"Friction" is why e-books adoption is slow

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

But that's precisely my point. When you say that its hassle the mass market understands, all that means is that there hasn't been enough time for the mass market to get used to the hassle involved with using ebooks.

I agree. That's why I think the best way to ease them along is with baby steps. Frankly, I think if e-books were delivered through dirt-cheap, physical USB keys and sold like pbooks, they would have higher adoption rates than they do now. That way you're only asking the mass market to accept one new thing at a time. Yeah, it's totally antithetical to what e-books are all about, and I'm not in any way suggesting it (before a couple of dozen people post that it's a stupid idea) but it would probably work.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really don't think that the average "man in the street" cares two hoots about DRM.

You usually don't, until it costs you something... like something you paid money for. As long as DRM users don't lose anything, they won't care about DRM. Another reason why iTunes is so widely accepted.

Of course, the day iTunes hiccups, and millions of dollars' worth of purchased music "goes away"... watch out.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

I agree. That's why I think the best way to ease them along is with baby steps. Frankly, I think if e-books were delivered through dirt-cheap, physical USB keys and sold like pbooks, they would have higher adoption rates than they do now. That way you're only asking the mass market to accept one new thing at a time. Yeah, it's totally antithetical to what e-books are all about, and I'm not in any way suggesting it (before a couple of dozen people post that it's a stupid idea) but it would probably work.

That's a stupid... oh. Never mind!

Actually, though, it's not. The idea is sound, giving consumers something substantial at the store. It's just the medium that's in question. It would be best, I think, if the customer could come in with their device, purchase the e-book, and have it automatically downloaded into their device. That way, they see it there, ready to read... instant gratification, and very frictionless. (See, we're still on track here!)

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think the "mass market" has had plenty of time to get used to the hassle... enough that they've had time to go to the stores and say "Stock some e-readers, please!" and call the publishers and say "Release my books in the formats I want!"

The fact that they haven't done these things is largely because the mass-market doesn't know e-books exist in the first place. And I also agree that, when they do find out about them, they don't want to have to go through the trouble of opening one web site to buy a book, open another piece of SW to convert the book, and open a third to get it into their reader. They want pathetic simplicity... the iTunes package. As hard as it might be for those of us in this forum to accept, it really does have to be that stoopid easy for everyone else.

I don't agree. You're coming from the perspective that computers are new to people, that's more and more not the case. Look at it like this, as portable computers (and I don't mean laptops) become widespread, and they will, people that read will want to read books on them, and at that point they will discover that using ebooks warts and all is a LOT easier than using pbooks. It's what happened to everyone of us on this forum. The big factor holding ebooks back is the lack of widespread portable computers.

And since everyone seems to bring up the Itunes model, one factor you all seem to be overlooking is that the ipod itself is a sexy device, its a device people want to have for itself. Nobody (except ppl on this forum) buys an ipod so that they can use itunes, they buy it because they think its cool.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really don't agree with you that DRM is the huge issue that some people make it out to be.

I turn again to iTunes as an example. iTunes has DRM for the overwhelming majority of its content, and it's been a massive commercial success. I don't know anyone who says "I'm not going to buy music from iTunes in case Apple goes out of business."

I know that one person here reported that they were unable to read a MobiPocket book that they'd bought while the MobiPocket server was down, but that's a bit of a mystery: I'm also a member of the "Fictionwise" Yahoo group and, while you couldn't buy new content from FW that depended on MP's DRM server, nobody there reported that they couldn't read what they already had. I don't know why that one person had a problem.

I really don't think that the average "man in the street" cares two hoots about DRM.

For you, as an individual, DRM may not be a big deal. For me and for many others it is.

More importantly, it's a parasitic weight on an industry that's struggling and cannot afford to support it. I'm going to draw examples from other industries than just e-publishing, as I believe DRM functions similarly in all situations.

DRM is supposedly about protecting content from piracy. Unfortunately it doesn't work. They have yet to find any form of DRM which cannot be cracked. Even if they do provide an uncrackable DRM, there's still the 'analog hole' where someone simply scans and OCRs the book. I'm not saying this means we should roll over and surrender to pirates. I'm saying that we need to find alternate methods of fighting copyright infringement rather than keep throwing money at something that doesn't work.

One thing DRM does do is add cost. Someone has to pay for its development, so DRM'd products are going to be more expensive than ones without unless the price is artificially inflated on DRM-free products. It also adds complexity and reduces reliability. It gets in the way of paying customers. It has all these negative effects without providing the benefit (protecting content from piracy) that is supposedly its reason for being. I call that parasitic.

