Future of ebooks?

I'm just curious if anyone else here reads ebooks, what you read them on, and where you think they're going. Getting familiar with ebooks a couple months ago, I was shocked to discover the underdeveloped state of the industry, but on reflection it makes sense, given that there was no widespread medium for reading them until recently, with post-iPhone PDA displays and now, netbooks. Dedicated e-readers remain too expensive for most people to justify, though the Kindle has made some headway, particularly among older people.

My thinking is that dedicated eInk devices will fade out in the next 5-10 years as more lightweight, low cost mobile devices proliferate, from smart phones to full-function netbooks, and ebook functionality becomes more of a selling point for those devices. I do expect ebooks to make a big dent in the publishing of physical books in the near future, particularly for academic works and mass market paperbacks. Eventually, paperbacks may all but cease to exist, with hardcovers persisting mainly as collectors' items.

I don't see dedicated e-book readers disappearing anytime soon
Really for one reason. Power management

You can read a book on the Kindle for 2 weeks without charging
Why? It's a highly specialised activity

The screen on the device is static, meaning it retains it's display content while the device is effectively powered down

The Kindle will flash a page of text up on the screen and power down
you turn the page, the thing powers up, displays the next page and powers down again
No backlighting, no processing, no nothing
This type of operation is only suited for e-book readers, or other similar function

You are not going to get nearly that level of power management from a phone - you'd get maybe a couple of hours of usage before it dies

Power management gives diminishing returns beyond about the 6-8 hour mark (the max reading time anyone would need between outlets), a standard that Intel Atom netbooks are already meeting, and that future tech with phone processors will likely exceed.

I agree with you that phones themselves aren't likely to become competitive as readers, due to size and power constraints, though iPhones are already serving as a 'gateway' to ebooks. It's the multipurpose devices riding the line between laptop/tablet and smartphone that I expect will really metastasize the ebook concept and eventually swallow or converge with the market for Kindles and such. The cost-to-utility ratio on e-readers, along with the limitations of DRM and proprietary formats, keep a lot of people out of the market entirely. I've already seen a 'Mini PC' (basically a smartphone minus the phone, w/ a bigger LCD and Linux) using ebook software as a selling point, successfully; if computer companies go just one or two steps further to optimize the ebook experience on their products, where's the market for a one-trick pony like the Kindle?

Even with my MSI Wind, which has the shortest battery life in the netbook market, I can leave it on in sleep mode with no worries. If I was reading before I shut the lid, I'm one button and about eight seconds from picking up where I left off. If I wasn't, then it's four keystrokes and maybe twenty seconds. I can buy ebooks anywhere I like (though I may need different software for some DRM'd formats), cut and paste quotes, jot down notes, or switch over to comic books, South Park, DV or Mybrute if I wish. Even if someone dropped a Sony reader in my lap (Kindles are way too restrictive), the Wind would probably remain my portable reading device, with the dedicated reader never leaving my bedside.

I read e-books on my smartphone, its great.. My phone is rather old though... so its kinda shit

The only thing that's keeping me from getting the sony e-reader is the price. $300 for, like you said, a one-trick pony? no thanks. I dont read enough to warrant it. I do occasionally check craigslist for one...

Another thing... I hope colleges will soon give students e-readers instead of books. Carrying all your textbooks (and more, dictionary, misc. reference, comics, crap, etc.) on one device would be very pretty awesome.

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Originally Posted by MSG

Another thing... I hope colleges will soon give students e-readers instead of books. Carrying all your textbooks (and more, dictionary, misc. reference, comics, crap, etc.) on one device would be very pretty awesome.

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Don't hold your breath :P Textbooks are a perfect illustration of the overall dillema with ebooks--the benefits for end users and society at large are huge and obvious, in terms of portability, access, workflow, and efficiency of production and distribution, but the 'price of progress' to existing industries is also enormous, and the absence of industry standards increases companies' and institutions' risk in committing to specific devices, formats and purveyors.

It's a no brainer that universities eventually will hand every student a standard device (many already give laptops) that will serve as textbook, notebook, research station and communications hub. The long-life, tablet-convertible netbooks coming out now would be ideal, particularly as more software comes together to accomodate the uses of these low-spec, full-OS, semi-handheld machines. Current eInk devices would have trouble with textbooks, I think, because of the importance of layout and color graphics. PDFs would almost work, if there were decent, flexible software for displaying them.

Yeah, price is still the major drawback. Textbook manufacturers wouldn't be so keen on giving up the tremendous profit they make on physical textbooks, and students wouldn't be able to justify spending as much money as they do now (textbooks are expensive!) for digital content. Something's gotta give. Perhaps the future is bright, though. My high school math book is currently available online, the publisher distributes passwords to schools using the book so students can access it online. It's only offered in an encrypted PDF and is only meant to be viewed in a browser.

In terms of standardization, format is critical indeed. PDF is an option, only it's meant for print, and isnt flexible in terms of viewing customization/scaling. You cant really scale text in a PDF without fucking up the format. Plaintext is already widely used but its kinda shitty, considering what we can do with XML. maybe an XML ebook format? (does one exist?)

In my experience, which is all of two months so far, html-based formats are the most flexible as long as your software knows what to do with them. A lot of people are excited about the html-based epub format right now, and the possibility that it will become the standard. Hopefully we'll see the situation stabilize a bit in the next year or two, as hardware options expand and programmers get a stronger sense of how people want to use ebooks.