Good, color PDAs might go for $75 new with OLED tech in use, I suggested earlier.

Actually, if a Staples is close and if the price I saw in a Jan. 4 ad insert in the Washington Post applies in your town, you might be able to pick up a brand-new Sony Clie PEG-SJ22 with a sharp 320 x 320 transflective color screen, 16M of RAM and a Memory Stick slot for all of $99.98 after a $30 mail-in rebate. In plain English, that means the screen won't be huge but will suffice for many readers. Also you can hold a small number of e-books at once in your PDA and can buy more memory later on. Meanwhile you can use your PC to store books and download them from the Net.

Just a special? Yes ("while supplies last"). But this post-holiday sale is a preview of regular prices in the future for similar technology. I couldn't find the same deal at Staples.com, but maybe that'll change tomorrow.

I hope a big point here will come through. PDA are like calculators, with prices ever lower, and libraries and their users can take advantage of this. In early 2003 the same Clie was commonly selling for $200.

Idea for public libraries: Perhaps you can catch up with vendors and come up with innovative ways to help the people most in need of library e-books find the right hardware for reading them. The Clie is just one example of the possibilities. It's hardly the perfect hardware for e-books and isn't for everyone, but it's far better than nothing at all. Just imagine the wealth of e-books for free on the Net--and even the possibility of libraries offering current best-sellers for free.

Time for Friends of the Library-type groups to work with schools and do mass buys, with some advice and follow-up help from local computer clubs, which might supply tech support? Perhaps different club members could help cover different library branches, especially those near them. Many large computer clubs have specal interest groups deaing with handhelds--some may even meet in libraries. Friends groups might also help with fund-raising to buy the units, either for the library to give away or to lend out. With enough qualified volunteers--hardly a given!--the time demands on already-busy library staffers could be reduced.

Just like the Sony Clie, this approach isn't for everyone. It's simply something to consider in library districts where the interest is there among readers, library staffers and potential volunteers.

The format angle: If your library does consider contemporary e-books from commercial distributors, see what electronic formats are available--and whether they'll work out on the most affordable PDAs.

Update, 5:52 pm., Jan. 3: Just back from Staples, where, aided by a $25 gift certificate from my in-laws, I bought my own Clie SJ22. My total cost, minus taxes and in anticpation of the rebate: around $75, or about the same as three undiscounted hardbacks. The thing is charging now. More tomorrow. Just to answer the obvious, the store where I bought the Clie is apparently used to dealing with people who get their newspaper inserts early. I lucked out. Two other Staples stores, called earlier, didn't even have the SJ22s in stock yet. Meanwhile I've just joined the Clie_Users Group list--and have remind myself of the wealth of model-specific resources that are available to PDA owners if they can find them. Yet another possibility: ClieSource, compelte with a handy, just-posted item about memory sticks.
posted by David Rothman at 12:13 PM | permanent link

The dogma is that electronic books won't work out for most recreational reading. Supposedly librarians should confine e-books to nonfiction categories like reference--with a few exceptions such as sci-fi and other genres for geeks.

But in a brave and useful experiment, the Cleveland public library system is defying the know-it-alls--and guess what? As I noted yesterday, the Number One circulating title in 2003 was The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's best-selling novel. Not exactly a dictionary or a space epic. Same for Split Second by David Baldacci (Number Two), Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens (Number Three) and Worth at Any Price by Lisa Kleypas (Number Five).

The only nonfiction title in the top five was The 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People by David Niven (Number Four), and just five other nonfiction books made the top 25. Part of the reason could be that the collection is especially strong on fiction. Still, e-stores like Fictionwise, Blackmask and eBookAd are also playing up fiction. I'd emphatically question Walt Crawford's assertion that e-books readers really won't care that much about reading fiction all the way through.

No mystery as to how Cleveland built up interest in fiction. Teaming up with OverDrive, the library gave its e-book area the flair you'd expect to see in a bookstore. I personally dislike OverDrive's proprietary formats (right now you can download books only in PDF and Palm, not Microsoft Reader or my pet proprietary choice of the moment, Mobipocket), but I think Tish Lowrey, CPL's tech services head, deserves some loud applause for her efforts to popularize e-books for recreational reading. They're a natural. Libraries don't want to buy zillions of copies of best-sellers in paper, only to see them neglected after six months. Limited experimentation today could save some big money tomorrow and promote book reading among young people, who are more and more Net-oriented.

To be sure, Cleveland's e-book circulation is now just a speck of the number for p-books despite a first-week spike in demand. Based on a perusal of the area, with special attention paid to books labeled "checked out," I'd say the stats would not be awesome (no information available to me on the number of different patrons accessing the e-collection each month). Just the same, as I see it, the CPL is off to an acceptable start, given the major challenges of formats (a consideration not as high up on Lowrey's own list) and technology (I myself won't expect much for e-books in libraries until tech is less of a hassle, although e-book-oriented PDA classes at library branches could help immensely in my opinion).

