Like most of those critiquing Franzen's viewpoint (Lance Ulanoff at Mashable, for example), I'll open with the disclaimer that I am a (dead tree type) book lover. I've been a dedicated reader for 40 of my 45 years, and have sometimes found myself in competition with my library for living space. Some volumes bring back associated memories every time I pick them up: "I accidentally left my last copy of this (The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman) on the airplane when I flew back from my speech to the New York Junto against the Iraq war in 2003;" "I was reading this one (Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand) the day my daughter was born in 1990;" etc. There's just something about a physical book.
But look at what e-readers are doing! Like other technological advancements (Brad has them pretty well-covered here), they're making a lot of people's lives a lot richer.
For the cost of 10-15 paperbacks (and the cost is falling), you can get a device that instantly puts thousands of classics in front of you "free" (courtesy of The Gutenberg Project, et. al) and lets you get the newer stuff with a click. The instant I bought my e-reader, my library got about 10,000 times larger, maybe more, without taking up any more space.
Ten years from now, I expect that every school kid will have an e-reader device of some sort, connected to a library much, much, much larger than any room in the government schools I went to as a child (no, I'm not putting those libraries down -- they, and their keepers, influenced me a lot; but still ...).
On this last weekend's trip, I took about 70 books with me (I actually read from four or five of them), and they didn't fill up the back seat of the mini-van. They all fit in the glove compartment, on my Cruz Reader.
I hope that dead-tree and electronic formats achieve some kind of coexistence ... but if we can only have one of the two, the latter just makes more sense. It makes more art and more knowledge available to more people, less expensively.
I've run into a couple of cheap e-readers in the $50-$80 range lately, but they're no-wifi, good-for-nothing-except-reading-books machines. Who'd pay that much for that little when multi-function, wifi-enabled Android tablets are now breaking into the sub-$100 range?
Take a look at the specs for that $99 Android 4 ("Ice Cream Sandwich") tablet, the Novo7. It's got a 1GHz CPU. It's got wifi. Two built-in cameras. Capacitive touch screen with "multi-touch" capability.
I'm still quite happy with my $130 Android 2.x Cruz Reader, which I've had for most of a year now, but we're talking iPad-level tech for less than a hundred bucks now. I'm already juggling my budget numbers to figure out how I can afford one.
So, the dedicated e-reader died before it hit the $50 price point. Yeah, I'm sure they'll be going for less than $50 in discount bins soon but I was talking about as a retail launch product.
The new price range is $99-$199 -- Novo7 at the low end, Amazon's Kindle Fire at the high end -- for a tablet that does the e-reader thing and a whole lot more.
But no, none of these are "iPad killers." The iPad's price will probably drift down into the $250-$300 range for a wifi-only model, but Apple fans will continue to be willing to pay a little more for their favorite company's products.
A book chosen at random from the coming week's New York Times mass market paperback fiction best-seller list: The Midnight House, by Alex Berenson. Haven't read it. Don't know if I ever will. That's not what this is about. Here's what this is about:
Materials cost of an e-book: $0
Printing cost of an e-book: $0
Storage/warehousing cost of an e-book: $0
Shipping cost of an e-book: $0
Okay, not exactly $0. There's hard drive storage space, bandwidth, etc. But the efficient cost of storing/downloading a single copy of an e-book is damn close to $0.
Another difference between paperbacks and e-books is returns. Send 50 copies of Midnight House to Wal-Mart, and the publisher may get 25 ripped-off covers of copies that didn't sell sent back for a refund of the wholesale price. An e-book that's sold generally stays sold.
And yet e-book prices hover around (and sometimes exceed!) paperback prices.
Why? Because you're willing to pay those prices. If you weren't willing to pay those prices, those prices would come down.
How far down? Well, as far down as they can come and still bring in a profit for the seller. And the seller would continue to produce e-books as long as they continued to produce a better profit than he thinks producing something else would.
A little Googling says that the average author's royalty on book sales is somewhere in the range of $1 to $1.20 per copy. I don't know anyone who doesn't want authors to get paid for their work. I'd like to see them get paid more than $1-$1.20 a copy, actually.
And yes, even absent dead-tree considerations, a publisher still has costs. An editor has to evaluate the book, decide whether or not to publish it, and work with the author to make such changes as are required to get it "there" for publication. The author usually receives an advance on royalties, which means some of the publisher's money is put at risk. There are overhead and administrative costs (data entry/formatting/cataloging, etc.). And that storage and bandwidth and such. There are affiliate commissions. And so on, and so forth.
Still, it seems to me that as a stand-alone operation -- i.e. if the e-book sales are not expected to subsidize hardcover and paperback losses -- an e-book that sells at all well for $5 a pop should produce a fat profit.
The obvious exceptions are titles like textbooks: Books with a limited market but whose readers really, really have to have them and will pay whatever it costs to get them.
