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Ed Hansberry

09-16-2003, 05:00 PM

The week of September 7 will not be remembered as one of the better weeks in the history of ebooks. <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17822">Barnes & Noble announced they were leaving the ebook business</a>. Barnes and Noble basically sold two kinds of ebooks, DRM 5 encrypted Microsoft Reader ebooks in the .LIT format and the Adobe .PDF format. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/article-ebooks/ebook.gif" /> The prior week though is a better indication of the future of ebooks. This was when <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17520">PalmOne sold Palm Digital Media to PalmGear</a>. I've been a Palm Reader fan for years, well before it was Palm Reader in fact. Ever wondered why the folder your Palm ebooks are stored in is called "Peanut Press?" They do need to market themselves more effectively to non-Palm users though. So few people realize that you can read ebooks in the Palm Reader format on Pocket PCs, Windows PCs and the Macintosh. It isn't a big surprise that this is the case though. Since Palm purchased Peanut Press in 2001, the ebook site has had more incentive in marketing Palm devices, only footnoting that other platforms are supported. Just visit their <a href="http://www.peanutpress.com">home page</a>. You'll see a picture of some Palm device, currently the aging (and overpriced at $179) m130 and the text opens with "If you have a Palm Handheld, Sony Clié, or any other Palm OS device, you can be off reading eBooks in minutes." Then as if to say "Oh yeah, we do other platforms too" they list other operating systems they support. Even though that is the case, Pocket PC ebook revenue at the Palm Digital Media is, <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158427#158427">according to Peter Fry of PDM</a>, "a fairly sizable chunk of our revenue." Imagine what they could do if marketed to the Pocket PC community? Think of a nice shiny 1935 next to that m130 on the front page. :D<!> There is an article called <a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030914/80/e8dwo.html">Digital books still have a future</a> (Thanks for the link scargill). It states that the future of ebooks is still viable but it will just grow a bit slower than originally thought. "(On Wednesday) we sold 2,000 ebooks. It was the largest retail day at Palm Digital Media in 2003, and we are having the largest month ever," Ryan WuerchMost, chief executive of privately held Web retailer PalmGear, said last week. PalmGear recently bought Palm's digital publishing unit. He estimated that PalmGear, whose offerings range from "Beowolf" to best-sellers by Stephen King and Al Franken, will sell some 1.3 million ebooks over the next 12 months." That is quite a contrast to a recent article on handheld enthusiast site Brighthand called "<a href="http://www.brighthand.com/article/Will_Ebooks_Survive">Will E-Books Survive?</a>" which gives a much gloomier picture of the future of ebooks, relegating them to the task of being reference manuals. "So is there a future for ebooks? Maybe, but not when it comes to novels. To obviate paper-based novels, ebook novels must provide something compelling. That means that they must "do novels" better, easier or cheaper, and preferably all three. Ebooks do none of these when it comes to novels." The article's author, Steve Bush, wraps it up with "But novels in ebook form? I don't think so." I couldn't disagree more. I think ebooks have a great future for a number of reasons, but I also think that a number of changes have to be implemented to give them broader appeal. First, let's look at why digital text can be superior to printed text. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/article-ebooks/ebook-thegood.gif" /> Search Capabilities I read probably an above average amount of time. I have collected 34 ebooks on my Peanut Press bookshelf over the past two and a half years costing around $425. One of the things I like most about ebooks is the search feature. I don't think I've ever read a book where I wasn't near the end and needed to go back and look at something earlier to make sure I had the facts straight as the plot comes to a close. This is a huge pain with paper. Sometimes, I just give up. With ebooks, you just enter a key word or two and search. This is doubly so for historical, self help and reference books. I'll lump bookmarks in here too. I have several ebooks with dozens of bookmarks. You can't read a paper book that has 15 slips of paper hanging out. I personally am not one to dog ear pages either. I'm not sure why, I just don't like damaging the book. Unlimited libraries The library you carry with you is limited only by your financial resources to buy insanely large storage cards. Most ebooks are in the 300-500K range, so even a dirt cheap 32MB SD card will allow you to keep approximately 80 ebooks with you. Always with you, always ready You have the ability to always have your ebook reader with you. I'll discuss this more in depth in the problems with ebook readers later, but if the reader is well designed, there should be very few occasions where you don't have your ebooks at your fingertips. I know though that I read far more today than I did five to six years ago. I would often be caught in a doctor's office reading a nine-month old article from Money magazine. Today, I'll knock out 100 ebook pages. You can also read an ebook on almost 100% of PDAs in low to no light situations. My wife really appreciates this as I can lay in bed and read for hours if desired without her hearing pages turning or having the lamp on. I've also read outdoors at night with nothing but moonlight, at my church camp in the cabin after "lights out" and several other places that would simply make reading a regular book impossible without a flashlight. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/article-ebooks/ebook-thebad.gif" /> So, why haven't ebook taken off at anywhere close to what was predicted a few years ago? There are several reasons. Inability to loan/transfer your ebooks Formats like the Microsoft .LIT and Adobe .PDF that have digital rights management pretty much eliminate the ability to pass your ebook on when you are done. Not only do they need to have one of the supported platforms (Microsoft Reader supports the Pocket PC and Windows PC OS, Adobe supports Windows and Mac), you'd have a very limited circle of friends or family members to share with and that is if you used common passport/activation accounts, something that simply isn't realistic. Palm Reader formats can work on four platforms which makes it a bit easier to share, but your ebook is locked to your credit card number. That, for me, guarantees the only one I'll share my ebooks with is my wife. You must also agree to the PDM license agreement before buying which states "You may install the Reader and Content on any supported handheld device that you own." Doesn't sound like loaning is encouraged. I understand that digital media is different than print media. It is impossible to physically have one copy of a paper book in multiple places at one time to be read by multiple users. This is all too easy with an unprotected ebook though. