they aren't much cheaper because most of the money goes on things like promotion. I don't think he had an example of an e-book priced higher than a paper book, though.

He gives an interesting perspective of e-books, at any rate, given that his business is selling books to publishers!

[andrewducker]

He doesn't seem to realise that "making ebooks as expensive as hardbacks" + "making ebooks much less useful than paperbacks" does not equal "selling lots of ebooks".

If they don't want to have ebooks at all, then fine. But at the moment they clearly don't have a marketing method that works.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I doubt I will ever jump ship to ebooks. I find it hard to read long passages on screens. Plus they don't have the nice book smell and they feel plasticy and bleh.

I like real books too much.. They're more than just words telling me things, they are lovely objects in their own right.

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

iawtc.

Also I break tech, sometimes instantly on receipt of it, and books can be dropped down stairs, into baths or fallen asleep on top of and still be useable even if they're no longer in exactly pristine condition because of it.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Also, how long will it be before e-readers are outdated? Books from 200 years ago are still perfectly readable (I have an early edition of the Lady in the Lake by Scott. The cover is coming off, but the pages are fine!).

[andrewducker]

Which is why books need to be produced in open formats that are well documented. I wouldn't be interested in books that are produced in a Sony proprietary format (or the like) - that'd be a terrible idea.

On a similar note, see what I said to nuttyxander about DRM.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Oh god, a load of different formats would be terrible. I'm not against e-books (actually I think they're probably a good idea for a lot of people..), I just know that if I have the choice (even if real books cost more) I will stick with my papery things.

[andrewducker]

I suspect I'll end up using both - depending on the situation and the type of book.

Oh, and how well the technology improves too.

[andrewducker]

I agree about the book smell. But the screens on e-readers aren't lcd, and they look staggeringly better than computer screens.

The "real book" argument reminds me a lot of what people said about CDs/vinyl - that the packaging was part of the experience. It seems that this isn't quite as true as all that :->

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I worked at a bookshop over Christmas where we sold e-readers, so I know what they're like. I still don't think I'd want to use one for the long - I will happily sit and read a book from cover to cover (and I'm not talking about piddly little things. I've read the Lord of the Rings in a day) and anything that makes that even a little harder will ruin the experience for me.

It's not "packaging", exactly - you have to hold the book while you read it. I'd rather hold something I enjoy the feel of. Records and CDs you don't have to touch while you use them, so the comparison isn't entirely accurate.

I don't think I'd want to live in a house without books. It'd be horrible. Urgh. Sterile.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I disagree - I'm happy to read a whole novel on a computer screen, but I have an e-reader (Sony) and I get eye-strain reading from that, because it's darkish grey on lightish grey.

[andrewducker]

Interesting. Cheers for the data point!

[andrewducker]

If you're feeling particularly adventurous then this may help:
http://www.msh-tools.com/ebook/contrast.html

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Interesting.
Although, from the before/after photos, that doesn't seem to have any effect on the background grey. I'd like it to be as white as the piece of paper they have in the photo. Like in a real book, or a backlit screen.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[heyokish.livejournal.com]

in principle, I really like the idea of e-books, because being able to carry lots of things to read all in one non-arm-killing package is massively appealing.

But there are lots of things that bother me, too, and not just the current cost. Not being able to borrow or lend books is key, or just pass it on to someone else when you're done. And second hand book shops. And libraries. And, when you are doing some research work, having lots of different things open on a big table in front of you all at once while you cross-check things.

But probably the most important, for me, is the way that my books act as an external brain. Even when I can't remember the thing itself, I know where the knowledge is: I can visualise the book, get it from the shelf, and find the right section because I have a visual mapping or index of the things I've read. I just don't know if that would work if it was all electronic. Though being able to text-search through an entire library would be bloody handy. But it would require a massive shift from the pattern I've developed over the past lots-of-years of being a voracious reader.