For "normal" e-books, the $8-$11 pricing scheme that seems to prevail at the moment looks like it was intentionally designed to encourage bootleg/pirate epubs.
Assuming that DMCA, DRM and all the other schemes to crush that phenomenon fail miserably -- and that's a very safe assumption -- I predict a $4.99-$5.99 price point (in March 1, 2011 dollars) for "current catalog" mass market e-books within two years.
I finally gave up on a $50 e-reader -- not because I don't think it's going to get here eventually (I've been seeing some that looked a lot like my "requirements doc" minimum machine in the $75 range lately), but because it's reached the point where $100 to $150 gets you a lot more than just a reader.
I've been saving my pennies, containing my enthusiasm and waiting, but last week I finally went ahead and popped for one of those $100-$150 machines. It arrived today.
Three machines were on my radar. I settled on the Velocity Micro Cruz Reader for a couple of reasons:
Price: I paid $120 for the Cruz Reader. That's a little more than I'd have paid for Augen's The Book, but $30 less than the best price I noticed on the Pandigital Novel. The Reader runs Android 2.0 ("Eclair"). Whether or not it can support later versions, I don't know yet. If not, I'm still okay with it.
Operating System: The Book is Linux-based. I love me some Linux, but I've been itching to try Android. So, it was the Cruz Reader versus the Pandigital Novel, and ... well, see "price" above.
Features: A lot of that comes back to the OS -- Cruz has its own "app store," and from there the user can download an app that runs the Android Marketplace. The potential isn't limitless (the Cruz Reader doesn't have a camera, GPS, microphone, etc.), but you can extend its capabilities. When I mentioned that The Book is Linux-based, I meant based -- it isn't running any kind of well-known, full-blown distribution, and apparently requires hacking/modding to turn it into anything but an e-reader with basic web browser.
The device arrived this afternoon and I spent about two hours playing with it before sitting down to review it. As new aspects reveal themselves, I'll update this review.
Short Summary: I pronounce myself quite satisfied with the device. It's not an Apple iPad or one of the new $600-$800 tablets. I didn't expect it to be. It's a $100-$150 device, and I believe I'm getting at least $100-$150 in value.
The Details:
The Reader arrived with about 50% battery power. Two hours of use, including power-consumptive activities like wifi-connected web surfing and video playback, ran it down to about 25%. One attractive stated feature of the device is that the battery is user-replaceable.
I've used the Reader as a reader with two different apps so far: The Borders app and the Amazon Kindle app (I don't do business with Amazon any more, but I still have access to digital content I bought back when).
The Borders app comes pre-installed. The Kindle app is available for free download in the Cruz Market. I understand that Barnes and Noble's Nook app will also run on the Reader, and intend to install it later.
The Reader ran both Borders and Kindle flawlessly. I easily downloaded books to my libraries, opened them and browsed them. With the Nook app and a standard non-DRM epub reader (I'll download that later, too), I'm satisfied that I have maximum variety and price competition within my reach.
Other applications I've tried so far:
The pre-installed web browser. It's a bit slow ... but as I've mentioned, we're talking about a low-end device here. I'd hate to have to work on the web with it, but it's fine for catching up with a favorite blog or reading the news headlines.
Facebook Mobile: Facebook on a tablet isn't as nice as from a desktop, but it works. I should probably mention here that the only keyboard available is a touchscreen keyboard. It's not meant for heavy typing. But a quick status update shouldn't be a problem. Came pre-installed.
Twidroyd: I was worried about this one, as Twitter suspended Twidroyd between the time I ordered the device and the time it arrived. But it works. You can tweet, and keep up with friends' tweets, on the Reader. Came pre-installed.
Dr. Eye: This is a dictionary that comes pre-installed. I haven't really put it through its paces, but I ran a few terms through it and got quick, decent definitions (it's apparently a product of Oxford University).
YouTube Viewer: This is a free app available for download from the Cruz Market. The video's a bit grainy on a 4:3, 800x600 display, but for the nth time, this is a cheap device. I watched a couple of Charlie the Unicorn videos. They played. The sound ran in sync with the video. It's all good.
Notes of interest to potential buyers:
* The Reader's touch screen is "resistive" rather than "capacitative." This means that you press on it (with a finger or, not included, a stylus) to get results, rather than it picking up your body heat. Having messed around with a friend's iPod Touch awhile back, I've found that I prefer the resistive screen (capacitative doesn't seem very responsive). The down side, probably, is that a resistive touch screen wears out more quickly since it has moving parts. Higher-end Velocity Cruz tablets do offer capacitative screens.
* The device operates on 256Mb of RAM and has an internal 4Gb SD card. An external slot supports additional SD storage.
