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I was going to post this on the wizards site and link to it but the site appears to be down at the moment...
I got thinking about the many discussions as to why people dislike the online format so much and one against answer keeps cropping up
"Portability, I can't take my PC down to the local cafe like I can a magazine"
Many have discussed the pros and cons of laptops and mobile phones (and PDAs) in this argument yet I haven't seen any other alternatives. so i did a little search and found this...
Is this the future of books? It certainly seems to answer alot of the worries with laptops and PDAs (nice large display, lightweight, portable) plus it has a number of cool features.
I can just imagine huge libraries being converted into USB databanks where you simply plug in a USB memory stick choose the books you want then plug them into the iLiad. Or book stores selling books on USB memory sticks.
Sure the price is high but if PDFs are far cheaper than books this device pays for itself in no time.
Thoughts?
Director of Sales
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Sure the price is high but if PDFs are far cheaper than books this device pays for itself in no time.
Thoughts?
While I am always a BIG fan of gadgetry... I'm not so sure about this.
The iLiad costs $700. That's huge. As an experiment, I looked up the price of a book from the Mobipocket service advertised on their site and the same book on Amazon.
Da Vinci Code (blech) on Mobipocket: $6.99
Da Vinci Code (blech) mass market paperback on Amazon (double blech): $7.99
Now, if you get your PDF books from Project Gutenberg (AWESOME), they are free. But these titles are free anyway, so the only cost you have to pay is the printing cost. That means that most of these titles are going to be available as a mass market paperback for $4-$8.
In the end I think that devices like this are probably going to become much more popular in the future, but only if the price point comes way down. And by that time, I would be surprised if the device you get will be limited to this one functionality. It's much more likely that this functionality will be integrated into the "all-in-one" device that the electronics industry has been building towards for years now. We already have several cellphone+mp3+PDA machines with this functionality and it's mostly just a matter of coming up with a clever design to get what's already available to the point that it will rival a physical book for reading pleasure.
But such a device would have to be really well designed for me to switch.
There's also the fact that I love to buy used books.
Cosmo,
Hypothetical Futurologist
I dont think this, or anything like it, will ever replace books for pleasure (sorry Cosmo). Dont get me wrong I'm not anti technology in fact I love it but here are some of my reasons why,
1) Books appeal to our hording nature
2) You can put a book down and no one will steel it.
3) If you drop a book in the bath you dont electrocute yourself, nor do you lose your entire collection.
4) There is something special about giving a book to someone after you have read it that just isn't the same with a USB stick
5) Books dont hurt your eyes or give you a headache as fast as a laptop.
6) Books are the antithesis of modern life. They are simple and easy to use. apart from reading no prior education is necessary to use a book. We read to escape modern life not to take part in it.
7) Books never need upgrading to be able to read them or to buy new ones(ok, 3.0 to 3.5 but you can still use the old ones)
And the best one of all
8) They aren't broken, they dont need fixing.
Of course something like this technology might well replace manuals for other technology (Your new TV might have a usb stick manual), we might be able to get previews as a try before you buy deal. But the novel is here to stay.
I offer as proof the Tad Williams Shadowmarch project. A well known top selling author who tried to write an episodic novel on the web. There was a new chapter every month and you could subscribe to be able to download these. In the end the subscriptions were not enough to make it pay and he has published a slightly reworked version as a novel. (he never finished the novel online).
Just my thoughts..
Elcian
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Sure the price is high but if PDFs are far cheaper than books this device pays for itself in no time.
Thoughts?
My thought is that that is a mighty big "if." They always b*!$~ about the cost of plant production, then when they can give it to you free of that cost they gouge you for it. It's the way it goes.
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The only thing I don't like about it is you buy all these electron books and ten years from now will the new software and hardware be able to read it? I have books that I bought almost twenty years ago and I have some old books I inherited that are almost one hundred years old and I know I can just pick one up and read it and not have to worry about if I can load it to a computer.
While I have to agree that I'm not going to be going out and buying one of these anytime soon, I think our "love affair" with books/magazines is a luxury we may not be able to afford in the future. Just like global warming is becoming big news (Toyota just announced that they will be going all hybrid by ~2010) there will come a day when paper production will mean killing too many trees and our planet will need those trees to keep oxygen production up and CO2 levels down. Sure, we could go to plastic "paper" (like Australian money), but they probably aren't biodegradable and all those plastic books will eventually fill up landfills.
I think this "ebook" format is the future. Not now, and maybe not 10 years from now. But I think, eventually, we'll have to go that way.
Greg
there will come a day when paper production will mean killing too many trees and our planet will need those trees to keep oxygen production up and CO2 levels down.
I doubt it. You have to consider the total environmental impact of a PDA verses a paperback book. I'd wager that a PDA has more of a deleterious effect because, to grossly oversimplify, it requires mining, releases more chemicals into the environment, and so on.
