LuYu: TeleBloggers could band together to design the hardware and interface for the ideal DRMless e-reader

I do not understand what devices have to do with drm?

All of the current e-book reading devices, including e-ink, umpc’s, Nokia 7-800 line, Ebk1150, palms and ppc’s, iPhone/ITouch, PSP and so on allow you to put your own content on for free (including the Kindle); sometimes you have to modify the format, for some like the iPhone you may need to do some hacking for the moment (though pretty easily), but once you have a drm-free text based e-book you can read it pretty much anywhere with minimal work; it’s trickier with scans and pdf’s but that is mostly about screen size than anything else.

The problem lies with content availability, at least of the commercial kind at sensible prices and drm-free/freeable, since free content exists galore

I have to say that I like the Sony Reader. Effort should be put into a Universal File Format — but isn’t that what IDPF is doing? The problem is more software than hardware. With a universal file format, people could use any hardware they wanted (oh you can bet Bezos would get it on the Kindle asap once he saw it was taking off).

Dave Winer had a similar idea of designing an iPod-like device ideal for podcasts. It went nowhere.

NAEB originally started out with the plan of designing a custom device. However the deeper we got into it, the more we realized we just didn’t have the staff or funding to bring it to market. So we switched gears and start looking at reselling.

Thanks, Liviu, but not every Kindle or iPhone owner is as tech-savvy as you—and, yes, Amazon does push people in the direction of DRMed content. While free options are available, they require conversion for the Kindle. The Sony is better. It can render PDF natively, if you can stand that on the small screen, and maybe even RTF. But you know where Sony’s heart it. On the positive, there’s the possibility of having hardware come with built-in software that would be well-integrated with public domain sites.

That said, I have my own concern with LuYu’s proposal—the expense of developing hardware. Better to focus on software for e-reading and creation that can do justice to .epub, etc. But I do agree with his main point: the need for the open source community to come up with alternatives to Bezos-style approaches!

As for free and/or affordable content, CC and the public domain will help, as will books from clueful companies such as Baen and ideally a TeleRead-style approach of a well-funded national digital library system. We need a mix of business models to avoid central control, the reason I’d hate to see TeleRead alone be the only choice even with the use of many librarians in many cities. Along the the way, I certainly want to see content providers compensated fairly. But this mustn’t happen at the expense of something dear to us all: true ownership of the books we love. Hence my intense dislike of DRM (even though interoperable DRM would be better than the present mess). Here’s to balance, which TeleRead library model could help achieve by providing another income stream for publishers and thus reducing the urge for content-related gouges.

Happy holidays,
David

Surely the OLPC IS the DRM free hardware. It just needs some hackers to hook up a better ereader to it. I would need a substantial lottery win before I ever considered donating to an open-ereader project.

I’ve been suggesting over at the GP32X forums that the upcoming pandora would make a fair ereader.

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=39869

http://pandora.bluwiki.org/ and this is the hardware.

So if not the OLPC how about the eeepc? I’m typing on it right now. Hopefully they’ll work out the heat problems and perhaps have a tablet format in a future release. Not that it gets THAT hot but it’s noticeable.

And if you absolutely must have an e-ink screen I am 100% sure that once supply is no longer constrained you will have a flood of cheap Chinese e-readers with no interest in DRM whatsoever.

FBReader plus existing or future Linux-based off the shelf hardware does seem to be the best bet, and it is available now. The Java version of FBReader will expand this “market” considerably. I don’t think Google’s Android (the initial target for FBReaderJ) is just going to be for mobile phones, and FBReaderJ won’t need a pointing device (mouse or stylus) which will allow less expensive hardware.

Exactly, Alan! I truly hope that people will give FBReader the full Sugarization treatment promptly. Keep reminding folks of the possibilities.
HH. David

David Rothman:

You said “While free options are available, they require conversion for the Kindle.”

This isn’t fully correct. According to the Kindle docs (see section 8.2, page 77), Kindle natively handles .txt, and non-DRM .mobi/.prc files (mobipocket). To get them into the Kindle you just connect the included USB cable and drag and drop the files. Or you can put them on an SD card which the Kindle reads.

You need to use the translation service for .doc, .pdf, .html, .zip, and various image formats. I wouldn’t be surprised to find simple conversion problems already exist, or will soon exist, to do this job locally without emailing files to Amazon.

