I don't think the publishing world is in for as much of a jolt as the music industry. MP3 players were what changed the music business because it allowed people to consume the product as easily - and in most ways, more easily - than the current technology. One of the points Simon loves to drill into everyone's head is "never underestimate the power of convenience." Once mp3s were a preferable way to consume a product, the pirate trade boomed. I don't see the same happening with ebooks, at least not in the same way. The Kindle is a nice reading experience, but frankly I read a lot on my phone because my phone is always with me. If I have ten minutes before a class, I can whip it out and read. I wouldn't lug a Kindle around on the chance I'll have ten minutes to use it in a day.
Ebook technology has been around for much longer than mp3 technology, and yet we don't see massive pirating of books, and I have to believe it's because A) no technology yet trumps a dead-tree book the way mp3s trumped cassette players, and B) far, far more people listen to music than read books to begin with. I think the ebook revolution will be a slow one, and it'll follow the model of giving away books to gain a quality reputation, then using that reputation to sell subsequent material. -- Jonathan Sherwood Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer University of Rochester 585-273-4726 On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 2009-02-19, Jason Olshefsky <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On Feb 18, 7:35 pm, [email protected] wrote: >> > ...as we know it? >> > >> >> > http://futurismic.com/2009/02/18/stephen-king-amazons-kindle-and-the-. >> .. >> >> > h-of-publishing-as-we-know-it/ >> >> >> From the artticle: "As has been pointed out before, the principle >> difference between the publishers and the record labels is that >> publishers haven't yet been forced to innovate by the pressures of >> piracy. It looks as if they'd be wise to jump ship and start swimming >> for shore right now, rather than waiting to be made to walk the >> plank." >> >> Flaw 1: it wasn't the "pressures of piracy" so much as it was "trying >> to force people to pay $20 for a $1 product". Pirating a book in a >> usable form would cost you about as much as a brand new paperback >> version. >> >> Flaw 2: the Kindle already screws people in the same way as the record >> industry: with digital rights management (DRM) [a quaint term for >> "taking your rights away"]. I thought the Kindle was neat until I >> realized it meant I could no longer share a book with a friend. And >> giving books you've read to people who you think would appreciate them >> is very deep and rich way we expand and strengthen our social >> connections. > > > > Kindle does seem to support some rudimentary capability to read without it > being a Kindle book, but it's not a very open platform, and Amazon has > little incentive to make it one. Kindle is basically a shunt from your > wallet into Amazon's bank account. They want you opening the stopcock on > that shunt instead of passing ebooks back and forth, whether they're > pirated, CC or public domain. > > I find it interesting that Kindle 2 has started to have more web > capability; still doesn't seem to have a card slot, though, and still seems > to be based on the model of using Amazon as your personal library. (Limited > storage -- still only 2GB. So if you get over about 1.5GB of books -- which > is a metric buttload, to be sure -- you need to store with them. If you want > to use the music player features, you need to store even more with them. And > it doesn't look as though it's transparently easy to get stuff that's not > Amazonian onto and off of the Kindle.) If the Kindle 2 web capability is > good, it could end up being a PDA replacement. (If I had a screen that large > and always-on mobile wireless, I could just use a web-based calendar -- no > synching, no worries about compatability.) > > One thing I find frustrating is that it would be fairly simple for Asus or > Acer to put out a reference model of an e-reader that's based on one of the > new sub-notebook platforms. (People have already hacked them together > by re-orienting the screen, remapping the mouse > buttons; people have also hacked in wireless modems; in principle, you could > probably hack together a Kindle-clone, though what would be the point, I'm > not sure.) With keyboards and in clamshell form factor (more expensive), > those go for as little as $200 with specs comparable to the Kindle (minus > e-ink), and that price with no prospect of downline revenue generated by the > device. I suspect you could get a unit price around that of the Kindle with > the bonus of external mass storage and a general-purpose operating > environment that let you extend the capability of the platform. It wouldn't > have a direct line into Amazon, though, so ease of acquisition would be an > issue -- to buy and use an ebook, you'd have to do most of what you have to > do on the web, now (cutting out the move-to-my-ebook-reader step, because > you can just browse the web on your ebook reader). > > That having been said, Amazon should be charging far less for the Kindle > than they are. They "should" be doing what the mobile phone service > providers do, and sell on contract, or sell it with some massive discounts > for the first x months. Kind of glad they're not, I suppose, because I'd > really like to see their fenced-garden [it's not really walled, just fenced] > model get some major public battering. > > > > ---Jason Olshefsky >> >> >> >> >> -- >> eric scoles ([email protected]) >> >> >> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
