I live in South America (Venezuela to be more precise) and publishers refuse to accept my money (even though I am trying desperately to throw it at them)
I have been trying to buy Artemis Fowl in Ebook format since november, and a couple of Android SDK related books, since the latter are way too heavy to handle an acceptable Shipping fee (60 dollars plus tax in shipping? What are they thinking seriously is books, dead trees not gold containers!) I decided to plunk down into an eBook edition.
guess what? I can’t because I am not a resident of the US of America.
So let’s see here:
My green bills are as good as any others
I will have the same limitations than anyone else
The kindle has a very elegant way of screwing its customers
Why in the name of peter can’t I buy the cursed books? it is because they are afraid I will build a bomb with it (¿?)
Sometimes it makes me think that we are a long way to be a modern, globalized, digital world. Way too far. You say ebooks will replace books in a couple of decades, I say they will probably never be able to replace them entirely unless publishers get their acts together and commit to publish instead of labeling everyone as a stealing pirate and mistreating their customers.
Good overview of where we are and where we are going. However, you are hopelessly naive on this one:
“with eBooks, book publishers now have an unprecedented level of control over when, where, and how you can read their books.”
Um, no they don’t. They have less power than ever before, which explains why so many are hesitating with eBooks. With a physical book, the maximum damage from “privacy” is one fictional lost sale if you lend it out to someone. On the web, it can be replicated for free in unlimited ways. From virtually any country in the world, right now, you could go ahead and download 10,000 computer science eBooks for free and you will have them tonight and get away with it. Just because thats illegal and how it should be done doesnt mean it doesnt happen. Publishers have ZERO control, not more control than ever.
On a side note, here in the Netherlands, book resellers are not free to compete on book prizes. They are prized the same (minimum) in every store. Nobody knows why, its ancient legislation.
You say that ebooks are far cheaper to produce and sell. Did you do any research into the costs of creating an ebook vs a physical book? If you did you’d find that the cost of the physical book is only about 10% of final price. The rest goes to the author, agent, editor, graphic designer, layout (which as you’ve noticed doesn’t come for free), marketing, publisher, retailer etc.
Self-publishing is one way to eliminate a bunch of those costs but good luck finding something you actually want to read from that slush pile. If anything having lots of self-published books on the market will only strengthen traditional publishing houses as their brands will become synonymous with quality.
I see no mention of the fact that a traditional book has the right of first sale, which means it can be sold, rented or loaned or whatever (this is in the US - some countries have restrictions on that, believe it or not). You can buy a book for $15 and resell it on the used market for $5 when you are done.
So some residual value is recoupable if you decide to no longer own the book, whereas with Amazon Kindle books, there are some lending options, but that’s about it - you do not have “ownership” in the traditional sense - you have some kind of license. Thankfully it does not appear to be able to be easily lost right now (although there was that 1984 case on Amazon…), but is not transferable in the sense that you could move your license to Apple and manage your owned books in its ecosystem if Amazon were to no longer serve up content based on your license.
While the freedom to transfer the bits is somewhat true of DRM-free books, the resale value of a DRM-free book is what, given the near-zero cost of duplication and distribution?
My biggest problem with ebooks is that I now have to decide how I want to own the book out of all the modalities based on their properties. Do I want to buy the paperback and then lend it around my family and friends, totally relinquishing control as it makes its way through different circles? Or will I want to keep it on the shelf? Will I want it in paper as a reference where I might want multiple books open at once? Will I want to give it as a gift which has some meaning with an inscription or at least something they can unwrap? Will I want a whole trilogy for a long trip and so definitely want it on an e-ink Kindle (and not Apple iPad) which is the lightest and longest battery for a two-week trip?
Greetings, everyone, from Microsoft Press. We’d just like to share that our ebooks – available via our distributor, O’Reilly – are DRM-free. Here’s a quick description of the program (from http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do): “You get lifetime access to ebooks you purchase through oreilly.com. Whenever possible we provide them to you in five DRM-free file formats — PDF, ePub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, DAISY, and Android .apk. Our ebooks are enhanced with color images. They are fully searchable, and you can cut-and-paste and print them. We also alert you when we’ve updated your ebooks with corrections and additions.”