Ideally other library systems will follow Cleveland's example. Pinch pennies, but within your budget, do get your feet wet and think about CPL-style experimentation with popular titles even if the circulation will be tiny at the start. If your library system can't afford a Cleveland-style effort, you might at least want to try give-aways of public domain works, which is less of a challenge now that they're available for free online from 10,000 eBooks and Black Mask in a bunch of formats. Black Mask even sells inexpensive disks that each contain thousands of books, and, without all the format-related wrinkles, you can also get free disks from Project Gutenberg. Team up with local computer clubs and civic-minded computer shops to help people get the support they need, and think about coordination with local school systems, whose students, for example, could benefit from Gutenberg novels in English and history classes. Let me know what happens.

Meanwhile, edited, here is an e-mail interview I conducted with Lowrey yesterday.

Q. The exact number of e-books in the CPL collection now?

A. 2,832 titles--4,014 copies.

Q. What do you expect it to be one year and five years from now?

A. Next year--3,500+ titles: 6,000+ copies. In five years--no idea.

Q. What you expect the monthly and yearly circulation numbers to be one year and five years from now?

A. No idea; will depend on the available content from publishers. [Amen! A great argument as I see it for a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein, with plenty of opportunities for localization in Cleveland and elsewhere! At the same time, no matter where I am, I want access to oddball items like my George Gissing favorites. Not to mention books for research! I regard the best-seller-focused approach as appropriate now, but only as a form of triage, given the library's limited resources for experimentaton. We need a rich collection of all kinds of books online, and I suspect Lowrey would agree.- DR.]

Q. The churn rate? Just how often do you change X percentage of titles?

A. No particular rate.  We drop outdated titles, superceded editions and copies that have never circulated.

Q. Are you concerned that some library patrons might regret the absence of previously accessed titles?

A. No more than with paper books.

Q. Is quality--as opposed to popularity--is at least a minor factor in deciding what e-books you keep available?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you worried that the weeding out process could interfere with the library's serving people with special needs or special tastes?

A. No.

Q. Do patrons call up with support questions, and what are the most common? Do you feel your people adequately respond? If not, how do you think the system could do better?

A. They e-mail our Automation department, usually about downloading the reading software or getting a library card.  The feedback and follow-up from the public is very, very positve.

Q. The cost of OverDrive's services per year or by any other other meaningful measurement?

A. Don't know about the OverDrive service costs.  Our overall cost per book is about $9.25 a copy and we own the books.

Q. Will you make any arrangements for accessing classics? I did see only three Dickens novels.

A. Depends on what is available and if we are asked for more.

Q. Will the collection include provisions for giving away public domain titles, rather than just lending them out? In what formats? If you won't give away public domain titles, I'd be interested in knowing the reasons why not.

A. We support links to Project Gutenberg and other sites including public domain sites on our website (Databases/Reading Room/Read Books Online).

Further comments on Lowrey's remarks: I myself would hope that libraries could keep lots and lots of old books around, which is easier to do with e- than p-books. Just the same, the Gutenberg links will help some, and TeleRead could help still more with classics and other serious titles. What's more, I can appreciate Tish Lowrey's eagerness to use the e-book format to drive down the cost of offering best-sellers and reduce the waiting time. Those are key issues in terms of patron satisfaction.

DRM-limit details: From the Policies and Procedures page: "You can have up to 3 eBooks checked out at any given time...Typically, the lending period for eBooks is 21 days, but can differ from eBook to eBook...Palm eBooks cannot be returned early." Adobe books can be returned early. Just the same, with a three-book limit, I myself would feel constrained. Ideally Cleveland can find a way to loosen up the borrowing limit, which, if a student researching a school paper, I would find to be a problem. Too, I notice that readers may encounter problems moving books from machine to machine. Simply put, more flexible DRM could go a long way.

Another library using OverDrive's system: I haven't really checked it out, but I should note that the public library system in King County, Washington, also has an area featuring e-books from OverDrive. There is not as much focus on best-sellers, and the "Literature" is the first listed category--with classics ranging from 1984 to Anna Karenia. In the cases of both Cleveland and Kings County, I'd love to see links from the classics-related pages to the equivalent Gutenberg titles. That might not be the best for the libraries' official circulation figures but could be a godsend for schoolchildren and others who could avoid fighting over the same books--remember, Gutenberg books are free. Great budget-stretchers!
posted by David Rothman at 4:21 AM | permanent link

Display tech just keeps getting better and better. Sony will be cranking out 300,000 OLED screens, which sip less juice than LCDs. No backlight needed since they glow naturally. Less space taken up. Less costly to make. Good dirt-cheap PDAs, selling new for $75 with sharp color screens, look closer and closer even though I won't predict exactly when that happens. Meanwhile Sony will also use the new tech in other devices such as cell phones. More at Blackmask.com.
posted by David Rothman at 3:41 AM | permanent link

Question: Normally the Open eBook Forum likes to play up the positive to the hilt. And yet in releasing its estimate of $10+ million in estimated e-book sales in 03, it didn't mention the $8 million in actual sales in Japan the year before. Was this because the OeBF didn't want to call attention to its failure to pick up Asian members? Although the actual OeBF stats reflected only officially reported information, it's interesting that the additional context wasn't offered.

