The Whole EBook "Thing"

[Julia Schult]

Now that I've caught up on my list reading, I'm bursting with thoughts on
the ebooks issues:

1) Thanks for all the analogies, but the bottom line is that business snafus
have prevented the development of the eBook reader more than any other
factor, which is why this 8-track or horseless carriage is taking more than
a decade to get rolling.  Industry squabbling over standards, companies
trying to hold the market for both the readers and the eBook files, and
merger madness have caused some really good physical readers to drop out of
existence, and have scared the public off of an idea they have mixed
feelings about in the first place.  (People love books, of course, but also
wonder why the electronic book, which was predicted back in the 60s or
earlier, hasn't come about yet!)

If they would just have hi-tech companies selling the readers (fighting to
bring the best features to market) and have the publishers sell the books to
load onto the readers (which requires agreeing on a reasonable standard)
this thing could take off really fast, for reasons I'll outline below.  It's
only because the Microsoft model of "bundling" (in this case the books with
the reader) and partnerships (the reader-makers partnering with certain
publishers) that we've got this big problem.

2) Book-lover or not, when you've got something that is small and light but
holds a gazillion books, is backlit so you can read it anywhere, enlarges
the text at the tweak of a control, and can play the audiobook or music as
well, it is going to sell.  Add the pda functions such as address book and
calendar, and it will rocket.  However, most pdas are too small to read on
for long, while most laptops are too heavy and hard to balance on your lap,
which is why the eReader is a separate idea.

There are readers that even book-lovers preferred to books, as I believe I
have posted before.  The problems with those readers were not physical --
old or young or in between, the library patrons that tried them
overwhelmingly liked them because of the backlighting and the text
enlargement.  The problem was with the limited selection of books and the
difficulties of acquiring them.  One library, which presented at NYLA (last
year or year before?) was downloading books they purchased over the Internet
onto the readers they circulated.  Then the company was bought out by a
competitor and they couldn't use the same arrangement, and the readers their
patrons liked were discontinued, with an inferior version put out to replace
it.  This is why the eBook is not making a go of it -- yet.

3) The things that are leading the charge are a) reference works, especially
medical info loaded onto handhelds; b) student textbooks (a la NetLibrary:
students love anything in full-text) and c) other non-fiction (probably
business and IT books that professionals can read in the airport and
standing in line at the post office).

My $.02.

---Julia E. Schult
Access/Electronic Services Librarian
Elmira College
Jschult at elmira.edu