I think that I’ve made it clear that I absolutely love using the iPhone as an eBook reader. Stanza remains my reader of choice, especially given that I can load it up via the desktop application from just about any source containing textual content.
However, the range of freely available books is limited to books that are out of copyright (via Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg and similar initiatives) and I’d like to be able to buy current or in copyright books to add to the list. Recently Stanza announced support for the DRM format used by Fictionwise (also available on the site eReader.com). They also offer their own eBook reader with direct download support (a little kludgy, but passable).
The problem (perhaps only in my mind) is the fact that despite the fact we are now dealing with a purely electronic good, the pricing for eBooks is insane. A quick example is in order. I wanted to get a better idea of the thoughts and attitudes of the president-elect of the United States as I’ve heard that he is eloquent in both spoken and written forms (useful for a politician). I can either go the traditional route and pop over to Amazon as I’ve done for years or try eReader for an electronic version. But…
Amazon eReader.com The Audacity of Hope $7.99 $14.95 (sale: $14.20) Dreams from my father $8.97 $14.95 (sale: $14.20)
How is it possible that the price of a product that began life as an electronic document costs more to acquire in electronic form? Is it possible that Amazon’s finely managed logistics are so efficient that the process of acquiring, stocking, order management, and shipping a paper book cost less than the transfer of a file that’s arguably smaller than some web pages?
This makes no sense whatsoever. And I would argue is one of the direct reasons that eBook sales are tiny. I’m paying a premium of close to 100% for convenience, plus I don’t have a reasonable right of resale once I’ve read the book. If I buy the physical book, I have at least the possibility of sending it on to someone else at the end of the day. DRM’d eBooks don’t offer this option.
The price discrepancy is somewhat smaller on general release fiction books, but it’s still there. Why is this?
It looks like the publishing industry is preparing to go through the same pain that the music publishing/distribution industry is going through. The delay between the two shifts is the availability of devices that make the consumption of the media approachable and useful. The MP3 player was (and remains) a simpler device to create where an eBook requires much a higher quality screen and we’re still trying to find that sweet spot between screen size, portability, battery life and usability.
My other complaint is a bit of a sideline and that’s the dearth of non-English eBooks. Most of the major initiatives for scanning and republishing out of copyright works seem to be US based and as a result, the number of non-English works remains pretty slim. And on the current release front, there’s practically nothing. I’m especially interested in french books, and I’ve only found a few sites that suffer from the same price discrepancy problem and on top of that, the commercially oriented sites are still mostly living in PDF-land. Not exactly ideal for reading on an iPhone or Kindle type device.
I would posit that with devices like the Kindle and the iPhone we’ve reached the level of “good enough” for many people. Which means that people will start trying to find more content for their devices. If it’s easier to fire up a P2P client and type in a title than to acquire a book otherwise, that’s what people will do.
It’s clear that the process of transforming a paper book into Book format and putting up a torrent is considerably more labour intensive that the process of converting a CD or DVD. But there are tools that can automate much of this process, and while the resulting quality is highly variable it’s generally good enough for a lot of people. But I’d rather buy a reasonably priced electronic version direct from the source without OCR errors and the like.
What’s it going to take to drag the publishing industry into the 21st century?