Adobe opens e-book store

TalkBack 3 of 10:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

So close... but the mark is missed once again

From the article: "Until there is a device that has a similar value to what a book has, the e-book market will continue to be nascent"

This is so true. People see e-Books as a losing value compared to "the real thing". And until there can be more advantages of obtaining books electronically, people will stick with the printed thing.

From the article: "Today, to get a good e-book experience, you have to spend hundreds of dollars on a reading device, one that can only be read in certain environments because of lighting conditions; a device that has to be re-energized quite often, because the power consumption isn't there yet; and a device that isn't very durable."

And just when you thought they finally get it, they say something that shows how nearsighted they are.

First, I do agree that there are issues with the reader, as is eloquently described by the article. E-Book readers have to be as comfortable to the eyes as a book. Navigating through the text has to be just as easy, or easier, than flipping pages or moving one's eyes across and down a page. Readers must be portable, though one might argue that users do not mind a small degree of weight beyond that of a book because you can store many e-books on one reader. And because books never run out of "power", battery life has to appear almost limitless (or, at least not be a frequent concern.) If you wanted to write small notes or highlight in a book (not to uncommon for textbooks), then you should be able to do those things with the reader too.

But more importantly, even if an ideal reader was available, there are issues like ownership and digital rights restrictions. It is without dispute that people own the books they buy. There's no "license" that one has to somehow "agree upon" to read a plain old book. But e-Book publishers will insist on retaining ownership of text and try to get users to adopt a "licensing" model, just like the software industry. And to prevent people from copying the book (even for legal uses), there's going to be a huge load of restrictions on the use of an e-book, like rules that prohibit from printing or excerpting pages from the e-book.

To me and the vast majority of people I know, the ownership and rights issues is enough to blow any demand for e-books out of the water no matter how good the readers are. Why should people pay "more" for "less"? Why should people license when they can actually own their copy of a book for considerably less? Until publishers are willing to relinquish their selfish demands and start allowing people to BUY (not LICENSE) e-books, and offer just as many rights on electronic content as printed content for the same price, then the world shall give e-books a pass.

In fact, if e-books really did take off, I can envision even more greedy business models on book "renting". For example, it is possible that you might be forced to purchase a license to read that expires after a certain time.

So tell me again, why would I ever want to get into e-Books? When the article says an e-Book must have similar "value" to a printed book, that "value" includes ownership and usage rights too. In the grand scheme of things, the issues with the reader are just the tip of the iceberg.

Posted by: Root User   Posted on: 12/17/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• SOA for Dummies 2nd IBM Limited Edition Mini eBook IBM In this ebook, you'll learn how to work smarter and optimize cost using ... Download Now
• Recovery Manager for Exchange ScriptLogic Recovery manager for Exchange discovers and recovers business-critical ... Download Now
• Server Consolidation and Containment With Virtual Infrastructure VMware To meet the constant demand to deploy, maintain and grow a broad array of ... Download Now