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, but until there is one, this will prevent people that tend to buy a book then pass it around to a close circle of friends, from ever investing in ebooks. Inability to easily download ebooks Downloading ebooks is a bit like installing software. Simple for you and me but not so simple for some people. Ebook readers should have a feature that allows them to view the library, browse the ebook (PDM allows you to download first chapters of many ebooks or read them online) then purchase it right there over whatever online connection you have. I currently buy about 50% of my ebooks with my Pocket PC, but I need to use Pocket Internet Explorer and have a WiFi connection to browse. The PDM site isn't at all optimized for small screens that have online capabilities. Remember who they were marketing to for the past few years and the online access those devices had. ;) You can browse over slower connections like GPRS, but it can be painful unless you are going to purchase a specific book rather than peruse their online library. Consequently, I scroll horizontally a lot and then have to use Resco File Explorer to unzip the ebook to the correct folder. You think my grandmother could handle that? I doubt it. Remember, there are 30 million AOL users and many of them never venture out of AOL's walled garden. If you make purchasing ebooks more difficult than checking email on AOL, you are leaving out a big potential market. Ebook readers must be in a narrow range of sizes Ebook readers that are small enough to fit in your pocket or purse must still be large enough to have a screen that provides a satisfactory reading experience. I don't think ebook reading on voice centric devices like the Nokia 3650 or Orange SPV Smartphone will ever be a significant enough percentage of ebook sales to warrant the cost of developing the readers for it. That said, MobiPocket has released cell phone readers. You and I may read ebooks on a device that small, but it would only be a backup for me. I'd never seriously consider reading more than a few dozen pages on it for long periods of time. On the other hand, if you have a screen that's as large as a page in a paperback novel, you can forget any guy carrying around something that big. A woman might be able to fit that in her purse, but given that it would weigh quite a bit compared to modern PDAs, I don't see that being very likely either. This is but one reason why the <a href="http://www.gemstar-ebook.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/eBookstore.woa/wa/">Gemstar Rocket ebook reader died</a>. The GEB 2150 had an 8.2" screen. 8) Who is going to carry that anywhere? Most PDAs are the ideal size for this task. Light devices like the HP iPAQ 1900 series make perfect ebook readers. One possible exception for some users is the Tablet PC. It has a nice big screen and will be perfect for some users despite its mass and size. I personally will never understand why anyone would read an ebook on a desktop machine. I can't even stand to read long articles on the Web. I <a href="http://www.repligo.com">Repligo</a> them to my Pocket PC so I can kick back and enjoy some quiet reading time. Screens must be easy on the eyes Not only must the screens be large enough for you to get an adequate amount of text on the screen so you aren't flipping pages every eight seconds, the text must be legible. Variable font sizes are a given. Most ebook readers have several sizes so that usually isn't an issue. I'm talking about how the actual text looks. Microsoft was the first to market with a reader that gave you crisp text on a PDA in 2000 when the first MS Reader shipped with ClearType support. The problem was few devices were optimized for it so you either got a red or blue fuzzy edge to letters on some devices. Today this is less of a problem as more OEMs are making their devices work well with ClearType. Some devices even allow you to enable ClearType in all applications, not just Microsoft Reader. Beyond that though, you must enjoy the experience. Palm Reader and Microsoft Reader offer markedly different reading experiences. Microsoft's Reader has large margins all around the text which significantly reduces the amount of text on the screen. Palm Reader has almost no margins at the top and bottom and none on the edges, to the point that occasionally italicized text on the right hand side runs off the edge of the screen cutting off the tops of letters like l, t and r. Oddly enough, neither reader offers full screen support. You could easily get 10% to 15% more text on the screen if you got rid of the menu and start bars, but you have to make it easy enough to get out of that full screen mode so people on a certain aforementioned ISP don't wind up soft resetting to get back to the Today screen. Margins should be optional. These are just mathematical algorithms to flow the text. Let me decide if I don't want a margin, a tenth of an inch or a quarter of an inch margin. Also missing in action is landscape support. On a square screened Palm, this isn't an issue, but as Palm devices get input panels that move out of the way like their Pocket PC counterparts have had for years, landscape support makes more sense. Self help books, for example, make heavy use of bulleted lists and small tables. Width is much better in these circumstances than is the length you normally like when reading paragraphs. Some PDAs lend themselves to landscape reading just by the physical hardware design. Devices must be multipurpose The ebook reader must do more than just ebooks. This is another reason why the Gemstar ebook reader died. Other dedicated readers like the <a href="http://www.franklin.com/ebookman/">Franklin eBookman</a> are dead too. They just don't know it yet. PDAs are the perfect device for this. You already have your contacts, appointments and notes with you. Music? Got it. Games? Check. Email? Check. Ebooks? Now we're cooking. My point is no one is going to buy a $200 device to read ebooks. Ebooks must be icing on the cake. Palm Reader takes up absolutely no room in my pockets and costs nothing, although a $15 "Pro" version is available. It's already there on my iPAQ 2215. If I wanted an ebook in a different format that required installing another reader, like <a href="http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp">MobiPocket</a>, that will also take up no space and should do it at no additional cost. Single purpose devices just don't make sense, and the market has already shown that. Battery life One valid concern is battery life. I can read on my iPAQ 2215 for eight hours or so at my preferred backlight setting, without stopping. For a PDA nut like me, that's no problem. I never take a trip without my charger anyway. For others though, eight hours might only last one weekend. I cannot imagine anything more frustrating than cozying up next to a fire in a lodge somewhere with three feet of snow on the ground, a nice hot cup of hot chocolate on the table