The E-Book Smackdown
Just when you thought that the humble book was destined to be a footnote in history’s own book of historic footnotes, the increasingly competitive E-Book market is making books more exciting and more accessible for everyone. Once the almost exclusive domain of the Amazon Kindle, a wealth of new E-Book devices are heating up the game. Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge take stroll through the many issues involved and try to shed light on the E-Book smackdown.
57 Comments to “The E-Book Smackdown”
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No sound file attached. Am I too quick in loading the page while you are still editing it?
There is a file attached for me — is it still a problem?
I had a problem with the sound to (it would skip parts of it) downloading the files worked though.
Yeah, this is a known issue on our audio server. I’m working on it.
A couple of thoughts: 1) How many books can you buy for the price of an ebook reader? An awful lot I would think. 2) How would libraries fit into this all? It would be great if you could download the electronic book from a library from the comfort of your own home. 3) As with mp3s there is the question of whether you can resell it second hand, those charity shops could be in trouble. 4) Hopefully, it will end up as PDFs in the end.
Well, from my perspective, you can buy no books for the price of my e-book reader, because I use my HTC Hero
That aside, you can buy an awful lot of CDs for the price of a decent mp3 player, too, but there are benefits to having all your songs in one portable place, and books, I think, are the same.
ePub is a far superior format for eBooks than PDF, because it’s essentially just a ZIP archive with XHTML files in it. It scales perfectly to any size display without any problems. Use PDF when you care about precise placement on the page, use (X)HTML when you want content to be able to reflow based on a user’s display.
Incidentally, the Nook uses ePub internally, which is part of my interest in the device.
My hangups on eBook readers are twofold. They’re expensive, and I don’t see them hitting mass market until they can get down to about $100 USD. And e-Ink, while a cool technology, is pretty slow, and that makes the reading experience a little wonky.
Sorry for my bad English, however I try to give my opinion.
This summer I wanted to buy a Sony prs-505. Unfortunately it wasn’t sold in my country and UK online shops don’t ship it here.
I found a british guy selling it on ebay. I paid it a little bit more but I’ve got what I wanted.
My impressions: -to read technical books a 6 inches screen is too small, it can work with novels -Every pdf on Internet is in A4 format, even when you use the generate PDF option on Wikipedia -I have to be very careful. It looks very fragile. I’m sure that the day it will drop from my hands will break and warranty doesn’t cover that -The software to buy books (with DRM) made by Adobe and the one made by Sony aren’t available on Linux (the first one works with wine, the second not, but I don’t know if the first one will work when I purchase a book) -online shops selling books for the Sony ebook reader aren’t cheap at all. I’ve found a book that costs 3 times the printed version on amazon.co.uk. For me that is crazy since the value of an ebook for me is much lower than a printed copy
What I don’t like is that now they want to sell ebook readers with a lot of features when they could ship a simple ebook reader at a cheaper prices. For example mine has an mp3 player but I didn’t care to have one. They put 3g connection, wifi, mp3 players, touch screen etc… For example the dr1000x has the batteries that stands just 10 hours because it has a wacom tablet. Now I see ebook readers with a lcd screen…for me is a no-sense.
What I want is just a big ebook reader with nothing else. I want my batteries to stand like with my Sony prs-505. I want to be able to buy books on Linux.
And about the Kindle International version. As far as I know it’s so international that (I don’t have one so maybe I’m wrong on some points): -the keyboard hasn’t latin characters -they give an american power charger (though you can use the usb cable to recharge it) -You can access only to the english wikipedia version -you have only an english dictionary -you can buy only books written in english -books prices are higher for the international version
Not too much international for my taste and the Amazon’s vice president comes from my same town…
I forgot to say one thing:
There is a great open source software called Calibre.
I use it to read rss feeds.
You can just add the feeds and everyday it creates feeds in epub format. Then I just need to plug the cable and they’re automatically on my Sony prs-505
Yep — I use calibre to make epub books for reading in Aldiko, as mentioned in the shot. Calibre itself is a bit of a weird app, and I find the UI quite confusing, but it does the job!
I use Calibre and Aldiko as well, I just wish there was a better way to sync the two on my Android device.
Thanks for the pointers on both these packages, I have both installed now ready for going on Holiday next week!
I’ve never had the chance to try an e-book reader (as of now), but I’ve read several books (both fiction and non-fiction) on laptops and found the experience really clumsy.
On an offbeat note: the player on your website seems to have some problems with the volume control: with firefox it appears when I move move the speaker, but as soon as I’ve try to move over to the slider, it dissapears. With chrome it doesn’t even show up (tested on Windows XP, I’ll try to test it with Ubuntu when I get home if I don’t forget).
Update: on Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) the issues are pretty much the same: with FF the audio control dissapears when I try to use it and with Chromium it doesn’t even appear…
What I’d like to see is an ebook reader that is waterproof.
