• Elsewhere in books, Google’s book battle has gone international, while Amazon’s has settled. Aptara and friends are working on a mysterious “solution” to iPhone books. Gormet threw in the napkin, and so did Philly’s libraries. I like what this guy’s got to say about ebook price points, though his bar may be a tad low. Disney books have gone digital, and Simon & Schuster “invented” the vook,  but nobody cares.

• Two of my favorite authors in a blender! Check out Nabokov’s notes on Kafka’s work. Also Kafka-related from Boing Boing, reading his work improves learning? UPDATE: Hilary Mantel has been named the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

• Finally, the fun. Levi Johnston finally uses protection? And while we can all chuckle at this quick Zelda animation, only true dorks can appreciated this apparent infusion of Mother 3 into Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (bonus points if you know the answer to Tomato’s Bubble Monkey question).

That's an American hand

MobileRead’s been keeping track of the Sony Reader’s European march: the PRS-505 debuts in Germany tomorrow, and in Switzerland in early April (still no sighting of the 700).

Just in time, it appears, as new data suggests a whole bunch of Germans want to buy ebooks, over two million (Germans, that is), more than even generous estimates of Kindle sales.

It seems like more and more of a missed opportunity for Amazon. The Kindle has never been available outside the U.S., ostensibly because the whispernet isn’t set up yet. Despite tiny indications that Amazon’s working on this, I’m siding with the camp that says this isn’t changing any time soon.

The two million estimate is way high, as the analysis grants, but still, with the addition of the Sony Reader, that makes only three Kindle competitors (the other two are BeBook and CyBook) available in large swaths of the world. So why isn’t Kindle trying to spread its tentacles across the globe?

I think there are two explanations, the charitable one, and the true one. First, let’s go charitable.

If I were Jeff Bezos, I’d go see (or become) a laugh therapist, and then I’d send Jon Stewart a thank-you card for shivving me hilariously on The Daily Show.

But if I were Bezos answering why Kindle is America-only, I’d say that Amazon is committed to the whispernet as Kindle’s flagship feature, and so there won’t be Kindle in Europe or anywhere else until the infrastructure is in place.

In reality, though, I don’t believe a word of that. I think Amazon’s doing what it’s done for the entire life of the Kindle: the minimum.

Let’s look at some history. They didn’t need to try to struggle against DRM to sell Kindles, so they haven’t, and in fact they’ve embraced it. They didn’t need to make Kindle 2 support different formats or support library books or use folders to organize books (despite the fact that they’re customers desperately wanted them to), and so they didn’t. In fact, they essentially didn’t improve Kindle at all in the jump to iteration 2. They also didn’t bother to lower the price.

In short, Kindle is picking up steam thanks chiefly to Amazon’s name recognition and wide variety of available books, and any extra effort on Amazon’s part is unnecessary and so not expended. The effort you do see—Bezos on TV, deals left and right with publishers, strongly advertised cheaper prices—is not on behalf of readers, it’s on behalf of an attempt to lock down as much market share as possible before customers wise up, or, more likely, a competitor creates such an obviously better device that Kindle has to play catch-up.

I’m guessing they’ve crunched the numbers and they can hit market share goals easier by hard-selling in America than by creating infrastructure in other countries, and so the real reason Kindle isn’t in Europe is because Amazon doesn’t care enough to get it there.

The odd part is that Kindle is so proprietary and locked down that Kindle buyers are cyclically forced into staying Kindle customers for the foreseeable future. So if Amazon had put a little more effort in, they could have a whole bunch of Germans lined up.

I can hear Bezos laughing now, chortling out his company’s motto: “Why bother?”

——————————–

Below: Bezos with Stewart, for no good reason. My favorite line is “Oh, you got to pay for the books, too?” Sold!

P.S., this would be Stewart’s return thank-you card.

With the new iRex 1000S, you can take digital notes as if writing on paper. The catch? It's enormous, far from perfect, and nearly $900.

When my writing class started discussing ereaders last week, I mentioned that I actually had one, and the professor said something along the lines of, “But you don’t use it for serious books, right?”