Rx for Asia and plenty else: A nonproprietary XML-based consumer format, without identification with specific U.S. brand names such as Adobe, Microsoft and Palm Digital Media. The longer the OeBF takes to understand this, the more potential members it will miss in Asia and elsewhere outside the States. Meanwhile Asians are busy adopting their own standards. The argument that Asian characters are graphical won't cut it against an XML-based approach from the OeBF, since XML can deal with virtually any language. Not to mention the additional graphic capabilities of SVG that a nonproprietary approach could include, adding further flexibility.
posted by David Rothman at 3:17 AM | permanent link

We Yanks can read Canadian Wallace J.McLean's post below from the CNI Copyright list and weep amid the damage done in the States from the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. - David Rothman

Happy Public Domain Day!

Today, January 1, 2004, every unpublished document whose author had died on or before December 31, 1948, has passed from copyright into the public domain in Canada.

As of today, millions of pages of archival heritage, in hundreds of archival institutions, have become the common property of all Canadians.

You are free to make use of this heritage in any way you want, by publishing, digitizing, compiling, translating, adapting, dramatizing, or treating the material in any other way. It's yours to enjoy and share with whomever, whenever, in whatever way you want [but not in the States].

Also today, the published works of people who had the good sense to die in 1953 have become public domain in Canada and any other country which retains the life+50 rule for copyright term. These people include Polish poet Julian Tuwim, British mathematician Alan Turing, Dutch children's author Hugo Pilon, Russian author and Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, metaphyisical author Baird Spalding, Norwegian novelist and Nobel laureat Knut Hamsun, playwright and Nobel laureate Eugene O'Neill (1953 was a bad year for Nobel laureates!), Irish poet and Yeats' one-time lover Maud Gonne, Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas (bad year for poets!), country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams, French author Hilaire Belloc, American historian J.G. Randall, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (bad year for Russians!), founder of Saudi Arabia Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, Maria Montessori of school fame, and many more.

Happy Public Domain Day!
posted by David Rothman at 9:28 AM | permanent link

Walt Crawford is an often grouchy éminence grise published in the likes of the ALA's American Libraries. He can be to e-bookdom what Darth Vader is to Luke Skywalker and friends.

Grudgingly, in a just-published article, Crawford concedes that e-books could succeed in niches, especially for reference. But you know what his true sentiments are about e-books for recreational reading and other general purposes. Problem is, he's wrong if you go by a hit-list of electronic books, stats received this afternoon from the Cleveland public library. I'll publish the information tomorrow or Sunday as part of an e-mail interview with the CPL's Tish Lowrey, who has fearlessly braved the skepticism of the critics. Her top-circulating book: The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's bestselling fiction.

I'll have a little more on Lowrey's efforts in the present item, too, but mainly I'll give you my take on Walt Crawford's comments. He's unhappy with less-than-paper quality of e-books, and coincidentally or not, he works for an association of research libraries, some of whose individual priorities at times can diverge from those of public libraries and schools. The big boys don't always like to share their toys, and e-books for the masses just might open up the sandbox. No conspiracy theories here. Crawford is just reflecting the world as he sees it at RLG, born as the Research Libraries Group. In fact, as you'll see, I agree with him that the e-book industry has bungled on many an occasion, and I believe that his thoughts are worth reading.

Still, on some issues, such as the potential of e-books for recreational reading, Crawford just isn't current. I hope he'll keep an open mind. He may yet understand why e-books actually can be just the ticket for picky readers like himself. I'm one, too, and I love the idea of being able to enjoy e-books in my favorite fonts or read dead authors online to whom even the great research libraries may not do justice.

The possibilities

As past president of the ALA's Library and Information Technology Association, in which he still participates, Crawford would do well to remember the basics here. Young people are growing up reading off screens, increasingly relying on the Net instead of books when researching school papers, and toting PDAs despite all the shortcomings of the technology. What's more, huge libraries of e-books could reach billions more people than paper books could, especially in the Third World. Crawford might show more objectivity, given the potential benefits. For example, when Crawford writes negatively about e-books for the Cleveland public library, he leaves out some hard numbers suggesting that this experiment could indeed be very worthwhile in the end, based on first-week experiences with reference and sci-fi books.

Just the same, Crawford can be right about many things, and I recommend a close look at an article in the January issue of Cities & Insights: Crawford at Large. It jibes with many of the points I've made in this Web log. Yo, e-book companies! Pay attention. Crawford could be costing you a fortune in library sales--and quite rationally so, given the legitimacy of many of his criticisms. Meanwhile keep in mind the potential of public libraries for lending out e-book hardware and whetting the public's appetite not just for library e-books but also the commercial variety. Libraries and bookstores can help each other with paper books, and the same will hold true even more in the electronic realm if the e-book industry can address Crawford's complaints. While listing them--in my order, not his--I'll also include remedies that he either won't explore or else might condemn out of old habits, which I hope he'll change.

Negative #1: Ballyhoo in place of real solutions

The e-book industry is sick, sick, sick, as a business--not nearly as healthy as its ballyhoo would lead you to believe. Even repeated promotion of the old Gemstar readers in TV Guide could not do the trick, as Crawford rightly notes; and the debacles go on.

