Ereaders

[ForeverAutumn]

It begs the question, though - how will educators address the digital divide? Will this make education available only to the richer and more tech-savvy population?

Incidentally - I know of several private schools here in the USA and overseas where - even for elementary school students - an iPad is required,

In Canada, Many of the private high schools and universities provide iPads to their students. The cost is built into the tuition fee. My boss's daughter is in private school and one of my best friends just started an MBA program. Both received iPads when they paid their tuition. I don't know how they would handle this in public education however.

Prepare yourself for the book industry to start going through what the music industry has long experienced - i.e. illegal downloading. There have been places where you can illegally download ebooks for at least 5 years, that I know of. Someone is going to create something like an ebook version of the old Napster. (Deja vu?)

I know that there are a lot of illegal download sites out there. I'm proud to say that I've never illegally downloaded music and I won't do it for books either. I know I'm in the minority, but I believe that illegal downloading is immoral. People deserve to be paid for their work and the things they create.

[Jerjo]

Sales of iPads and tablets are flattening out, which has some predicting death of the device. But the reality seems to be that manufacturers expected people to upgrade on a regular basis, like their phones. Instead they're hanging on to their devices longer than expected.

[Bungalow Bill]

It appears to be a very tight-lipped industry.

Very much so...it's learning lessons from how the music industry screwed itself with digital, especially piracy.

It's interesting that you say that. I go to college part-time and I have yet to be able to buy a text book electronically. The way it works is you buy the paper text book for $100+ and THEN you get access to the e-book on-line. But you can't download it directly to a device. It can only be accessed on the publisher's website. Are you saying that the books will be fully downloadable? I'd actually love that! So much easier than carrying a bunch of big text books around.

No, sorry. They're won't even be a digital "book". It will be a URL, password-protected, and the "book" will be the Website, with all of the book content and a bunch of interactive features. There won't be, say, a PDF version of Psych 101 that you can download and keep. You'll enter a publisher's portal, access the Student Edition, and read/work online.

That's one of things that pisses me off about e-books and why I don't buy them as often as I used to. When I got my first reader I thought that I would never buy another paper book again. But then the prices of e-books started to increase. But from all that I could see the manufacturing cost should have been going down. The pricing model made no sense so when an e-book is more expensive than a paper book I now buy the paper version. I don't want to, I just can't justify paying more for an e-book...unless the paper version is particularly cumbersome.

The publishers are going to make a fucking boatload of money:

1. no print/distribution costs
2. increased ability to re-purpose existing content and cut the quantity of author contracts
3. most book composition labor is in India, the Philippines, China, and non-Western cultures --- very, very cheap.

The reason why you see so many typos in Amazon's free ebooks is because the books aren't keyed or typeset...or even proof read. A scan of the print edition goes to, say, India. The text is reproduced electronically with various software tools. Often, those tools produce corrupt characters, errant spacing, etc. That's the content going into a free ebook. You'll see this in purchased ebooks, too, but less of it.

I worked in India for two years with book composition vendors. Indians are as smart as can be...but they're awful at bookmaking...because they rely too much on automated IT processes...which is how you get typos and very terrible, skewed content/formatting.

I'm not at all against this. I LOVE my e-reader. I would just like to see e-books priced more fairly. Again, thanks for the inside scoop.

In the world of digital comics, I don't see that e-comics are cheaper than print comics. That's probably going to be the norm, for books, as well.

[Bungalow Bill]

Fascinating post - many thanks for the insights. I knew that publishing was going electronic, but was not aware that it's being pursued so aggressively.

It begs the question, though - how will educators address the digital divide? Will this make education available only to the richer and more tech-savvy population?

I hate to say this, and many naive educators will disagree, but that divide is going to be an un-leapable chasm for poorer students. I see it coming. The socio-economic split in education is only going to favor the rich more.

Incidentally - I know of several private schools here in the USA and overseas where - even for elementary school students - an iPad is required, and kids never lug heavy school bags. And interestingly, per my limited knowledge, this started happening in places like Hong Kong, Australia, Korea and Japan way earlier than in the USA.

