Reading is something I seem to be doing more and more. Not because I've bought an electronic book reader for myself but because I've walked to my local library and purchased a loaning card. It cost be a £1. If I had gone out and bought an electronic book reader it would have ripped a massive hole in my wallet. On top of that there's the extra cost of actually buying electronic publications, among many other problems. My main aim here is to support the good old paper and resin, spine-bound, hand held book in the battle against electronics completely taking over the planet.
Here are some of my main points:
The total cost of ownership is way higher.
Electronic book readers are fast becoming just another way for companies to battle it out to see who can gain the most followers in this particular market niche and thus grab as much cash as possible.
The technical issues.
Total Cost Of Ownership
On average, an electronic book reader is approximately £150. And that's one of the lowest entry-level models which don't come with all the fanciful frilly bits like a touchscreen and note-taking abilities. If you want those features you'll have to fork out another £100. You'll also be purchasing content, lest your reader be an empty shell or doorstop, and charging on a regular basis. Thankfully, E Ink technology keeps the latter to a minimum.
E ink is the clever innovating behind reader screens. It was originally developed to allow the reader hours of reading pleasure with no eye strain, which would have been inevitable if a regular LCD screen had been used instead. Shortly after its developers achieved what they wanted to achieve to satisfactory level, they found that E Ink also took up far less battery life compared to the likes of LCD/LED. This will cut down charging costs.
So you've got the cost of the reader hardware itself and the cost of content. Depending on how much you read and what kind of features you want to get from your reader, the total cost of ownership will variate widely. Students may suffer the most. Perhaps college attendees will want to temporarily loan a book, not buy it, just for a quick research session or bibliographical reference in coursework. Total cost of ownership of a reader is abstract.
Getting a library card equates to unlimited free loans of as many books you want at any time. Find a good library and you'll also have a massive selection too. £0.00 is quite a bit cheaper than about £500 (after a lot of content purchased obviously).
Apple has the chance to make quite a lot of money here. They recently released the iPad which has support for electronic books. I've yet to try out the store but from what I can see in screenshots it looks quite nice. What matters the most is price, though.
The iPad itself is quite costly if all you're just looking for a standalone reader. At present information regarding the pricing of electronic books has been withheld. If it's anything like iTunes expect a monopolistic, somewhat costly approach. Sorry, but the truth hurts.
And the winner is... good old paper. From a consumer viewpoint the total cost of ownership of an electronic book reader is far greater than that of regular library membership. Lump together £150 for the reader itself, approximately £1 per electronic publication, plus charging costs, and you'll be left with quite a hefty hole in your finances. Library membership costs the same price as public transport. Or you could try walking!
Survival of the Fittest
Companies, from Apple to Microsoft, Sony to Nintendo, Asda to Iceland, don't actually give a flying fish about your experience with the products you buy from them. They just want cash to make their way in the world and gain more customers to get more money and so on and so forth. It's a large vicious circle which can't really end until someone comes along and changes the way the business world works. That would be quite miraculous.
It's called marketing.
Regrettably, electronic book readers are part of their own little market. In marketing, most businesses just love to throw endless reels of new features into the pot every time they're ready to hook a new iteration of any one product onto the fishing line. We're the gullible fish who smell out the appealing morsels set before us but when we come to gobble them up we get poisoned. We've wasted our time and efforts on something rubbish.
Quality will always hold more importance in contrast with quantity. Less can be more but businesses won't recognize this because they're blinded by money. Electronic book readers started off bearing a single purpose and that was to ensure avid readers could carry around vast libraries of publications with them in their pocket. Somewhere along the line this simplistic concept died and now readers are a market. How did this happen?
Apple of course,
Apple decides that they're missing out on quite a bit of cash. All around them, competitors had started raking in the cold hard stuff by setting up electronic book stores. So Apple makes sure that reading electronic published material via such products as the iPhone becomes a possibility. So their competitors foolishly fall for the bait and decide to add as many features possibly achievable. We'll end up with a merge of market.
Soon enough electronic book readers shall no longer be a standalone market but will gain so much stuff they'll be no different from smartphones. Problems such as these simply don't occur if you stick with the original method of publishing novels on paper so why bother fixing something that isn't broken? To rake in some more cash of course, while simultaneously sucking the fun out of uncomplicated reading. Sarcastic kudos to Apple.
And the winner is... again, good old paper. Hardware developers may make claims about new technologies being added to electronic book reading devices to improve the way we interact with novels and authors. I appreciate installing a browser into the system, connected via 3G and/or WiFi, but I truly don't understand the requirement for music, for example, or colored screens. Text is black and white and so are traditional illustrations!
The Technical Issues
On the subject of connecting to the Internet, including connectivity technologies in a device intended for reading could lead to problems. The most obvious is being caught without a way of connecting. Say, you're on holiday and wish to download a good read. Pull out your electronic book reader and find you can't connect. Alternatively, pull out a book you brought and just read it. It's as simple as that.
Connecting to the Internet will also wear out battery faster and therefore makes one of the main purposes of E Ink technology completely obsolete. In a sense, adding all these new features is ruining the market itself, while regular paper books continue happily.
What if your reader gets dropped in water? A regular book can be dried out if you've got a hair-drier to hand and a lot of patience. What if the screen of your reader cracks or the touchscreen capabilities malfunction? Regular front covers don't crack at all and you don't need some silly touchscreen and stylus to turn pages on a normal book. What if you haven't got cash to download an electronic publication? Reach for your library card...
Perhaps the only area in which electronic book readers win is portability!
And the winner is... electronic book readers. I'm just kidding of course. Paper publications can't actually have technical difficulties because they don't require electicity or software to run at all! You could always tear it in half. But that's quite difficult to do by accident.
Overall, electronic book readers are a lost market. I walk into Waterstone's and see vast shelves filled to the brim with glorious books begging to be read... then I see two lonely readers stuck to the wall being ignored. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Sony.
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By Steve Wiilliams
2 comments:
Great post, first of all. I personally like the prospect of e-readers, but unless they can get every book there is no point in them. They also need to be cheaper, more accessible and less geeky.
Indeed :)
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