The Misunderstood eBook23 June 2003 I read a truly disturbing article in Reuters recently. It's opened with Cory Doctorow's success at offering Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as and ebook, and I thought, "Hey, maybe they're finally getting it." Then the article explained that Doctorow is the exception rather than the rule, and that the general public doesn't want ebooks. The reasons given were so far off base from the ebook market I've been covering for three years that I started to wonder if the article was written by the Iraqi Information Minister ("I must now inform you that you are too far from reality.") First, the article trotted out readability. People don't want to read books on a computer screen. The writer actually used the "curling up on the sofa" argument as though it still made sense. I hate to be the dowsing of cold water on the paper book industry, but this example just makes anyone using it look archaic and uninformed. I curl up on my couch every damn night and read ebooks for an hour or so to unwind before I go to sleep. I read on my PDA de jour, and it is not only every bit as comfortable as reading a paper book, it's better. Why is it better? Let me count the ways. I don't have to hold the book open. I don't have to shift position every time I turn a page. I can provide my own private background music since my PDA can play MP3s (actually, Oggs) in the background. I don't have to pick my position to get the best lighting since my page is self-illuminating. And if I happen to fall asleep while reading, I don't lose my page. Go ahead, try to make the case that reading a paperback is superior. I dare you. Then they brought out the "and there aren't any ebooks anyway, because of pirates." (And somewhere, in the distance, I hear al-Sahaf saying, "There are no ebooks! And if there were ebooks, they would be pirated and no one would read them. Ebooks will be beaten with shoes!") Like most lies, this one is half true. Ebook selection does pale compared to paper books, at least new releases of paper books. (Try to find a paperback more than six months old, and then we'll talk about paper availability.) It is getting better, though, and oddly, the publishers making the best go of it are the ones ignored by the writer of the article. She mentioned companies trying to come up with ebooks using "disappearing ink" and other DRMish means to further limit what consumers can do with the content they buy. The publishers doing best with ebooks are going the opposite direction, making ebooks more accessible and more palatable. Steve Jobs credits the incredible success of the Apple Music Store to his philosophy of not treating consumers like thieves. Give people the opportunity to supports artists they like at reasonable prices with little or no restrictions, and most people will do the right thing. Jim Baen knows this, and he has seen income for his authors double in some instances because of the "no catch" way he handles ebooks. Scott Pendergrast at Fictionwise knows it too, and he's managed to convince Random House to experiment with unencrypted ebooks on his site. And Palm Digital Media keeps chugging away, amassing the biggest collection of ebook titles and treating their customers like customers, not felons. The titles will come, but we have a chicken and egg problem. In order for more publishers to release titles as ebooks, they have to see a demand for them. In order for there to be a demand, they need to quit scaring off the few that do try ebooks with restrictive DRM. Make e-reading a pleasant experience, and the customers will come back for more. And there is one last problem the ebook community desperately needs to solve before ebooks take off with John and Joan Q. Public. Somebody needs to let the masses know that ebooks exist. I didn't realize how big a problem this was until I started working the PDA counter at CompUSA. I use ebooks at a selling point for PDAs, and nine out of ten times I mention that you can use a PDA to read novels while on the go I get a blank stare. I have to explain what I mean because most of the people that walk into my store have never even considered the possibility of reading books on a handheld device. When I explain it to them and show them iSilo and PalmReader on my Zire 71, they get into the idea, and when I show them Palm Digital Media and Fictionwise, they make little excited noises. The biggest problem most people have with reading ebooks is learning that it's an option in the first place. I've seen a slew of other complaints. Some, like ebooks lacking the "heft" or smell of paper editions are just anachronistic nostalgia. I'm sure early book readers noticed that books just weren't the same as scrolls, darn it. Ebooks are a new medium, as different in many ways from paper as audiobooks, but that doesn't make the medium inferior, just different. On objection to ebooks that I found particularly interesting was that ebooks lack a sense of permanence that paper editions have. On the surface, this makes sense. An ebook is just a collection of bits, after all. You can't touch one, really, or put it up on the bookshelf to admire it. But when you stop and consider the long view, this is really silly. Most books are printed on acidic paper that actually dissolves over time. Glue bindings disintegrate. Ink fades. Most paperbacks printed today won't last twenty years before they literally fall apart. Ebooks, on the other hand, last forever. If stored in DRM and encryption free formats like ASCII or HTML, they'll be readable by whatever technology replaces what he have today and once an ebook is posted on the Internet, it's copied from server to server by so many web spiders that it's virtually certain that at least one copy will always be out there somewhere. And with digital, one copy is all you need to start a whole new "print run." The myths on why ebooks don't work don't hold up to common sense. Most of the resistance to ebooks can be overcome by the education of a book buying public that simply doesn't realize why they should give ebooks a try (I've seen ebooks referred to as a solution in search of a problem). So how can we fix this? How can we kill the mistruths once and for all and get the word out to world at large that ebooks are here, and here to stay? Honestly, I don't know. Let me know what you think, and we'll explore the options together. Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! |