I was reading a post on PimpMyNovel this morning and I just felt like sharing my thoughts. After dealing with the comment submission process on Blogger, I was rejected due to the size of my comment. Apparently, I have a lot to say about this. So I decided rather than a comment to someone’s blog post, I had actually written a blog post and should post it as such. I found Eric Blank’s blog on Twitter and so I want to credit him with the idea of the loss of another format to e-readers: large print paperbacks. My response is what follows.
The problem with e-readers is the cumbersome nature of sharing, if it’s even possible. Our family revolves around sharing books between family members. There is more to reading than keeping what is read to ourselves, there is the social aspect of reading that is important to our family. Here are some thoughts I have about e-readers and why we’re not ready to embrace them:
(1) E-readers are less about convenience than they are about profit. The current model seems to be that publishers are looking at making money every time something is read (by a unique reader) instead of the centuries-old paper model of making money every time something is printed. There is no profit in sharing, so let’s kill that ability.
(2) E-books are priced too high. If you consider that paperbacks are priced at $4.95 and ebooks average $9.95, the reason to adopt technology just isn’t there yet. E-books need to be priced at or below $1.99. Before you scream, consider this: Our family shares books. The kids are grown, they live a few miles away. At family get-togethers everyone exchanges books. So the actual, realized cost of a good read is about $2.00 when you consider that we don’t actually purchase everything we read.
Again, before you scream, consider that this is the social nature of reading and has been the model for centuries. We are not pirating, we are socializing. However, if you have competing, proprietary, high-priced e-book formats, that kills the ability to socially interact with literature, it makes it too expensive for a family of poorly paid educators like us to continue the practice. However, if you make the format open, interchangeable between devices, and affordable, then our social interaction around literature can continue.
And that brings me to (3): Common, open format. Publishers will cry ‘piracy’ but they are truly never going to quell it completely. Audio downloads have dropped digital rights management (DRM) in favor of more open and common formats, and publishing must do the same. Currently there is no e-book reader that makes the idea of sharing books easy. Yes, some can, but it is cumbersome at best. I’d just rather hand the book I just finished to my wife to read. Besides, she reads in the tub. If she drops the book, we’re out $4.95, if she drops the Kindle/Nook/iPad…
A little background, I’m not a luddite. Quite the contrary. Our house has two WiFi hotspots and everyone has a laptop (I have two, a PC and a Mac), I have an iPhone that my wife says gets more attention than she does, everyone in the family has at least two college degrees and my stepson just quit a high paying computer science/robotics job to get his PhD. My wife is a language arts teacher, my stepdaughter a social studies teacher, I’m a high school business teacher and adjunct for a local university instructing teachers how to invigorate their curriculum with technology in order to engage students. To us on the surface e-books sound like a great idea (and maybe they are with regards to textbooks) but there are just a lot of barriers left to overcome.
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Why I Won’t Get an E-book Reader (just yet)
Posted: August 9, 2010 in CommentaryI was reading a post on PimpMyNovel this morning and I just felt like sharing my thoughts. After dealing with the comment submission process on Blogger, I was rejected due to the size of my comment. Apparently, I have a lot to say about this. So I decided rather than a comment to someone’s blog post, I had actually written a blog post and should post it as such. I found Eric Blank’s blog on Twitter and so I want to credit him with the idea of the loss of another format to e-readers: large print paperbacks. My response is what follows.
The problem with e-readers is the cumbersome nature of sharing, if it’s even possible. Our family revolves around sharing books between family members. There is more to reading than keeping what is read to ourselves, there is the social aspect of reading that is important to our family. Here are some thoughts I have about e-readers and why we’re not ready to embrace them:
(1) E-readers are less about convenience than they are about profit. The current model seems to be that publishers are looking at making money every time something is read (by a unique reader) instead of the centuries-old paper model of making money every time something is printed. There is no profit in sharing, so let’s kill that ability.
(2) E-books are priced too high. If you consider that paperbacks are priced at $4.95 and ebooks average $9.95, the reason to adopt technology just isn’t there yet. E-books need to be priced at or below $1.99. Before you scream, consider this: Our family shares books. The kids are grown, they live a few miles away. At family get-togethers everyone exchanges books. So the actual, realized cost of a good read is about $2.00 when you consider that we don’t actually purchase everything we read.
Again, before you scream, consider that this is the social nature of reading and has been the model for centuries. We are not pirating, we are socializing. However, if you have competing, proprietary, high-priced e-book formats, that kills the ability to socially interact with literature, it makes it too expensive for a family of poorly paid educators like us to continue the practice. However, if you make the format open, interchangeable between devices, and affordable, then our social interaction around literature can continue.
And that brings me to (3): Common, open format. Publishers will cry ‘piracy’ but they are truly never going to quell it completely. Audio downloads have dropped digital rights management (DRM) in favor of more open and common formats, and publishing must do the same. Currently there is no e-book reader that makes the idea of sharing books easy. Yes, some can, but it is cumbersome at best. I’d just rather hand the book I just finished to my wife to read. Besides, she reads in the tub. If she drops the book, we’re out $4.95, if she drops the Kindle/Nook/iPad…
A little background, I’m not a luddite. Quite the contrary. Our house has two WiFi hotspots and everyone has a laptop (I have two, a PC and a Mac), I have an iPhone that my wife says gets more attention than she does, everyone in the family has at least two college degrees and my stepson just quit a high paying computer science/robotics job to get his PhD. My wife is a language arts teacher, my stepdaughter a social studies teacher, I’m a high school business teacher and adjunct for a local university instructing teachers how to invigorate their curriculum with technology in order to engage students. To us on the surface e-books sound like a great idea (and maybe they are with regards to textbooks) but there are just a lot of barriers left to overcome.
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