Again and again I've hammered away at the pathetic $10 million in consumer sales that the Open eBook Forum brags that the business will achieve in 2003. That's a speck of a speck of total book industry sales; and now Crawford weighs in with his own math. Even if e-book revenue grows at 30 percent annually and p-books grow at just five percent, then sales of digital books will "reach one percent of print book sales in 2022, a year after e-book sales hit the $1 billion mark." Not until 2033 will they "reach the ten percent mark" that some optimists predicted for 2005. That's assuming that the $10 million figure for worldwide sales is correct. Actually, elsewhere in the article, Crawford says the sales of Japanese e-books reached $8 million in 2002. Did the 2003 OeBF stats include that? And are those consumer stats--calculated the same way the OeBF did? Interesting question. I'd hate to think that Japanese numbers would account for the majority of the $10 million, and if they don't, then the global stats will be far higher that the OeBF says. The most likely explanation is that the biggest Japanese publishers did not take part in the OeBF's reporting. Whatever the case, though, whoever participated, and whether the figure is $10 million or $18 million or otherwise, e-books sales are a disgrace.

That is exactly why TeleRead has called on the OeBF either to go out of business or radically revamp its activities. Instead of just spewing out PR that inflates some industry egos but demolishes the group's credibility, the organization urgently needs to do the obvious and essential. It could begin with more serious efforts toward an XML-based Universal Consumer Format and DRM Lite--as opposed to the proprietary formats and onerous copy protection that can drive many readers nuts, whether they're book buyers or library patrons. I couldn't agree more with Jenny Levine, quoted by Crawford. She knew the Gemstar readers were "dead the moment they locked down their content to the point where I couldn't put it on a new ebook reader that they themselves have manufactured" (actually licensed for Thompson/RCA to make). Proprietary reading software isn't as horrid as Gemstar's strong link was between hardware, software and content. But the same concepts apply since human readers would rather not mess with installing, learning and updating a variety of software readers, especially when memory on their PDAs is limited. Ironically Crawford uses PDF in his newsletter, but, reflecting the 'tude of many veteran librarians, he is duly apologetic.

Get that, OeBF? If the group were on the job, we could indeed have a nonproprietary format at the consumer level that wouldn't place librarians and the rest of us at the mercy of Adobe--which, of course, cares far more about profit than about the usability of the today's books and other documents in the future. Publishers, distributors, writers, editors, corporations and government agencies would all come out ahead without the OeBF-tolerated Tower of eBabel. Electronic books will never be "real books" in the fullest sense, for example, unless buyers are assured that they will eternally have convenient access to already-owned titles at no further cost, even if the publishers or e-book companies go out of business. Right now Adobe can change its formats as often as it wants. Who cares about the needs of consumers and archivists? No wonder some well-informed librarians in effect see the OeBF as the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum.

Negative #2: E-books' failure to live up to their potential in libraries

Outfits like OverDrive and netLibrary love to crank out PR about their library efforts, and so does the OeBF, whose executive director, Nick Bogaty has described libraries as "a huge growth category." Growth in relative terms? Yes. But hardly in absolute numbers. Remember, the revenue of the whole industry is perhaps $20 milion or so at most, a fraction of library spending for p-books; and it isn't just because of the imperfections of the technology, but also because of avoidable evils like onerous DRM and the Tower of eBabel.

That said, even in librarydom the situation isn't quite as dire as Crawford makes it out to be. He mentions an OverDrive white paper on the e-book experiment in Cleveland and challenges it with the assertion that the "vast majority of patrons want more print books." True? Of course. That's what most readers are used to. But at least Cleveland is going to the trouble to educate adventurous readers about alternatives that could dramatically increase their reading choices. Rather laudable, as I see it. Although e-books aren't ready for gigantic library purchases, in part because of vendors' fixation on Draconian DRM and proprietary formats, the Cleveland system would be negligent in not trying them out. What Crawford conveniently ignores, in the OverDrive paper, are numbers supplied by Tish Lowrey, head of tech services for the Cleveland Public Library. Lowrey told OverDrive: "In the first week, more than 300 different patrons checked out more than 500 titles, and almost 200 titles are wait-listed"--out of 1,000. "We already plan," Lowrey said, "to change which books are emphasized on our online catalogue, to see if we can balance out the demand for certain titles." Even allowing for a first-week spike based on the novelty of e-books, those usage numbers show promise.

At just 1,000 titles, of course, the collection was exactly as Crawford described, "tiny." But now the number has reached several thousand, according to what Ms. Lowrey told me today. What's more, Crawford errs in saying Lowrey should play up e-books mainly the in "pseudobook' category" such as reference where readers often won't do the cover-to-cover routine. True, the encouraging start-up numbers were for e-books in the references areas and the like. But Lowrey has already been smart enough to see more potential here, and, with OverDrive's help, the area has evolved to strengthen categories beyond reference and techie-favored science fiction. The electronic collection now offers content ranging from general fiction to true crime and even best-sellers such as Michael Moore's Dude Where's My Country? Is everything checked out? Far, far from it! But, based on the wait lists I saw, the area is seeing some checkouts. I'm not surprised the number isn't huge. Certain books in the bloated Adobe format, sometimes the only one available, can run two megabytes. And at the same time the library is asking people in other cases to use the Palm Reader. At least as of now, people with the Microsoft Reader, which comes with many PDAs, are out of luck. Oh, the joys of the Tower of eBabel!

