How is software a question mark? Every reader (even the doomed Kobo) has a software equivalent on the major platforms. That's one of the reasons I ended up getting a iPad rather than a Nook- I run stanza, eReader, Kindle, and Nook apps on it. When the last Dresden Files novel came out, it was only available on the Nook. My friends that had a Kindle were out of luck. It wasn't even in eReader format even though that format is the same as the B&N format. You could only get it electronically if you had a Nook. But I was still able to get it, because I had the Nook app.
It's alot like the argument for Final Draft or MS Word as far as "typing" goes.
Nook has one of the better business models (although I don't monitor e-book news so I don't really know of your specific tid-bit) but it's not a "killer app".
It's a great app (although I had assumed it was hardware) but it's taking the same model as before and just making it better or making it more interesting to interested people.
E-books though are bigger than that. That's why they are so hard to sell and the current business model is at the same time so easy to corrupt. This is all my uneducated opinion mind you but it's just what I see.
E-books have something bigger to them, that's why even though the final product is mostly the same - it tooked E-Ink Readers to get a small set of people interested in the actual idea of an e-book reader as opposed to a natural pattern where technology just caught up.
-Paul Keith
The nook is the hardware and the app. I'm not saying it's a killer app. iTunes isn't a killer app. Most people don't even like it. They put up with it because of the hardware. That's why software isn't the issue- it's more hardware.
To the other argument about using PDF... did you ever experience the abortive effort by Adobe with it's reader editions? That was a very big fiasco, and there's one other problem with that- PDF isn't an open format. Adobe has shown this several times in trying to exert muscle over the use of PDF.
You're actually making my case. PDF is bad but why did it take this long before something like epubs appearing? Let's not even consider PDFs but factor in the difference between how many people know of every popular types of e-book readers from how many people subconsciously have an idea of what Adobe Reader is showing on-screen?
-Paul Keith
You're missing one part of the point. Adobe tried to get into it after the market started maturing. PDFs have never been considered a big format in the game. The formats from the beginning were .mobi (which is now owned by Amazon), and .pdb (which is now owned by B&N). People try to compare .epub in the same category, but the format was not created until 2007... well after the other two had become entrenched. Though the market was not as large as it is now, it was large enough that neither of them had any pressure to drop their format and change to a non-tested format. And both had secure and non-secure formats, so it wasn't like .epub was offering something that wasn't there. That's my point. An open format can't be an also-ran, or there won't be an argument towards moving to it, other than we don't want to use a proprietary format.
The RIAA analogy isn't based on software, hardware, or anything of the sort. It's based on content not delivery. And in the same way, the big publishers are the same as the RIAA, just not as in bed with each other, so not as easy a target. They rip off authors in the same way as the RIAA does with artists, they control the channels in the same way as the RIAA. They are the choke point, and the source of the issues.
Actually it's based on all of that but we're mostly talking about semantics at this point. Even if you just took the content argument, it's still not 1:1 comparison between how people share and perceive the contents of an e-book from a movie/song/audiobook.
They are one of the major choke points but let's not kid ourselves and think e-books or even books never had a marketability issue compared to movies and music.
-Paul Keith
I'm not really getting the point here. There is a 1:1 comparison between books, movies, and music. They are all content delivered by a medium. If you give someone an empty cd, they have the same problem as if they have an empty book- there is no content. Add content to that delivery device, and you have a product. In both cases, there are other ways to deliver the content- digital being one of them. So the content is the big thing here- not the delivery mechanism.
Amazon didn't start the rise in eBooks. They took a risk, but it wasn't as big of a risk as you make it out to be. They did innovate, but they weren't the first to try. What they did was buy the correct technology, then leverage it with hardware at the exact time that the market was starting to take off. If they hadn't done it, it would have still happened IMO- there were signs pointing that way already.
Amazon didn't have to start the rise of anything. That's kind of the point of the killer app category right? It's not who begins but who ends up sticking around and growing and redefining the users.
In that sense, the Kindle was the equivalent of the first netbook. It wasn't the OLPC but once the EEEPC got out, you knew netbook was a category of it's own and even today you could make the argument that netbooks doesn't have as huge a market despite not having to carry a format on it's shoulders.
