Here are the two bombshells in the interview for me:

1. I found Barry’s indication that publishers’ ‘gold master’ is currently paper. That is just mind-blowing. What does it mean? That final adjustments to books come at the typesetter, I suppose? And then these changes must be hand-made to the digital files farther upstream? The major publishers are even farther behind the times than I had dreamt. I can’t imagine that small publishers are so backward.

2. Also the fragility of ‘rigid’ eInk screens is not something I’d heard of before. I guess this explains the recent reports of cracked and shattered Kindle screens.

It’s too bad about the rise in price. To me this means, ‘Don’t buy one yet!’ Either they will get a deal with a discounter who can then trumpet, ‘List price $249. Our price $199.’ Or, the discounters will all turn away, and Astak will then lower their own price.

Any word on whether the Astaks will incorporate the new Epson controllers that will allow for faster page refresh rates? End of July release might be too soon for the Computex-announced Epson controllers.

I must say, all things being equal, I’d rather go with a $300 MID tablet device with a 7″ LCD screen that shows full color, and can run FBReader and even, if it runs WindowsXP, just about every format out there, including djvu magazines and .lit MS-Reader books. And can surf the web and play videos.

eInk has come a long way from the years of ‘Coming soon!’ but it still has a good ways to go in increasing yields, lowering price, faster refresh rates, and color.

Battery life? I’d be happy with a no-battery, plug-only ebook reading device. But none of the manufacturers seem to recognize this as a marketable niche as yet, alas…

I’m dead-serious about not playing favorites with vendors, but I can’t help but observe that the original TeleRead proposal back in the early ’90s envisioned e-readers being sold at discount stores.

So I’m getting a big kick out of seeing Astak pursue those possibilities.

I hope people will understand the implications here when it comes to price reduction—both in hardware and content!

Best of luck to you (and the other companies with similar goals)!

Thanks,
David

A very good and honest article that I like. It is well written and stated facts. Please call or email anytime as your news is well written and, while not playing favorites, presents Astak as actually trying to bring prices down while bringing the Mentor/LiteBook to the masses.

I ALSO agree with your reader’s comments that prices NEED to come down on both hardware and eBooks. I would add that what drives prices down is VOLUME. The surest way to decrease eBook prices is to have eBook Readers selling more and more titles. Astak is talking with some of the largest publishers on earth now on a regular basis.

Here is some fact that few know:

Right now the GOLD Master for books is NOT in digital format at almost all publishers… it is in paper form. That means that they have to digitally convert when they want to do it in eBooks. This conversion means COST and COST is what you are fighting.

As more eBook readers are sold… the GOLD Master will be digital. Once that is done, then prices CAN come down for eBooks. SO… Astak is trying to sell thru large chain stores. Why is this important… because chain stores sell to the masses! If you can get a good 5 inch out there with all the right features and it does a great job… eBook sales should go through the roof…. meaning they CAN cost less. David is telling it like it is and I applaud that. You don’t HAVE to buy a Mentor/LiteBook… but do realize that, to a large extent, YOUR desire to see eBook prices come down is tied to one thing: getting enough eBook Readers into the hands of the masses! That is what Astak is trying to do!

Robert B.

Textbooks should be on these things. My daughter has to carry a 30-35 lb. backpack with her books in it back and forth from school, just to do her homework. It would be far easier to make them electronically readable and let her carry that around at 1-2 lbs.

That said, I’d love to have more screen “real estate” and if the keyboard could move out of the way when not needed, that would be great.

I’ve been watching the Astak 9.7 with great interest–if they have a viable text-entry method, and can handle regular pdfs, they’d make a great reader for scientific articles.

And once they are sold and have standard interfaces everything else can be dealt with by any 3rd party vendor if theres profits to be made.

DRM lockdown is the problem because it means the gizmo must be under control by someone beside the owner for it to be efficient and thats the bit thats i at least don’t see as compatible with any traditional market model.

I think this means that your possible scenario about small publishers won’t work. The buyers will want all the latest stuff and won’t be the slightest bit interested in anything they haven’t heard of. This means, unfortunately, DRM. But unless DRM’ed books are offered I don’t think there will be enough of a draw to lure in buyers.

Remember, the hardware is unimportant. All it has to do is work well and sort of “fade into the background”. People are not buying the hardware, they are buying the “reading” and unless enough good, recognizable, popular stuff is available I don’t think the public will go for it. If you look at the Sony Reader and the Kindle, they are popular because of the large selection of well known books, including best sellers. I don’t think very many of the Sony/Kindle owners even know that much about DRM. The ones I know bought them because of the big libraries of available books. They may come to hate DRM later, but that did not influence their initial decision to buy the product.