Imagine, however, the benefits of a TeleRead approach with a reader-friendly Universal Consumer Format and a well-stocked national digital library system, for which netLibrary and OverDrive might be among the vendors. In fact, Lowrey says tells me that the biggest single way to boost traffic to the site would be more content. The Cleveland system is constantly fine-tuning content by weeding out the less popular titles, but then again, as I see it, that isn't the best news for people with special tastes or special needs--hence, the desirability in my opinion of a TeleRead approach, a national collection offering many times the present several thousand electronic titles available to Cleveland. Hardware and format matter far less to Lowrey than content does (she in fact seems apathetic about format). I myself would consider format and hardware also to be major factors, and wonder if perhaps Lowery's 'tude is influenced by the fact that she may view her e-library as more of a renter than a buyer. To a mere mortal without tech support people nearby, format and hardware can mean plenty, however, especially if a user wants to views e-books as durable purchases, which to me and many others is rather important. It's one reason why the format wars and the related proprietary DRM frighten away many buyers, including libraries, and keep the e-book market so small.

Short term, more hand-holding for e-book users could help libraries, as I see it--for example, PDA classes and the loading of public-domain e-books on memory cards, as well as tight integration with the English, geography and history classes of local school systems. Friends of the Library-style groups perhaps could bring in volunteers from personal computer clubs as well as the IT departments of civic-minded corporations. Meanwhile companies such as OverDrive could also enter the support scene in a major way, not just in the States, but also abroad--perhaps as government contractors for the U.S. government and others. The right support services could help deal with the consumer-hostile habits of so many computer companies. Vendors and libraries could also work together to popularize file-sharing, in a library context, so at least friends in the same library districts could begin sharing books with each other. The right DRM would allow content providers to be compensated when e-books changed hands. Other ways of making DRM more flexible could help, too, especially if accompanied by the razing of the Tower of eBabel.

Do the above, and improve the hardware--and then e-books will eventually take off, big, with help from libraries here and abroad. No threat to strictly neighborhood libraries. Use them for purposes such as story-telling hours, in-person reference services and meeting places for civic groups, and as support centers and sources of content-related mentoring (large library palaces are a different question). Local libraries, if nothing else, could design MyLibrary pages that teachers and local school children could set up to accommodate each child's reading preferences in the e-book area. PDAs could be lent out. The children most intrigued could be given their own--to enjoy even if the technology isn't as good as it will be. Eventually all students could have PDAs or, better, tablets. See next item.

Negative #3: E-book hardware that isn't as readable as paper and otherwise won't stack up

Predictably Crawford complains that e-books lack the same resolution as paper, but are his eyes the same as those of a youngster weaned on screens? And who says even older people are at a loss, especially those who could benefit from blown up print? Fact is, many people could enjoy digital books even with today's less-than-perfect technology. Not everyone. But many. It's a matter of educating human readers to find the right hardware, software and content for them.

On my Dell Axim, bought used for all of $130, I can read e-books hour after hour off a nice color screen with ClearType in use to smooth out the letters. No flicker. And the light needn't be bright enough to bother my eyes. Furthermore, with Mobipocket software and a simple pickup of fonts, I can enjoy the same "type" I've chosen for my desktop. Crawford might enjoy e-novels, especially those in his favorite typestyle, which Mobipocket would make possible as noted below, if he took a little trouble to consider the possibilities. Even allowing for maintenance contracts, furthermore, we're talking about technology within the means of most Americans. Today's $130 bargain will be a $70 or $80 one in the next year or so.

Now compare that to the price of textbooks, which can cost hundreds per student per year. E-book tech could help redirect expenditures from the paper and ink to actual content. Tablets, as I see it, would be better than PDAs. But meanwhile, via fund-raising and otherwise, libraries and schools should work to get PDAs into the hands of appreciative young people who cannot afford to buy them them.

Wanted: More on freedom to read--the right books

While Crawford can't imagine life with e-novels, I can't imagine life without them. I've said it before and will again and again, because it's so true. The issue isn't just the quality of the display but the number of books conveniently and affordably available. A $50 memory card can hold hundreds and hundreds of e-books. Now I can carry around a library.

Before e-books I didn't gamble on Victoria-era classics nearly as much as I would have liked. I would either be hesitant to shell out the money for them or would worry about library fines. Now, however, I can go wild. I don't have to commit to finding a book and bringing it home for a library or bookstore or returning it to the former.

I've developed a serious addiction to George Gissing, whom many dismiss as a second-rate Dickens, but who for me is better (no arguments with the world's literary critics, necessarily--just a reflection of my own preferences). At the same time I am in the thick of London society (via Gissing's Crown of Life, I'm revisiting one of Dickens' favorites (David Copperfield), hunting down Nazis with Doc Savage (Cargo Unknown) and fretting about bears with Bill Bryson (Walk in the Woods). My costs? Zero. Gissing is clearly in the public domain. At least some Doc Savage books of Kenneth Robeson, a pen name of the late Lester Dent and at least one other writer, are apparently free, too (I'm downloading them from Black Mask, a legitimate commercial site). And Bryson? Got him through Microsoft's wicked program to offer commercial books for free to bribe people into uploading books with the latest DRM.