Where’s the comparison of books to their predecessor, scrolls, or to their predecessor, clay tablets, or to their predecessor, rock walls? I’d also add “what about their predecessor, oral communication?” But that’s been done: http://www.amazon.com/Orality-Literacy-New-Accents-Walter/dp/0415281296
I’ve been reticent about purchasing an eBook reader, and this does cover some of my concerns: mostly, how do the technical books I tend to purchase look on an e-reader? (O’Reilly books’ pictures on the Kindle were my first concern; now that the Fire is out, that’s less of one, but still…) The ownership points are also well-mentioned: writers SELL their copyrights to publishers, who now can LICENSE the intellectual property back to us. (Of course, the barrier to entry now in selling books can be much lower, and publishers are going to feel that pain in the same way that print newspapers are…)
There are public libraries for those who can’t afford an “e” reading device. I like the compactness and the light weight of my cell phone which holds several titles, but the burden of carrying a few paperbacks can be over-come with a little excercise.
Now if electronic programming books would accomodate copy and paste…
This debacle reminds me of the early days of DVD, when they were little more than VHS copies transferred to the new medium. There was almost no attempt made to get the most out of the “versatile discs”, instead you pretty much ended up with the same quality images and (maybe slightly better) sound, only with a break in the middle where you had to turn over the disc, or where the player had to skip back 1/2 way through to continue playing the film.
Sure you got a ‘menu’ that allowed you to choose where in the film you wanted to go, but it was pretty poor. Thankfully DVD’s these days are somewhat better, bluray also, but I still feel they’re not making the most of the format, that it is misunderstood and much of what’s dumped on the disc as extras as nice-to-have but add nothing after watching them one. Sure I’m interested in the making of… and it’s great to see interviews but it’s still just video playing
You should try living in Australia - when the only way to buy most physical books is to order them from Amazon in the states, and wait over a month for shipping and pay more for it than the cost of the books themselves, eBooks seem a whole lot better, even when you often have to use a proxy server and pretend to be in the states to buy them.
I find myself in a similar position as you, Jeff. I would love to love eBooks, but just find them too limited at present.
Another issue, sadly with some relevance at the moment for me, is that of inheritance - it’s very easy to leave a physical book to someone and leave different books to different people. It’s very hard to do that with eBooks.
I think the problem lies more in the current standard than in the format itself. As soon as you can make a fully functional webpage within a single-file “book,” then the eBook will be vastly superior.
Right now it’s just a young technology. Give it time.
Why in the name of peter can’t I buy the cursed books? it is because they are afraid I will build a bomb with it
Luis Robles, you cannot buy the book because Amazon does not have the right to sell it to you. When a book is sold, it’s usually sold to a publisher with limited rights, specifically the right to sell it in a given geographical location.
It is quite possible, and even likely, that you are trying to purchase the book from the US publisher, who could be sued if he allowed it to be sold (through Amazon) outside the US.
As a Canadian, I sympathize. Often Canadian and US rights are bundled, but its not uncommon for them to be divided, and then worse, for the author not to find a Canadian publisher or for the Canadian publisher not to be into e-publishing yet. At that point, there’s no legal means for us to buy the e-book. (At least the printed book and can be bought in the US and then physically carried across the border…)
There are many more advantages to real, physical books:
if I lose one, I’m out $5-$20, not $100 (or more)
can’t break it (half the people I know with kindles have broken them). No worries about bringing it to the beach, throwing it casually into a bag, or whatever
in rare cases (mainly travel guides) I can rip pages out of them if I can’t carry the whole book
many are small enough to carry in a jacket pocket
The list goes on and on. The real physical “feel” of the book and the cost (I buy most books used on Amazon, often for just few dollars, and sometimes the kindle price is as much as 5 times the used price) are the most important reasons, but everything above, as well as everything else mentioned makes physical books SO much better.