I only point this out because the misconception seems to surface pretty often. If you have textfiles or non-DRM mobipocket files, it does not by any stretch of the imagination require technical genius to copy them to the Kindle.

Many thanks for the details, Bryan. Of course the main point survives–Amazon really tries to build your e-book habits around DRMed books sent via wireless. – David

“They want us to be ignorant…”

No, they just want to sell their products. But the manufacturers of ebook readers don’t seem to have a clear idea of what their product is. They’re selling hardware, and hardware that should run a certain type of software in order to do one primary task — read.
But they’ve overlearned the printer/razor lesson: sell ’em the printer/razor cheap, and make the real money selling ink/blades. Problem being that to make the real money, the ink cartridge or razor blade has to be sold or licensed by the same company that sold the printer/razor. Or so they see it. Sure, sell an ebook reader, but the real money is in selling the books that’ll be read on it — there is the incentive to contribute to the eBabel problem by selling books in a format that’s tied to the Kindle, or the Sony Reader, or the Rocket ebook, etc. So we get devices that read ebooks sold only through Amazon or Sony. And yes, they’ll also look at unsecured MobiPocket, or text, or HTML, or PDF maybe. But for commercially published ebooks, which is where the money is — you’re chained to your Kindle or Sony Reader. They’re selling razor blades now, having already sold you the razor, and they want to make sure you buy your blades from them and only them. Nothing evil about it. They just want to turn a profit, which any business has to do if it’s going to be here tomorrow.

But the notion of making the real money on blades instead of razors is a greater contributor to the eBabel problem than DRM. On the Palm devices I’ve owned (IIIXe, M125, Zire 31, and now a T/X) as well as the desktop PCs, I’ve been able to read secured and unsecured books in Ereader, MobiPocket, Adobe, HTML, text, and others. Readers of at least some of those formats are available for Pocket PCs, Macs, and smartphones. But then, those devices aren’t sold primarily as ebook readers — most of them are general purpose devices sold to a customer base for whom ebooks are an extra and not the primary reason for purchase. Which is why I can read DRMd Adobe, MobiPocket, and Ereader on a $99 Palm Z22 but not on a Sony Reader costing quite a bit more. Palm isn’t trying to sell me its particular brand of razor blade.

The notion of having a wish list of features for the ideal ebook reader is nice, and maybe somebody would actually try to market one. But really, the screens are nice already — the Palm T/X has a terrific screen for ebook reading, and while I’ve not had a chance to handle a Sony Reader, Kindle, or the other dedicated ebook readers, from the photos they look even better. The notion that things have to be dumbed down to make it easier to load content to the device (this in a time when everybody’s moving content to and from smartphones, PDAs, digital cameras and mp3 players!) is wrong from the git-go. A lot of places have been selling DRMd content for years, and they haven’t gone broke yet, so somebody’s buying it besides me. But how many people are going to buy hardware saddled not just with DRM, but with a book format that can’t be read on other devices?

So the one item on my wish list for the ideal ebook reader (besides a screen as nice as the T/X or the Sony or the Kindle or etc) is that the people creating the product arrange with Adobe and MobiPocket and EReader and the rest to prepare versions of their reading software (for both open and DRMd content) for the device. Yes, epub or some other standard format recognized by all devices would be nifty, but it’s not here yet, and the prospective customer base has purchased about a decade’s worth of material in different formats, DRMd and otherwise, that they might like to be able to use with their nice new reader. Mike Cane said in an earlier post that the problem is more software than hardware. It is indeed.

Bests to all,
–tr

Amazon got one thing right in marketing their device: when you read e-books you want to forget about the device (and to me this is why laptops/pc’s make poor reading devices overall for anything that requires concentration, while they are great for news, blogs and stuff similar to conversation)

On the other hand any average computer user with a fast connection so Google is instantly available should be able to easily use text based drm-fee e-books on pretty much any device. I even used the Linux shell editor vi to modify some files using detailed instructions found with Google. You just need the will and desire. To me “difficulty” in using e-books on a device is just another excuse by people who do not care about them but do not want to appear technophobic.

Tony Rabig:

I really liked your points centering around the razor/razorblade selling question. You’re really on to something there! I hope there will be more discussion of this.