Simply put, while there should be many more e-books online for free, much progress has already been made. Too bad the library world is so pathetically behind. Via Black Mask, for example, I not only can download Gissing in Mobipocket but can come up with a copy I can legally keep on my drive forever. No overdue dates! Given a choice of (1) expiring library books or (2) those of Black Mask or 10,000 eBooks or Project Gutenberg, just which do you think I'll prefer?

I'm in a small minority right now, but you can bet more people will catch on, and libraries will suffer if they fixate on Crawford's carps about screen quality rather than looking ahead to the future. And looking back on the past, too--in the sense of using new technology to popularize the old classics. Come to think of it, perhaps the best allusion to use about Crawford and e-books isn't from Star Wars but rather from David Copperfield, in which young David, no matter how good a boy, can never please the captious Mr. Murdstone. Given the consequences of librarians underestimating the potential here, however, perhaps Crawford can change.

Related: Also see Crawford's column Libraries, E-books, and Monolithic Solutions in the April 2003 issue of American Libraries, in which he admits that e-books do have a place. He concedes: "When you look at the broader range of e-books, you see some significant successes and some areas where substantial markets may yet emerge." Even in the column, however, he does not admit that someday e-books could be the dominant medium. They're not going to kill off paper books, but eventually will be far more common than he can envision.

Update, 12:37 p.m. EST: Dorothea Salo says I'm a bad boy for coming up with "conspiracy-theory aspects" to explain the e-book mess ("why attribute to conspiracy what is simpler to explain as incompetence?"). Hey, Dorothea, no conspiracies needed! Someone who sells proprietary e-book software, as do the OeBF's main sponsors, is obviously going to start out with a different 'tude about open standards than someone who doesn't. Similarly, Walt Crawford, working for large research libraries with gazillions of books, won't share the same perspective as a lone library user in a city with a less-than-fully stocked library system.

More details: Dorothea deliberately or not ranted against "the latest Rothman ranting" without a link to it. Ironically, although she herself was fuming, Steve Potash, the OeBF president, made a friendly and very useful phone call to me a few days ago and shows signs that on some matters he is listening--if nothing else, on the question of onerous European VATs on e-books, against which he wants the OeBF to lobby. Way to go, Steve! In view of the latest development, give the guy a chance! Yes, Dorothea, some good is coming out of this, and I'm hoping for other constructive responses from Steve. OverDrive, his own company, could do very well if it heeds my suggestion to show more flexibility and go with open standards and more consumer- and library-friendly ways. Could mean a change of business models. But so what? The idea should be to serve consumers and libraries and make money along the way, not just stay proprietary for the sake of it.

One further advantage of a UCF, even from Steve's perspective: With formats and DRM well standardized, it would be easier for library patrons ("users" in plain English) to buy books they had checked out. I doubt libraries would allow this unless purchases could be from amy of a number of vendors--a very appropriate concern since libraries shouldn't be turned into sales outlets just for one company.

Update, 3:03 p.m.: Yep, I softened the lead and removed most of the "Darth" references, with (selectively) delicate souls like Dorothea in mind. I won't count Crawford as totally impervious to conversion. Be interesting to see if he can appreciate the font angle. One reason he does his newsletter in PDF is that he wants just the right type ("I'm fond of Arrus BT from Bitstream"). I myself at times will read books in Berling Antiqua, which at least is far more easily available than Arrus BT.
posted by David Rothman at 6:24 AM | permanent link

The eBook Community list, the town square of e-bookdom, will be eight years old on January 5.

Jon Noring moderates and says TeBC has 1,970 members and is adding a few more each day. Members include everyone from e-book newbies and garage publishers to industry veterans at companies such as Palm Digital Media and Xerox.

Among general-interest e-book lists, TeBC is the most prestigious and probably the oldest as well. It started out as the "eBook-List" (not to be confused with the current e-books list, which Jon does not run).

When Jon announced the creation of TeBC under the original name, guess what was the first of his sample topics? Format-related issues! And the second sample was even more specific: "Should a 'standardized' electronic book format be developed for the long-term future? Is it even possible?" His feelings today? Emphatically yes! I like those priorities.

Happy birthday, TeBC! And best wishes to all our readers in '04!
posted by David Rothman at 4:13 PM | permanent link

Funny. The "E-books and docs" tab seems to have vanished from my Amazon.com pages as best I can determine. On the other hand, I'm still able to limit my search to e-books if I use the selector at the left of the page. So, Amazon, what's up? Are you playing down your e-bookstore for the moment--or just saying, "A book is a book"? Or maybe in the midst of some virtual remodeling?

Detail: I've left a message with Amazon for the lowdown here. Anyone know more?

(Via the e-books list.)
posted by David Rothman at 4:00 PM | permanent link

Even William Goldman would agree that not all recent movies stink.

One of the best is director Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Based on a book with a similar title, it's about a master forger in the 1960s, who, if a young hacker today, would be a brilliant social engineer and perhaps a great coder, too.

