You have given me a lot to think about. I had hoped someone knowledgeable would step up and analyze the situation and educate newbie’s like me. Yes, it was a newbie comment and I appreciate your detailed and comprehensive response. I am a newly re-enfranchised reader. At 56, I have started reading again after an adulthood mostly devoid of that pleasure. I may not be the typical P2P user but I suspect that for books, many of us are older. Taking the time to read a book is a larger investment of time and mental effort than watching a movie or listening to music.

The reason I posted that question/comment, was that I am using P2P as well as Project Gutenberg to assemble a library for myself and my wife. We are also going to resale shops and library sales to buy print books. Our interests are first in the classics and then in good recent novels. We also like histories and technical books. Gutenberg satisfies most of our needs for classics. The rest of the classics can be had in cheap paperback print versions at resale shops. Recent good novels are, for the time being; being satisfied by collecting Oprah book club selections at the resale stores (We have all but 5). The price range for this is 5 small paperbacks for a dollar and 80 cents to 4 dollars for large paperbacks and hardbacks. This all shows that I am willing to go to some lengths to get a lot for a little. Most people will do what is easiest, which is to go to a bookstore and get something new and retail. But there is also another segment of people who will be put off by current retail prices. P2P is VERY easy to set up and operate. I was surprised at that. The selection of popular titles is VAST.

There are some titles that are not readily available in our system. Technical books and histories don’t seem to turn up on P2P or in the resale shop. Nor do histories as readily as I would like. And to cost of retail puts them out of our reach. But how many books do you need? As said before, it is a big investment in time to read a book, so readers like me must be very picky about what they invest in. Sometimes I can’t get a free or inexpensive book that I want, but there are plenty available to fill my time. As to the debate about e-books vs. paper books, they both have value to me for the obvious plusses and minuses they both have. I do wish there was more quality in the print versions. If I am going to hold and keep an object I would like it to be beautiful and an object worth admiring as such, especially if the contents are of the same value.

This satisfies me for the moment, but I am worried about the future. Will P2P kill the goose that laid the golden egg? If everything goes digital, will I no longer get to hold a book in my hands? How can more free books of the types I want, be available? What can be done to make e-texts more beautiful? I would like to see better typefaces and more and better illustration. And how can other technologies be combined with the reading experience? How can graphics and video be integrated in a way that enhances rather than detracts from the reader’s creation in his own head? What can be done to make physical books more beautiful and affordable? This is an exciting time, but changing times are full of worry, and opportunity.

This is a very interesting article, but I my first reaction was to laugh and laugh. My VERY FIRST professional, paid article that I ever wrote was about what P2P file sharing meant to ebooks.

On Aug 25, 2000. Roughly 6 years ago today.

The funny thing? Nothing, effectively, has happened. We’re pretty much the same point where we were 6 years ago. Six years is a long time in Internet time, but it’s not all that long to people.

My comment regarding it taking a generation is based on my own experience with my children. My oldest child is a voracious reader. She always has a book in her hands. I strongly suspect that when she grows older, she will feel the same sentimental fondness that I feel for that tattered old copy of XYZ-p-book. Her reading experience will be strongly tied to print books.

But what would happen, for example, if I put an ebook reader in the hands of my next child, around the age of 10 (about 4 years hence) when she starts reading for pleasure (which I hope she will)? She is not going to have ties to print books. Using an ebook reader is going to be her emotional flashppoint. And perhaps she will grow up with warm, fuzzy feelings for that battered old PDA that she keeps in a box and cherishes like my brother cherishes his old Tandy Color Computer.

But IS there a compelling reason to put ebook readers in the hands of children? I’d make the case that yes, there really IS a compelling reason to put ebook readers in thehands of our next generation. School text books are getting bigger and bigger, heavier and heavier. Children are developing back problems and the rolling backpack is only a stopgap solution since those backpacks still have to be lifting into cars, onto busses and subways and onto beds to be unpacked.

Couple the trusty old ebook reader “from my childhood,” the lack of emotional attachment to paper books, and the somewhat less moralistic attitude towards copying… and we have, as I said… “trouble.”

But only a generation from now.

I have more detailed thoughts on this matter (which I’m not going to relate here, but maybe later). However, there is a grain of truth in what I originally said. People are less likely to pirate works that are published on a smaller scale, although you’re right; it isn’t impossible.

There are different laws of economics here. The typical pricing strategy has been to price artificially high, then drop the price until supply and demand reaches an equilibrium. As I argued elsewhere , the wide disparity between highest possible price and free literally invites people to pirate. On the other hand, if the initial price is $1 or $2, nobody will view it as worth pirating. I call that the “chump change” method of pricing. Instead of starting with a high price, content companies should start with a low as price as possible and aim for mass markets. (I am sidestepping the DRM issue here of course). Conceivably they could bring the price up, but that is unrealistic (although not impossible; valuation of a book’s quality is a very subjective thing).

A person is less likely to pirate from a DIYer than a multibillion dollar media company. If you pirate from Random House, you feel that they can afford it; if you pirate from Robert Nagle, you would think twice.

Finally, books are consumed in a different way than mp3s. If you read a book once, you are unlikely to read it again. If you listen/download to an mp3 once, chances are you’ll want to listen to it several times. An ebook provides entertainment/edification for a longer period of time than a song. To tempt people to read a book, you can’t expose them to the entire work, but a chapter. To tempt people to listen to an mp3, you often have them listen to the entire song. I don’t fully understand the dynamics here, but that would seem to argue for stricter DRM on ebooks and looser DRM on mp3s.

I agree with your main, or Mary’s main, point: most readers of traditional books are in love with the paper medium as much as the content. Polls speak often of people complaining, “I could never curl up with a computer device.”

This generation is fading, and e-ink and other display tech will eventually come up with devices that provide good experiences.

For 5 years now I’ve been reading ebooks on an old Psion Revo Plus, and I must say after reading lots of good books, like Churchill’s account of the Boer War, or the novel Four Feathers, from gutenberg.net, I started to have a similar transference of affection to the device itself. The Revo started to represent to me the wonderful experiences of those books.

Kids raised on such devices would similarly like them, I feel.

Welcome, Chris. Along the way, you’ve illustrated the usefulness of blogs compared to e-mail lists in many situations—blogs are better for long-form writing, just so the items can be continued from the home page (we need to keep up the pace there). E-mail lists are good for other purposes such as the very fastest-paced debates. Blogs can help digest the main points made. I really liked your linking to mailing-list messages and, in your own way, your synthesizing the points made there.

To address two of your statements in your TeleBlog post:

1. The Tower of eBabel is hardly the only reason why e-books sales stink; but, yes, it is a major one. My hunch is that e-book sales could be at least several times greater without eBabel and harsh DRM.

2. Baen deserves much credit for getting so much wonderful free content online. At the same time, as e-books become a more compelling experience, it will be interesting to see if the free-sample model goes on. I believe it will, but that not quite as much will be available that way.

Hey, just my opinions. The idea of having a multicontributor blog is to get different ones!

Thanks, and let’s see an online bio from you with a photo.

David