New Cybook shipments—and a few thoughts on e-reading gizmos and user choice
Swamped with orders, Bookeen couldn’t immediately fulfill all orders for the new Cybooks. But MobileReaders now tell of receiving a new batch. Best of luck to all. Via ad barter, the TeleBlog’s Robert Nagle just received a Cybook from NAEB, a buyer’s club.
Despite the Kindle craze, my favorites remain the Cybook and the iLiad because their makers are more open to user choice. The Cybook, for example, will let you bring in TrueType fonts, while iRex is courting software developers. Even now, the iLiad will work with FBReader, allowing native rendering of .epub even if CSS capability isn’t available yet. I know. The Kindle is supposed to be for book-lovers who don’t care about technology. But sometimes you can’t separate technology from a choice of books—when hardware binds you too closely you to one bookseller. While Sony isn’t as hacker-friendly as the other two companies—and when, Sony, will you allow a decent choice of fonts outside PDF?—I certainly applaud its plans to offer .epub capabilities, ideally with interoperable DRM someday.
In other hardware-related news, a new publisher-sponsored site called eBook Readers has started up in the Netherlands to cover e-book gizmos. One way for European publishers, stores and hardware vendors to counter the Kindle influence? Here’s to competition!
December 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I don’t think I have ever had a device that only read e-books. They were all Palm devices or somesuch. I wonder, as technology improves and price decreases, if they might come out with a budget device which might pique my interest
December 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Exactly, Joanna. Was it Rob Preece who did some calculations on the cost-benefit of an e-book device vs. regular p-book purchases? If so, maybe Rob can supply us a link. He’s even a real, live economist (by training). As I recall Rob or another person made a good case that you can’t justify a dedicated device unless you do a lot of reading. Thanks. David
December 17th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
>>>my favorites remain the Cybook and the iLiad
Bah! Turn in your Sony Reader, you infidel.
To me.
Ha!
December 17th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Hi David,
I did do some payback calculations–here on Teleread, a few months ago. Can’t find the link so I’ll sum up the math.
First, you’ve got to assume a useful life (and discount rate). I’m going to assume your eBook reader lasts three years and ignore the discount rate (which is about comparing a buck spent now with a buck saved in a couple of years. For most of us saving a dollar a couple of years from now is not as valuable as saving a dollar now.)
Let’s assume you buy your Kindle at $400 and you regularly read best-sellers in paperback at $20 each, but you now buy them for Kindle at $10 each (and we’ll assume that Amazon keeps the $9.99 pricing).
To pay for your Kindle, you’ve got to buy enough books to repay your $400 from the savings. Which is 40 books. Over three years, that’s 13.33 books a year. Which would make you a fairly heavy reader.
Now, if you normally wait for books to come out in paperback, your savings drop dramatically. For example, you can buy Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett in paperback for $6.99. On the Kindle, you save 20% or $1.40. At a savings of $1.40 a book, it would take you 286 book purchases to repay your Kindle or 95 a year.
Let’s make this a bit more real by assuming you read a mix of paperbacks and new best-sellers. As long as you buy at least one best-seller a month, and a couple of paperbacks, you’re talking break-even. Adding a modest discount rate (say 10%) means a few more books, but not too bad.
Bottom line–as long as you buy best-sellers new on a regular basis, you actually can come out ahead with the Kindle. It’s rougher with the Sony because Sony doesn’t discount so much from cover price (if at all).
This is simply the cost savings from buying books. I intend, some day, to try to calculate what I pay per year for keeping the thousands of paper books in my house–costs I don’t incur for my eBooks. I think this makes the economics come out a lot better but no matter how you look at it, a dedicated eBook machine is a good investment only for a dedicated reader. For the average reader (5 books a year), figure out how to read on your PDA, smartphone, or even your PC.
Rob Preece
December 17th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
For the Sony Reader, if I were to be able to buy one tomorrow, it’d already be paid for just with the incredible books in LRF format I’ve found over at mobileread that are *not* available in print. (And which I wouldn’t read on a PC screen…)
Don’t discount free ebooks in the equation!
December 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
This raises another point. Certainly if you want to read public domain content, and you find the PC unacceptable, the economics changes. On the flip-side, the $.01 used books available from Amazon can change it back (yes, I know these used books come with non-trivial mailing costs).
Still, the eBookWise seems like better economics for reading public domain books–and the Kindle for heavy buyers of hardback best-sellers.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
December 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Thank you David for mentioning our new ebook readers website; please let me add that there is no need for a google translated version, since the website is already available in English by itself: http://www.ebookreaders.nl/index.php?language_code=en
December 18th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Thanks, Wiebe. Changed to direct people to the English version. Best of luck with the site! - David
December 18th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
>>>Still, the eBookWise seems like better economics for reading public domain books
Economically, I could get a PDA for a pittance (if I didn’t already have one).
Economics isn’t everything. I place satisfaction above money. PC, eBookWise, PDA — all unsatisfying.