The only advantage that I see to electronic books is that they take up less space. There’s a lot of stuff I could do in my small apartment with an extra 20 square feet of shelf space. But 1 - note that this is not really an issue when traveling because you’ll have at most 2 books with you, and 2 - it doesn’t come close to making up for all the benefits of real books.
I think there is one major aspect of the benefits offered by eBooks which printed books can never compete with: dynamism.
Unlike a dead-tree book, eBooks can change over time. One way that happens is through publishers releasing new versions of the same book. Depending on the software/hardware involved, you may be able to get the updated version, or only those who download it after the update will get it - but in any case, a new version is available without re-purchasing the book.
However, a form a dynamism which I find even more interesting is through metadata or as we like to call it, “Subtext” - because that’s the name of our app which is built entirely around this idea. Subtext allows authors, experts, and everyone else the ability to enhance any eBook with contextual information, videos, notes, polls, etc.
I’m biased, of course, since I work on the product, but I honestly believe reading with Subtext adds a ton of value. More importantly it exemplifies an aspect/benefit of eBooks which seemed to go unmentioned here, so I wanted to call it out.
Subtext is currently iPad-only and supports the ePub format, including DRM eBooks purchased through Google Books. I agree with many other comments here that DRM, as it briefly did with music and currently is with movies, causes far more trouble than it is worth and hopefully will live a short life.
On the DRM front, I’ll point out that J.K. Rowling recently launched pottermore.com where one can purchase DRM-free eBook versions of the complete Harry Potter series. She is using watermarking as a deterrent to piracy, which is an interesting approach. The industry is watching to see how that experiment goes and it may likely influence future publisher decisions around eBooks and DRM.
eBooks are simply inferior solutions to paper books in almost all regards. They are a convenience an should be respected for that.
But I have books from my childhood and books my father left me and his father left him. My oldest book is a late 1600 edition of Os Lusíadas, beautifully made. There’s absolutely no way, no way whatsoever, technology can guarantee backwards compatibility over a couple of decades, much less across generations.
My eBook collection is probably as good as dead in 100 years. There’s so much I will be able to guarantee in terms of format updates to keep up with whatever new technologies replace old ones.
But my oldest paper book is over 3 centuries old. Been on the family over many generations.
ebooks are pretty good—especially with the development of e-ink which is easier to read for long periods of time than LCD—though we could use improvements in resolution and speed, and some user interface improvements (e.g. once we get the speed issue licked, a page-turn knob – an analog control: roll it fast to skip way ahead, slow for one page at a time. Maybe a touch bar to go immediately to 3/4 of the way through the book, etc.)
Until then, while I use e-books if I want to travel with more than I want to carry, for normal bedtime reading at home, for ex., I stick with books having lots of atoms that don’t need recharging and won’t evaporate if the provider decides they shouldn’t have sold the book after all.
For some weird reason I find myself not being able to concentrate enough when reading from a device like iPad or Kindle. Is it just me?
On top of that I actually like the look of my collection of printed books. I guess they make me feel more intelligent…
I’m struck by the idea that the new and improved digital encyclopedias are better than the dead tree versions, because they preserve everything forever, instead of slowly losing information through a process of attrition.
Digital information is constantly being lost through a process of attrition. Ever try to load that program you wrote for your home computer back in 1985? Ever try to load that brilliant paper you wrote in college, that you saved on a 360K floppy disk, as a file for some long-forgotten word processor that never used one of the more popular formats? Good luck with any of that. If you had printed any of those things out on paper, however, there’s a good chance you’d still have access to them today.
I’m a big fan of books, and I think it will be a severe tragedy for humankind if we eventually stop printing them. Fake digital books are fine for computer- and other technology-related crap that will be laughably obsolete in a few years anyway, but for anything that adds any real lasting value to the body of human expression and knowledge, dead tree is the one and only way to go. Temporary, short-lived copies of dead tree books are just fine as a convenience, but please print them and stick them in a library somewhere too.