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‘Sony Reader: Nice, but No iPod,’ Publishers Weekly reports
October 2, 2006 | 10:44 am
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By David Rothman
Publishers as a group seem to be lukewarm about the Sony Reader, Publishers Weekly reports in its October 2 issue.
“Despite the hype surrounding the Reader,” says the Bible of the publishing trade, “few in publishing believe it will do for books what the iPod did for music—create a new, large digitally delivered sales channel.”
That should interest sophisticated consumers who know the history of e-books. Will big publishers in time even abandon the Sony Reader’s format, just as they backed off from the formats for Rocket eBook-style machines? Suppose Amazon, which owns the rival Mobipocket format and reportedly has its own hardware on the way, crushes Sony and publisher no longer care to support the BBeB format. Amazon and other Mobipocket-related companies already seem destined to enjoy access to far, far more books than Sony could ever dream of.
The Amazon-Sony fight ahead: Glaring flaws reduce Reader’s odds
Sony’s BBeB is just one more proprietary format, reducing the enthusiasm of publishers who are sick of eBabel’s burden on them; and the related Reader is a major step backwards from paper and even existing software, especially Amazon’s Mobipocket. You can search on a keyword in a Mobipocket book, for example, but not in BBeB as used on the Reader. Will the marketplace ignore such glaring flaws in Sony’s approach?
Publishers still confused about e-book standards
The risk of a Rocket eBook scenario is my speculation, not Publishers Weekly’s, but in the new, article, headlined “Sony Reader: Nice, but No iPod,” PW unwittingly does raise some rather serious issues. For example, despite lessons from the Rocket eBook, we now hear that some publishers still think that the proprietary approach can encourage competition. Bizarre. It shows how ineptly the IDPF has educated publishers about the virtues of a common format—which would open up competition in such areas as book-creation tools and reader software. Convenient, standardized e-book formats for legally obtained books would also reduce the threat of e-book piracy.
But tell that to some of the usual suspects, who even have trouble distinguishing hardware and software competition from format competition. A common format would actually create more competition in hardware and software—you wouldn’t be locked into a Rocket eBook-style mess where you had to use a device of a certain make to read your e-books. But in the eBabel tradition, confusion over these basics still appears to reign. PW reports:
Despite the hype surrounding the Reader, few in publishing believe it will do for books what the iPod did for music—create a new, large digitally delivered sales channel. One executive said he doesn’t think there ever will be an industry answer to the iPod, and that the transition to a digital reading market will be gradual and include a variety of devices and formats. And while some have criticized Sony for adopting a proprietary system that could cause confusion among consumers, others see the development of the Reader—and the approaching launch of other competitive devices—as good for book publishing, saving it from the kind of monopoly the iPod holds in music.
Hmm. Let me get this straight. Reader-style devices with a proprietary approach can help publishers–despite all the expenses of translating and supporting the eBabel, and despite the failure of the Rocket eBook model?
The newbie angle: Ellen Hage says I’m scaring e-book novices and harming the cause of e-books by criticizing the Sony to the extent I have. Hey, Ellen’s entitled. She is no dummy, and she herself is buying a Reader. Here’s my position, however. While I love e-books as they could be, I’m not going to withhold the truth about e-books as they are. Otherwise we’ll just set the industry up for E-Book Bubble II. As long as Sony and others insist on proprietary formats, e-book sales in the end will be a fraction of what they could be. How many serious book-lover want to own DRMed books whose formats could be obsolete, and which might not work on future hardware? Buy the Sony Reader if you wish, but don’t think of yourself as owning BBeB books for real.
Related: My Publishers Weekly essay on the Tower of eBabel (a guest column I wrote for PW expressing my personal views).
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Comments:
The current crop of ebook readers is still abysmal, both technically and ergonomically, and prospective non-technical readers shouldn’t be led to think that they are ready for prime time. The iLiad and its ilk are getting there, but they are still pretty much beta-stage products. Maybe the next 5-10 years will bring both workable devices, and what’s more important, workable e-books (i.e. things you can actually own and do with what you will instead of just renting them on a hyper-restrictive license the publisher can revoke almost at will).
As a consumer, I won’t be buying any reader device until they get their act together and agree to a format that works on any device, anywhere. It’s not like coming up with a multi-platform format is rocket science, the only thing stopping it is greed and stupidity (greed for money and the power to control supply, stupidity for not realising that it’s the very reason why the market is so immature).
Wouldn’t it be slightly ridiculous to consider a p-book as a “reading device” (although technically it is certainly that)?
