3

By David Rothman

Amazon logoIn Amazon.com, Ebooks and “Chump Change,” Robert Nagle elaborates on earlier thoughts in his blog and lays out the pros and cons of Amazon’s recent acquisitions from a writer’s perspective. A pro: Writers can self-publish more easily and undercut the e-book prices of the big publishers. A con: Beware of high prices that Amazon and others may charge for the publishing tools and other goods and services. Mobipocket, which Amazon bought, socks writers $150 for the Mobipocket Publishing Standard Edition. The article, published on Kuro5shin, also explores a number of other issues ranging from DRM to e-book hardware.

Also of interest: A survey asking Kuro5shin’s largely geekish readers, “Where do you read your Ebook?” Most don’t read them at all. Details follow.

Cellphone 0%
PDA (Palm) 5%
PDA (PocketPC) 0%
Dedicated Ebook Reader (Ebookwise 1150, cybook, etc) 5%
My PC 10%
Laptop 15%
Only deadtree books; ebooks are still too much trouble
63%

This is a really geeky community site, and the fact that
such a low percentage of geeks are reading ebooks is
revealing.

In fact, I’m the only so far who chose the Dedicated Ebook
Reader choice. That’s pretty sad. We need to remember how
exotic these technologies still seem to most people.

Despite what Robert himself describes as a small sample size, I suspect that if nothing else, the 63 percent for “Only deadtree books” reflects what’s really happening. That won’t change until DRM and the Tower of eBabel vanish. Want some specifics about the Tower? “Ebook enthusiast Cory Doctorow keeps 20 different versions of his first ebook . For most people, maintaining this many versions of the same content would add significantly to the time, cost and aggravation of self-publishing.” Exactly! Keep in mind that Doctorow had help from many volunteers in offering all those formats.

OpenReader, anyone?

 
3