Let's look at some examples:

There's the recent mobipocket issue. It may not have had too much impact on reading, but what would have happened had they gone out of business? No DRM server means no more devices could be authenticated. So reformat/upgrade all your devices (likely to happen in five years or so) and there goes your library.

Google's Video download service-- people thought they were getting the videos in perpetuity, but they took the server offline and nobody could watch what they paid for anymore.

Sony's rootkit debacle with CDs. In an attempt to produce unrippable CDs Sony opened a huge security hole through installing cloaked software on a paying customer's computer.

I bought the DVD of Casino Royale, but thanks to DRM there are some Sony DVD players that can't play it. Think about that, here's Sony rewarding a good customer (they buy both movies and hardware from them) by releasing a movie you can't play on something that's specifically designed to play it.

Nobody benefits from that except the people paid to code the DRM.

DRM is something we really can't afford.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I don't agree. You're coming from the perspective that computers are new to people, that's more and more not the case. Look at it like this, as portable computers (and I don't mean laptops) become widespread, and they will, people that read will want to read books on them, and at that point they will discover that using ebooks warts and all is a LOT easier than using pbooks. It's what happened to everyone of us on this forum. The big factor holding ebooks back is the lack of widespread portable computers.

Most of the people I know, who all have computers, don't know e-books exist (or didn't, before I told them about it). Many of those, who have portable computers called PDAs and Smartphones, likewise didn't know they could buy books specially formatted to read on them. (Okay, granted, most of the people I know are over 40. The situation with younger folks is better, but not always by much!)

My point is: If they don't know about e-books... how can they buy them and find out?

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think, if the customer could come in with their device, purchase the e-book, and have it automatically downloaded into their device. That way, they see it there, ready to read... instant gratification, and very frictionless. (See, we're still on track here!)

Or both, I would think. You don't want to lose the impulse purchases from those who didn't happen to have their reader along. Also, you'd still be able to buy them as gifts. Heck, flash memory is cheap, and you don't need much. Think of all that wonderful, wasteful packaging. Cardboard covers with fancy cover art, a few nicely designed sample pages to flip, and a blister-pack USB key on the inside back cover.

As long as it's combined with a universal format or it contains multiple device-specific formats (like software on Mac/Win CDs), it can still be frictionless.

Sometimes it takes a stupid idea to get the market off the dime. Besides, this particular stupid idea has one other hidden advantage. It allows the large booksellers to profit from e-books, as well. Right now, there's no incentive for them to throw their considerable influence behind e-books.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Most of the people I know, who all have computers, don't know e-books exist (or didn't, before I told them about it). Many of those, who have portable computers called PDAs and Smartphones, likewise didn't know they could buy books specially formatted to read on them. (Okay, granted, most of the people I know are over 40. The situation with younger folks is better, but not always by much!)

My point is: If they don't know about e-books... how can they buy them and find out?

Ah but see you told them about it. This is an example of overcoming inertia. I agree that ebooks need more visibility, indeed they need visibility more than they need anything else, including ease of use.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

Or both, I would think. You don't want to lose the impulse purchases from those who didn't happen to have their reader along. Also, you'd still be able to buy them as gifts. Heck, flash memory is cheap, and you don't need much. Think of all that wonderful, wasteful packaging. Cardboard covers with fancy cover art, a few nicely designed sample pages to flip, and a blister-pack USB key on the inside back cover.

Well, I'm thinking of all the landfills stuffed with little 5MB flash drives and USB keys that people purchased, transferred the contents to a computer or reader, and threw away as being too small for other uses. I think we sacrifice far too much for disposability now (one of the worst downsides of "frictionless" society).

But if someone figures out how to encode the books onto those cardboard "gift cards" with a magnetic stripe on the back, something that's less wasteful and a bit more biodegradable, I'll be a lot more responsive to the idea.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Ah but see you told them about it. This is an example of overcoming inertia. I agree that ebooks need more visibility, indeed they need visibility more than they need anything else, including ease of use.

Right. That's what won the e-music market, once MP3s became a standard. Word of mouth will create visibility, and visibility will create a market. Smoothing friction will naturally follow.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think we sacrifice far too much for disposability now (one of the worst downsides of "frictionless" society).

We do. My keyboard's tongue was firmly planted in its cheek when I wrote about the packaging. Right now, I don't see any good way to get booksellers (beyond Amazon) involved, and I think that's important. They can sway both the reading public and the publishers. Right now, e-books are essentially developing around the bookseller roadblock. It will work, eventually, but it takes time.