As a guy who reads ebooks myself, however, I do have a wishlist. And reading ebooks on a display smaller than a business card (which is what you’ll find on most phone/pda devices) is snacking, not really reading. Oh, I wouldn’t mind having that capability, for snatching back some of the lost moments in waiting rooms. But for at-home, on-the-couch or in-the-bed reading, a Palm-like device isn’t going to cut it. I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading on my Nokia N770 (which has a larger screen than most phone/pda devices), and it just barely makes the grade. It doesn’t really ‘get out of the way’ and let me really immerse myself in the material.

Maybe one day we’ll have the sort of rollable/foldable displays occasionally shown in this and other forums, where the screen can be larger than the device which must fit in our pockets, and there will be a true chance for the phone/PDA and the e-reader to merge into one all-round device. But until that day arrives, I still want a dedicated e-reader with a screen nearly the size of a sheet of typing paper. Which is what I suspect many are really saying when they bemoan the lack of .pdf on ereaders today.

Personally I remain convinced that the proper format for such a device is something about the size of a DVD case. I’d want it to have three screens: one on the outside front of the device, and two inside the folding part of the device. While standing in line or sitting on the bus I could read from the outer screen; when I need a larger screen (for that page-sized PDF, or whatever), I could open the device and snap-lock it into the open flat position, making the two inner screens appear as one larger screen. Perhaps there would be an onscreen keyboard as well, for those times when I need to type out a search string or make an annotation. If so, allowing the hinge to snap-lock into various angle positions would also be desirable. And I’d like all three screens to be touchscreens so that I could scribble on them as well.

Today, that device is probably pretty expensive to build and market. I have hopes for tomorrow, though!

Bryan,

Wish I could take credit for the observation about razors/blades and printers/ink cartridges, but I can’t. Nor can I recall whose article or post I first saw it in, so I can’t even give credit where credit is due. But once the workings of printer/ink cartridge are noticed, it’s not much of a jump to see the same mechanics operating in dedicated reader/proprietary format. PDAs, smart phones, and PCs are general purpose devices with ebooks just one more function, so their manufacturers aren’t too worried about the idea of people buying their ebooks from more than one vendor. And the ebook retailers know they might see more sales if their reader software runs on multiple platforms. But the folks doing dedicated reading devices seem to think they’ll lose out if books for their devices are available from just anyone. Free content handling? Fine. But that new best-seller that readers have to pay for? Sorry — only from the company store. Who knows whether they’ll ever decide they’ll sell more units by supporting more formats?

I’ve done a lot of ebook reading on Palm PDAs, and never found the screen to be a real problem, though like you I find a bigger screen nicer to use. A fella named Jeff Kirvin in the old Writing on Your Palm site once noted that the hardest thing for folks to get used to when using a PDA as a reading or writing device is the fact that you can’t see a full page. Once you’re used to that, though… I’ve read a lot of short fiction on the Palm, and long books too, with no trouble. But yes, a bigger screen is nicer, and a device the size of a DVD case would be truly nifty (even if it had only one screen).

Bests,

–tr

Tony:

Well, the part of the ebook/razorblade thing I’d like to see drilled into is: simple profit/loss mathematics. I’d like to see some MBA type take a long range look at things like:

+ What’s the cost to develop, manufacture, and market an e-reader at this stage of the game?

+ Given whatever costs found in above point, what’s the payback period at various price points – if you stipulate a hardware-only profit model (no content lock-in adding to profit stream)?

We see Sony, Cybook, and Kindle all settling in the $350-$400 range. We see Iliad at the higher $700 price point, but that’s probably to be expected with its larger touchscreen. Then again – maybe Iliad’s lack of content lock-in has something to do with that higher price? Then again, Cybook, at $350, apparently has no lock-in deal for content.

I dunno the numbers. I’d like to see them. Honestly, right now, I am not surprised at the $350-and-up pricing. I suspect it won’t get much lower until we see factories churning these things out by the millions.

Well, it seems as if my article drew a few unexpected responses. This really should not surprise me as I am hardly clairvoyant enough to anticipate everyone else’s cognitive output.

Having said that, I was completely knocked off guard that so many of the posters felt that hardware was not an issue. So, I suppose I should clarify my position a bit by adding a little background on where I think, at minimum, things stand.

