As regular readers know, I’m fairly interested in the topic of e-readers, e-books, and how they impact society. So obviously I found Upendra Shardanand’s criteria for evaluating whether e-readers and e-books are good for the spread of knowledge intriguing.
In my view, the rise of e-books will have a profoundly positive impact on the world if:
1. Books are cheaper. The less expensive they are, the more people can read them.
2. There is a better secondary market. Used books are more affordable and circulate long after the title is out of print.
3. Books are easier to share. Or hand down to your kids, donate to a book drive, or leave on your stoop for passers-by to take.
4. There are more books. And more knowledge, more information, more perspective.
5. Free options are more widely available. Such as a library (thanks to robber baron Andrew Carnegie for building thousands).
6. Books are harder to censor. Or recall or delete. Censorship has been a consistent threat as long as we’ve had writing and is everpresent even today (see churches burning Harry Potter, fatwas against Danish cartoonists, and China).
7. Books last longer. At least as long as a paper book.
While his questions themselves seem like a useful metric, his answers to them seem a little bit myopic.
1. Books are cheaper. Only if you are a bookworm and buy enough books to defray the cost of the Kindle. For the average reader, FAIL
For one thing, Shardanand is overly conflating the e-book with the e-reader. Even if we only look at Amazon’s e-book store, the texts available there can be read not only on Kindle devices, but also on iPhones/iPod Touches and Blackberrys through their respective Kindle apps and PCs (and soon Macs) through a desktop Kindle application.
It would also appear that Shardanad is unfamiliar with the wide range of sources of free e-books. There’s Feedbooks, ManyBooks.net, and the Magic Catalogue of Project Gutenberg E-Books (an incredible service which lets you download any e-book from Project Gutenberg directly from your device).
Both points drastically change the issue of affordability.
2. There is a better secondary market. Not only not cheaper, but actually nonexistent. Amazon’s terms of service explicitly doesn’t allow you to “sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights” to your e-books. FAIL
As prices for new e-books approach zero – which they are and conceivably will continue to do – the logic for a secondary market continues to diminish. Not much more to be said there.
3. Books are easier to share. Not unless you’re willing to part with your Kindle for a few days. FAIL
This is obviously true, however there have been statements made by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that sharing – and in a way far superior to the Nook’s sharing abilities – may be coming to the Kindle in the future.
4. There are more books. Given trivial reproduction costs and infinite shelf space, it’s safe to assume more books will be available. WIN
No disagreement here. The only other thing I’d add is that by reducing costs to publish e-books are helping break down barriers to publishing and therefore enabling far more people to get their works out into the world.
5. Free options are more widely available. There are a few libraries experimenting with lending Kindles, but this is a violation of Amazon’s Terms of Service. FAIL
See my response to #1. The Kindle apps for both smartphones and computers are all free. It should be easy to use this fact to integrate e-books into libraries.
6. Books are harder to censor. Amazon answered that one when it magically caused 1984 to disappear from customers’ Kindles. When the Chinese government asked Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to get rid of all references to the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square massacre, Google complied. FAIL
This isn’t really that true. While the ability to censor information is a lot greater today, the ability to produce it is significantly greater as well. Consider the example of samizdat; it worked for books and there is no reason I can perceive of to think it wouldn’t work equally well (if not better) electronically.
Additionally, the 1984 issue rightfully is a non-starter, for the reasons I listed here.
7. Books last longer. Digital books can last forever. (Provided Amazon doesn’t choose to follow the music industry and work hard to make your old media obsolete.) WIN
Once more, no disagreement.
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This is a topic that has interested me to no end also. The biggest problem with e-books that I have is that people don’t really know how to deal with them. Are e-books products in the traditional sense, or are the software?
By products, I mean should they be treated the same as their physical counterparts? She we be able to share the books like how B&N is allowing with the Nook? Something about this is amiss to me. B&N is trying to impose a limitation that is natural with the physical product that is not inherent in the digital product.
If ebooks are software, then do we then buy licenses in a scheme similar to how Microsoft licenses copies of Windows? Well, to be honest this will lead to piracy because people want to OWN their books and not be limited to what they can or can not do with their own private property.
There must be other ways to make money from books that allow for ownership of the book and still allow the person to do what they want with it. Trying to treat ebooks as if they are the same as older technologies is not the answer. What do we do with a product with infinite supply and low cost to produce, but with very limited demand? I say you raise your standards. publish books that people want and they will buy them. If they can download the same book from bittorrent for free instead of buying it from you, you’ve made just as much money as if they waited to get it from the used bookstore. In either case, you have not made any royalties for yourself or your author, but you have gained positive advertising.
My point is that new business models are needed, not old rules for old products.