My favourite place to read is in the bath, but unless a device is definitively waterproof, I’m not going to risk using it there.
I like hard copy, but a reader might not be a bad thing.
Would be awesome.
Mind you, the Kindle can read you a book.
An advantage of an e-reader is that you can put it in a waterproof bag and still read it, unlike a book.
I’ve read a few books on PDAs and my phone. Those are non-ideal due to small screens that don’t work in all light, but as long as I can see the words I can enjoy the book. I’ve not bought any ebooks yet. They’ve all come from free sources.
Great idea, but not there yet. Waiting for it to be colour and some of the UI and interaction things to be sorted out.
A simiple one I’d like to see is an indicator of how far throught the book you are. A small bar across the bottom that fills as you go through the pages would do because part of reading a book is knowing you are getting deep enough into the story for something significant to happen. Kind of spurs you on.
The trouble with E-book readers is that if you accidentally download “The Daily Mail” to it, you can’t then use it to wipe your arse.
I think it is great that there is finally some competition in the market, atleast util apple comes out with one. But my real complaint about the Kindle is that it is so integrated with Amazon. The Sony E-Book is good, but the many of the books I want are not at the sony store.
Maybe I will wait until I have to cary more tech manuals and hopefully the market will settle down.
Apart from the “Daily Mail” problem, I think there are some good reasons why these might not catch on..
They can make you look a bit of a pretentious knob (sorry Jono). It’s the same with Bluetooth headsets. They might be very good and very convenient. But somehow, you do look a bit of a knob using one in public.
Another thing – if you’re studying a text, you can’t write notes in the margin. Similarly, what happens to book signings? Do you really want Bacon and his contemporaries scrawling all over your Kindle when they promote their books?
I’ve also never had a paperback run out of batteries on a long train journey. However, that time I read a Jeffrey Archer book I wish it had.
They might be a very popular fad/craze for a while, even a few years, but long term? I don’t see it.
You absolutely can write annotations to your texts (and those annotations are available on the web, too, with the Kindle).
But those annotation features have been panned widely by users ( http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/09/28/23918/ ).
I will say, that having played with a Nook display unit and a Kindle, the Kindle’s physical keyboard is preferred to the touchscreen keyboard on the nook. The layout of the nook’s keyboard is just…off.
Plus, I had trouble getting my annotations to display on the nook after annotating, but that might have been user error (though it does speak to a broken UI).
I stand (sit on my backside in a nice comfy seat) corrected.
Hey, guys: can you make the download links be served with Content-Disposition: attachment? I click the Ogg one in Firefox and it just loads it in a new page as if it’s in an all on its own.
Gerv
Yes. There is work going on to seriously change the audio.lugradio.org webserver; it’s just going to take me a little while…
Grr. And please make this blog software escape < and > as < and > rather than making unknown tags disappear…
Also, a Preview button would be great!
Gerv
hmm. the nook looks sexy. i’m very tempted
In my opinion the Nook is at least as good as the Kindle, but, since it’s based on Android, I think it has a lot more potential than Kindle.
Just been reading about the Nook, looks like one of the best readers out there at the moment. Now helped by the fact that it can be rooted easily due to the OS being held on an SD card… How nice it that?
http://www.feedbooks.com/ is an awesome site for getting ebooks. plus, you can create a “custom” pdf page size (great for specifying the dimensions of an eeepc screen, so you have one “page” fill a screen, and can view in a nice full screen viewer)
Aldiko comes with feedbooks integration, so I’m all about their stuff; I’ve re-read all the Sherlock Holmes in preparation for the film at Christmas
I think that the difference between ebooks and music is that when people started making MP3 players, people had already been ripping their CDs to MP3s and listening to them on computers when there weren’t handy portable devices to listen to them. This meant that when the companies started manufacturing portable players, there was already a de facto standard for them to adhere to.
While the ePub format exists, prior to the appearance of these devices people hadn’t already been using ePub to read electronic books widely enough to generate the same demand as MP3s did, allowing the device creators to choose (or create) their own formats. I agree that it’s stupid how people have to keep “re-learning” the lessons each time a new industry steps into the digital age (the movie industry’s a prime example), but as with all things in a market economy it’s got to be driven by demand. Only buy readers which support non-DRM formats and eventually they’ll have to stop selling those that don’t.
A guy in my office just got one of these and it looks really good (it’s a Sony one). However, I wouldn’t look at getting one until they’re a bit cheaper (£<100), and I know I’ll be able to get the books I’d want in a non-DRM format.
I agree with much that has been said: The price needs to be lower, they need to support open, non-DRM formats and it is sad and frustrating how industries keep relearning these lessons.
