Since the Tools of Change conference, I’ve been thinking a lot about women, technology, eBooks, and most of all, complacency.
While I have some specific standards about fiction, particularly romance, I’ve never been one to really question corporations. I figure, if they make decisions I don’t like, I won’t shop there, if I can avoid it.
But with ebooks, and specifically epublishing, the community and the market are too small. If Amazon does things I don’t like, I won’t swear not to shop there because the fact is, I do, for many different things. I’ll be frank: with this site, plus my other job, plus the small young dudes, I have in effect three full-time jobs. So the possibility of delivery of most of the things I need that aren’t fruit, vegetables, and milk? I’m on that like damn and whoa.
And because of that lack of time, I no longer have acres of leisure time to figure out why file A won’t play nicely with device B, or why this particular computer program isn’t working. Used to be I could hack my way through anything. No, I’m doing six things at once and don’t have any time to focus solely on some ebook that’s having a temper tantrum because it’s DRM is refusing to leave the swingset even though its turn is over.
Yet Amazon continues to make decisions that affect e-reading and e-book buyers that make me pull my hair out. The bubble boy, for example: Kindle 2.0? BIGGER than the previous device in length? What, I ask, the fuck? The monolithic attitude toward formats that sacrifices my ability to bargain shop for the sake of relative ease of use? Again, I say: Feh!
Since the ToC conference, I’ve had a big wake up call. The ebook, epub, and ereader community is so small that disgruntled users cannot be ignored. And more importantly, women, who buy more technology and spend more on fiction, cannot be ignored either. While my usual course of action is to quietly do my own thing, it’s time I yelled more and spoke up about the things that make me nuts, and demand changes where I think they ought to be made as pertains to digital publishing and reader issues.
At the exhibition hall, there were devices like the readius that seemed to have been developed without questioning what the customer would actually want in a device as pertains to loading content. A fold-up reader with a touchslide and fast-changing e-Ink? Nice. A completely closed system that doesn’t allow me to add my own books? I remain mystified by the entire concept.
I said repeatedly at the ToC that I didn’t think the program reflected enough of the reader experience. My rant at our panel was simple: women readers are the readers you are looking for. We are the readers you need – if you want to make money and continue to develop digital publishing and reading initiatives.
Angie James linked to a poor customer service rant about the Sony Reader that discusses the six month warranty and how frustrating it is to have a device go bad after such a paltry warranty period. While my experiences with Sony have been fantastic, a six month warranty is troublesome. But larger than that, I’ve been ranting lately about the void into which any and all of my feedback email messages to Amazon have disappeared, with nary and answer or even a form reply in sight. While the phone-based support is alarmingly fast – request that they call you, give them a number, and in less than 5 seconds your phone rings – the answers I’ve received to any problems have been based upon a theme of “It’s a network problem in your area. Check back with us later and it should be fixed.” No answers that satisfied my curiosity were forthcoming to my queries as to why a particular PDF or HTML file didn’t go through, except to say “That feature is experimental.”
“Experimental,” it seems, is code for, “Don’t know why it didn’t work, and don’t care anyway. So move along.”
Customer service, shopping options, and ease of use are the trifecta of attracting the female reader to digital publishing and ebook reading devices. In the coming weeks, I’ll be staging Olympic competitions between Kindle I, Kindle II, the Sony 505 and the Sony 700, to see which device reigns supreme. I welcome your testing or obstacle course suggestions – let me know if you have any ideas or experiences you’d like me to replicate.
But most of all, the time has come for me to Speak the Hell Up and Get Loud. After ToC, I realized, perhaps the reason we women readers aren’t being heard or responded to is because we haven’t made enough noise. Being the largest consumer demographic buying electronics, and the largest group buying fiction clearly isn’t enough.
Women readers need to explain point by point to manufacturers and digital publishers what specifically appeals to us, why, and how those publishers and device manufacturers should reach us through product development and marketing campaigns. We shouldn’t have to explain what to me seems obvious – women read more, women buy more electronics, and women are loyal, repeat customers – but it seems that we do. [Thank you to Jane for the links.]
So bring it on. What makes you happy in an e-reader, digital publisher, or retailer? What turns you off?
Another reader from outside the U.S. here. I would *love* to buy a dedicated reader but they are Not Available in NZ and the price is prohibitive- I’m talking about 500-600 dollars prohibitive. Luckily for me, a geek friend was moving to an iPhone so gave me his Ipaq.