next to me and the "Extremely low battery warning" pops up. Now, I'd just pop in my second battery or get the charger out of the suitcase and plug it in. The average person would probably chuck the PDA into the fire. Battery life and user education need to improve. People who use cell phones have figured out they either need a second battery or chargers for trips. PDA users need to get that message too. Device ergonomics I've been an iPAQ user since 2000 and have gotten used to using the joypad to flip pages, but I'll admit that a nice jog dial like the Sony Clié's have would make ebook reading a bit easier. Why the new iPAQ 2215 and 1900 series weren't given jog dials I'll never know. Ebooks must be reasonably priced Under no circumstances should an ebook cost more than the paper equivalent that is out at the same time. When a best seller is released, it is generally released as a hardcover first and will cost between $20-25 US. The ebook should be about the same price. The physical paper and distribution of the book isn't that significant and I'm not going to even discuss "but ebooks are cheap to produce and should be much less." You still need an IT infrastructure, so let's just assume they can be the same price. So why is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000069F3R/104-0070480-6055900">Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done</a> $22 in Microsoft Reader format and $19.25 in hardcover? I've seen ebooks at the hardcover price when the paperbacks were out below $10. That's just plain insanity and a big turnoff. You want to kill a market, let people get the perception that products in that market are more expensive than other products that give you the same basic thing. Hard to find titles in your preferred format Perhaps the worst problem with ebooks is the mish-mash of formats, resellers and device compatibility. As I said earlier, Palm Reader is the only reader that works on PalmOS, Pocket PC, Windows and Macintosh computers, so that presents a problem if you have a Palm and want to read an ebook in .LIT format, or a Pocket PC and want to read an ebook in the locked .PDF format. To make matters worse, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Web sites where you can get books and I'd bet not one of them has even 25% of the ebook titles in their library. If you want a physical book, you can just walk into a Barnes & Noble or Borders book store and they will either have it or can get it. You could also order it from Amazon.com. If you want an ebook, prepare to surf. The best place to start is often at the site of the publisher of the book. You can get that info easily from Amazon. If there is an ebook format available, usually that information will be found at the publisher's site with links to resellers. If not, all isn't lost, it just means you have to go to Google and look for it, and then hope, if you find it, that it is in a format you can use on your device. Perhaps the reason this is such a problem is many times the publishers don't do the ebook. They just contract it out to another site to compile it and distribution agreements aren't standard. I'm really not sure why this is the case. All book stores carry, or can order, just about anything in print. No ebook store has even close to everything available. This is going to take someone or some company to bring ebook publishing distribution to the attention of dead-tree publishers and work out a standard way to make ebooks part of the normal publication process. Right now, it seems like more of an afterthought than anything else, and it results in frustration for ebook readers and lower sales of ebooks. I am not one for monopolies by any stretch of the imagination, but the only thing I can think of that impacts my life daily that is as messed up as ebook distribution is the cell phone network in North America. Not everyone works everywhere and different carriers have different technologies so there is no sharing of bandwidth. And the reasons are the same. Palm Digital media is interested in cornering the market with their format. Microsoft wants to monopolize it with the .LIT format and their activation servers. Adobe wants to take over the text world with .PDF. It is as incomprehensible as it would be if certain chains of bookstores only carried ebooks from certain publishers. I wouldn't care which ebook format won, but I really wish there was just one. Finally, digital rights There are several types of digital rights management models out today. I'll just say right now that Microsoft's DRM5 is messed up. No question. You have to activate your device and you have a limited number of devices you can activate. Just whose ebook is it? My iPAQ doesn't own it. I do! Palm Reader is better by locking the ebook to a credit card number. Palm Digital Media could shut down today and all my ebooks will still work for me for as long as I own devices and platforms that Palm Reader will still install on. If Microsoft decided tomorrow that DRM5 wasn't the way to go and shut down their DRM5 servers, you'd be toast. Device activation is just wrong-headed thinking. Audible does the same thing and I know for a fact I've cost Audible more in 1-800 phone call support on not being able to activate devices than they've made in profit off of me since I started using them in 1999. I don't know the best solution for this either. PDM allows you to reset all ebooks in your library to a new credit card number if you switch cards or have to get a new one issued, which is good, but as I stated earlier, you can't just transfer it to a friend or co-worker. I should be able to transfer my ebooks from my online library to theirs, but there are problems with that too. I'd never consider shipping a paper book from here to Canada or Italy to share with a friend. The shipping would pay for the book. But I wouldn't think twice about transferring books in my library to friends all over the world. Conclusions Ebooks are here to stay, contrary to what doomsayers predict in various analyst reports, on various sites and in various articles. As you can see, there are several obstacles that need to be overcome before ebooks are ubiquitous, but none are insurmountable. Many of the negatives I've listed have gotten better over the past few years. More and more Pocket PCs have great ClearType screens. Ebook pricing is starting to be more in line with paper versions. I've paid under $3 for some older ebooks at Palm Digital Media, which would be less than I could purchase it from Amazon if it was still in print. Battery life is getting better all of the time for Pocket PCs. Strangely, battery life for PalmOS devices are headed down, not up. I think novels will be the lion's share of the revenue in ebook sales for the near term anyway. I could see student books becoming a large piece of the ebook pie if you can ever get the publishing and distribution model for schools and universities right. Ebooks are becoming more popular here too. Jason recently opened up a <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=51">new ebook forum</a> to discuss ebooks, readers and anything related to them.