Also, stop trying to shoehorn the old ideas into the new world. It seems quite obvious that libraries won’t be needed for the same stuff that they used to do anymore, when I could fit 20,000 copies of the Lord of the Rings on my flash drive, and it’s obvious that resale of digital copies is a ludicrous concept.
I second the waterproof ebook reader need. I just won’t buy an ebook reader until this is satisfied, because I know full well I’ll never use it.
I find myself agreeing with Aq on this subject on several points (does this make me a raving cynic too?)
I prefer something that can fit in my pocket. For reading ebooks, I started with the Palm, back in the day, with Mobipocket, which was the defacto standard until epub came along. I continued to read on with Opiereader on my Zaurus, and now I read ebooks on my Nokia N810 using FBReader. The thing I like about these devices is that it fits in my pocket, and it does more than just read ebooks. Games, programming, web browsing, etc. is available to me. It is a portable Linux desktop that fits in a pocket, hence can do most of the things that I can do sitting on my desktop machine.
That said, I have a couple of hundred ebooks on my N810. Leisure reading, Linux docs, security pubs, the lot of it. I couldn’t go back to reading books on dead trees. It is so nice to have all of this content at your fingertips. Just like with music files, having hundreds of CDs worth of content on one device more than makes up for the loss of having a physical CD as I have heard some complain about.
The whole idea of the e-paper display is wonderful in a lot of ways (power consumption, readability, and what all). The implemantation of this tech, however, as embodied in ebook readers, is massively underwhelming.
I read my books in higly-portable plain text off my Sanza e270 running Rockbox. Additionally, it has my music, podcasts, movies, photos, games, and a pile of apps on it…and it was several hundred dollars cheaper.
Once the refresh rates on e-paper displays go up to something like usable levels for other portable devices — such as media players — and they get the color issue sorted out, the Kindle and its ilk will be history. And for that matter, so will other traditional display technologies.
Again, I must point to ePub (http://www.openebook.org/), which is a very open format for e-book publication. Yes, it does have optional DRM on it’s container standard, but it’s also a re-flowable XML-based document format that allows you to organize your document far better than plain-text would allow.
Plus, newer eBook readers have headphone jacks, if you want to load them down with music/podcasts/whatever other audio you like.
ePaper is a huge weakness at this point, because the tech isn’t quite there. Refresh is noticeably (perhaps aggravatingly) poor, and the lack of even a color option is disappointing for many.
I’ve been itching to buy an ebook reader, but as with many people I’m frustrated about the variety of stupid formats and lockin to specific stores etc. Another thing that frustrated me hugely last time I looked at ebook readers is a lot of them won’t support unicode text and foreign fonts, though I noticed some of the OSS based readers do allow you to install such support.
Good point: I wonder how much ebook readers will embrace an international audience.
I think it’ll be a long while before I ditch the real book in favour of an ebook. The ebook technology’s main issue with me is the human factors side of things: there’s a certain something about being able to flick through a book, put in real bookmarks and carry around with you, even if it’s only being able to view two pages at once.
I’d use a Kindle or something on public transport for reading the news or articles, but not for entire books, I think. Unfortunately I’m not on public transport anymore either, so I don’t really have any justification for it.
I’ll watch the space though. Nice shot, but I think you missed the question of how acceptable ebooks are compared to real books, concentrating mostly on how well different readers and technology do the job.
Anyhoo, merry holidays if you have them.
I see your point, but there isn’t much to say on how ebook readers compare to books, and some folks will just flat out refuse to use an ebook reader because it isn’t a normal book. What was more interesting in our mind was how the game is hotting up with these new devices entering the market.
I have a question for you though, Derek – what would an ebook reader need to do to make it feel enough like a real book for you to get one?
The reason we didn’t bring up the area of how the ebook reading experience compares to real books, to be honest, is that it’s a totally, totally subjective concept. Some people are happy to read e-books off tiny screens (me). Some people are happy to read e-books off an e-ink screen (Jono). Some are not happy with e-book reading technology at all (you, Rupert Giles). It’s not really for discussion, it’d just be my personal preferences vs yours
As Jono asks, though: what do you think, if anything, would change your view?
Sil, Jono, the reader needs to “smell” like a new book. But again, its subjective.
I’d like something that looks and feels like proper paper book, eg, 2 pages. It’s subliminal, but once I can see 2 pages, I’ll look into buying a reader. Meanwhile, they are to expensive, and until a format is decided, they might become dead fish.
I’m not sure it’s the smell, as corrie206 suggests,
) but I think it also depends on the purpose. I’ve started using my iphone to read news articles (e.g. new scientist articles arriving via twitter) and that’s okay but it’d be different for reading a tech book as a reference (e.g. learning a language).
