Electric Currents

Welcome to E-Books
JR posted in Writing, Devices on December 31st, 2005

I’ll admit that, as a life-long reader, I’ve always been looking for some way that I can conveniently take a book or two with me during my commute.  Paperbacks have filled that role for almost all of us since their introduction almost a century ago.  However, as a heavy and rapid reader, I was regularly faced with the dilema of determining what book to take with me as a backup when I approached the end of the current novel.  And, if I had a particularly productive day of reading, I would sometimes find myself without reading material for the commute home.  While not an onerous choice, sometimes I wished that it was one I didn’t have to make.

BusinessWeek has an article about Sony’s upcoming e-book reader slated to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show.  They report that it is to be priced at $300-$500.  Learning from Apple’s success with the iPod/iTunes close integration, they will be offering books via their Sony Connect web store.

I have some severe doubts about the appeal and success of this device.  First, Sony’s previous attempt at such a device, the Japanese-only Librie, while promising, turned out to be a failure in the market.  Overpriced, required a proprietary formats for e-books, and, as a result, little in the way of content.  Nor was there any easy way for readers to get their own material onto the device.

Sony attacks these issues in multiple ways.  It has content deals with major US publishers (Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins).  They have included the nearly universal PDF as a readable format and, as previously noted, have embraced the common USB standard for connecting the device.  Further, it will reportedly use the standard SD memory cards rather than Sony’s less popular and proprietary Memory Sticks.

Missing from this advance notice is any indication of what the price of an e-book will be or if there will be any way to get publications to the reader outside of Sony’s web store (though with PDF as an allowed format, one would hope so).  Though Sony may have learned lessons from Apple, my guess is they aren’t likely to have noted that a lot of what is driving the success of the iPod is people placing their own existing music library on the device without paying another dime to the content owners (something that Sony-BMG despises and tried to do away with via their recent rootkit fiasco).  This won’t be possible for the e-book reader unless people are willing to scan their own books to PDF.

Sony has a penchant for creating some great hardware and then missing the opportunity to make it a standard.  I expect that to happen here.  Also in early 2006, the BusinessWeek article reports that iRex Technologies (a Philips Electronics spin-off) and Jinke Co. (a Chinese device maker) will also debut similar devices.  I doubt that either will be compatible with the Sony store, and Sony will lose any chance of setting a standard that will benefit themselves.

Lastly, and an objection that may readers will note, why does this need to be restricted to being an e-book reader only (and especially at that price).  The e-ink screen is the real value of the product.  That screen can display any black/white text with remarkable crispness and with a miserly use of power.  Couldn’t this be mated with something like Nokia’s E770 web tablet which is already available for $350 and able to read web pages, PDFs and more?