This teenaged high school dropout didn't just forge $2.5 milion in checks. He also passed himself off as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, you name it, including, just as the FBI was trying to arrest him, a Secret Service agent. The feds eventually threw the book at Frank W. Abagnale, pictured below as a middle-aged author, lecturer and fraud-prevention consultant; but he atoned brilliantly through his work for the FBI and the financial services industry.

Abagnale as a reverse social engineer for the good guys?

So here's the deal for the e-book business. Isn't it just possible that either pro bono or for much less than he charges international banking empires, Abagnale could help come up with a good nonproprietary system of DRM Lite? No need for Abagnale to do the coding. Rather he could at least help the Open eBook Forum or an equivalent deal with the human factors here. At the same time an e-book organization could set up a focus group of readers and find out just what they would and would not consider convenient. Needless to say, the OeBF could also consult with accomplished hackers and top security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, who has warned against the perils of proprietary encryption, where not as many people can kick the tires. Maybe even Winston Smith, himself a bright high school dropout, who has outsmarted security specialists in an actual e-reader context but without monetary rewards in mind, would show some interest here.

Would the above efforts create a crackproof DRM? No, of course not. We're talking about DRM with consumer convenience in mind. But at least this approach would be far better than the heavy-handed proprietary ones from the software industry. We already know that DRM systems from Adobe and Microsoft and Palm Digital Media are crackable. So why should e-book publishers pay anything extra for them? Ditto for e-book formats themselves; best to wave good-bye to proprietary standards and go with a refinement of the OeBF's own Open eBook Publication Structure. With standardization of formats and well-integrated DRM at the consumer level, e-books could actually be more secure--not just because of the kick-the-tires factor, but also because updates would be less of a hassle.

If you want star quality...

Again, let me emphasize that Frank Abagnale would be just one of many people involved, but chances are he could make more than his share of contributions. From a cost-benefit perspective, I doubt he'd be that affordable for individual sellers of e-book software--considering the pathetic $10M in annual sales of actual e-books. But if the OeBF approached him and said, "Look, here's a good deed you can do for the entire book world, including libraries," Abagnale just might oblige. What's more, his efforts might also be useful to the movie and recording businesses, whose DRM efforts the OeBF has been tracking. It's no small coincidence that I began this item with mention of a movie. Yo, Jack Valenti! If you want star quality in a theft-prevention expert, Frank Abagnale just might be your man.

Just a reminder: I myself am not the biggest fan of DRM, but recognize there are certain situations, such as legal file-sharing or library use, where it could be handy. If nothing else, this would be a nice security blanket for e-book publishers insistent on it. They'd actually be far better off than trusting Adobe, Microsoft and Palm Digital Media--the companies whose flawed and proprietary DRM has given us the costly Tower of eBabel.

If not Abagnale: If he isn't interested, remember there are other well-known experts in fraud-prevention whose participation would show publishers that the OeBF or a similar group was dead-serious about protection of intellectual property.

Detail: While I'd hope that Abagnale could donate some time or at least discount it heavily, I still believe that techie standard-setters--ordinary folks with gas and groceries and no mega incomes--should be paid a decent amount for their efforts it all possible. Even token payments would help. Ironic, isn't it? E-book publishers understandably want intellectual proprety protected--under the premise that work has value. Well, the standard setters' time is worth something, too. If nothing else, this would consideraby speed up the standards process.

A TeleRead angle: Needless to say, well-stocked national digital library systems--with affordable subscription and purchase plans for people outside the countries with such systems--would be one way to help reduce the incentive for e-book piracy. Interestingly, I can see a possible role here for one of Abagnale's clients, NuTech Solutions, or other companies that specialize in predicting business risks. In the case of TeleRead, the risk is that large but fair payments for best-sellers would be budget budgers without suitable precautions. A NuTech-style company could help refine already-mentioned possiblities, such as publishers paying money up front and along the way to qualify for maximum revenues.
posted by David Rothman at 7:18 AM | permanent link

While PDAs can be great for electronic books in many cases, I've now got even more reason to question the e-book industry's love of this platform.

In dealings with PDA buyers, some Ernestine imitators at Dell are slavishly plagiarizing in real life from Lily Tomlin.

Relying on outfits like Dell is a great way to screen out booklovers who aren't committed techies or expert bureaucracy-fighters. Customers had better learn to deal with morons in departments with Orwellian names like "customer care."

Scary even for geeks

Mine isn't the only horror story inspired by Dell and other PDA vendors. Geek.com has some beauts.

I'd love to see the outfits like the AARP, NEA, ALA and maybe even library systems arranging for mass purchases of better machines for e-books--such as tablets. From Dell? Maybe. But only with enough clout on the consumers' side. I can see a role for book chains, too. As flawed as p-book stores can be, their service is stellar by computer industry standards.

Ideally the tablets could display e-books better and hopefully be sold and swapped out--if defective--in a more consumer-friendly way. While powerful color-screened tablets aren't affordable for the masses, that day will come soon enough. Meanwhile consumers are in PDA Hell.

Existing PDA sellers can't hack it

The existing PDA biz just can't hack it. Would you believe, PDA sales actually fell slightly in the third quarter of '03 while PC sales went up. That's partly because cell phones are the craze and the PDA makers aren't as inventive as before--but I suspect that the public is also put off by the way the vendors people take consumers for granted, despite the fact that the machines are personal digital assistants.

