The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

ars technica ^ | February 1, 2009 | John Siracusa

[MrEdd]

I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet's nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of "the world's largest e-book store."

Unfortunately, despite starting the company near the peak of the original dot-com bubble, the founders of Peanut Press lost control of the company very early on. In retrospect, this signaled an important truth that persists to this day: people don't get e-books.

A succession of increasingly disengaged and (later) incompetent owners effectively killed Peanut Press, first flattening its growth curve, then abandoning all of the original employees by moving the company several hundred miles away. In January of 2008, what remained of the once-proud e-book store (now called eReader.com) was scraped up off the floor and acquired by a competitor, Fictionwise.com.

Unlike previous owners, Fictionwise has some actual knowledge of and interest in e-books. But though the "world's largest e-book store" appellation still adorns the eReader.com website, larger fish have long since entered the pond.

[TChris]

Some of the cool features of the Amazon Kindle:

• Device holds hundreds of books, more if you add a memory card
• Battery lasts for days between recharging; My wife recharges hers every two or three weeks, just to top it off
• Adjustable font size (try THAT with your paperback)
• Download new books over FREE wireless connection (uses Sprint phone network, not Wi-Fi) in a minute or so (No worries about book store being out of stock, closed, too far away, etc..)
• Plays MP3 music files too, if you like to have music while you read
• Your Kindle has an email address; you can send converted documents to it by email
• Add notes, automatically backed up for you
• Free wireless Wikipedia access

[hawkboy]

I think Amazon could have come up with a better name for their device...”Kindle” makes me think of “Fahrenheit 451” and burning books.
Kind of gives me the creeps.

[shorty_harris]

I have an Ebookwise 1150 (http://www.ebookwise.com/). It’s great for just reading books. Very easy to hold and turn pages, has backlighting (so you can read it in the dark), the battery lasts literally for days between recharging, and it only cost me $140. Has a little stylus so you can scribble notes on pages, which are saved so you can go back to them later. Doesn’t have wireless like the Kindle, but it was much cheaper. I load several books on the device before I travel, so I don’t really need wireless. It’s great for reading at the airport and on the airplane.

[rwfromkansas]

I love anything computer and digital, but I just can’t get myself to read a book on an e-reader device.

They just don’t look as good as a real book...resolution, the light coming off the screen like a computer screen etc.

Just don’t like that.

Are there some good ones out there that are easy on the eyes like a real book?

[MrEdd]

As you wish. give up a bit of battery life and you get a thin seven inch color screen, online anywhere and it fits in your pocket.

[antiRepublicrat]

For a book reader I want something like an iPhone, just with a paperback-sized screen. Even get rid of the button. I want something that only has a thin border around, just like a paperback.

I want the ability to make notes, see them on the page, and be able to get an index of all notes, where clicking one takes you to the page where you wrote it, or just pops up the surrounding text right there.

I want to be able to synch my notes wirelessly to anybody who has the same device and book, and to have them synch back to my computer.

I don’t want mandatory DRM. A publisher can DRM (loosely like iTunes does), but I don’t want the books I got from Project Gutenberg to be automatically DRMed like the Zune did when transmitting.

I want to be able to give books to friends wirelessly. At least some intro chapters if it’s DRMed, the whole thing if not.

I want it to have enough memory to hold an entire library. Gonna need at least 32 GB.

It should be able to do audiobooks with the option of auto-flipping pages to where the sound is, and even hilighting the words or sentences as it goes (great for beginning readers).

I’ll think of more later, but that’s my minimum for finally buying an ebook reader.

[MrEdd]

Just for you there are five and eight inch models of the Ipod touch being launched later this year.

Enjoy

[RikaStrom]

I love my ebook! I have the ebookwise.com critter. I’ve had it for years. Got my family hooked on them too.

Instant gratification, woo hoo. I must have about 20 sites bookmarked where I can purchase and download books.

[antiRepublicrat]

Just for you there are five and eight inch models of the Ipod touch being launched later this year.

That's still loose rumor status.

[RikaStrom]

I have that one too, actually, I have two of them. I blew up my first one by removing the chip while the device was on. Don’t do that. Bad juju.

Then I bought one and thought it had a screen burn (operator error), so I bought a second one to replace it, now I have two.

One goes with me everywhere. Jury duty, airports, anyplace that I may have to wait.

:-)

[cajungirl]

Hubby has a kindle, I have a Sony 505. Love them. Take everywhere. My battery is better but AMazons book list is better. Mine is smaller, more elegant, thinner but the kindle has the advantage in readability with a better screen or at least it looks better to me.

There are so many free books out there. Burgomeister has an incredible list, you get 100 free classics on Sony but gutenberg is free. And there are bootleg books out there,,not out of copyright but free.

It is the best tech thing I have had. Hubby likes the access to internet and email on Kindle,,I don’t miss it.

It took me one chapter to get used to it and you can increase the font as your eyes tire.

[CaptRon]

I’ve been reading books on my Palm for years.

[cajungirl]

PS get the warranty. I dropped mine on a tile floor and it went kaput.

I then dropped it in the bathtub full of water from about four feet up,,it floated and was fine.

The kindles buttons are too easy to hit,,always changing pages but I got used to it.

Sony has a cover with alight now,,it is hard to read in dim light but I have a cataract so it is worse for me.

I love my ereader and gave all my kids and sons in laws them as presents before our beach trip. Five kindles and one ereader,,they read more than evern. ANd the grandson got one for his birthday and he loves it,,age 12,,he uses it for email and such things.

[Billthedrill]

I find it a little surprising that the author seems to have missed one other aspect of this new world - the content owner doesn't have to be the publishers. An individual who can sell his car on the Internet can sell books too. It is little wonder that conventional publishers were reluctant to advance this technology - pace the author, they recognized a nascent competitor.

What they do to make a living is vet, purchase, and edit the material, do the publicity, manage the physical shipment in both directions, and of course run factories that produce the product. What they'd be left with is the publicity part and maybe some preparation. If it looked to them like a less profitable proposition, it was.

Personally I'm reluctant to saddle myself with one more piece of electronic crapola to carry around. I've tried the PDA thing and found I couldn't scroll down as fast as I read, so a dedicated reader may be inevitable. Not tomorrow for me, anyway, but soon. What the heck - I already spend 12 hours a day in front of a computer monitor.

[SeaDragon]

I love my ebook! I have the ebookwise.com critter. I’ve had it for years. Got my family hooked on them too. Instant gratification, woo hoo. I must have about 20 sites bookmarked where I can purchase and download books.

It is just a shame that more publishers don't release in multi-format. They miss a lot of sales that way.

[Tunehead54]

Reference bump ... ;-)

[KosmicKitty]

Seems like a lot of steps, but, ten, I guess it makes up for losing your pencil & having to go look for it :-)

I have to add my comments in the margins - especially when I’m reading something I disagree with.

How god is it for recent publications? I’m studying fr a National Security degree and have to read a lot of new, non-fiction.

[shorty_harris]

I like mine too. I also read in bed, and since it’s backlit, I can read and not annoy the wife. When I fall asleep, it turns itself off after no activity for 5 minutes or so.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	My view is, these devices should be replacing all textbooks soon. In fact, textbooks should be published electronically, and not in hardcopy. It would make education more economical among other things. Imagine toting all your textbooks plus other needed texts in one lightweight package, which includes full text search, personally annotating, etc. This is a Pages topic. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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