If it isn't the norm world-wide in less than 10 years, give-or-take and depending upon the country, I'll be very shocked. Portability is the by-word right now.

If you have the right device, and the right purchase plan, then books you purchase are loaded onto your device (pad / phone / kindle, whatever) - and you can read them at any time, withou having to be near a wifi connection. E.g. I spend about 5 hours a week on airplanes, with no wifi. Reading is easy.

True but the storage space is very minimal, compared with a laptop. I think there's a commercial intention in that...but I'm not sure what it is...

Prepare yourself for the book industry to start going through what the music industry has long experienced - i.e. illegal downloading. There have been places where you can illegally download ebooks for at least 5 years, that I know of. Someone is going to create something like an ebook version of the old Napster. (Deja vu?)

Very true but you wouldn't believe the security that major publishers are implementing. As I said above, there will be no book file to retrieve, eventually. The ebook will exist in a secured cloud, or be a website portal, guarded by publisher security, and it will be impossible to pull content out except maybe using screen-by-screen screenshots...which is hardly worth it. The publishers are savvy and watched what happened in the music world. I don't think they'll get badly burned.

My major concern is this (and I see it daily): many publishers have decided that the quality of the content --- in terms of grammatical correctness, absence of typos, quantity of narrative, quality of data, sheer aesthetics of writing --- are negligible and instead focus upon, How many books can we get into the market as quickly as possible? That's more alarming than the actual medium used for book content delivery --- CEOs deciding, Who cares if the book is shit? Let's flood the market, grab up the dollars via volume, and make a killing.

[Bungalow Bill]

One of the things I wondered about is a national library or web library for ebooks. I believe our local library has a ebook section, and you can check out an ebook for a certain time period. Of course, funds for local libraries differ depending on the city and their financial resources. (I live just outside the city limits here, so I get charged fifty cents to check out a regular book or dvd, etc., but with an ebook, I don't see where that would apply as there's no physical book, and a web library might offer a better selection over say a limited local library.) I wondered, however, with the advent of ebooks why a web library couldn't be created along the same manner?

At any rate, good info, thanks.

This will happen. There was a recent significant ruling that leaned in favor of public domain and away from publisher copyrights. (I can't cite the case, though.) I think you'll see that governments and groups like the ALA will work to support library databases despite publisher pressure. Libraries will likely become less expensive to run as they become more digitized.

[Bungalow Bill]

I don't know how they would handle this in public education however.

As usual, public school students will get screwed.

[Bungalow Bill]

Sales of iPads and tablets are flattening out, which has some predicting death of the device. But the reality seems to be that manufacturers expected people to upgrade on a regular basis, like their phones. Instead they're hanging on to their devices longer than expected.

In some schools, the desks and tables are interactive and replace tablets. But something like a tablet will be necessary for education for a while, I suspect. Until Google Glass replaces everything!!!

[hippypants]

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Very much so...it's learning lessons from how the music industry screwed itself with digital, especially piracy.



No, sorry. They're won't even be a digital "book". It will be a URL, password-protected, and the "book" will be the Website, with all of the book content and a bunch of interactive features. There won't be, say, a PDF version of Psych 101 that you can download and keep. You'll enter a publisher's portal, access the Student Edition, and read/work online.



The publishers are going to make a fucking boatload of money:

1. no print/distribution costs
2. increased ability to re-purpose existing content and cut the quantity of author contracts
3. most book composition labor is in India, the Philippines, China, and non-Western cultures --- very, very cheap.

The reason why you see so many typos in Amazon's free ebooks is because the books aren't keyed or typeset...or even proof read. A scan of the print edition goes to, say, India. The text is reproduced electronically with various software tools. Often, those tools produce corrupt characters, errant spacing, etc. That's the content going into a free ebook. You'll see this in purchased ebooks, too, but less of it.

I worked in India for two years with book composition vendors. Indians are as smart as can be...but they're awful at bookmaking...because they rely too much on automated IT processes...which is how you get typos and very terrible, skewed content/formatting.



