While J.K. Rowling won’t even let publishers sell e-books of the Harry Potter series, members of the digerati continue to make the case for “free.”
Suw Charman, a social media consultant, writes in the Strange Attractor blog that e-books are a subpar experience and therefore don’t compete directly with “P.” Details:
Reading an ebook isn’t currently a great experience. Specialised ebook readers are expensive, and most people don’t like reading on-screen, so the ebook is seen as not equivalent for a paper book, i.e. people are more likely to go and buy the paper version if they like the ebook. Thus it is beneficial to release a free ebook so that you can reach as wide an audience as possible, as you stand a good chance of converting ebook downloads to paper book sales.
Conversely, it doesn’t really matter whether you have an unlawfully downloaded copy of an audiobook, or the real thing, whether bought as a download or as a CD, because either way you are probably going to listen to it on your iPod, computer or other MP3 playing device. The assumption is that giving away ebooks encourages sales of paper books, but giving away audiobooks, or allowing unauthorised downloads, will cannibalise the sales of the legitimate ebook. This is exactly the same logic as used by the RIAA and BPI for suing file-sharers, and the rest of the music industry for attempting to slap DRM onto everything in sight. It’s a very compelling and sensible looking argument, but it’s based on unproven assumptions behind the motivations of the downloader/buyer.
Thought: In one way, Charman’s thinking may actually overlap a little with that of J.K. Rowling. Notice? Charman says that reading an e-book isn’t an optimal experience, and J.K., who writes in hand, might even make the argument that she is kindly sparing her readers the experience. Still, shouldn’t that decision be up to J.K.’s audience instead? Readers such as Roland Rohde actually prefer e-books. So will many of the millions of young people who grow up accustomed to reading off screens. If nothing else, think of the aching backs of schoolchildren with heavy loads of p-books. How optimal an experience is that?
I wonder how many eBooks Suw has actually read. I do a lot of reviews and when I get the choice between printed ARCs and electronic, I always pick electronic. Why? For one thing, I can carry several with me. Equally important for those of us with aging eyes, I can adjust the font size.
Back when I was first writing, I’d write things longhand and then transpose them to the computer. Later, I learned to write on the computer but would print out to edit. Then I learned to edit on the computer. I suspect that for many, learning to read on the computer (or PDA or dedicated reader) will just take a little practice. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it Suw.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Rob Preece wrote:
“Why? For one thing, I can carry several with me.”
I think that really hits the advantage of the e-book. I love physical books, but I can’t tote around a 1200 page novel everywhere I go. I can, however, load the ebook of that novel on my Treo and pretty much read it anywhere.
Most adults I know rarely read more than a handful of books every year precisely because they are too busy and are usually physically separated from books when they have a spare moment to actually read them.
I have actually bought and read quite a few ebooks so my views aren’t formed from a lack of experience. I tried reading ebooks on my Treo, but I just didn’t enjoy it because the screen was just too small. I still need to set up an ebook reader on my Nokia E61 and see if that is any better. I’m a bit happier with ebooks on my mac, but there are times when it’s actually more convenient, safer, or for some other reason preferable to read a book than a computer. I’m not, for example, going to read from any expensive electronic equipment if I’m in the bath, and I much prefer a old-fashioned paper book if I’m reading in bed.
Note that I’m not ruling out ebooks as a waste of time, or saying that they aren’t worth doing. I don’t think that at all. But I just think that it’s fairly true to say that right now, most people still prefer paper, so they may try out a book in ebook form, before then buying a pbook. (Although that’s just one behaviour and there are many.)
There’s actually a good case for people buying both ebook and pbook. I’ve done that for programming books – on the one hand you really do benefit from easy search in the ebook, but on the other hand, if your screen is full of code, you need a physical artifact that is independent of the machine you are working on.
You see that happening with music and films too – people do want the digital and the physical, in part because humans are acquisitive creatures and we like showing off our acquisitions to our peers, and in part because we know how fragile the digital form is. Nothing beats a bookshelf full of books, DVDs and CDs as a physical manifestation of your personality, and as a back-up lest you lose your digital copy.
I think that the situation is definitely in flux, though. Specialised ebook readers are eventually going to get it right. Sony’s latest offering looks really nice up close, and is very readable, but the interface is crap and the DRM really puts me off. As the technology progresses, we’ll see more people felling happier using ebooks instead of pbooks. I would love an ebook reader that didn’t make my eyes hurt, was lightweight, readable in low light, cheap, and could hold a whole library of books on it.
But I still think pbooks will remain popular, the way that vinyl has remained popular despite CDs and digital downloads. Market share may have shrunk, but predictions of the death of vinyl were very premature.
Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see how the economics of it are going to play out, but I think the base assumption that many people make that giving away ebooks will damage sales of a pbook is not as well founded in fact as they would like to think. Whether all books would benefit from giving away free ebooks is also debatable. I’m curious to see how this all develops, and hope that we’ll see a lot more authors and publishers experimenting with the different types of format for written works, from ebooks to speed-reading versions to audiobooks to wiki versions.
“There’s actually a good case for people buying both ebook and pbook. I’ve done that for programming books – on the one hand you really do benefit from easy search in the ebook, but on the other hand, if your screen is full of code, you need a physical artifact that is independent of the machine you are working on.”
If I could buy a physical book and have a tiny SD card in the inside cover with a DRM-free ebook version, I would love that. Sometimes with e-books I buy, I will print, read, then toss the printed version knowing that I can search the ebook version anytime (especially with heavily graphic PDFs that don’t lend themselves well to reading on the diminuitive screen of the Treo).
Mostly, though, if it is not an art book, I prefer to read it electronically.
“I have actually bought and read quite a few ebooks so my views aren’t formed from a lack of experience. I tried reading ebooks on my Treo, but I just didn’t enjoy it because the screen was just too small. I still need to set up an ebook reader on my Nokia E61 and see if that.”
One of the problems first encountered with reading e-books on the Treo is that I have a mental model/expectation of what constitutes a page’s worth of writing. On the Treo, I use Mobipocket to set the display to full screen and bump up the font and I’m seeing only about 50 words at a time. That definitely takes some time to get used to, but after awhile I did get used to it and don’t notice it anymore.
For me the benefits of having the book always with me so I can knock out a couple chapters while waiting at the dentist’s or in line at the bank makes that particular tradeoff worth it, but I think like a lot of e-book enthusiasts, I’m more of a hardcore reader than most people.
The ideal device for me would be something like the iPhone that has the big screen which can be fully used for display (as opposed to the Treo where half the form factor is used the keyboard which I only intermittenly used). I don’t think I could ever convince my wife to try reading a book on a Treo. Something with a bigger screen more like the iPhone, I bet she’d give a whirl.
Finally, for me the advantage of the Treo is having one device to keep track of. I own one of the eBookwise re-branded RocketBooks and I was really impressed by the crispness of the Sony Reader, but ultimately its just like having another book to tote around — I used my eBookwise for a couple months and then abandoned it because I’d never remember to bring it with me to the line at the bank or the dentist’s office. I like only have to have one electronic device to carry everywhere.
“If I could buy a physical book and have a tiny SD card in the inside cover with a DRM-free ebook version, I would love that.”
There have been a few hardcover Baen (publisher of science fiction and fantasy) books sold complete with a CD containing a copy in a number of different formats free of DRM crap. Plus theCD will have a number of other books on it (normally all the other books in the series).
There is even explicit permission to copy and give away the CD.
And I agree that I loved it.