posted
Just caught up my Uncle Orson columns and saw the one where he described his Kindle experiences. In it he lists the objections he had to ebooks, and then how his own experiences with a Kindle answered (most of) them satisfactorily, to the point where he plans to get all of his books available in ebook form.
Which I applaud. But if possible, I would appreciate it if they also would be made available for other platforms besides the Kindle.
I've been reading ebooks for 7 years or so. First on a series of Palm Pilots and now on my iPod Touch. It is now my primary method of reading books, in fact, and I do have OSC books on there. I bought a copy of Enchantment from eReader.com 4 years ago, Magic Street a month after that, and they have traveled along with me everywhere I go. Ender in Exile I bought and downloaded immediately because driving to the bookstore would have taken too long. The Kindle, wonderful though it may be, is not the only ebook reading system out there and I have no intention of buying one as $350 for a device that only reads books is far too much for me to consider, whereas my $300 iPod Touch reads books and does a few zillion other things besides.
However, I suspect my smaller handheld device was the sort of ereader he was objecting to, so here's my answer to his objections, as applied to Palms/iPhones/iPod Touches:
1. Unreadable screens.
I can read 'em just fine. I don't expect that to be true for everyone, but there are an awful lot of us out here who have no problems. More every day, in fact, as ebooks for the iPhone are some of the fastest growing categories in iTunes. It is, to me, even easier to become entranced in a book on a smaller screen because it becomes almost impossible to skim text, as I have been known to do with a print book.
2. Limited selection of books.
Catching up fast. And Stanza for the iPhone can connect wirelessly to Project Gutenberg and download books with a touch, which immediately expands your available (free!) library by another 27,000 books. Granted, most of them aren't books you may be interested in, but give me Twain and Wells and Doyle and Chesterson and Wodehouse and I'm good for months.
3. Lose a book, you're out a few bucks. Lose an ebook machine, and you've lost hundreds.
Just as with the Kindle, every book I've bought at Fictionwise and eReader and ManyBooks and Baen's Webscriptions -- and I've bought hundreds -- are still there if I need them.
4. As with music, copy protection will be annoying.
And it is. But eReader's is fairly elegant: you enter your name and credit card number once on your device, and it can then read any book you bought with that card. If you change cards, a button updates all the books in your library. It never bothers you after the first one, and sharing books becomes impossible unless you're also willing to give out your name and credit card number. The Kindle app for the iPhone works just as seamlessly as the actual Kindle. Baen, of course, doesn't use DRM at all and even gives away great numbers of its books for free, and yet somehow they've remained profitable and the second biggest science fiction publisher. Funny how that works.
5. When the battery dies, so does your book.
True. But I have a charger at home and one at work, and the battery lasts quite a while (although admittedly not as long as a Kindle's).
6. Just try flipping through the pages, dog-earing, or making marginal notations in an electronic book!
OK. Most of the readers on my iPod Touch allow you to make bookmarks (on eReader they do in fact look like dogears), all of them provide ways to scroll through the book, and a few allow you to make notes. And you can do word searches, something no print book can match.
7. They rob the authors, who are paid the same low royalties as for printed books -- while the publisher has far lower expenses and pockets the difference.
This is indeed a terrible thing, and one that many ebook lovers have been complaining about. There are a few publishers who address it but none of the big ones do.
8. What if Microsoft creates the ebook software? It will be the end of literature.
No worries. Microsoft's Reader is probably the most awkward, least-used and most DRM-crippled ebook reader.
The aspects he didn't mention, that still bug me, are: -- You can't easily loan out books. There are quite a few authors -- OSC, Jim Butcher, Robert B. Parker, Terry Pratchett -- whose books get purchased and then passed around the family. -- Difficult to get one signed by the author. -- Dropping one in the bathtub a much bigger deal
So I still buy print books for those reasons, and I certainly have plenty from my pre-ebook days. But mostly I look for ebook editions.
And that leads to the major reason why I think OSC should get all of his books into other ebook stores is this: they're already out there. Right now it is not terribly difficult to download copies of everything OSC has ever published, in your choice of ebook format (or plain text), without paying anyone a dime because people out there have scanned them in page by page and created un-DRMed electronic copies to share. An honest person cannot pay for the privilege of reading Ender's Game on a handheld device no matter how much she wants to, while a dishonest person can do so with relative ease.
For those of us who want to read our books in formats convenient to us, who want to give you money for them, please get your books out there in as many formats as possible.
posted
I agree with all of the following. Although my ereader of choice is my Palm.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: I have no intention of buying one as $350 for a device that only reads books is far too much for me to consider, whereas my $300 iPod Touch reads books and does a few zillion other things besides.
Amen. The Kindle is also considerably too big to fit easily in my purse, even though the actual screen is barely bigger than that of my Palm.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 1. Unreadable screens.
I can read 'em just fine. I don't expect that to be true for everyone, but there are an awful lot of us out here who have no problems.
Hear, hear! Especially since these days they are almost always back-lit. Reading my Palm is the dark is easy too.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 2. Limited selection of books.