In the world of digital comics, I don't see that e-comics are cheaper than print comics. That's probably going to be the norm, for books, as well.

I'm not going to edit the quote...sorry...but the idea that won't even be digital books sounds terrible. But maybe I'm in the minority. (Not that it matters of course)

[Reginod]

Somebody had to do it . . . . . . . . .

[Scott Bails]

Why should paying for a book be any different than paying for music or a movie? I have had a Kindle Fire for over 2 years now and I love it. The price for a brand new release is typically anywhere from $8 to $15, which is easily $10 cheaper than the hardcover. Because it's electronic it should be cheaper, or free?

Not free, but yes, absolutely cheaper. Really shouldn't be any more than 1/3 the price of a hard-copy book. As Bill has said - you don't own anything tangible!!

Sales of iPads and tablets are flattening out, which has some predicting death of the device. But the reality seems to be that manufacturers expected people to upgrade on a regular basis, like their phones. Instead they're hanging on to their devices longer than expected.

This makes sense - that is, that people are hanging on to their tablets longer. I doubt that there are too many advantages to upgrading. I can only speak for myself, but I don't use my tablet anywhere near as much as my smartphone, and I really only use a few apps on it.

I hate to say this, and many naive educators will disagree, but that divide is going to be an un-leapable chasm for poorer students. I see it coming. The socio-economic split in education is only going to favor the rich more.

Oh, of course it will. Everything does these days.

True but the storage space is very minimal, compared with a laptop. I think there's a commercial intention in that...but I'm not sure what it is...

Books take up very, very little space. You don't really need a lot of storage space to store a ton of books.

[Jerjo]

Books take up very, very little space. You don't really need a lot of storage space to store a ton of books.

Tell that to my wife. I'm been accused of crowding us out most of my married life.

[ForeverAutumn]

Tell that to my wife. I'm been accused of crowding us out most of my married life.

I think Scott was referring to computer storage and e-books. My Sony e-reader claims it will store 1500 books. I probably read, on average, 20 books a year (not including text books), so it would take me about 75 years to get to that 1500. That would make me 123-years-old before filling my reader.

[Scott Bails]

Tell that to my wife. I'm been accused of crowding us out most of my married life.

I think Scott was referring to computer storage and e-books. My Sony e-reader claims it will store 1500 books. I probably read, on average, 20 books a year (not including text books), so it would take me about 75 years to get to that 1500. That would make me 123-years-old before filling my reader.

Right. Exactly, Esther. Thanks!

[Bungalow Bill]

Books take up very, very little space. You don't really need a lot of storage space to store a ton of books.

It depends upon the type of book. Books that include a lot of art generally eat up space. But then I guess that's the beauty of clouds...

[Jerjo]

You mean I could fit more books on my iPad if I didn't have 1200+ songs on my iPad?

[Scott Bails]

You mean I could fit more books on my iPad if I didn't have 1200+ songs on my iPad?

No, we mean that you could fit both if you had a Samsung Galaxy Tab, since you could upgrade the memory with a microSD card.

[sotdude]

I work for a company that is owned by 2 of the largest IT publishers in the world, and we have a subscription based service of digital books (over 37,000) all online & full searchable, with the ability to cache a small subset on your mobile device for offline reading. The publishers knew, way back in 2000, that e-content was going to overtake print content sooner rather than later. Now, the retail sales of IT related print books has drastically declined in recent years, and our service has been incredible successful. President Obama has even picked the company I work for to help deliver a huge school/educational initiative to get top notch content out to kids via the internet, insuring that every child gets a fair chance to learn using modern technology. This initiative does not include print books. Every month I hear how much the print sales are suffering from our owners, and it's been happening for years now, so it's slowly going away.

I got my wife a Nook a few years ago-she was already a voracious reader, and I read a lot too, so between the 2 of us, we collected a ton of books, to the point that they were taking over the house. Tried to sell them at a yard sale we had for like a quarter each...didn't sell one, so took them to the town library and donated them. My wife now reads probably twice as many books on her Nook, and loves it. Me, I still read print books...despite what I do for a living. Call me an old dinosaur I guess!