I’ve been reading ebooks on and off for a few years, first on a old Palm Pilot that an ex gave to me and now on the IPaq. (I realise that I’ve been very lucky.) I sometimes read on my laptop and have found pdf files tend to be the most flexible and give the best reading experience over both the laptop and the ipaq. Plus I can save the pdf files as txt for compressing the file.
My gripe tends to be around the godawful readers the secure formats compel you to use. If I never seen MS Reader again I will be happy- I can’t imagine a sighted person using this and I think that the blind must grow to hate the reader voice. It’s a truly awful piece of design. The one the Harlequin books came with is a slight improvement- you can double-page the screen but even then it’s not great. Plus I resent having to have more than 1 reader installed.
OK, now that I’m over my DS distraction for the moment, what do I want in an ereader?
I want something that comes out of the box either ready to go or with very little set up. I want the screen to be approximately the size of a paperback book. I want the navigation to be straightforward, with the buttons in spots that are easy to reach as I’m reading but won’t get bumped by accident. I would prefer wifi, but I can accept a plug-in-and-download model. I want a well made product that will take a reasonable beating, considering it will be living in purses, briefcases, and backpacks. Some moisture protection would be good, too. I’d like a reasonable warranty (six months is not reasonable) and real help in a timely manner from customer support. I’d like to be able to download ebooks from the library the same way I download audiobooks from the library.
What I do not want is to be locked into purchasing from one vendor. Or paying a fee any time I want to take something from a different vendor and transfer it onto my unit. It’s MY unit. I should be able to put anything I want on it without incurring a fee from the people who sold it to me. If it’s a wifi trasfer, I’d rather pay a low monthly fee (and I do mean low) to transfer an unlimited number of items onto my machine, than have it wrapped into the price of the unit and then be charged for stuff that didn’t originate from Amazon.
Ideally, I’d like for everyone to settle on one format for download. Then give anyone who can’t work with that format for whatever reason the ability to easily transfer it into the format of their choice. I don’t want to have to fight my machine to load books that I’ve paid for and have every right to read.
I’d really, really like to see the price for the units come down to a more reasonable level. If that means a backlit screen until the eInk prices come down, I’m OK with that. $200-250 (or less) works for me, assuming I don’t have to jump though major hoops to get the books I want. I’d also like to see the book prices come down some more. The discount off the hardback price was a major reason I considered a Kindle. Now that the prices on the “hardback” editions are going up- in one instance from $9.99 to $14.85 on a book that runs $27 hardback- that selling point is a lot less interesting.
Basically, I want my ereader to be invisible. I want something that will operate smoothly, without a lot of hassle. I want the ability to shop where I please and not be penalized for it. I want an ereader produced by a company who understands that the books are the point, not their gadget, and designs and prices accordingly.
Kerry D said:
Thirstygirl said it too. I don’t know if there’s anywhere outside the US you can get a Kindle—are they available in Canada?—but over here in the UK it’s no-go. Not even an estimated time of arrival. Hilariously, if you go to Amazon.co.uk and search for Kindle, you get other e-readers, and even exciting Kindle accessories such as power cables, but not the actual Kindle itself. That’s a big D’Oh right there.
You can buy the Sony over here, but it’s monstrously expensive. And, of course, whenever I’ve chatted to people about it I’ve compared it to MP3 players, so they know where I’m coming from. But it’s been pointed out several times that MP3 players have one significant advantage: that anything I’ve ever bought on CD can be copied to my player, so I can listen to it wherever I am without carting around stacks of CDs.
Want to take a selection of your favourite books on a long plane trip? You’ll have to fill your hand luggage with paperbacks, or else pay for the books all over again. That’s if they’re even available for download. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t please a lot of people.
The other thing is that I got a netbook for Christmas (okay, it’s on the blink and needs to be fixed, but this is beside the issue). It’s about the size of a hardback book, and it can open a PDF file. And it has all the functions of a normal laptop—Internet, word processor, etc. And it was cheaper than most of the e-readers I’ve seen.
Why would I spend an extra few hundred quid on an e-reader when I’ve already, in effect, got one?