* Included as accessories: An AC charger, a cable for syncing/moving stuff back and forth between the Reader and your computer (USB on one end, mini-USB for the single port on the Reader end), and a spiffy neoprene sleeve. Oh, and a nearly useless paper "quick start guide." If you can't intuit your way around the device, a more comprehensive guide is available for download [PDF].
Conclusion: I got at least as much as I expected for the price, and probably more. The Reader has me covered as a reader, with significant additional and useful features that I expect to use regularly. Only time will reveal its durability, but it and its accessories seem to be, upon slightly more than casual inspection, of quality manufacture. As of now, I'm extremely pleased with the Velocity Micro Cruz Reader, and recommend it to KN@PPSTER's readers.
Update, end of day 2: Despite some issues, I'm still happy with the Velocity Cruz Reader.
The Barnes and Noble Nook app doesn't seem to be available in the Cruz Market. I grabbed it from elsewhere, installed it ... and it shuts down every time I try to get a book. I'm going to keep messing with that because of the available ereader apps it's the one I expect I'd like best (among other things, it lets you "borrow/lend" ebooks for up to two weeks at a time). I've been reading Thomas Paine on the Borders app. It's quite nice.
After its first full charge, the Reader gave me several hours of use -- I didn't count them, but probably 4-5 -- even though I was constantly running Pandora, which presumably consumes quite a bit of power running sound out the speakers, streaming via wi-fi, etc.
In addition to Pandora, I installed an app called "Daily Paper" (I think I got that one from the Android Market) that pulls up the mobile sites of bazillions of papers from a convenient list. I read news for a living, but I enjoy it much more on a tablet while lounging than at my desk in "work mode."
Another presumably power-consuming app I've been using is the YouTube viewer. I'm auditing David Blight's "open course" on the Civil War and Reconstruction (courtesy of Yale). I had been watching the lectures on iTunes and Academic Earth, but they're available on YouTube and (see comment on lounging versus desk):
I also installed ZumoDrive (referral link!), an online storage app that lets me keep files on my desktop computer but use them from the tablet (including, allegedly, my iTunes library -- haven't tried that out yet).
Speaking of storage, that's one thing I haven't figured out yet -- I've run into "not much space left" warnings while installing, even though I show a LOT of space available when I look. Like I said, I'm still figuring this out.
I installed, then uninstalled, a browser called Skyfire. I wanted it because I'd heard that it could be used to watch shows on Hulu (because it runs the data through its own servers and doesn't identify itself to Hulu as a tablet), but apparently Hulu got onto that trick, and told me that it "doesn't support Skyfire."
In the near future, I expect to "root" the device so that I can get rid of some of the preinstalled apps that I'll never use. Eventually I'll have it ultra-personalized ... but I'm definitely enjoying it in its arrival state with some added apps. It's a keeper.
I know we're going to get there eventually, but I'd rather not wait.
No, I'm not going to pony up $150-$200 for a Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader or Kobo. Ain't gonna happen.
Right now, I buy most of my dead-tree books used for $5 or less, shipping included. No way am I going to spend the price of 30-40 books (assuming I read one book per week, that's the better part of a year's reading!) on a device to read books with.
The max price point needs to be no more than $50, preferably less. $50 is my line of separation between "purchase requiring household discussion and perhaps earmarked savings" and "something I'll either jump on immediately or talk myself into by the time I've walked past the end cap display at Micro Center a couple of times."
For that price, some hardware concessions are obviously in order.
It doesn't have to sport color graphics (good contrast control and a backlight are enough).
It doesn't have to be able to store a bazillion books. It needs to be able to store several, but not a bazillion, as long as I can change them out and store what I'm not reading on my computer's hard drive or a thumb drive or something.
The battery life doesn't have to be stellar. For that matter it doesn't have to have a built-in rechargeable battery. I'll pop for the AAs or AAAs.
It doesn't have to offer Wi-Fi or 3G/4G connectivity (I'm willing to download the books to my computer and port them via USB).
It doesn't have to support multiple file standards. The ePub format strikes me as the likeliest candidate, PDF a distant second.
It doesn't have to support Digital Rights Management. As a matter of fact I'd rather it didn't.
On the other hand, there's one inducement which might lead me to tolerate DRM or some other scheme for keeping me tied to your store for my e-book needs: Cheap book prices.
If you'll sell me a cheap device and make reasonably new titles available for $3-5, and price current bestsellers at no more than $7-$10, I'll probably accept DRM.
Hell, I'll even willingly pony up a buck apiece for all those old public domain titles (Ivanhoe, Les Miserables, GK Chesterton's stuff, etc.) that I read for free on Stanza or Bookworm now, if I can read them in bed on an inexpensive, back-lit, hand-held device.
The company that brings a device to market meeting the above specs (plus one more spec -- it can't fall apart after a month) can count on selling me the device, and on a perpetual revenue stream from my wallet somewhere in the low double digits per month.
Image via Wikipedia
