It's not your book; it's our service!

[viktor_haag]

Hmm. Well, I've now seen two separate articles on the intarwebs about Bezos' latest notion (some might say folly): an e-book reader that uses a thin-on-the-ground, closed system wireless network to deliver content to owners on a subscription basis. On the one hand, I can see that this product might just be a replacement, not for books, but for more transitory forms of written content (newspapers, magazines, blogs). Maybe it will succeed as an iPod for words rather than tunes.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that this gradual transition of creative content over to a service-based, subscription model is somehow, well, offensive.

When I buy a book, I buy a book, dammit. And why would I not want my hundreds of dollars to be invested in an e-book reader onto which I could load whatever PDF or HTML content I wanted to load, using open wireless networking standards (like 802.11 WiFi), rather than only the content that my service provider saw fit to provide?

Somehow, this product here makes me feel more sanguine about the whole "inevitable deprecation of the paper book". On the other hand, I can't help but notice how much more expensive the iLiad is than Bezos' new "Kindle"...

postscript: in today's Register, we have this: "One plan is to reduce the cost of books through advertising ... books in Kindle can contain adverts which are updated daily."
So, apparently, the solution to e-books is to turn them into television.

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

It's dead in the water for me, too, for many of the same reasons. It's also too expensive, has ongoing recurring costs, and looks ugly in a Stalin-esqe fashion.

You can't even read PDFs on it, unlike the other E-book rivals. And to read things like .doc files, you have to email the file to Amazon who will email back the conversion for 10 cents.

I'm still waiting for a better electronic ink reader.

::B::

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

The best of the lot so far, as far as I can tell, is the Iliad. It's the most expensive, but it's also the most open, with a decent sized screen. I was inches away from buying one, and then I read that the current generation of e-ink screens tend to fade out and lose their contrast over a few years.

I suspect that before we see e-ink based readers that make good financial sense, we'll have small tablet computers for not too much more that will take up the market instead. Imagine, for example, an iPod touch that was only a bit larger, with a screen the size of a trade-paperback book? I suspect that this is where the e-book market will end up, rather than with the current generation of e-book readers.

As for Stalinesque ugliness, has the New Brutalism passed so quickly out of fashion? Or were you never a fan? 8)