Electronic Books
Over the past couple of years, I've been interested in electronic books, mainly keeping abreast of the technology, waiting for prices to come down and the number of available electronic books to go up. I was really looking forward to the transformation of paperback books into electronic form (read saving trees). There are, of course, both advantages and disadvantages to electronic books.
The disadvantages of electronic books:
- Choice. Most books are not in electronic form yet, especially technical ones.
- The sense of being ripped off by not leaving the store with a 1 lb. hunk of paper. This is the same sense we all get from purchasing $99 software only to open it up to a single CD, registration card, and a lot of air.
- The loss of not holding a book in your hand, with the ability to feel the pages as you turn them...of being able to flip the corner of the page to mark your place (this was something I never did)...of using your favorite bookmark.
- The ability to pass a good book on to your friends and get good books from them.
- Being able to read a book wherever there was light without having to worry about your battery going dead.
- Walking into a library and checking out any book you like.
The advantages of electronic books:
- The biggest advantage is being able to carry multiple books in a device the size of a hardcover book (or smaller).
- Being able to save trees.
- The coolness factor.
- Reading a book in the dark without a book light.
- Searching for any text in the book you want.
I was disappointed to learn of the demise of the Gemstar eBook. The Gemstar eBook was, I thought, going to be the first true electronic book. A revolution in bringing electronic books to the mainstream. I even saw it for sale in my local bookstore. I never actually purchased an eBook and my interest in electronic books waned. I fell back into the habit of browsing my local bookstore in the Science Fiction section (my favorite), picking up books with interesting names and covers, or ones which were displayed in the center aisle.
Trying to rectify the situation, I recently decided to make a concerted effort to try electronic books. The easiest thing for me to do was look for electronic book software for the Palm OS. I have a Kyocera 7135 SmartPhone which I love. This is my second Kyocera Palm phone. My first was the Kyocera QCP 6035 Smartphone. Both have J2ME loaded on them BTW. I did some browsing on the web and found an electronic book reader for the Palm OS, eReader. They offer software for reading books on my Palm phone - eReader Pro for $9.95. So I purchased and downloaded it. Now, I just needed a book to read (and here comes the real reason for writing this). So I went to eReader.com to look for a book. I chose AirFrame by Michael Crichton (I'll write about this book later). To my disappointment however, I found that the electronic version of Airframe is priced the same as paper the version of Airframe. If you want to buy a book which is only out in hard cover, then the electronic book is priced at hard cover prices. This is ridiculous. A big chunk of making a book is the paper, ink, printing press, shipping, etc. Downloading an eBook incurs none of that cost. I can see paying the author, the company which converts the book into electronic format, and the company which sells the electronic book (the website), but that's about it. There is no cost for printing, no paper, no ink, no printing presses. The eReader software takes care of formatting the book for the device. In short, I expected the reduced cost of creating an electronic book would be passed onto the customer...you and I. I guess I was wrong.
My experience with reading a book using my Palm phone was a good one. The book has 1719 pages, in electronic format formatted for my Palm phone. I found I ran through the pages pretty quickly. It's easy when the pages contain no more then about 80 words. Setting bookmarks was easy, although I almost never use more then one bookmark at a time. The software would force me to delete the previous bookmark if I wanted to keep only one around.
All in all, I like having several books sitting in my phone. I find myself reading more often as I always have my phone with me and finding a few spare moments to read a page or two happens often. However, I will not be a true convert until the prices of electronic books come down. I just purchased another book, this one a paper book. The reason? It's $21.83 in electronic form (the book is only out in hard cover) and I found it new for $5.62 in paper form. Oh well.
The disadvantages of electronic books:
- Choice. Most books are not in electronic form yet, especially technical ones.
- The sense of being ripped off by not leaving the store with a 1 lb. hunk of paper. This is the same sense we all get from purchasing $99 software only to open it up to a single CD, registration card, and a lot of air.
- The loss of not holding a book in your hand, with the ability to feel the pages as you turn them...of being able to flip the corner of the page to mark your place (this was something I never did)...of using your favorite bookmark.
- The ability to pass a good book on to your friends and get good books from them.
- Being able to read a book wherever there was light without having to worry about your battery going dead.
- Walking into a library and checking out any book you like.
The advantages of electronic books:
- The biggest advantage is being able to carry multiple books in a device the size of a hardcover book (or smaller).
- Being able to save trees.
- The coolness factor.
- Reading a book in the dark without a book light.
- Searching for any text in the book you want.
I was disappointed to learn of the demise of the Gemstar eBook. The Gemstar eBook was, I thought, going to be the first true electronic book. A revolution in bringing electronic books to the mainstream. I even saw it for sale in my local bookstore. I never actually purchased an eBook and my interest in electronic books waned. I fell back into the habit of browsing my local bookstore in the Science Fiction section (my favorite), picking up books with interesting names and covers, or ones which were displayed in the center aisle.
Trying to rectify the situation, I recently decided to make a concerted effort to try electronic books. The easiest thing for me to do was look for electronic book software for the Palm OS. I have a Kyocera 7135 SmartPhone which I love. This is my second Kyocera Palm phone. My first was the Kyocera QCP 6035 Smartphone. Both have J2ME loaded on them BTW. I did some browsing on the web and found an electronic book reader for the Palm OS, eReader. They offer software for reading books on my Palm phone - eReader Pro for $9.95. So I purchased and downloaded it. Now, I just needed a book to read (and here comes the real reason for writing this). So I went to eReader.com to look for a book. I chose AirFrame by Michael Crichton (I'll write about this book later). To my disappointment however, I found that the electronic version of Airframe is priced the same as paper the version of Airframe. If you want to buy a book which is only out in hard cover, then the electronic book is priced at hard cover prices. This is ridiculous. A big chunk of making a book is the paper, ink, printing press, shipping, etc. Downloading an eBook incurs none of that cost. I can see paying the author, the company which converts the book into electronic format, and the company which sells the electronic book (the website), but that's about it. There is no cost for printing, no paper, no ink, no printing presses. The eReader software takes care of formatting the book for the device. In short, I expected the reduced cost of creating an electronic book would be passed onto the customer...you and I. I guess I was wrong.
My experience with reading a book using my Palm phone was a good one. The book has 1719 pages, in electronic format formatted for my Palm phone. I found I ran through the pages pretty quickly. It's easy when the pages contain no more then about 80 words. Setting bookmarks was easy, although I almost never use more then one bookmark at a time. The software would force me to delete the previous bookmark if I wanted to keep only one around.
All in all, I like having several books sitting in my phone. I find myself reading more often as I always have my phone with me and finding a few spare moments to read a page or two happens often. However, I will not be a true convert until the prices of electronic books come down. I just purchased another book, this one a paper book. The reason? It's $21.83 in electronic form (the book is only out in hard cover) and I found it new for $5.62 in paper form. Oh well.