And yet this is how we (of necessity) tend to see the digital print world. We conceive of “playing” print files on a “player”. I hope that someday we can get away from this “device-centric” view entirely. In fact I believe that at some point we will look back at “e-book reading devices” with the kind of whimsical nostalgia we reserve for horseless carriages and wireless sets. Electronic paper does not have to be an “ipod”. It can be seen as a medium rather than a device. All you need is a way to transmit an electrical charge to particles (via wireless signal, barcode, RFID chip, memory etc.) and voila! a page turns.
Picture a sheet of paper that just happens to display print which can be updated electronically, whether with today’s news or an annotated edition of Moby Dick. The medium is common as sand (think paper).
The interface: whatever you want it to be. If e-paper becomes ubiquitous (sounds pie-in-the-sky now, but you might be suprised in a few years) the hardware issue kind of goes away. That’s why I wholeheartedly support open standards. Don’t kid yourself, the eventual stakes here are infinitely larger than a simple, cozy e-book reader.
Pretend that way back in history, Sony or Philips (or e-ink Inc) “invented” and held the patent for tree-based, printable paper. Can you conceive of the royalties due?
Very big stakes indeed …
David, I didn’t mean that you are not telling the truth. I am afraid that I am already having Rocket ebook deja vu and I haven’t even touched the Sony reader yet. Hopefully, it will catch on. I too am a victim of proprietary formats since I own at least one device of each of the Gemstar/Nuvomedia/Franklin/Hiebook/Ebookwise/Kolin/Librie. Yes, I wish that I could move those books to my Sony ereader when it gets here, but I am trying to accept the fact it ain’t gonna happen. So when those devices hit the dust so will my many books. The bright side is that my Cybook is still doing well and so is my T/X. Now if I could move my almost 500 books off those devices to the reader, I ‘d be in heaven. Maybe one day. For right now I would just like people to try the experience of reading a book without paper.
Keep up the hard work David!
Thanks, Ellen! And remember, that invitation to do a Reader appreciation still holds! Plus, I’ll welcome any of the usual, helpful Hage tips for newbies who are starting out with the Reader! – David
I bought a Sony Reader on Sunday. Is it perfect? No. But I’ve had the original Rocket eBook, the Hiebook, and the Ebookwise 1150. This is a very solid reader and the display is great. I’ve downloaded almost all my books in RTF and it displays them very well. I’ve also emailed Fictionwise and asked them if they were going to offer a Sony Reader compatible format for their multiformat books. They said that they are investigating it.
I still plan on making most of my book purchases in a non-DRM format, but it’s also nice to have the options of purchasing some of the “more popular” books.
Well, best of luck with your Reader, Carl, and feel free to share your experiences here. – David
Jake, what a terrific comparison. I myself like to use the example of having to buy proprietary reading glasses for books from different houses. – David
re: ” one more proprietary format, reducing the enthusiasm of publishers who are sick of eBabel’s burden on them; ”
I still don’t get this. Sony needs content from book publishers to be interesting. Thus it’s in Sony’s best interest to provide the tools to convert the book *content* to something in their format. If the tools exist, then where’s the burden? It’s effectively the e-book equivalent of having multiple ways to ship a paper book — when a customer orders a book in a particular format, convert one for him and let him download it. You don’t even have to keep the converted form around afterwards (it’s just a speed/space trade-off). Heck, you can even just point him at the Sony story if he wants a BBeB book and squirt the content over to them for conversion/distribution.
Of course, the *content* is the real issue. How do you specify that “source material” that is fed to each eBook vendor? Well, obviously you want a single format for this, but it’s important to realize that this is _not_the_full_on_eBabel_problem_. For example, there’s no need for encryption or other DRM on this. The format only needs some reasonable way to express the basic content of the book (i.e. text + graphics + simple formatting, say an html subset) and can leave all the “hard bits” up to the person who wants to sell the book in that format.
Look at it this way: Music publishers don’t need to figure out how to implement the iTunes DRM, they let Apple do that. The “sound” that the comes from the Music publisher is the equivalent of the “source material” that should come from the Book publisher.
I have a Sony Reader and it is an excellent device. I can use it with a book light and there is no strain on my eyes. It is small and lightweight and I can carry many books (10 at the moment) easily. I can listen to audio books on it too (as long as they’re in the right format).
I am not sure why publishers view consumers as nuisances, but I am weary of it.
How about you try to make it work?
Why give me a good reason to buy someone else’s books?