Discussion

By Michael Josefowicz on Jan 17, 2008

Nice post. Another thing to consider is that in addition to the consumer market for customized books, it's possible there may turn out to be another opportunity in public education. I think it might be plausible to believe that textbooks might someday be replaced with customized books that are directly integrated into classroom activity. A physical book is still the best device to be able to do "compare and contrast" which is at the center of the learning process. Outside the USA, where the need to learn - very fast - is even more pressing than here, it might turn out to be the killer app for digital printing.

 

By avagee on Jan 17, 2008

Re. distributing books to mobile devices, it's worth noting that modern cell phones make fine book readers for 'low format' novels and general prose. You can see the advantage of not needing to carry an extra device and the fact that wireless is built into phones means you can do all the impulse acquisition like Kindle. You can get a good sense of the possibilities at http://www.booksinmyphone.com where you can install for free direct to your phone from their mobile site or download and install via a PC.

 

By Mike on Jan 17, 2008

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/index.html?ex=1358226000&en=dc35254b0fcd5490&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss" rel="nofollow">The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore. -- Steve Jobs

 

By Bryan Yeager on Jan 17, 2008

I think that Apple prediction may have either been a little short-sighted, or dead on. According to Steve Jobs at the recent MacWorld conference, people don't read anymore. From the NY Times Bits Blog:

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Of course, he made a similar statement about cell phones a few years back, and look what happened there... The problem with most consumer-level cell phones (as in Moto RAZRs, not Windows Mobile or BlackBerry devices) is the resolution and text rendering capability. Charles Bigelow, the current Cary Professor at RIT (and the designer of the Lucida typeface) was doing research on rendering prose on small screens by flashing individual words or short phrases in succession on cell phone screens as a method of kind of "faking" normal reading. The example he showed was very cool, and I think if you got used to it, it would would pretty well. However, display technology is advancing so fast, especially in the world of OLED displays (1,000,000:1 contrast!) that readability won't be as much of a problem in the next 5 years. I personally have a Windows Mobile device (Motorola Q), and after trying that versus the iPhone, it's clear that the readability on the iPhone is spectacular and very suitable for reading eBooks. The Q... not so much. The ClearType rendering still isn't that great, mostly because of resolution and the lack of zoom available.

 

By Bryan Yeager on Jan 17, 2008

Hmm... I must have started writing that before Mike popped the same quote up. Nice.

 

By Mike on Jan 18, 2008

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/january#thu-17-nyt_jobs" rel="nofollow">So, either (a) Jobs think the Kindle is a bad concept; or (b) Apple is working on a portable e-book reader. - By John Gruber

 

By Patrick Henry on Jan 18, 2008

Recently, we discussed Amazon’s Kindle and other e-book devices in a graphic communications course that I teach at New York City College of Technology. To put it mildly, the students—mostly tech-savvy people in their 20s—were underwhelmed by the thought of using e-book alternatives to the real thing. Their biggest criticism was that as far as delivering information goes, a gadget like the Kindle doesn’t do anything that can’t also be done by several other gadgets they already carry. They didn’t like its high price, and despite my best effort to explain why the Kindle’s e-paper display represents such a breakthrough in the digital presentation of text, they seemed less than bowled over by that aspect of the product as well. Many followers of this blog will recall the Rocket eBook and other e-reading devices that had a very brief heyday (mostly at trade shows) in the late 1990s, only to go nowhere in the mass market. While it’s true that a Kindle with an infinitely re-imageable e-paper screen is a giant advance over a Rocket eBook with a much less flexible LCD viewer, the new device has the same physical awkwardness and the same over-engineered persona as the older solution. Consumers, jaded to flippancy by flash flip phones, will be no more impressed than my students. If Apple really is planning to adapt the iPhone and/or the iPod as an e-book reader in lieu of introducing a dedicated device, it’s a decision that will keep Mr. Jobs and his cohorts from reinventing a very square wheel. One member of the class did propose an intriguing use for the Kindle and its kin: let it serve, he said, as a portable digital library for all of the college texts he was obliged to buy but probably never would consult again after the courses were over. Others agreed that buying a Kindle once and reloading it many made a lot more sense than spending four years accumulating textbooks for trade-in at pennies on the dollar. Could Amazon, the academic publishers, and the schools work a deal on the razor-and-razorblades model whereby students would get Kindles for nothing, or close to it, in return for paid subscriptions to required texts in e-readable form? That kind of offer might get some attention from the people who ought to be most receptive to e-reading, but who clearly need a more convincing explanation of what’s in it for them.

 

By Bryan Yeager on Jan 20, 2008

It should be noted that Amazon's first production run of the Kindle did sell out, so it's not as unpopular as it may seem. The E Ink technology doesn't impress me as much as the services tied in the back-end of the Kindle: EV-DO connection to Sprint's network (for free!) which gives you the ability to buy books anywhere EV-DO service exists (a substantial area), the ability to view other websites, such as Wikipedia and the New York Times, the option to expand memory with an SD slot, and also the personal e-book publishing platform (Digital Text Platform), which can be used for people to self-publish their own work in e-book format. For example, if you publish a book on Lulu, chances are you can convert your text via the Digital Text Platform and have your book for sale in e-book format as well. I think that aspect is impressive. I don't think this will impress people in their 20's or early 30's. However, I think people in their late 30's to 50's and beyond may be the market for a device like this. They don't want to deal with iPhones or other multi-function portable devices, but they already probably have trust toward Amazon (more so than a company like Sony) based on previous experience and are willing to drop the money to try it out. Obviously people are already doing that.

 

By Patrick Henry on Jan 22, 2008

CNNmoney.com is carrying an interesting feature called "Owner Tested/E-Book reader roundup: Will Kindle catch fire?": one user's ratings of the Kindle and three other e-reading devices. Here's the link: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0801/gallery.ebook_readers.fsb/index.html Be sure to check the story's discussion thread for pointed comments from other e-reading aficionados.