A good addition, but not, for me, a replacement. Not yet. And certainly not when they cost so bloody much.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I feel much the same way at the moment - they're a good addition, but they aren't a replacement yet.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I have to say I'd be hard to convince that they'll ever be a full replacement.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I use my Palm as an e-book reader -- taking plain text files or HTML (available all over the place quite legally: Tor, miscellaneous author sites, Project Gutenberg) and converting to Palm book via Makebook or my latest discovery, WavePDB (which does batch conversion). I don't tend to pay for e-books though occasionally will buy one from Fictionwise, especially if there's something interesting on offer. (They're often much cheaper than Waterstones.)

I confess that if I have paid money for the paper version of a book, I feel entitled to acquire an e-copy from any available source: I found an illicit download of Anathem and used it as backup when I couldn't face the physical act of reading the actual book!

Chances of me paying for an e-book this year: pretty low unless there's something that I can't easily get in actual book format ...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

also, I have no compunction about beaming somebody a copy of an e-book. If I'd lend them the physical book, why not give them the e-copy?

And yes, I know it's very different: it's creating a second copy, which can in turn be duplicated and distributed. But I can't see an analogue for 'lend a book to a friend' with e-books.

[andrewducker]

I'll admit to having done the same with Anathem...

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I wanted Winnie-the-Pooh books for my ebook reader on my PalmOS device but, having persued this idea via the publisher, the 'Milne estate' wouldn't even give me permission to manually throw everything into a text file to carry around with me.

Bastards.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Did you happen to read this history of ebooks?

http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars

[andrewducker]

Added to my reading list. Cheers!

[andrewducker]

Page 4 pretty much sums it up:
"All of this is to say that the publishers effectively sabotaged the e-book market from day one."

And the end of it rings true too. I didn't read a book on my PDA until I was at a con and autopope gave me a copy of Accelerando from _his_ PDA. Until that point I hadn't even considered it. And then I read it over the next few days, and realised that it just wasn't a problem, despite the misgivings I'd had before actually trying it.

The Sony PRS-505 is even nicer (except for not being able to read it in the dark), and the only thing I miss is the ability to flick back and forward quickly between different pages - which isn't something I need to do often, and is apparently easier with the 700.

It's clearly still in the early stages, but I'm hoping that the problems in the industry get sorted in the near future, because I'd now rather read on the e-reader than carry an actual book around with me.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Ah, Accelerando. The 'thanks to' made me chortle. ;)

(Didn't like the book, despite your credentials).

I quite liked the bit in the article on how we don't quite know what a reader is, and what an ebook is, and whether it's the box or the text. There's a lack of clarity there, and until we get something like an iTunes where we know we can find such-and-such a book that will fit on whatever reader (or phone or laptop) we have, I'm not seeing it.

Perhaps the box is still too important. iPods are so ubiquitous, it's not important what they are.

[andrewducker]

The book was definitely one of those idiosyncratic ones that people other love or leaves them untouched. I felt it was very good at what it was doing, but not everyone is going to enjoy that.

I agree about readers - until they start to be more widespread there's not going to be a general understanding of this. There are now ereaders for the iPod Touch/iPhone, and that may help a bit. But not until they're cheaper, and it's easier to know what you can/can't do with them.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I do love real books, but I must admit that I'm struggling to see where I'll put all of mine without lining the walls in multiple rooms. As most of them are paperback, this doesn't quite lend the same effect as a Victorian gentleman's library ;)

For that reason and because when I do read, I read quickly, I'd be interested in ebooks, but I'm yet to be convinced we're beyond the 'early adopter' phase, so I'm very much in 'wait and see' mode.

There are still some books I'd love to own (I have lovely leather bound copies of The Hobbit, LOTR & Silmarillion for example), but I'd be more than happy to indulge my penchant for dodgy vampire fiction in an electronic format.

[andrewducker]

Yup, sounds about right.

I'm always going to want some things in special formats for display. But not everything needs that treatment.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

LOVE your icon!! I've always said that just because fish don't need bicycles, doesn't mean they don't like them. :)

I think I shall now borrow this awesome icon.

Thanks for being so darn cool.