Blockbuster formed a similar market roadblock in the video rental market. It took the market a long time to find a way around it, but it found three of them, all quite successful now, all Blockbuster is in the dumper. The market always fixes things in the long run. I'm just impatient.

[Lemurion]

I do think selling physical products may help: The question is how to go about it? The simplest way would be to sell pre-loaded SD cards or USB keys, but once you get into physical packaging the biggest savings on ebooks is lost. One possibility might be to sell cards with micropay credits for somewhere like fictionwise. Go to the store, buy the card and load up that way. My own thought would be something like buy an SD card with so much credit on it-- go to the kiosk in the store, browse for books, load and leave. The card could either come with its own login to the ebook store, or you can add your own.

[Liviu_5]

One thing not emphasized is that lots of people make their living exploiting friction (or inefficiencies in economic jargon), so they have a vested interest in keeping things as they are (book distributors, book sellers).

Also many other people while theoretically benefiting from reducing friction, are afraid that they will lose their livelihoods (writers and publishers) if that happens, so unless there is external pressure they will resist change to the hilt.

My prediction is still that unless a magic wand appears that takes your print book and makes it digital fast, for free and at your convenience the way cdex say takes your cd and makes it mp3, only strong external pressure from some digitizing behemoth (Google, Amazon, national library...) will lead to widespread adoption of ebooks in the near future.

In the longer run all bets are off due to fast technological advancements, but right now that's how I've been seeing things for several years and there is nothing new to make me change my mind...

What needs to occur is a new eBook paradigm. A lot of you are comparing Apple's iPod and iTunes to eBook sales. Apple's is the exact paradigm from which the publishing industry must shift away. In the Apple paradigm, Apple sells specially formatted songs that play only on Apple software. In the Apple paradigm, you wind up with dozens of companies selling songs that play only on their software.

The publishing industry needs to shift toward a paradigm similar to HTML and web browsers. One source (in HTML format) is interpreted by web browser software applications and displayed in whatever formatting deemed appropriate by each application. The web designer needs only to provide one source and that source can be displayed in any number of web browsers. It is of course true that web browsers don't always interpret HTML correctly and thus some cause problems in the way they display the HTML source. But they all can display HTML, and it is up to the individual software designers to verify the compliance of their web browsers with HTML.

Using a similar paradigm, there must be ONE and one only industry accepted source markup language for eBooks. I doubt this will ever happen without government intervention and arm twisting. With only one eBook markup language publishers would be more likely to publish books in this format. It would then be up to software developers to develop the eBook browser software that would enable us to read the eBooks. This would probably kill many companies like MobiPocket, but I don't care. There would be plenty of developers interested in developing eBook browsers for profit or for open source.

This paradigm would shift total publishing control back to the publishing houses where it needs to be. Little money would be made from developing eBook browsers, but companies like Sony could still make money from developing eBook hardware, although their hardware would no longer require only their eBook formats and therefore would considerably cut their profits. I say let the publishing houses dominate and control, just like they do with the printed books. To hell with Sony and other companies that have tried to piggyback onto the eBook industry and have just caused more confusion and less eBooks to be produced. Plenty of hardware and software would eventually be available for browsing eBooks and the publishing houses would be happy that they can produce on source file that can be displayed on any number of eBook browsers and hardware platforms. And they should be able to secure that file without jeopordizing sales. We consumers will be happy because we will have more eBook titles to choose from, and we will be able to read each eBook file using any number different eBook browsers. Even if the security limits us to one or two hardware licenses per eBook file, we will still be much better off.

[Trenien]

Since I've begun using my librie to read in public places, I don't know how many people have asked me about it (definitly more than ten). Usually they tend not to be overly surprised that ebook exists (most of them didn't know they did prior to meeting me).
However they are very surprised of the slickness of the screen of an eink device.

One thing though: nobody under 30-40 has ever asked me anything.

I read in a prior post that ebooks need some company to lauch somekind of offer similar to the ipod. You forget that the ipod success is based first and foremost on the hype around it (there are players with interfaces as easy as the ipod's, but none that comes with such heavy advertising).

The problem is that music is cool, whereas reading isn't.

There's no way for that market to grow huge in the span of a few months, hence no big advertising campaign (these cost big bucks). And we get back where we started, with knowledge spreading through word of mouth between readers only - bookshops have a vested interest into staing mum about such things.