Friday, August 27, 2004
Have eBooks Turned A Page?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 01:00 PM
http://news.com.com/Have+e-books+turned+a+page%3F/2100-1025_3-5326015.html?tag=nefd.lede
"Although revenues remain tiny, industry surveys show encouraging signs of growth in e-book sales over the past year. Publishing executives and analysts say the industry is finally coming to grips with the most significant issues that have stalled e-book adoption to date."
The biggest issue is publishers are figuring out what consumers want. {Gasp!!! 8O } Imagine, doing what consumers want, which is pretty much a friendly DRM model. This statement cracked me up: (No pun intended.)
"Violano said security concerns are one of the main reasons some top publishers offer limited or no support for e-books--particularly of top-selling authors. Printed-word stars like "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and legal thriller specialist John Grisham have been notable holdouts in the e-book world. "The major obstacle now is availability of titles," Violano said. "Some publishers just don't trust letting their content be available in digital form."
You know who's books I see on forums like alt.binaries.ebook? Those from J.K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Robert Jordan and J.R.R. Tolkien. People painstakingly scan paper books in with OCR technology, compile it, proof it and post it to the universe if there is no other way to get it. I rarely see stolen ebooks from authors like Dan Brown and Michael Chriton that are more likely to have their books in an ebook format. Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code" has all four of his novels in ebook format.
Of course, Adobe is still living on their own planet claiming that it is still an laptop/desktop world for ebooks. I cannot imagine anything more painful than reading a book on your PC or laptop. Even if you had a svelte Tablet PC, imagine trying to get comfortable lying in bed and somehow propping that thing up? :idontthinkso:
"Although revenues remain tiny, industry surveys show encouraging signs of growth in e-book sales over the past year. Publishing executives and analysts say the industry is finally coming to grips with the most significant issues that have stalled e-book adoption to date."
The biggest issue is publishers are figuring out what consumers want. {Gasp!!! 8O } Imagine, doing what consumers want, which is pretty much a friendly DRM model. This statement cracked me up: (No pun intended.)
"Violano said security concerns are one of the main reasons some top publishers offer limited or no support for e-books--particularly of top-selling authors. Printed-word stars like "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and legal thriller specialist John Grisham have been notable holdouts in the e-book world. "The major obstacle now is availability of titles," Violano said. "Some publishers just don't trust letting their content be available in digital form."
You know who's books I see on forums like alt.binaries.ebook? Those from J.K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Robert Jordan and J.R.R. Tolkien. People painstakingly scan paper books in with OCR technology, compile it, proof it and post it to the universe if there is no other way to get it. I rarely see stolen ebooks from authors like Dan Brown and Michael Chriton that are more likely to have their books in an ebook format. Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code" has all four of his novels in ebook format.
Of course, Adobe is still living on their own planet claiming that it is still an laptop/desktop world for ebooks. I cannot imagine anything more painful than reading a book on your PC or laptop. Even if you had a svelte Tablet PC, imagine trying to get comfortable lying in bed and somehow propping that thing up? :idontthinkso:
