TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Sony’ Category

By Paul Biba

The Amazon Kindle Review has started a comparison of these two machines. The author hopes the comparison will continue to be filled out in the comments section. While not unbiased, as he admits, it’s still worth reading.

One of the points he makes is one I hadn’t thought of before. Under the advantages of the Sony he says:

ePub support - Lots of people drum this up as a huge advantage. However, opening up the Kindle too much would lead to Amazon not being able to support whispernet i.e. if people start buying their books from other stores.

Is that a valid argument?

By Paul Biba

NatCh over at mobileread has a nice write-up on the new Sony Reader bookstore. If you have a Reader you might want to go over there and read his article and the comments that follow. Since I broke my Reader I haven’t looked at the store in a long time, so I can’t give you much of an idea as to what has changed. At the Sony press event for the PRS700 they said that one of their main goals was to re-do the store and make it easier to use.

By Paul Biba

MobileTechReview is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best, review sites on the web. It has just published a detailed review of the Sony PRS-700. The site gives the machine an excellent review but do have one problem with it:

What’s the catch? The touch screen layer reduces contrast. Digital readers like the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle use e-ink technology, a very low power, paper-like display that’s non-glare and high contrast (much like a book’s pages). Touch isn’t part of the e-ink technology, nor is backlighting, so we rarely see a reader offering these. Sony, cutting-edge company that they are, found a way to add these two desirable features. Sony added a touch layer on top of the e-ink display and embedded LED side-lights into the frame that surrounds the display. Clever. But this comes at the expense of contrastand glare, and the Sony Reader PRS-700 looks more like a grayscale notebook screen than an eBook reader.

I must admit I didn’t notice reduced contrast when I saw the unit at the Sony press event, but I did not have a comparison unit with me. I suggest you pop over to the site and take a look at Lisa’s excellent review.

By David Rothman

"The Apple rumor du jour is that Sony Music Entertainment will license DRM-free tracks to iTunes, under the iTunes Plus program," reports Billboard.biz.

Time for Sony’s e-book side to experiment with DRMless ePub, which its new reader devices can display? Maybe with social DRM? I think so! Without traditional DRM to gum things up, ePub is a standard for real. Sony and independent stores—the company laudably plans to reach out to indies, when its forthcoming readers go wireless—could exploit this to the max in marketing. "Buy from us and own your e-books for real."

My personal stake is this matter—as a writer

I know: Sony will need cooperation from publishers. But at least the DRMless approach should be available as an option for cooperating houses. I’d love to see The Solomon Scandals offered through Sony without "protection"; I’m not just talking theory here. My publisher, too, dislikes DRM’s hassles for consumers. To one extent or another, the technology is a threat to our livelihoods, and I really dislike Amazon’s DRM requirements. A DRMless option would be one way for Sony and friends to distinguish themselves from Amazon and woo consumers and forward-looking publishers.

A reminder: The TeleBlog has both pro- and anti-DRM readers, and I encourage both sides to speak up here, in a civil way.

Related: Wikipedia item on Sony Music Entertainment.

Image credit for "Social Way" photo: Casey West.

By David Rothman

Gizmos like the Kindle and the Sony Reader still cost hundreds of dollars, rather steep for devices intended mainly for book-reading.

But sooner or later, as E Ink and the rest drop in price, we’ll see $100 machines.

Meanwhile, the news is good for thrifty people who favor the multi-use approach:

• Asustek will sell a $200 EEE PC laptop next year—finally living up the old rumors it would reach that price (Digitimes via CNet). That would be half the $400 price of the Give One/Get One offer from One Laptop per Child, which, however, deserves credit for popularizing the concept of lower-priced laptops. And remember, the $200 for the Asustek hardware will buy only a laptop for you or your child, not a second one for a student in a developing country.
• “Subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-note will soon cost as little as $99,” predicts PCWorld, which expects that cell-phone-style contracts will drive down the costs up front in the U.S. Also see a related Wall Street Journal article and DSLReports.com. In Taiwan you can already buy a $429 Asus for $29 with a two-year wirelesss contract.” Anyone know about possible rental plans in Europe?

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By Paul Biba

Two articles you really should read in detail.

First: J. Esposito, in Publishing Frontier, says: One of the unintended consequences of the Kindle and its brethren (desirable for readers, more woe for publishers) is that it will reduce the number of books that are actually sold. This will happen not because of piracy (with the proprietary Kindle, piracy may be a small problem, though ebooks built with open standards may pose larger problems for publishers), but because the architecture and business model for the Kindle support a “buy only when you need it” frame of mind, aka “just in time” inventory management. In the hardcopy world, where many books (no one knows how many) are bought “just in case,” the number of books purchased exceeds the number of books read. The Kindle will remove the excess, adding to the legions of misfortunes of publishers and authors.