I started reading ebooks on my desktop, and then decided to buy a used iPAQ, thinking that it would give me mobility, plus a whack of other functions. It did, but because of the shiny screen and the LCD, it also gave me brutal eye-strain headaches. I never use it anymore. Last summer I bought a Cybook, and absolutely love the e-ink display. I think if you read a fair bit (I read at least a book a day), it’s worth it. Last winter, I bought a laptop, which I could read e-books on. If I were travelling and needed my laptop, I would still bring my Cybook, it’s that much nicer to read on.
As for what I want, I want more flexibility in what formats I can read on it (or one common format). I can easily load txt and pdf and Word files into mobipocket to put on the reader, but secure files are not as user-friendly. I would like the page changes to be a bit quicker. I would like each page to be numbered so that even if I’ve changed the font size, I could identify what page of the print copy I’m on (for discussion mainly, but it would be super important if I was using it for research).
YAY. And again I say YAY.
I’ve been obsessing about ereaders since SB Sarah started this post, and the more I think about it, the more I equate the ereader with a DVD player. I can rent or buy a DVD from just about anywhere, and it’ll play on my DVD player. The machine is not the content.
I can remember when VCRs first came out (I’m old, old!), and before Blockbuster or Rogers existed, we had to go to the Brick (furniture & appliance store) to rent videos (in VHS or Beta). Any place that sold the VCR machines was renting the tapes, because otherwise they wouldn’t have a market for the machines. I’m hoping that the current ebook situation is similar. Right now, the manufacturers have ebook stores in order to have a market for ebook readers, but eventually (once there’s a standard format), we’ll be able to buy ebooks everywhere. I hope.
In the meantime, I’ve found EXACTLY the machine I want, for the low, low price of $US 699. Um, no.
So far, I’ve been reading ebooks on my laptop. It’s been ok, but far from ideal, and I’ve been sending longing glances (metaphorically speaking) at ebook readers that other have over the internet.
Would I have plunked down the cost of a kindle when then first came out? Not sure, but I did investigate them, only to discover that no, not available over here in the U.K. Bah.
It seems like about once a month or so, I search around a bit to see what’s out there, because the more ebooks I read on my laptop, the more I want a dedicated ebook reader. Currently, I have my eye on the BeBook (http://mybebook.com/). I’m not quite ready to plunk down my money, but what I like about it is that it is shooting for open source – they support lots of formats.
As for ebooks themselves, publishers, get the pricing sorted. It’s annoying when a book is released in massmarket paperback, but the ebook price is still priced similar to a hardcover.
I won’t buy an ebook until most books are sold without DRM, and I won’t buy an ebook until most books are sold in open formats. Until those two things are true, the technical details of individual book readers don’t matter to me at all.
this is not mystery at all. the entire point of an ebook is to make bucks, and a primary way technology companies make bucks is by locking you into their technology. (Ever wonder why replacement power cords cost so much money and only fit one model of machine?)
As my friend Richard Stallman, digital freedom fighter, MacArthur “genius,” and Sharon Shinn fan writes: E-book readers are part of a long term plan to deny book readers important traditional freedoms to do things like:
* Borrow a book from a public library.
* Lend it to a friend.
* Sell it to a used book store.
* Buy it anonymously paying cash.
* Keep it for as long as you like and
read it as many times as you wish.
* Pass it on to your heirs, who can then read it too.
Every one of these freedoms has been attacked by DRM schemes for e-books. The “Amazon Swindle” is currently set up to attack most of them. It does not at present explicitly limit how long a user can keep a copy of a book, but it might in the future. For more info see DefectiveByDesign.org.
Hillary
I’ve been reading e-books (mostly from the public library) on a $99 Palm Pilot for quite a while now. And when I get tired of reading, I have solitaire too. 😉
I posted some of the geeky details on my old blog, here: http://coffee.ondragonswing.com/archives/000806.html
I have also downloaded a lot of the free Harlequin books, and have even (gasp) bought a few e-books. I store the files on my computer’s external hard drive, and copy them over to the Palm only when I want to read them, because that Palm hasn’t got a huge amount of memory and it’s not expandable. But it was cheap and it works, and you can get ‘em used on eBay for even cheaper than what I paid.
This is something I’d been wondering about, because I’ve only looked at a Sony reader very, very briefly. It did occur to me that there might be a lack of page numbers, and when I looked at photos of the Sony ereader and the Kindle, I couldn’t see page numbers on the screens, but I wasn’t sure. I do know that when I’ve bought (or downloaded for free thanks to their promotions) ebooks from Harlequin, I got the pdf versions, and those are fine in that respect. They look exactly like the paper copies, so the pagination is identical. That’s really important to me because I am doing research when I read romances.