First off, I should state that I doubt very much whether I, personally, would want a dedicated e-book reader at all. I have read many books on both my phones (P800, A780, and an E6) and my PDAs (iPAQ 3780 and two Zaurii). I have found the screens quite comfortable enough for my needs, and my program makes books that work with any device that has a screen constraining browser and a file manager. In fact, I am composing this post on a Zaurus right now — just as I did with the article. So, I would hardly be able to state that I am wanting when it comes to devices.

While these devices all have their good and bad points. None of them fully satisfy my needs, and — more importantly — none of them satisfy the diverse needs of others.

What I Think Is Needed

While web browsers make excellent platforms for passive reading, they fail at many other tasks that paper and some dedicated e-book readers do well. Functions such as annotation and paragraph or sentence bookmarking or highlighting are conspicuously absent. There is no ability to create new links in documents either. I have been enjoying FBReader, of late, but it lacks note taking and editing functions as well. Dictionary lookups vary from device to device and are generally inadequate (I have no need for a dictionary that only contains words I already know).

I am satisfied with — in fact, I prefer — backlit displays. However, the discussions on Teleread and other sites and conversations with friends lead me to believe that I am not in the majority. Most people believe paper to be superior to digital displays, and while I disagree, I cannot fault people for having their own opinions and preferences.

The Zaurii have keyboards, but none of the phones or the iPaq do.

I have a CF WiFi card, but none of these devices have built in WiFi support. Therefore, all of these devices require books to be transferred to memory cards or over USB. I can use Bluetooth on the phones to transfer books to and from other devices, but there is no archiving utility to pack them up, and none of these devices come with software that can nicely display plain text files.

Mesh wireless would make it possible to discuss and read books simultaneously. Perhaps this could be a form of hardware based social networking where people could brag about what they were reading to show their mental prowess or use an IM program to send enticing snippets to a friend. Imagine a class discussion where people where exchanging text and speech — or even video and audio — simultaneously. One could highlight phrases or passages in a book and send them to others and then discuss the highlighted version. All the students’ annotations could be added to the book and reviewed after class enhancing the following week’s discussion.

The displays are too small for what most people expect. Most people probably want something the size of an average novel. They also probably want something like Eink. Again, this is where I think the Chi Mei display is superior. It can satisfy my needs for a backlight and other people’s need for a static monochromatic display.

Power probably is not a problem, but devices that last days instead of hours would definitely be an improvement — or weeks instead of days.

Finally, the cost of these things. My Zaurus cost me something in the neighborhood of US$700. I doubt many people have that much budgeted for their friends’s X’mas gifts. According to Tony Rabig’s razor blade/printer cartrage analogy Amazon is selling the Kindle for cheap, but even US$350 is a lot to spend on a holiday gift. That price is the price of my last phone (E6 — last year’s price, in fact). So, if that is the discounted price for a device that only reads books, and for the same money I can get a phone, Bluetooth, Opera, a dictioanry, a crapload of games, a camera, an mp3 player, and all the other PDA and phone software a phone comes with, the choice is rather obvious. I really cannot see why someone would spend more than US$100 on one of these things. If the razor blade analogy were true, why is Amazon not giving these devices away for free?

LuYu,

It’s my understanding, and somebody will correct me if I’m wrong here, that there aren’t a lot of suppliers yet for the displays; I think as that changes the prices will go down. At the moment, Amazon’s price for the Kindle isn’t much out of line with what you’d pay for a Sony Reader or a Cybook, and it’s cheaper than an iliad. Part of Amazon’s marketing for the Kindle is selling a lot of popular books for ten bucks instead of the regular hardcover price, which I’m sure a number of purchasers regard as something of a rebate, making the Kindle seem more economical to folks who buy lots of best-sellers. Maybe Amazon might have priced the device lower if they’d gone with wi-fi instead of EV-DO, or if Bezos & Company were truly certain that the device would really take off (who was it that estimated there might be 50,000 Kindles sold by year’s end? — that’s not a huge number of units), but at any rate it’s not priced much differently from similar devices. Some people would call it cheap, though apparently not you and I certainly wouldn’t call it cheap either, but it’s in the ballpark for that type of device at this time.

I think the central point of the razor blade analogy — you gotta buy OUR blades — still applies. They expect to make more money over the long haul selling you the books you’ll read on the device. Otherwise, why not release a device that will handle multiple secured formats? Otherwise, why the proprietary formats in the first place?

All the best,

–tr