On Mar 1, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Bob W wrote:
What really does stand a chance of stopping electronic books is the
specter of DRM that Bill Robb and Adam Maas have pointed out.
Publishers' greed, in other words.
People have to be able to back up electronic books somehow,
so that they
can be confident that if they drop, break or otherwise incapacitate
their reading device, they haven't lost the hundreds of books thay
bought to store on it.
The real Achilles Heel of the whole enterprise isn't technological it
is, as usual human.
Of course it's human - that's who reads books - but the Achilles
heel is
that they are trying to create a market which doesn't exist.
Is that why Kindle sales have doubled in the last couple of months?
The whole enterprise is about greed. It has nothing to do with what
the
customer wants, and all to do with the producers trying to reduce
their
costs and push this nonsense onto people.
It has to do with making books available at a cost people can afford.
Publishers can't continue down the traditional path. It isn't working.
They're disappearing every day as the cost of producing paper books
continues to expand, and consumers continue to demonstrate that
they're not willing to pay higher prices. Hardcover books are already
almost a thing of the past, other than for those with special
interests and library collections. I include myself in that category,
but there aren't enough of us to support publication on a wide scale.
They will try to convince people
that there is a need for these things where no need exists - that's
why the
world has admen, who can make themselves believe anything without
evidence.
There is abundant evidence of a need for inexpensive reading devices
that can be used over and over again. And that need is gradually being
met.
Throughout this discussion I have asked people to point out the
benefits of
these devices to readers, but nobody has been able to do so.
Ultimately inexpensive. Quite affordable now for avid readers. Space
saving. Crisp, clean displays that are not backlit in any way. Capable
of providing audio for impaired readers. And they provide a path to
publication for the thousands of good authors who can no longer find
publishers willing to invest in new literary fiction.
The people
trying to push this stuff simply do not understand the psychology of
reading.
Whatever the supposed benefits are for readers I'll bet you my entire
collection of Spinoza 1st editions that I can outweigh them with the
disadvantages, and with the advantages of traditional books.
My guess is that the gadget-lovers who've bought these things will be
enthusiastic about them for a few weeks, buy a few e-books, then
move on to
the next gadget, leaving their Kindles to gather dust under their
bed, next
to the bread-making machine and the exercise bike and last year's
useless
piece of shit from Sony.
And lest you think I'm a complete Luddite, I should point out that I
do have
an e-book reader. On my mobile phone / PDA I have a copy of some
software
called Mobi Pocket, and I have 3 ebooks - an English dicitionary and 2
volumes of a French-English dictionary, because it's convenient to
have them
with me when I'm travelling. I also have the printed versions of each
volume.
Bob
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