All too often PDA owners end up in the "computer boot camp" portrayed in the commercials for Dell. Except that the worst drill sergeants often aren't techies at all. They're just business-side morons who can say little more than "That's not our policy."

Mention "customer loyalty"--I own two Dell desktop bought directly from the company--and the Ernestines and male equivalents at Dell will come up with gems such as: "That's not a factor." No irony. They mean it. Seriously.

Oh, the fun Joseph Heller could have had with this.

Telephone fiends

Dell's "customer care" bozos balked when I kept trying to send them $120 for a two-year "advanced customer exchange" policy on a refurb Axim X5 for which I had paid $130 and shipping. I like the jog lever. Great for moving through e-books. Wonder if the new models would be as good.

So far I haven't succeeded at getting Dell to take my money despite the mini-killing that the company could make off me. Why? Because I was evil enough to have bought the refurb from a well-known discounter, which understandably doesn't want to reveal its sources to Dell (although I'm absolutely convinced they're legit).

As caring as Ernestine on a bad day

If my experiences are representative, is it any wonder why PDAs are not selling as well as they should? Now that I own a Dell PDA, the 'tude is: "We don't have to care. We're the computer company." Dell said it might take as long as 15 business days just to get the change of name processed, assuming it was even granted. And that would be before I sent the existing machine in for an exchange.

Oh, and the much-ballyhooed Dell techies did not quite come through either. While ActiveSync on my Dell still isn't working perfectly, it is back in service again after more than a little troubleshooting on my part. I presently believe that buggy software from Dell or Microsoft, not the actual hardware, has caused my problems. They beset me after I did a Microsoft security update on my Optiplex with which my Axim now communicates when earth and Mars are properly aligned.

Someone at a large federal agency reports similarly dismal results from Dell. I wonder if the CIA deals with 'em. Perhaps Dell's customer worry supervisor will be terminated someday with extreme prejudice. I'd send people to HP and IBM, but still can feel the sting of old memories from the former--when the techies kept denying that my hard disk was defective, right up to the time it crashed.

Rx if your organization deals with Dell:
Mafia-style procurement officers

Just the same, the benefits of the technology are worth it, considering the joys of e-books--all the more reason for libraries to hold PDA classes.

Plus, libraries and other mass buyers can sic Mafia-style procurement officers on Dell and the like, with heavy penalties for nonperformance.

Still, that won't help me now. Sad, isn't it? Dell won't even let itself gouge me. My friendly suggestion is for Michael Dell to bring back the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" guy and put him in charge of "customer care." He might be pushy, but never as obnoxiously anal as the customer worry specialists.
posted by David Rothman at 12:58 PM | permanent link

The PDA is the e-book platform now. But could electronic publishers and their techie overlords at places like Palm Digital Media be betting too heavily on it--without nurturing some more-consumer-friendly alternatives?

Palm Digital Media and Microsoft won't even bother right now with e-book-reading software for the Microsoft Smartphone. But wait! Aren't a heck of a lot more cellular phones being sold than PDAs? And won't the displays on phones be growing in size and quality, given all the built-in digital cameras? Mightn't other ergonomical factors improve as well? Beyond that, phones could make it much easier for people to download books than having to put up with the present challenges of buying books on the Web. The Net is my favorite way of getting a book; but not everyone feels the same.

If nothing else, remember that phones are consumer devices without all the complexities that PDAs impose on nongeeks who want to do little more than just keep lists of phone numbers and appointments. Yes, phones do have layers of features. But the basic ones are rather accessible to all.

The old Gemstar machines were also easy. Alas, however, the greedster Henry Yuen killed them off with his love of obnoxious DRM and a proprietary format.

I can't wait for the next crop of dedicated e-book-reading machines to come along, as well as affordable Tablet PCs, just so the former devices are multi format, an impossible dream if the Yuen mindset prevails.

Oh, and incidentally, this pro-KISS rant isn't just theoretical. The word from Dell tech support is that my Axim PDA is indeed dying. I'm not sure. Instead I may have been done in by complications from a Microsoft security upgrade to my desktop; perhaps that's the real reason ActiveSync has gone south. The PDA life, even for an old PC hand, just isn't as simple as it's cracked up to be.

And to think that so many techies in the e-book industry are haughty enough to insist on both a format war and oppressive DRM--adding those book-related annoyances to the still-abundant uncertainties of PDA technology!

Thought: I suspect that impatience with the Smartphone market is a big reason why both Palm Digital Media and Microsoft haven't done reading software. But could PDM also have another reason--some prejudices against the Microsoft, maker of a rival operating system for PDAs (PDM or at least its parent, PalmGear, supports the Palm OS and may very possibly be hoping for a variant to thrive in the PDA-phone market)? That's yet one more argument for publishers to push for a nonproprietary e-book format. Books and their human readers shouldn't be caught in the middle of format and OS wars.

"Open Ink Christmas Carol" update: Perhaps Tuesday or Wedneday.
posted by David Rothman at 5:00 AM | permanent link