Tech Blog

[#1]

Recently I bought a simple eBook reader online. My wife has one too, from a different manufacturer. All’s good; they both work great and make it easier to read books in situations where turning pages is harder than pressing a button (on the treadmill, for example). It’s also great to have a nice light device that I can carry with me in a form-factor thinner than most paperbacks.

Or should I say, almost all’s good; unlike a physical book, we can’t share our purchased eBooks between our two different devices easily. Even if they’re in the ‘portable’ ePub format.

ePub is a common eBook format that’s actually a ‘container’ for the content that’s supposed to be device agnostic -- any ePub is supposed to be viewable on any eReader that can view ePubs -- desktops, portable, iPhone, etc. But ePub also has the ability to be encrypted. Which breaks the portability. ePub for books is not the same as mp3 for music.

Many eBook publishers and vendors choose to use ePub encryption, which ties the purchase of your eBook to you by wrapping the book in unique encryption that is coded to your eBook purchase transaction.

If I try to copy her ePub book to my reader, the book doesn’t display. The reader won’t recognize it because it can’t decrypt the text. Which is kinda silly because if I buy a physical book and read it, I can hand it to my wife to read at any time. Not so with ePub encrypted eBooks.

Sure, there are ways to strip the encryption from ePubs, but that’s not the point. eBooks and eReaders are trying to evolve the experience and custom of reading, bringing it to the 21st century.

They’re failing, because the custom and expectation of being able to share a book is not being honoured. And until it is, eBooks won’t gain the popularity that physical books have. As with the music industry, eBook publishers will have to forget the last-century thinking of locking down their content and develop ways and business models that allow their customers to share their eBooks, and really evolve the experience.

[#2]

It seems such short-term thinking, too. As things stand, if I decide to move from, say, a Kindle to a Nook, I'd have to repurchase my books, because the Nook wouldn't be able to read Kindle's encryption. It also seems to be a thorny problem for our conventional notions about libraries.

There are some problems to be worked out with this. I very much want an e-reader, but I'm delaying a purchase until some of the DRM problems get shaken out, and until I see how the tablet market develops, as I'd prefer to have an e-reader that offered some additional functionality.

Actually, what I really wanted for an e-reader was Microsoft's Courier, but we saw what happened with that.

[#3]

I have a Kindle, however I am in the process of selling it. Ebook readers are most definitely the way of the future. In light of this, I have decided to let social technology catch back up with me. Ebook readers are drastically overpriced for the product and I will be waiting to buy my Ebook reader when the price is closer to the $50 range, which I believe it will be in 2 years or so.

On to the topic at hand.  Ironically, I believe piracy is the solution to the concern. Sooner or later someone will take the time and convert the books to a universal format such as PDF or other reasonable format. More and more books will be converted by the sharing community until those that purchase their books such as bgrier and Katherine become fed up with the unreasonable methods of service delivery by publishers. Hopefully publishers will realize that pirates will be pirates and customers will be customers and remove the senseless restrictions.

[#4]

@Katharine: Hopefully the problem is short-term too. There are more eReaders entering the marketplace, and as more units are sold, pressure from consumers will be to eliminate DRM.

@Tony212: Good points. Pricepoint will drop, hopefully to $50, but then, hardware MFGs may just keep adding features to keep the pricepoint higher.

Pirates will be pirates, and likely break the DRM and repost the DRM free version. Customers will buy the DRM'd version and be frustrated that they can't migrate their library to a New device they buy to replace an older one. DRM punishes the honest.

[#5]

You got it bgrier. I completely agree with you.

Like the sucker I am I will pay the extra for the added features.  The big one I am waiting for, that hasn't been announced as far as I know, is a dual e-ink/back-lit ebook reader.  Providing the option of reading with natural light as well as in the dark when necessary.

[#6]

Yeah, there's nothing backlit with eInk...though the Notion Ink technology looks pretty cool if it can make it to a dedicated reader, and not stay bundled in a slate/tablet device.