Paperbacks, on the other hand, consume trees, discharge chemicals into the water in the production of paper, but that's largely it (again to oversimplify).
But beyond that, one paperback book is several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to design, manufacture, and distribute than one PDA.
It's difficult to conceive of a circumstance where it would be cheaper and easier to deal with PDAs than printed (even home printed) books.
Books are a superior technology and will remain the best way of storing written media for at least the next 50 years. I'm a technologist, but I'm also a bibliophile, and there is simply no reason to go "all digital" when books are so much more convenient.
Books do not need a power supply, do not get strange glitches/viruses/bugs, are not subject to rapid obsolescence, don't fall prey to format or system wars between rival manufacturers, can't be wiped out accidentally by user error/EMP/power surges, have no learning curve, have no DRM hassles, and don't require network connectivity.
Books are portable (at least the smaller ones), instantly accessible to 99% of the population (literacy rate in developed countries) without special instructions, easier to read (the dpi for books is at least 600 versus 72 or less for digital viewers) and very, very cheap in most cases.
Books do have two major drawbacks: physical size and interactivity (search functions, hyperlinks, 3d motion diagrams).
[...]there will come a day when paper production will mean killing too many trees
Unlikely. Tree cover is already expanding in most developed countries (like Canada, Europe and the USA) and that's where most of the silviculture for book production comes from. Deforestation is primarily a problem in Africa, SE Asia and South America, but it's not book production that's causing it.
But beyond that, one paperback book is several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to design, manufacture, and distribute than one PDA.
It's difficult to conceive of a circumstance where it would be cheaper and easier to deal with PDAs than printed (even home printed) books.
I won't argue with most of your post, because it's quite possible you are right on those points. The one thing you are missing, though, is that 1 PDA = many,many books. Not one.
Personally, I like books. I have a home office filled with mine and my wife's books. I just don't think we (or our planet) can afford them forever.
Greg
I always keep a book on me, waiting in the car for kids, waiting on doctors etc, books are far more portable than a laptop. You can't sit on a bench, eating your lunch with one hand, and holding your favorite book in the other. Besides that, I collect old books, and maybe I'm weird, but you just can't compete with that wonderful smell.
It would most definitely take several generations for E-books to overthrow paper books, not to mention a large campaign to slowly integrate them into normal life over a span of decades. Reading backlit text for long periods of time hurts the eyes for most people, and I seriously doubt there will be such a thing as an E-book public library. That means that all books would have to be purchased, creating a pretty large gap in who can afford to read what they want, and who has to make do with what they can afford. (I'm a voracious reader, and even used books cost me an arm and a leg once I'm done with a month's reading. Thus, the library is my best friend.)
You can also bet that the price won't stay down for long, even though production costs would drop dramatically. I'm sure that sharing books would also be prevented through E-Book reader software, stopping something that can't be controlled with paper books.
The largest hurdles the industry would face is to make E-books better than paper books are. Both are portable and both fairly easily obtainable. The downside of E-books are that you have to go specifically looking for them. With a paper book, you can wander into a chain bookstore looking for, say, a CD, and have a wicked cover of a dragon tap dancing with a gnome catch your eye. The value of impulsive book buying can't be beaten by a random image on a website.
As for the environmental impact of books vs E-books, I'm not sure if it is the book itself that is the problem, but the way they are traditionally made. Bamboo is an excellent renewable paper source, and the use of soy inks are less detrimental to the environment. (Or so I have heard. This could be a pipe dream stirred up by students at the college I attended.)
Co-existence, I can see. Some may even prefer an electronic book to a paper one in the future. Total dominance of E-books over paper books I can't see, barring a massive, sudden change in society the world over.
Yeah, you beat me to EMP. I like hard-copy.
Total dominance of E-books over paper books I can't see, barring a massive, sudden change in society the world over.
I guess all I'm saying is "don't rule that out". I doubt that ebooks will pop up everywhere at once. Like computers, ebooks will become prominent in industrialized societies first. Slowly, they will grow in popularity until they start becoming a staple of the world as a whole. How many years ago can people say they didn't have a computer in the house? Now, they are even in schools in third world countries.
And, of course, there will always be books around. They won't ever disappear completely. But look at the Gutenberg Project. You can get a fair number of books, free, on the internet. And ebook haven't even started. If they are available now, without ebook technology, how many boooks will become available when ebooks are prominent?
And just look at the PDF market in our own hobby. Who would have guessed it would even be viable a few years ago?
Massive changes do happen, albeit slowly.
Greg
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The iLiad is high priced but there are others out there.
Sony do a reader PRS-500 that retails around the $350 mark. compared to the Panasonic Word Gear it has a huge battery life (were talking days instead of hours) but is only black and white (with greytones).
I think (though dont quote me) that it is less strenuous on the eyes too due to a "impressive display, utilizing breakthrough technology that's almost paper-like". The only downside for me is its only got a 6 inch display.