ChristopherTD

09-16-2003, 05:08 PM

Thanks for the balanced review!

The Brighthand article was extraordinary in its dismissal of ebooks and wasn't very objective.

For the PPC world I agree that novels make the most sense, any reference book that included diagrams and graphics would quickly get tedious to navigate on the small screen.

Probably 80% of my PPC time is spent reading ebooks, so I hope these birthing traumas will lead us to a better solution.

Thanks again for the excellent summary of the state of ebooks.

griffin911

09-16-2003, 05:15 PM

cscullion

09-16-2003, 05:53 PM

Actually, I think the PDM credit-card-unlock strategy works great for lending. The credit card number is not stored in the clear on the device... it's encrypted. So, unless you're lending to someone well versed in breaking encryption schemes, you're safe.

What's also nice is that it solves the issue you mentioned about lending to far-flung people. You pretty much only lend to those physically near you. You beam the ebook to them, or hand over your SD card for them to copy the file, then you take their device and enter your credit card number personally. They never see your number, and it's encrypted, so they can't retrieve it later, plus they now have the ebook to enjoy. The only way to lend the ebook to someone far away would be to email the ebook file and your credit card number for them to enter themselves. Nodbody would do that, would they?

Sslixtis

09-16-2003, 05:59 PM

I have used Peanut Press for a while now and only with a PocketPC. Their selection is huge and the ease of use, especially with their install wizard, is seamless. I enjoy using the palmreader much more than MSReader.

Agreed! I even purchased the Palm eBook Studio (http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/S=2382ee561213cf2dc396e395bc294252P2c-qMCoACYAACvqdR07619928/ebs.cgi) so I could convert my BAEN Webscrpitions (http://www.webscription.net/) into Palm Media (http://www.peanutpress.com/home.cgi/REFID=41415/00801-23789-41012431) Reader Format!