I think for me to buy a device specifically for reading novels and news articles: 1. the screen would need to be a bit bigger than the iphone (perhaps the much touted iTablet will have a better suited form factor, actually a Kindle would probably be okay), 2. it’d need to be inexpensive (e.g. less than $100AU or 40 pounds or so) 3. I think the eink stuff is good enough for reading (with respect to reflect and light emitting screens, etc) 4. It’d need wifi (+ 3G preferably) 5. It doesn’t need to fit in my pocket, but that’d be a massive advantage – fold out screen perhaps?
For a text book application, it’d need a fold out screen for sure so I could get two full pages of viewing, and a handy scroll bar at the bottom, like the progress bar winkleink suggested, but interactive, for flicking through a book. Oh, and easy bookmarking.
There’s a huge amount of human factors work in there to do, to overcome several hundred years of people being used to paper books, but I imagine that’s exactly why Apple’s taking so long with their iTablet. They want to enter the netbook market but cover the emerging ebook one at the same time. Ebooks will be available through the itunes store, I’m sure of it.
I do like the idea of it being waterproof too, for bath reading (mind you baths are a bit a luxury down our way), and the issue to do with onselling/DRM is a great big can of worms AFAICT.
Nothing will ever replace the smell and feel of a good `ole hardback IMHO. I just cannot get used to reading things electronically. I prefer light to be reflected off of pages rather than having the light produced in the reader itself. I’m just old fashion like that I guess.
-Yos
Eww, I just saw my reply. I second that call for preview. Maybe something to read your post out loud to you before you post it? ;o)
I’m still surprised that whenever someone is discussing ebook readers, they only mention the Kindle, the Sony, and the new Nook. There are tons of other ebook readers out there. I’ve been using a Bebook (http://www.mybebook.com) for over a year and find it far superior to the Kindle, for my particular needs.
It will read just about every format you can throw at it (pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, rar, zip) with firmwares for either DRMed ePub or Mobipocket. It has no wireless capability, but I load it with hundreds of books at a time, so that’s not an issue for me.
They do have a new version coming out soon, which I’ll be pre-ordering as soon as it’s available, and a 5 inch screen version if you want to put it in your pocket like Aq.
Cor, I didn’t mention it because I didn’t know about it. That’s really interesting; thanks for the update on that! The “Bebook Mini” is the small version? Or is there a smaller version still?
“Lessons of Open Source”
Jono and Aq each mentioned something profound (at least to me) that goes beyond ereaders.
Jono mentioned new technologies and writing apps that will sell more devices and Aq mentioned manufacturers having to relearn the lessons of open source.
They haven’t learned this lesson yet. For example, Amazon providing a Linux client for purchasing music isn’t embracing open source.
When an ereader (or other new technology device) is first available for purchase AND the manufacturer has released source code/API/developer documentation AT THE SAME TIME as a matter of course rather then a community backlash…then maybe, perhaps they have begun to embrace it.
Kindle format has now been reverse engineered
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/23/amazon_kindle_hacked/
My favourite e-book reader that I’ve seen is the COOL-ER. Meets my requirements of not having a lot of clutter, reasonable screen etc.
http://www.coolreaders.com/
I’m still confused by the proliferation of formats though.
What I’d like to see is the sale of a paper book including a code to download an e-book version. Either that or e-book versions being much much cheaper than paper versions. And every book ever available. And the world. On a stick.
Does that mean “favourite one that I’ve played with and have direct experience of” or “favourite one that I’ve seen pictures of on the internet”?
Hey Chaps, The point about restrictions management and tbe ‘black market’ was thought provoking. If you want to be able to read your paid for book anywhere yet it has DRM, should you just download a cracked copy and still pay for the DRM ‘legal’ version? If you do that you could well claim moral justification, but are you not just encouraging continuation of DRM? Taking that thought a step further… you want to reward the book author(s) for their work, but you don’t want DRM. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to donate to the author directly – then you could pay them for their work you want without having to ‘reward’ the publisher for packaging it with restrictions you don’t want. So download the ‘black market’ copy and pay the author directly. Since most publishers/distributors/retailers take the lions share of the book cost (I think O’Riley say 20% goes to the author), then the author will be happy and argument that Restrictions management is there to protect the works creators will be invalidated.
Thanks for the thought provoking shotcast.
Good quality digital typesetting is extremely complicated, this is obvious form the complex nature of programs like LaTeX, and the very poor typesetting produced by web browsers and word processors alike. I doubt that a portable device would even have enough CPU horsepower to produce decent typesetting in real-time.
Ah, there’s a distinction between “effort required to properly typeset a work” and “effort required to properly display a typeset work”. The typeset form can be rendered into something easier to display before being shipped to portable devices, I think (in the limit case, you ship PNG images of pages, for example).
I have an Cybook Opus ebook reader. It just displays text on the device. Thats all I need. I use calibre to convert my books to epub.
The device does not cost much and does a good job. and it looks good if you ask me.