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Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed
wraith808:
No matter their few compatibilities here and there, Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble have quickly succeeded in making the ebook market horked beyond recognition with their proprietary formats and [proprietary] hardware.
-zridling (February 04, 2011, 02:07 AM)
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I'd disagree. I don't think it's the fault of the companies that you quote, but the actual publishers. This fact is obscured by the fact that the publishers became overly greedy about the time that the larger distributors came into the market. I've been buying e-books for a while, and have seen the market shift a few times. First, when MS was pushing its reader, DRM was as prevalent as it is now. (They weren't the first... just hte first that were really truing to push it for commercial gain) It's about that time that Mobipocket began to push its .mobi books alongside .lit books. Of course, MS had the most leverage, but the market wasn't mature, and it wasn't profitable enough for MS, so they bowed out. There was a rush to fill the void, and basically the .mobi format began to be seen a lot more. Adobe tried to get into the market, but (thankfully) bumbled the attempt. There was growth, and there were two kinds of books sold, pretty much alongside each other- secured and unsecured. Fictionwise was the big distributor of e-books, though Mobipocket distributed some of its own. But the format was pretty much the .mobi format. Then Fictionwise began to get a bit leery of depending on someone else's format for their product. They still distributed .mobi formats, but began to push their own format, based on the old palm format (.pdb), that they called the eReader format. That's when the market began to splinter, though it was still possible to find pretty much every book in both formats, so it was a matter of choice. Unprotected eBooks were still sold at the author/publisher's discretion, and many books were sold unprotected. The market started to thrive, and this was its downfall.
Amazon bought mobipocket. Barnes & Noble bought Fictionwise. The IDF developed ePub. e-books sold like hotcakes. And the publishers decided, "Hey, it's time to exert muscle again!". And so they applied pressure through their normal channels against Amazon and B&N, books began to be unavailable on certain platforms because of licensing.
If way back when there were few books sold, one format had been decided on and supported, and the publishers brought in at that point, maybe things would be better. Maybe if an open format had been written a lot sooner things would be different (.epub wasn't brought about until 2007, 7+ years(!) after .mobi and .pdb) But because of the publishers controlling the channels, and the amount of money spent on e-books, and the already fragmented market, it's very unlikely that anyone else will be able to get in on the scene. Hardware... maybe. Because you can support the e-reader software of both. But to actually get in the market is pretty hard, as Borders and Apple have found... they just can't get the licenses to support a new format. And because of the purchase of the .mobi and .pdb formats, they aren't open. But in reality, it's the channel agreements that are killing the ebook market. And even the owners of the formats are held at the mercy of the publishers. Fictionwise has been very adversely affected because of this. Of course the owners have already made their money, but the shell that's left keeps getting gutted because of limitations placed on it by the channel agreements- not it's parent company. It's the RIAA all over again... but in this case, the distributors take the heat, and the publishers play their puppets behind the scenes, screened from the negative PR by their pawns...
Paul Keith:
If way back when there were few books sold, one format had been decided on and supported, and the publishers brought in at that point, maybe things would be better. Maybe if an open format had been written a lot sooner things would be different (.epub wasn't brought about until 2007, 7+ years(!) after .mobi and .pdb) But because of the publishers controlling the channels, and the amount of money spent on e-books, and the already fragmented market, it's very unlikely that anyone else will be able to get in on the scene. Hardware... maybe. Because you can support the e-reader software of both. But to actually get in the market is pretty hard, as Borders and Apple have found... they just can't get the licenses to support a new format. And because of the purchase of the .mobi and .pdb formats, they aren't open. But in reality, it's the channel agreements that are killing the ebook market. And even the owners of the formats are held at the mercy of the publishers. Fictionwise has been very adversely affected because of this. Of course the owners have already made their money, but the shell that's left keeps getting gutted because of limitations placed on it by the channel agreements- not it's parent company. It's the RIAA all over again... but in this case, the distributors take the heat, and the publishers play their puppets behind the scenes, screened from the negative PR by their pawns...
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No. Software is also a question mark.
It's easy to look at the format problems and think it's a mess but in reality, it never really did become organized and in many ways hardware did push this current market when Amazon launched the Kindle.
However from a non-hardcore e-book reading community, the ones these corporations are trying to market at, there really wasn't much of a software distribution design that went killer app enough to rival the RIAA situation for music and movies.
Both of the latter two categories are very flat. You mostly needed a viewer and you almost heard of the songs and movies the mainstream really wanted.
Books not only don't hold that mystique but it's not a natural digital age fit. As a format, epub is not as widely recognized as pdf and pdf would not be the most widely recognized if there were other competing formats with the same amount of software readers supporting said formats.
Then there's media libraries. Most people who want to get into music have things outside of Itunes for desktop playback. Most people who want to get into books have applications like GooReader.
Alot of these sound repetitive but the truth is wasn't this the same for online book publishing before Amazon came along? ...and then when Amazon came along, everything changed as far as e-commerce went. The e-book issue seems to be in the same case of problematic stage.
The only difference is that there is the market wanting it to grow already and there's more places to discuss it due to the bigger presence of the internet but most of these dilemmas remain the same even without greedy publishers/distributors: There's no next generation "Web" yet that did for books what the dotcom boom did for online book buying. Everyone's trying to fit the "business" into an app/reader/etc. already but in reality there's really only a small room for a newbie to jump into being an e-book fanatic especially without spending any cash on. (How many really share or talk about e-books that weren't just copies of real books? Audiobooks are much easier to try out than e-books and even audiobooks are not as widely sold yet in stores.)
All this greedy publisher issue relies on the assumption that you need these publishers to jump start the e-book market into mainstream usage but that's like saying books not Amazon.com helped Amazon.com more even though anyone could have and have tried stealing the momentum away from Amazon.
wraith808:
^ 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.
As far as your point about the transfer of media, there isn't really that problem with e-Books; they're smaller than other media by a great percentage. So much so, that when I downloaded my complete collection from Fictionwise (to make sure I had a backup of everything), which consists of well over 500 books purchased over the last 10 or so years, it was still less than 100MB. Try that with music purchases for any length of time.
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.
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. 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. And while it's true that anyone could have tried- it's also true that people did try. It's just that the deals behind the scenes limited the penetration, and Amazon also shot themselves in the foot by trying to follow Apple's example of playing hardball with their pricing when they didn't have the leverage to win that particular battle. 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.
Paul Keith:
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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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Is the e-book the content? Not really. In this topic alone, most everyone commented about the format more than the concept.
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?
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.
kyrathaba:
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).
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