:rainbowafro:

Foo Fighter

09-16-2003, 06:09 PM

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is the fragmented ebook format landscape. There are at least a dozen different technologies at play here, ranging from ebook formats to dedicated eReader hardware. Adoption is slow because the choices are too confusing. Which ebook format do I buy? MSReader Lit? Adobe PDF? What about the smaller players like Palm Digital Media? MobiPocket? Do I have to buy a single purpose reading device like the Franklin ebookman? Or RCA's reader? This is what causes a lot of confusion for the general public. And publishers have done a piss poor job marketing this new technology. I don't recall ever walking into a B. Dalton book store (owned by Barnes) and seeing a big display encouraging shoppers to purchase ebooks.

The other problem is that the technology to deliver ebooks hasn't reached critical mass. PDAs are still a relative niche category. And mobile phones are still too primitive to offer a solution, unless you like reading 3 lines of text on a postage stamp sized display. The ultimate goal of ereading is to offer paper/print quality text. So that reading a book on a PDA..or Smartphone is every bit a clear and rich as reading a paperback copy. We haven't gotten to that point yet.

Ebook technology has a LONG way to go. It's no wonder it hasn't taken off.

Ed Hansberry

09-16-2003, 06:40 PM

Actually, I think the PDM credit-card-unlock strategy works great for lending. The credit card number is not stored in the clear on the device... it's encrypted. So, unless you're lending to someone well versed in breaking encryption schemes, you're safe.
It isn't stored anywhere on the device. You enter your CC# and a one way hash is generated. The OWH is stored and when it matches what you enter, the ebook is opened. The OWH can't be decrypted into a valid CC#, too many possiblities. It could be broken so someone could crack the ebook, but your CC# is safe. See http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/one-way_hash_function.htm for more on one way hashes.

egads

09-16-2003, 06:51 PM

I've tried reading ebooks several times and tried real hard to like them, but I will ALWAYS prefer a paper book over a ebook. I'm in engineering and most IC data books are electronic now. The first thing I do when I work with a new IC is to print out the data book so I can highlight important stuff and write notes on the side. Can't do that with most pdf data books.

Also, it seems to me that my eyes work harder when reading from my PPC. Has there been any studies on what is easier on your eyes, printed or electronic ?

surur

09-16-2003, 06:58 PM

Nice article.

I would not however dismiss e-book reading on a smartphone. If you use auto-scrolling it doesn't really matter how short your screen is. And the market is obviously much larger e.g if 30% of PDA users read ebooks, and only 1% of smartphone users did it, the phone people would outnumber the PDA people. To capture that 1% all you need is a good advertising strategy. Remember the marginal cost of each new user is near non-existent, and if it cost $50 000 to port their reader to java for e.g., once they have invested there is nothing further to do accept 3)Profit!! :)

Anyways, lets not dismiss phone readers like the dead tree people dismiss PDA readers.

Surur

PS: BTW I find the idea of sharing your books to people only in physical proximity as someone above suggested quite a good idea. I will now have to admit that the Peanut press reader is really the best, fairest and most practical reader of the big 3 currently

Peter Fry

09-16-2003, 07:17 PM

It's very nice to read articles by people who know what they're talking about. I'm really sick of the "Gartner predicted the ebook market would be $75B by last week, hence ebooks are doomed" parrot reporting that prevails in technical reviewing nowadays. PDM is now doing business on the order of a very large brick and mortar book superstore.

Ed: Absolutely correct on the OWH. Your credit card number is immediately thrown away after it is typed in. There is no mathematical way to retrieve it.

Foo Fighter: Your offhanded comment basically sums up the marketing problem PDM has had all along. You call us a "smaller player". We in fact sell more ebooks than all other vendors combined, but no one perceives us as serious.

If I can throw in an opinion here: I'm not sure why everyone is so anxious for a monopoly in the DRM/ebook business. We (PDM) want to have people come to our store, try our business, appreciate the customer service, and then return on their own volition. We go out of our way to avoid trying to lock customers into our service (unlike a few companies that pay for exclusive rights to books).

I include these ridiculous plans for the government to control the source of all of our reading material that are getting a little fanfare on the 'net nowadays. The format wars, that everyone derides, are allowing consumers to vote for both how the future of DRM plays out, and who they choose to do business with. I may be in the minority, but I don't think that all of that is bad.

Anyways, on a completely offtopic note, I'm looking into the book re-locking bug. I'll try to have a fix ASAP.

disconnected

09-16-2003, 07:49 PM

Great summary, Ed.

To Peter Fry --
Since your company obviously deals with lots of publishers, perhaps you could forward Ed's article to some of them. I'd hate for publishers to get discouraged by the other type of articles you mention, and give up on ebooks.

Peter Fry

09-16-2003, 09:37 PM

Not a bad idea. I'll send the link to the person that can forward this on to them.