What I can’t work out is why the DRM-free ebooks from Harlequin in pdf format are readable on my normal computer, but when I bought some, I had to use the laptop we’ve got can run Windows (though we usually run it in Linux). That was a hassle, so I gave up on the idea of buying more. But the DRM-free ones work perfectly.
There are page numbers at the bottom of the screen. But the page count varies depending on the font size that you use. Everytime you increase the size, you increase the number of pages in the book.
Thanks for explaining that, Ev. So it would have page numbers, but they wouldn’t be much good from the point of view of giving a reference, because when you cited the work you’d have to give all sorts of very precise details, such as which ereader and font size you were using, and if the other people didn’t read the ebook on the same ereader, the page reference would probably be of no use to them at all. Hmm.
I’m sure I’ve read discussions about how helpful it would be to have textbooks available as ebooks, but if you can’t give proper page references, it seems to me that that’s going to be rather a drawback for many students.
I think the smallest font is the same as the book font, so the pages would probably be the same, although I really need to check on that since I havent’ used it other than to find my place if I lose it.
they may just have to update the refernce books on how to cite a reader, won’t they?
Yes, and changes have already been taking place in this area, as people start to cite online journals, webpages etc. Generally, the idea of giving page references is that it makes it easier for other people to double-check a quotation and/or read up on the context in which it appears. I suppose that if an ebook has the facility enabled which permits a reader to search for specific words in the book quickly, then a page reference wouldn’t be so necessary any more. I have a feeling, though, that searchability may not be a feature that’s available on all devices and all formats of ebook. But given how little I know about ebooks, I could well be wrong about that.
I like the look of the BeBook too, because they’re making determined efforts to support as many formats as possible. Alas, the only DRM’d format they support is Mobipocket, but that is one of the better ones. I just wish their devices were *slightly* more sexy (although they’re sexier than the Kindle).
If the device supports a lot of formats, that takes away the gripe about formats that should be like the MP3 of books. See, I don’t use MP3 for music either, I use OGG or FLAC because they’re better (and are useful for different purposes). But I agree that the number of formats we have at present is ridiculous – I just don’t want everyone to standardise on a crappy one (ie. one that costs lots of money to licence, and which is hard to encode the raw material in).
As for the comment about the Readius (which looks cool, even if they haven’t settled on an ebook format yet) being a “closed system”, I’m a bit confused. On the website:
It has a USB connection (and wireless), onboard storage, and an SD card slot. It doesn’t really seem that closed to me.
Hillary Rettig writes:
DRM is undoubtedly attempting to cripple these rights, but libraries aren’t going anywhere any time soon (and are, in fact, starting to lend ebooks in some cases—expirable files that simply don’t open after your two weeks are up—in this instance, I’ve got little problem with that kind of DRM, handled responsibly). But DRM only cripples most of the list for the short time it takes someone to crack the DRM. Granted, it makes extra work for the end user, and that’s a pain. But lending and passing on books to heirs is still very much possible, both within and without DRM confines (if not entirely 100% legal, it is still evidenced by societal behavior that it’s not attached to moral transgression).
Backwards-compatibility is still possible for many formats, and will likely continue to be available if the physical location is accessible (floppy disk drives are no longer standard or even very common, but they’re in existence, and there’s an emerging market in retro-fitting older technology to work with current tech, as evidenced in both the longevity of the Palm platform and the availability of usb-connected turntables. It may not be something you get at Best Buy or Fry’s, but the interconnectivity of the internets makes big-box style availability not a requirement (seems as if everything is developing its own “long tail” without the barriers of distance and/or cultural gatekeeping in the Great Public Square of the Internets).
The only remaining issue is being able to pay for a book with cash and anonymously. Which you can approximate with the existence of visa gift cards, and browser anonymizers. It isn’t easy right now for those of us fortunate enough to be able to browse the internet from the relative freedom of an “uncensored” country. But necessity mothers that invention, as is evidenced by browsers from censored physical locations still finding a way out and around the blocks. Or most determined teenagers out looking for pron under their parents’ noses. 😉
Without doubt, the body of consumer rights, as well as artist rights will change with the advent of new delivery and archiving. But I suspect it is both a capitalist and a socialist thing—societal practice will either accept or reject the common usage of the rights in a practical manner, and the law and the markets will follow.