When my Sony Reader PRS-700 bit the dust, and I decided to switch brands because of Sony’s lackluster warranty service, I found myself asking this question all over again.

What reading “serious books” requires

For me to be able to read serious books (by which I primarily mean books for academic classes) on an ereader, I need to be able to take notes, highlight, bookmark, search inside books, etc. Essentially, I need to be able to keep up with paper book readers during dicussions in a literature class.

I decided on the PRS-700 because it had all of these features, a touchscreen, and the ability to quickly flip through pages to look for highlighted passages. It was also open enough to let me borrow library ebooks, which is a huge bonus.

However, the PRS-700 has a couple of very significant drawbacks. The screen is the worst among any current ereader, the Sony software is horrific, I got a lemon, and Sony wouldn’t even pay to ship the Reader in to be repaired.

The other options for serious book reading are equally bleak. The Kindle’s physical keyboard and joystick combo would be agonizing for taking notes and highlighting, and simply isn’t nimble enough to keep up in a class.

The new iRex 1000s (pictured above) has a great-looking note-taking system, it’s allows a tablet-like interface (which is to say, a pen and paper-like interface) with digital books, which is probably the precursor of great things to come for ereaders. The problem, though, is that it’s not perfect, and for $859 I want a perfect ereader. Even then, I’d wait a little while.

The conclusion I came to, today, is that ereaders are simply not currently capable of intense content interaction, which prohibits using them for serious books. So if that’s out of the question, what’s left?

The current state of ereaders: Accept it

There are a number of ereaders (the eSlick, the BeBook, the CyBook, the PRS-505) that have everything you’d want except a keyboard. They work quite well for taking a bookshelf’s worth of casual books on vacation.

All of those except the eSlick can also borrow library books (the BeBook and CyBook in Mobipocket format, the PRS-505 in PDF).

This is probably enough for most casual readers, and enough for most ereader makers not to bother making a deluxe edition. I can understand that, but the first company to make a serious ereader will be able to crack into a massive student market, so there’s definitely motivation.

When I accepted this reality–that I’ll never be able to use an ereader I buy today in a class, ever–it was actually pretty liberating. I like books, and I’m willing to pay the price of an iPod to have a bunch of them with me, all the time. But ereader producers should know that most people will not pay that much for such a stripped-down device.

I think the ereader will split in two directions: the cheap, easy, casual ereader that just shows you books; and the more expensive, value-added ereader that will eventually replace paper.

One major problem with the current state of ereaders is that such a distinction has not yet been consciously made by producers, or explained to customers. That needs to change.

Conclusion: So which ebook is next?

So my new expectations for my ereader are simple. First, I want to borrow library ebooks (I already lost 5 books when I returned the Reader; until publishers abolish their digital restriction measures (DRM), my goal is to buy 0 (zero) new ebooks). Second, I want a wide variety of format support. Third, price.

Out of the four “casual ereaders” I listed above, the eSlick was out immediately because it can’t read secure PDFs or Mobipockets (or anything secure, I believe). The Astak Mentor or EZ Reader, was also out, because their website is a mess, and the device turned out to be $300, instead of sub-$200 as originally advertised.

The CyBook and the BeBook (sometimes called the HanLin V3) are pretty similar. The BeBook reads more formats, but mostly foreign formats I’ve never heard of, like WOLF, and DJVU, and CHM, and FB2. Their technical specs are pretty much similar, much akin to the current state of netbooks.

Ultimately, the BeBook was almost $80 cheaper than the Cybook, including shipping, so it’s currently in the lead. After reading this comparison of BeBook and PRS-505, though, I have to decide whether to go with BeBook or suck it up and come crawling back to Sony.

Whatever ereader I get, I’m planning to just chock it full of library books and take it on trips. If it lasts until a serious book ereader comes along, I’ll be more than happy.

]]> http://chamberfour.com/2009/02/13/are-ereaders-ready-for-serious-books-no-they-are-not/feed/ 2