I wouldn't get too worried about the publishers despairing. They, like many of us, got take in by the dotcom hype and the "research firms"* that did the hyping. They did despair, and then settled on good consistent growth. There was a big talk with reps from the different publishing houses at the OeB/MS TabletPC convention last winter in NYC.

Looking back, I feel really silly thinking that everyone was going to throw away all their paper books en masse. How the ebook industry has played out seems so obvious, given four years of watching it. :^)

-peter

*I have always been very skeptical of those research firms. I distinctly remember a 1987 article in an Apple ][e rag quoting a study that LCD screens would surpass CRTs by 1990. They were only off by thirteen years. These studys are never remembered for their awful mistakes. They exist solely to supply marketing departments with data to quote in press releases.

ux4484

09-17-2003, 12:56 AM

Pretty darn good Ed, I'm with ya 100%......except on price. I think it should be at or below the paperback price. For a new release by a major author in hard cover only, I can see charging full price for the ebook, but when the paperback comes out......the ebook price should drop to it's price (or below). If the release comes out in hard cover and paperback, the ebook should be the paperback price.

One item that I think publishers are overlooking is books that are perennials or sleepers that are out of print (but still copyrighted) and can't really justify a print run for the few hundred or thousand that are requested via customers through booksellers. Ebooks seem tailor-made to fill that void. I know I had to search a while to find a copy of "Between Brothers and Sisters" a few years back for a gift, as I couldn't lend them mine (as it was water damaged). I would have jumped at even a MS reader version of it at most ANY price (I did find some eventually though and replaced my copy too).

Jason Dunn

09-17-2003, 01:27 AM

One item that I think publishers are overlooking is books that are perennials or sleepers that are out of print (but still copyrighted) and can't really justify a print run for the few hundred or thousand that are requested via customers through booksellers. Ebooks seem tailor-made to fill that void.

Here, here! I think that, assuming the cost to create the eBook was fairly low, a lot of books could have a "second life" and make the original author some $$$ again.

Ed Hansberry

09-17-2003, 01:34 AM

Andy Sjostrom

09-17-2003, 08:18 AM

Very good article!

BugDude10

09-17-2003, 02:31 PM

Nicely done, Ed.

The only point with which I disagree is on pricing. Not knowing anything about the publishing business, I presume that all works are, at some point in the process, in digital form. From there, it cannot be too difficult to make what will become a p-book into an e-book. Yes, you must have storage, distribution, payment, etc., but those expenses simply must be less than the costs of handling p-books. (With an e-book, the publisher creates one thing: a file. It must be held somewhere, and there must be a distribution channel -- bandwidth -- but to sell one million copies you still need only one file. With a p-book, to sell one million copies, you need vastly greater storage (a warehouse), vastly more expensive delivery (trucks), and vastly greater number of actual products (one million books).)

I will accept that the cost of any book may be mostly based on royalties or profits, and not the expenses of printing it, storing it, and/or delivering it. Nonetheless, the fact that e-books can be done cheaper than p-books needs to be factored into the price. Otherwise, it just looks like price-gouging. And until e-books appear to be a better value, there will be many potential customers who just won't give them a try. That's why I really like M$'s current e-book givaway.

Just my $0.02.

drac

09-17-2003, 03:11 PM

Ed, I cannot praise this article enough- it was absolutely stellar. Informed and balanced, it put the Brighthand article to shame.

I take issue with those who, without researching the facts, claim that producing and selling an e-book "must" be a cheap venture for the producer.

Any justification for that apart from guesswork?

disconnected

09-17-2003, 04:11 PM

I don't think that pricing is totally ruled by the cost to create the digital book versus the hardcover. If a book is currently only available as a hardcover, not paperback, publishers would probably not want to price the ebook a whole lot cheaper than the hardcover, so as not to cannibalize the hardcover sales at the higher price. I have noticed some nice exceptions lately though; Steven Bochco's "Death by Hollywood" is 17.47 at Amazon, and PeanutPress has it for a sale price of 8.99 (8.09 for subscribers).

Peter Fry

09-17-2003, 04:22 PM

The cost of a hardcover book (paper, ink, printing, distribution, storage) is about $3.00 and paperbacks are about $1.50. Just about the entire price is royalties and salaries already.

eBooks tend to be a little cheaper for the publisher, but they have costs. The primary cost currently is the fact that they have fulltime staff converting books. They tend to cost less at the consumer side, too. That's due to the fact that the ebookstores can market to a much larger audience than a brick and mortar store, and don't have shipping and handling charges of an online pbook store.

