22

By Paul Biba

One of the real problems with sites like this is that they often turn into the “converted” preaching to the “converted”. So I need to let you know that I really mean the the headline to this post. The only people who understand ebooks are Amazon (and Fictionwise).  Everybody else doesn’t get it.

What made me think of this was that I tried Adobe Digital Editions with my Sony 505. Who cares what the result was, the point everyone is missing is that the process sucks. Why anyone would do this is beyond me.

OK, I want to read a book. First I start my computer, then I find something called Adobe Digital Editions and download and install it. This doesn’t let me read the book, however. Next I have to find a book, then I download the book. Having fun yet? Then I have the book, but I can’t read it. I have to take it into the Adobe Digital Editions software and then move it to my Sony. Wow – how simple!

Then I want to read another book, but it’s in the Sony format. All I have to do is fire up the computer again, be sure I have downloaded the Sony Connect software, go to the Sony store and download the book and then sync it to my Sony Reader. Wow! Neat! Now I have two different programs on my computer and I have to remember which one to use for which book. We’re really having fun now.

Want to have even more fun – try to explain all this to someone who would like an ebook reader but is not a computer geek (and that’s most of the world, by the way.)

What we spend too much time on this site discussing is the technicalities of ebooks, and not the commercial realities.  Hey, people read ebooks and people like things simple.

I’m a people, too, and I like things simple as well.  This hit me like a fish in the face when I installed Fictionwise’s eReader on my iPhone.  Want a book – go to Fictionwise on the phone and download one.  It hit me again, more like a whale in the face, when a I told a colleague about a free ebook being offered by Amazon.  He has a Kindle and, while I watched he fired it up and downloaded the book while standing outside in the sunshine.  No computer, no USB cable, no card reader, no Sony software, no Adobe software, no Calibre software, no conversion programs, no WiFi router. He bought a book without a computer – while standing outside in the sunshine. Get it?

He did something remarkable.  He wanted a book and he bought it (albeit for free).  What’s that like?  It’s like going to a bookstore.  Wow! NOW we are having fun.

As much as I dislike DRM and all the associated crap, what I have a profound respect for is that extremely difficult thing to attain – a painless consumer experience.  Apple has acheived this with  iTunes and Amazon is achieving it with the Kindle.

People are always commenting to me on my Sony Reader.  I am now working directly in the consumer space and I’m amazed at how many people are attracted to the machine and would like one for themselves.  When they ask me what they should do – the answer is clear: get a Kindle. The consumer wants, and rightfully so, things to be simple, easy and not to require technical expertise.  The Kindle encompasses all of this. One stop shopping.  Hey, buying an ebook is just the same as buying a box of cereal. The fact that you may not be able to finish the cereal because someone padlocks the box is another question. That’s the question we focus too often on here.  Let’s get the cereal into the kitchen first.

We can rant and rave, and we should continue to rant and rave, about DRM and eBable, but Amazon made on-line shopping a reality for consumers, and I suspect that it will be Amazon that makes ebooks a reality for the consumer as well. Kudos to them and may they be hoisted by their own petard into being forced, as Apple was, to make compromises on DRM.

The subhead on this site is “Bring the E-books Home” and, right now, Amazon is the only one who is doing it.

 
22