Second: Joe Wikert, in his Publishing 2020 blog, responds: … I couldn’t disagree with him more. … I’m probably not the only Kindle owner who’s bought a few books and has yet to read them. That’s right. They’re just sitting there collecting digital dust on my e-reader. Why did I buy them? Because I know I want to read them and, in most cases, I thought I would have the time to start on them before now. I was wrong, but that’s not going to stop me from buying my next Kindle edition.

Both posts are well worth reading in full.

By Paul Biba

There have been a lot of comments about why the Kindle and the Sony Reader are not making more inroads into Europe. Well, I just came across two articles in The Bookseller that indicate that it may not be so easy for a US bookseller to do business in Europe. Perhaps one of our European readers can leave a comment and give us some background about just what is going on here.

First article is “Turf Wars: 2 years on“. The arguments between US and UK publishers over European rights could be reignated after the UK Publishers Association revealed that it was actively pursuing “several” cases where US books had been sold in the UK, while Simon & Schuster president and chief executive Carolyn Reidy dismissed the claims used by British publishers to gain exclusive rights in Europe as “specious”.

Second article is “Publishers to challenge rights hegemony“. Publishers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand have voted to pursue closer cooperation between the three English-language markets at a special summit held in Frankfurt, with one aim to challenge the dominance of the two largest English-language markets, the United Kingdom and United States.

Clearly there is a lot going on here that we in the US don’t understand, and I suspect it must be having an impact on getting the Kindle and Sony Reader introduced into Europe.

By Paul Biba

The South China Morning Post has an excellent video of the new Sony Reader. Here is the link to the YouTube video.

By Jane Litte

There were rumors this summer that a new Kindle would be released in October/November. Then Amazon doused that rumor. Now we have pictures of a slightly less fugly NEW Kindle. (Note to Amazon, hire a new designer, seriously).

Photo via Gizmodo. More pictures available through BoyGenius.

Sony unveiled it’s newest device, the PRS 700, complete with a touchscreen and integrated front light (click link for picture). Read Paul’s account of the new Sony. It’s like a battle between form and function. Want wireless, got to go with Kindle. What style and an integrated front light, then Sony is your choice.

By Paul Biba

Yesterday I attended the Sony press event announcing the release of their new PRS700 ebook reader, to be priced at $399. Pictured above is Steve Haber, President of the Digital Reading Business Division, who made the presentation.

There has been a lot of talk about the new hardware on the net, and I’ll speak about it in a bit, but there was far more important news that came out of the event. It is now clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sony is committed to ebooks and the Reader platform. This gives all us ebook mavens a reason to contemplate the future with optimism.
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By Paul Biba

Tomorrow is the day that Sony is announcing its secret ebook “something”. TeleRead has been invited to the press event and I’ll be there in New York. The event is from 6 to 9 pm, so look for a posting fairly late when I get back from the City. Sony has kept the secret so far, and I have no idea what will be announced.

By David Rothman

"When you sold your Sony Reader," Garson O’Toole sensibly inquires, "what happened to the library of books associated with the machine may I ask? What happens to the e-books with Sony-type DRM? Are e-books inherited by the new Sony Reader owner or can they be transferred to another machine in the future?"

Thanks, Garson, for yet another chance to point out the follies of DRM. Answers:

1. I’ll decommission the DRM for my Sony PRS-505, as soon as I get further confirmation from the buyer. If I don’t buy another Sony Reader, I’ll lose access to books in the proprietary BBeB format. But guess what. I avoided that stuff. I didn’t buy DRMed ePub, either, preferring just to borrow books from public libraries. My favorite kind of copyrighted book is still a used paperback. That sounds awful for a writer, but I’ve got the usual budget challenges, and if I buy books, shouldn’t I be able to own them for real? I’d much prefer to pay $5-$10 for an E book I could keep. I’m proud to say that people will be able to buy The Solomon Scandals for a reasonable price without DRM, and with ePub among the options.

2. If the books came with the machine, then the new owner is SOL. So much for right of resale, eh? But guess what. Unless I’m forgetting something I don’t think that any still-in-copyright books did—just samples of mainly junky books. As for Sony-DRMed classics, what a laugh. They’re available at $0 via sites such as Feedbooks, Gutenberg and Manybooks.net.

3. To keep the new owner happy, I advertised that I would download ten public domain books of his or her choice. I have not yet heard back from the buyer.

OK, there you go. Does anyone still wonder why DRM is about as popular in TeleBlog Land as cracked E Ink screens or dead batteries?

For those tuning in late: You can both dislike DRM and like copyright. One possibility is social DRM. It has flaws of its own, but, all in all, is much better in that it doesn’t interfere with the ability of e-books to be displayed on a number of devices.

Image: CC-licensed photo from jbonnain.