-Paul Keith
The killer app analogy doesn't really equate in this situation. A killer app is something that is content that sells hardware. A whole different paradigm. And even if you do try to equate the two, a killer app is something that starts critical mass. With consoles, they have exclusives that everyone *has* to have... and once it's in their possession, the sales of other things on the console rise because people now have the big investment part out of the way. With the kindle, there was no killer book that made people buy the kindle. It was bought because it was cool, and useable, and people could consume books on it. *Any* device that could have satisfied those needs would have slipped into the same profitable area. It was just the Kindle that did it first, right as there was a critical mass of ebooks starting in the market. That's one of the reasons that they bought the .mobi format rather than making their own- it was proven, and there were *already* books in that format; only minor tweaking was needed to bring the content to market.
As with anything, it's the content that drives the market, not the other way around. There are other ways of getting content to the users, but without content, the deliverers of that content are dead in the water. So just as it is the RIAA standing in the way of the progression of the digital music movement, the publishers are the same gatekeepers for the switch from analog to digital in print media.
Is the e-book the content? Not really. In this topic alone, most everyone commented about the format more than the concept.
-Paul Keith
The format isn't the concept either. It's the content within the e-book, and that's what the publishers control.
When you mentioned the exclusive Nook files, were you selling the book or were you selling the idea of certain exclusive books like how gaming consoles work?
-Paul Keith
To continue that ... the exclusivity on consoles is *again* content. The reason that it works like it does is because of the number of publishers. There aren't as many publishers of books as their are of games. And as the number of publishers dwindle in the gaming market, the number of exclusive titles also dwindle. Have you looked at what's exclusive now? Only games that are published by the manufacturers of the consoles. That doesn't really create lock-in. I want infamous, but it's not enough to make me buy a ps3. But if a large publisher consistently made games only for one console, then that would be more of a draw.
The RIAA is standing in the way of digital music that has pretty much been maxxed out except for certain audiophile people as far as everything goes.
There may be a better format but it's an uphill "upgrade" format at this point. E-books on the other hand, even if you don't choke that out, it's full potential isn't really out there yet.
Or rather you could say even if you accept all the current concepts and forms e-book selling has taken currently minus the DRM, it doesn't mean it has the same mass adoption yet so everything that's being stifled now is like trial by fire in my opinion to force content providers to adapt to a paradigm shift and that's really just my stance. I'm not really saying ok there's no problem, let's wait it out. I'm just saying it's not FUBAR yet. It may become dormant because of the corruption but it's this type of corruption that is going to upseat a new form of format acceptance as well as new forms of delivery and even opportunities for other businesses to "make up" for where these companies have massively failed and that still includes software even though now it seems e-book readers are known by most.
-Paul Keith
Do you *really* think another format is going to come along at this point that's going to change the way that things operate? Unless it gives something radically new, I think you're dreaming. You can see that in the market even now. Sony has a hard time, and they have a lot of leverage behind them from other entertainment markets. Borders is a huge chain, but they came a bit late, and so are falling a dollar short... if someone that large can't make it, then who can?
It's more the fault of greedy publishers than of greedy eBook marketers. E-books make money for their pushers due to bulk -- the high quantity of distribution. It's the publishers who don't want their hard-copies of titles to be undersold that are driving up the per-book price of any given eBook. Even at that, lots of eBooks are still considerably less expensive than the hard-copy equivalent. Take, for instance, the Stephen Donaldson title I just bought for my Kindle. Total cost to me was $6.52, as opposed to the paperback version, which at $7.99 plus shipping/handling, comes in at over $10.00. Not only did I get my book instantaneously, but I saved $3.50.
But your more expensive books are not going to see such a discrepancy in hard-cover versus eBook price, because, hey, the publishers don't wanna lose money on that big expensive book (say, certain programming books, for instance).
-kyrathaba
My exact point. But it doesn't seem that many recognize this- it's easier to blame Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple than Harper Collins, et al. Most people don't even *know* the names of the publishers. They just aren't as easy a target, especially since they don't have a self created one like the RIAA for people to focus their ire on.
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He's already into Java, so this recommendation is probably Pointless (
(Wow... two threads to point that out... LOL)