Catching up fast. And Stanza for the iPhone can connect wirelessly to Project Gutenberg and download books with a touch, which immediately expands your available (free!) library by another 27,000 books. Granted, most of them aren't books you may be interested in, but give me Twain and Wells and Doyle and Chesterson and Wodehouse and I'm good for months.
I have almost as many own-but-unread ebooks as I have paper ones. Way too many. *blush*
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 3. Lose a book, you're out a few bucks. Lose an ebook machine, and you've lost hundreds.
Just as with the Kindle, every book I've bought at Fictionwise and eReader and ManyBooks and Baen's Webscriptions -- and I've bought hundreds -- are still there if I need them.
Yup. And my Palm syncs to my computer.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 5. When the battery dies, so does your book.
True. But I have a charger at home and one at work, and the battery lasts quite a while (although admittedly not as long as a Kindle's).
My Palm can charge when hooks up (USB cable I carry everywhere) to any computer. Plus I have some batteries (about the same as my Palm) to feed it power too. Enough juice in two to keep my Palm running non-stop for an entire flight to Israel from L.A.
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 6. Just try flipping through the pages, dog-earing, or making marginal notations in an electronic book!
OK. Most of the readers on my iPod Touch allow you to make bookmarks (on eReader they do in fact look like dogears), all of them provide ways to scroll through the book, and a few allow you to make notes. And you can do word searches, something no print book can match.
Yup. I love being able to bookmark every few pages, highlight or insert a note, etc. (My reader of choice these days is Mobipocket Reader.)
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: 7. They rob the authors, who are paid the same low royalties as for printed books -- while the publisher has far lower expenses and pockets the difference.
This is indeed a terrible thing, and one that many ebook lovers have been complaining about.
Except here's the thing. The author doesn't get any less than they would for a paper book. Agreed, they should be getting more. But how does that translate to the ebook reader robbing the author?
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: For those of us who want to read our books in formats convenient to us, who want to give you money for them, please get your books out there in as many formats as possible.
quote:I do a lot of my reading lying on my back in bed. The Kindle is slightly heavier than most paperbacks, and lighter than most hardcovers. You can hold it and turn the pages with one hand.
*snickers*
okay, I know I'm immature, but it was too good to pass up.
I doubt I'll ever buy a kindle. Why?
I live a 3 minute walk from a central city library, which along with 18 associated libraries (that I can reserve books from and pick them up at the central library) has pretty much every book I'll ever want to read.
If I buy a book, it's because I love it so much I want to keep it on my bookshelf, reach for it whenever I want to reread a wonderful passage, write in the margins and highlight important quotes, and especially, share with my friends. Why would I dump an extra $350 just to be able to do that on a fancy machine? (and from OSC's review, it seems more protracted to try and write marginal notes on the Kindle than doing it with a pen)
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
You know, it occurs to me that the Kindle really might be worth it for subscription content. Consider: I want to read the latest Scalzi or something, but don't want to buy it and would rather have it in a more portable form than my local library provides. I can download it to the Kindle for $2 or so, keep it for a week (or one read-through, even, since the Kindle knows how many pages you've read), and then let it vanish.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can see that happening, but there's no reason it couldn't also be done for other ereader programs on less dedicated devices.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'd imagine that the Kindle's DRM is a point in its favor from a subscription-based publisher's perspective.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'll be holding out on eBooks until they start pairing them with the physical book (like the way alot of dvds are now being released with a digital copy).
I can see why eBooks are appealing but I'm too much of a pack-rat. I look forward to lining every wall of my house with books and if I switch to ebooks, I'll have to learn how to decorate and that just doesn't work for me.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
When they start putting textbooks out in ebook form, college students the world over will buy Kindles in droves.
Until then, the books I buy are often the same price or cheaper than the ebook form, and I enjoy the tactile experience, and lack the massive up front sum it takes to buy an e-reader.
These things have to come way down in price, the ebooks have to come down in price, and the selection needs to increase before I'd consider coughing up the cash. I'm hoping that when Apple gets into the game it'll start a price war and the price will drop.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: When they start putting textbooks out in ebook form, college students the world over will buy Kindles in droves.
Several publishers already do sell ebook textbooks. In fact, I know of a couple that preferentially sell ebooks, and only secondarily sell print versions. (Atomic Dog Publishing is one.) However, the ebook versions are usually only marginally cheaper than the print versions, and almost never cheaper than the used ones floating around. And you can't sell the ebook at the end of the semester . . . not easily, anyway.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
In order to read properly, I need an interface which doesn't accommodate other media. So I can't read on an iphone if I am aware that the same iphone can show me a video instead- it's too distracting.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Which enables you to do what, buy Amazon's Kindle edition books for your Palm?
Which enables me to buy Kindle books for my iTouch that are more expensive in other ebook formats, especially NY Times bestsellers.
My iTouch has eReader, Stanza, Bookshelf, Kindle, Bookz and Classics on it, because I don't want to miss out on any ebook avenues. I've also got a standalone ebook of "Coraline" to see what it was like, but I really don't like the practice of making each book a separate app. Like downloading a new music player for every MP3, unnecessary and annoying.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
*blush*
