The state of the eBook
Technical, Media ·Friday September 18, 2009 @ 00:26 EDT (link)
Electronic, or digital book readers are regrettably still in the "stone knives and bearskins" state, and the industry really isn't helping.
What I want is a fairly general purpose device, which means open. The iRex iLiad might fit this description, but it won't read the most common DRM'd books. I want to be able to make full use of it, limited only by the technology, not by the vendor: so if it's physically possible to use it as, for example, a code editor, or to run an open source chess game, or to browse the web using my wireless router, I want to be able to do that. Many of the current devices are too locked down to allow that: complete and utter fail by design, although it's at least possible to "jailbreak" the Kindle.
I also want to be able to obtain eBook versions of the books I own (I don't mind giving up the physical books if necessary). The idea of paying $9.99 per book (the going rate for many Kindle books) for books I already own is insane. It doesn't cost that much for the publisher to make an electronic version available (not for books produced in the last 20 years, anyway), and if, as they claim (most vocally for DVDs and software), I have a "license" for the material, and don't own it, I should be able to buy a copy in a different format for no more than the cost of moving the bits.
While eBooks at $9.99 are touted as cheaper than the paper version, that's still not good enough. Since they don't need all of their paper book presses or delivery channels, the cost should be much lower: pretty much just the cost of operating download severs (almost insignificant when amortized), royalties, and the publisher's share of development costs and profit.
I would like to retain the right of first sale (let the state and its rules actually be of some use for once). DRM in practice only serves to restrict legitimate users (others just pirate the software or item anyway, or obtain it from someone else that has done so). It should be possible to use it to transfer a book from (to start) one Kindle (or Sony Reader) owner to another, later between eBook readers regardless of device.
The top three devices seem to be the Kindle (2 or DX), Sony Reader (PRS-600 or upcoming PRS-2121), or iRex iLiad (the Books Edition looks interesting), although there are plenty of also-rans. They all seem to be satisfactory in terms of readability (they use eInk and claim to be readable in direct sunlight blah blah blah), battery life (days, especially with wireless off), ergonomics, and speed (page turning). So it's not the hardware that's holding back the future—and to be fair it's probably less Amazon or Sony than the content owners.
Amazon's most common format, MobiPocket, has fortunately been cracked (there are some Python scripts floating around that can strip DRM, and there are other scripts that can add it so regular text can be read on the Kindle). That's a good first step, but then they built the better mousetrap: the "Topaz" (.AZW1) format, which apparently is a fairly lousy reading format anyway (used to store low-quality scans) but also a crack hasn't been publicized yet. Give it time: users can get root access to the Kindle, and the decryption software and key are both on the device. Many of us don't want to pay for content that we risk losing access to, or can't shift to another device. Many books can be found online, e.g. on BitTorrent sites, and I have no problem getting books I already own from there. I wish formatting was more consistent, and I hope HTML emerges as the format of choice (easiest to re-flow), and that HTML versions stop with the idiocy of putting <br> tags where the line would end in the book (nobody cares how the book was formatted, except for some scientific works).
I'd also like for libraries to have more eBooks; King County has a pretty good selection, with most books are available in MobiPocket or PDF. I'm not sure that they can actually be read with current eBook readers (I think Sony's can read secure PDF, and Amazon's MobiPocket, but the DRM might only work for PCs).
Duly last is price. Some online studies have shown that critical mass will be reached when the reader price is less than $100. $469 is pretty high for the Kindle DX, and even $299 for the Kindle 2 is fairly steep. But if they did everything I wanted above, I'd buy at current prices.
So while I have been looking at eBook readers as a way to cut down on clutter, they're not yet ready for prime time, and still I wait.
Let's look at it from the other side, and imagine what a great eBook reader experience would be. I'm going to hold my nose about the DRM a bit—I'm morally opposed but let's pretend it can do what it purports to do (stop theft) but still let users do whatever they could do with a paper book with an eBook that they've bought.
In this world, I'm connected to my home wireless network with my eBook web browser (I'm paying for the connection and bandwidth, just as if I was using my laptop) and typing this journal entry on it. In fact, I'm using a version of the open source Firefox browser that I downloaded and installed onto the device.
I've traded in all of my reasonably new books for eBook versions, in some format that can easily be re-flowed to different page sizes so that if I get a larger (or smaller) display in future (or want to zoom in or out), my books will still look good. I've managed to find copies of my old books that are out of copyright online, perhaps at Project Gutenberg (or even scanned and OCR'd them myself), and sold or gave away the physical versions. I only have one bookshelf (the rest were sold when the books went) which has a few sentimental or reference books in it only.
My local library has nearly everything available in electronic form. I can either download eBooks directly to my reader with the wireless browser, or download them with the correct DRM stamp to my PC and transfer them later, and they just work (perhaps with some initial PC setup).
Books generally cost about $5, except older ones are frequently available for much less or even for free. When I'm done with an eBook, I can sell it on eBay or Craigslist for whatever I can get for it.
My current University of Washington PMP Master's course textbook is available electronically, so I also keep it on my reader. I can easily take notes inline, or even work on projects and flip back and forth between my composition windows and several sections of several references.
I can connect a USB cable and backup all of my books, so that in the unhappy event of my reader being lost or stolen, I still have all my books. In fact, books I've bought online are (at my option) recorded with the retailers, so I can re-download them if I need to (but I can expunge the records if I feel paranoid).
I can set up a small perl program on my computer to automatically download and install various blogs or news sites' content to the reader overnight—free sites, or sites to which I already pay for access. I can use its text to speech capabilities to have it read me items of interest on the drive to work, then when I get there I can connect it to the wireless network at work in case I want to do some online reading or browsing over lunch.
There will come a day when all this is possible, and I look forward to that day. And I might not wait for everything to happen: perhaps when I'm happy enough with the state of the world I'll buy a reader and contribute to making things better myself.