Panasonics handles colour and video playback so its trying to be more than just a reader.
Books vs. PDF pricing will always be varied. novels are fairly cheap productions compared to hardback books and glossy magazines. What PDF does provide is a good market price based on the contents not the manufacture.
PDF readers will also make it easier for people to read FREE material. Appart from forums and blogs, I generally don't read long HTML page articles or web enhancements such as those on the wizards site. I generally collect them up, import them to Word, and print them for reading later. I work on a computer all day and prefer the print method to rest my eyes and read while eating dinner or in the garden while my kids are playing outside. Hhowever, if the PDF viewer is easy on the eyes, I'll definately consider converting sometime in the future.
Until they can give me an electronic book that I can stuff in my pocket and not worry about damaging, take to the beach and not worry about sand, take to the park and not worry about rain, read in the bath and not worry about dropping, loan to a friend and not need it back to read another book, and so on and so on... I just don't see it.
Will e-books rise in popularity? Yup. Print on Demand will also rise, I think, but I don't see the physical book taking a dirt-nap any time soon. Self interest, sure - I'm published and enjoy it, and I manage a bookstore.
I do think audiobooks are on the rise - I listen to at least two a month on my iPod going to-and-fro to work. Given the number of people with wires in their ears, I can see that increasing, but it's still not the same experience and sitting with a paperback.
I'm not inclined to think that a digital medium will ever fully take the place of ink and paper, and my reasons as to why have all been said here already (not the least of which is that books won't crash or short-circuit). There is a comparison, though, I'd like to make.
When cars first became a viable mode of transport for everyday people, many assumed that horses would go extinct because nobody would need them. Today we can see that such was certainly not the case, and while the place of horses in society may have shifted to secondary and/or luxury roles, they still have a significant place in a modernized world (to say nothing of more pristine areas of the planet where technology is non-existant).
Also, consider this; horses are living things that can easily consume 20+ lbs. of food a day and require grooming and health care. Books just sit neatly on your shelf, waiting for you to pick them up and read them. If horses, which require so much care and money, can still have a viable role in society, then the relatively maintenance-free book stands quite a sporting chance at continued survival and relevance, I'd think.
Reading books for hours on end isn't nearly as unpleasant or bad for your eyes as a screen. And you can drop them, and they'll be fine. I'm sure they'll try and replace the book with some other medium, I don't think it'll catch on. There's something very personal about the medium.
And if it does, I'll be shaking my cane curmudgeonly at those damn kids and their newfangled e-books.
PS. I seriously have a cane, but it's from a bruised anklebone.
As for some sort of eBook totally replacing books, I don't want to say it will *never* happen, but it is certainly something that will take generations as each generation is exposed to physical books less and less. Even generations out, I doubt books will be totally extinct, but in 150 to 200 years from now they certainly won't have nearly the prominence they have now.
Whereas we think about how strange it would be not to have a physical novel to read and the inconvenience of an eBook and reader, a few generations from now they will wonder why people wouldn't want all of their books accessible at any time. Even with something like reading a novel - you might try to remember when a certain character first appeared or what happened in another story. It's easier to do an instant search of the previous novels in that series than to go over to a "bookshelf" and start flipping through a bunch hoping to find what you are looking for.
Of course long before then all of the issues raised above will be solved. The products will be cheap, durable, information may be stored locally, but most likely will just be cached from some networked server (either whatever the internet grows into and/or a central computer system that is integrated into your home's phone, TV, client computers, and eventually even other appliances like refrigerator, stove, and heating/cooling units). So no problem dropping it in the bathtub and losing your entire book collection. Your book (and music and movie, etc.) collection would reside somewhere else.
As for public libraries, I think in their own self-interest, as the ebook shift gains momentum, they will adjust to accomodate it and serve the local community. In many areas, the local library is also the local "high tech center" often having internet access before the majority of houses did and such.
Lastly (sorry, didn't realize I'd ramble so much but I've thought a lot about this), one big change I do think will happen in the next 20 to 30 years is that eBooks (and websites) will start greatly replacing reference books. I'm 33, and I already turn to the internet for more information in a single day than I spend reading reference books in a year. As my kids grow up and become the primary consumers, I'm sure the reference sections of bookstores will start getting awfully sparse. (Funny aside, when my 5 year old son puts a book down with it open to the page he is on, he calls it "pausing the book".)
The reason I see this happening so quickly for reference material is that, unlike novels where a printed book is pretty close to the best format for it, reference material is simply handled FAR better in an interactive format. Printed reference material can't hold a candle to a (well done) interactive website or eBook. As eBooks eventually move from being just the "book-wannabes" that PDFs are and more into mini-websites, nonfiction, not novels, will be the primary driving force of eBook reader sales and technology (which as said above, will most likely be part of a PDA/cellphone/mp3/video player rather than a 1 trick "fake book" device).