The Age of the E-Book
October 9, 2011
Can e-readers and e-books really replace the good old book?
E-books are now out-selling paper books, at least according to Amazon, and are tipped as the must have gadget of the impending festive season. Is this truly The Age of the E-Book, or are consumers being short-changed by a sub-standard product, actually worth far less than their predecessors?
In this, the first of a series of posts on e-books and the future, we look at the beginnings of the e-book, and what the era of e-books may mean for consumers.
What is an E-Book
On Tuesday 6th September of this year, Michael Stern Hart, sadly passed away. Michael Hart is perhaps not a household name, but his invention is sure to be – the electronic book or e-book.
“He had been granted access to significant computing power at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On July 4 1971, after being inspired by a free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he decided to type the text into a computer, and to transmit it to other users on the computer network. From this beginning, the digitization and distribution of literature was to be Hart’s life’s work, spanning over 40 years.”
Obituary for Michael Stern Hart – Project Gutenberg
Although he typed out most of the early books himself, volunteers and contributors have allowed the Project Gutenberg library to reach 36,000 books. If you have never visited Project Gutenberg, it is well worth a look, as there are thousands of literary classics available for a range of devices (Kindle, Android, iPad and many others), and all for free.
Although e-books themselves have been around for a while, there has never really been a comfortable way of reading, up until recently with the advent of better screens and e-ink technology. This has allowed people to read on tablet computers like the iPad and e-readers like the Sony Reader and the Kindle, as if they were paper books.
“The invention of eBooks was not simply a technological innovation or precursor to the modern information environment. A more correct understanding is that eBooks are an efficient and effective way of unlimited free distribution of literature.”
However far from being the free, or virtually costless way of mass distributing literature, the burgeoning e-book market has been beset by problems and complaints.
E-Books erode consumer rights
Currently, if you were to purchase a paperback or a hardback, read it and decide to lend it to a friend or give it to a charity shop, you can. This isn’t possible with e-books, they are strictly tied to a device and an account. Despite costing virtually the same as paperback books, e-books have no re-sale value, effectively costing more as there is no way to recoup money spent on e-books that you no longer need.
The reason that you cannot sell them is quite simple – you don’t actually own them. Buying an e-book means you purchase the right to read it, effectively renting it, nothing more. Moreover, this is a right that can be revoked at any point as was proven by Amazon when they took back books from their own customers in the past.
“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”
Should the company that you purchased your e-book from happen to go bust, or be bought out, it is entirely possible that they may take your entire library with them.
More annoyingly, if you read a book you think your partner may wish to read, you’d have to lend her your e-reader to read the book, or she’d have to purchase the book herself, or you’d have to keep swapping e-readers. If you and your partner had similar taste in books you’d both have to buy each book individually and end up with two libraries that were almost identical. Which I am sure the publishing industry won’t mind.
Another complaint about e-books has been their price. Despite having virtually nil production costs per digital copy, as they don’t need specific print runs, transportation, storage etc, and the fact that e-books have more limitations and restrictions than paper versions, e-books still cost virtually the same as paper copies. This means that unless the first 100 or so books that you read are free classics, courtesy of Project Gutenberg, it is virtually impossible to recoup the initial outlay you made in buying a device to read the e-books on.
This had lead to many criticisms that consumers are being duped into paying the same amount for something that is intrinsically worth less than a paper copy.