Hardcovers always (as far as I know anyways) ship before paperbacks. All the major publishers drop the MSRP on the ebook to paperback price once the paperback is released. Not all the infrastructure is in place at all publishers to have this happen immediately. Random House, for instance, just sent 500 price corrections to us all at once ($.50 to $1.00 off our prices real soon now). If you see a paperback that is shipping (not preorder) and our price is still the hardcover price, just drop us a line at [email protected] . We usually fix these in an hour or so. These price changes go to every retailer at once.

If the book is in electronic format to the publisher, it needs to be converted from Word/Quark/??? to ebook formats. This is a flat rate of ~$500. Keep in mind that is constant no matter how well a book sells, so some books haven't paid their conversion costs off yet. If the publisher doesn't have the electronic version around, then it needs to be OCRd and proofread. This costs much more. This is why you see so many more recent books than older books, and why you'll see odd skips in book series (like books 1, 3, 6, 7, 8 being available, but not 2, 4, 5).

We've finally gotten our conversion backlist to zero, so we're going to start pressing for some backlist books and new publishers. Please send any requests to [email protected] . Although we don't answer every email to that address, all of us read and listen.

I hope this answers everyone's questions,

-peter fry
palm digital media

09-17-2003, 04:23 PM

Ed, thanks for the article. I hope that the publicity that eBooks are getting on the site these days encourages more PPCT people to check them out.
I also hope that the problems created by the Microsoft DMS do not prevent people from getting to enjoy this media.
It's worth sticking with it because the free MS books are a good opportunity to start an eBook library.

09-17-2003, 04:30 PM

I hope this answers everyone's questions,
Cheers Peter. It's great to get good information from someone in the business.

AndrewShuttleworth

09-19-2003, 04:13 PM

One advantage of ebooks that wasn't mentioned is that the small page size lends itself well to reading in short bursts. This works well, for example, when travelling on public transport, filling in short free time gaps or for those of us with short concentration spans whose mind easily wanders in the middle of a page. It's much easier to find your place in a short ebook page than on a pbook page. And no need to worry about remembering the page you were on.

A final related point is that I've a feeling the short width lends itself much better to faster or skim reading in the same way narrow columns in newspapers do. Less eye movement, or something, although I would guess the ideal width varies between individuals.

For those who need to need to read books with diagrams, RepliGo can go a long way to solving this. For those who like marking up pages, if you have a TabletPC you can 'print' any file into a MS Journal file which can then be marked up to your hearts content. An no need to worry about 'soiling' your one copy. Edit, delete, resize, recolor your notes as much as you like. Journal is not made for reading ebooks but actually works very well especially with page up/down hardware buttons. If RepliGo could add a mark up feature for Pocket PCs that would be great.

Andrew

crairdin

09-20-2003, 02:29 PM

Very comprehensive article. You missed the significance of the sale of Palm Digital Media. Ebook sales are horrible, and Palm was unloading this loser.

According to the Open EBook Consortium, he entire ebook market is about $7 million per year for publishers. Sales for the first half of 2003 was $3.6 million and 620,000 units. 3600 new titles were published. If we assume that all the sales came from those titles, that's about 172 copies of each at $1000 per new title.

When a publisher is considering publishing an ebook and knows they can look forward to about $2000 per year in gross revenue, it makes it a little hard to get excited about putting someone on the task of creating ebooks. And keep in mind that I assumed that 100% of the sales came from NEW titles. Realistically, you could probably cut the sales-per-title in half.

With respect to cost of ebooks vs. cost of print books, at first glance you'd think print books have signficantly more costs. Shipping costs are often quoted, citing all the trucks and warehouses involved to move a million books to a dealer. But you have to divide the total cost by the number of books shipped in order to get the impact on price. When you do that, the cost of shipping one book from the printer to the publisher to the distributor to the store becomes fairly small, especially considering that for the bulk of sales the book may go from the printer direct to the warehouse of a chain store, and from there it is combined with other titles in a large shipment going to an individual store in the chain.

I think there are segments of this market that are growing. The market we're in -- Bibles and Bible reference material -- is doing well and has been doing well for 15 years. But publishers are becoming disenchanted with ebooks in general.

Craig Rairdin
President
Laridian, Inc.

davidspalding

09-21-2003, 03:08 PM

The week of September 7 will not be remembered as one of the better weeks in the history of ebooks. Barnes & Noble announced they were leaving the ebook business (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17822). Barnes and Noble basically sold two kinds of ebooks, DRM 5 encrypted Microsoft Reader ebooks in the .LIT format and the Adobe .PDF format.(emphasis added)

... And therein lies a big problem with some retailers. I won't again argue the case against PDM's single format model, they're popular but I won't try them until I seem the implement the same features that Mobipocket does, namely full use of screen, full-screen mode, user-picked colors, user-assigned categories, FAST searching, blah blah blah.

But Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) has got me locked in. Why? Choice. Give consumers choice, and they will reach for their wallets. Deny consumers choice -- "you can have any ebook you want, as long as it's Reader or Adobe eBook Reader" -- and they will shun. Simple.

Reader is a big pain in the you-know-where. This summer's threads and complaints prove that. It's slow, it lacks configurability (see above), uses one set of colors.... I've looked at the Adobe eBook format ... do they have a PPC reader yet? Last I checked, no. Duh? People are going to buy eBooks that they can only read on a laptop? Get outta town.

At Fictionwise, I've bought a few books in Reader format (if I had to), and several in Mobipocket, secure or otherwise. A few rogue publishers are still expecting Fictionwise to sell an eBook at 150% or more of the trade paperback price, and I do complain. Guess what, those publishers probably aren't selling much. But reasonably priced secure eBooks sell briskly. No surprise why. Choice.

davidspalding

09-21-2003, 03:14 PM

... Looking back, I feel really silly thinking that everyone was going to throw away all their paper books en masse. How the ebook industry has played out seems so obvious, given four years of watching it....
I remember chuckling at all that talk. Steve Case and his cronies promised to revolutionize old media, and did so at the end of the dot-com era and well into the dot-bomb. Amazing that anyone bought this dinosaur's BS. Yeah, I predicted that AOL would do to TW what it already did to ICQ and Netscape, among others.

And now that AOL Time Warner is returning to the Time Warner name, I feel once again vindicated in my 1995 prediction that AOL would become a massively successful black hole. ,:)

OneAngryDwarf

09-22-2003, 08:10 AM

I think the biggest thing getting in the way of ebooks really taking off is the fact that it doesn't seem remotely appealing until you've tried it. I used to wonder why anybody would want to do such a thing until one day i tried it and now i hate paper equivalents. I told several friends of mine w/ PDA's about how they should read their handhelds and just I was, they were very skeptical. But then they tried it, and they absolutely loved it... there has got to be a way to prove the viability of ebooks to the skeptical ones like myself. Once people realize this, they will be flocking to ebook retailers (assuming they ever get really good selections of books - warez communities just don't help the common user - not that i necessarily agree w/ the "stealing" of the book anyways)

Janak Parekh

09-22-2003, 04:12 PM

there has got to be a way to prove the viability of ebooks to the skeptical ones like myself.
More promotions that, for example, give popular ebooks away for free. We've had a few (a Stephen King novel being the most prominent), but overall the perception is that ebooks cost about the same and give little benefit. You and I know the latter isn't true, but the average public doesn't.

--janak

grobin

09-22-2003, 04:16 PM

I really liked the article! I agree with just about the whole thing. Things do need to be easier and more convenient.

I just recently discovered Peanut Press and Fictionwise ... and love it. I did NOT know that Palm books could be read on the PPC. I don't plan to get any more M.S. Reader books unless I have to.

So far the biggest thing that REALLY BUGS me is that it is still difficult to navigate and buy and download directly to my PPC from most all Ebook sites WHILE using the PPC. This has GOT to change .....

I still think Ebooks are here to stay also BUT it the paper book readers aren't going to go away over night ...

...

I agree with the first part of OneAngryDwarf's post. The folks who still read paper books (that's most readers) think it is too weird, or probably too inconvenient, or are just conservative and prone NOT to change very quickly. I WAS one of those until I bought my first PPC. I really expected the PPC to be a toy, like many other purchases I have made, that would end up in a drawer and get dusty.

But several things happened. I found a hard aluminum case for my PPC and I tried an Ebook. With the case I can safely pocket the PPC and take it anyhere ... and with the Ebook I can actually have a great use for it. Since then I have found other great uses, too, BTW for the PPC.

My PPC (Axim X5) is really great to read novels and stories with. I can NOT see myself EVER going back to paper books unless I am forced to. Technical manuals and many other books that rely on heavy graphics (Art books, etc.), diagrams, and charts are a whole different matter, though. A PPC doesn't cut it on that type of reading (some might if they were formatted real well).

tommyboyprime

09-25-2003, 11:15 AM

The future of Ebooks? I think I am a snapshot of that future.
I have had numerous PDA's starting with a Palm Pro, Handspring Visor DX, 2 Sony Clie's, a Toshiba E740 and finally an Axim 5. I haven't bought a paper book since my Visor. I read voraciously, at any free moment and when I finally sit down and relax.
I have bought over 800 titles at www.Fictionwise.com and before that I had about 400 titles from PDM ( formerly Peanut Press ). I also download free etexts to read using Mobipocket, MS Reader and Acrobat 1.0.
I am 57 years old and have come to the portion of my life where I no longer want clutter around me. It just makes sense to store the books on my PC than to cut down 1200 trees and have them hang around my bedroom library.