Ultimatum

June 29th, 2009

I read a review of a new book called Ultimatum. It seems interesting — it’s an eco-thriller set in the future — so I thought I’d buy it.

Now I switched to ebooks some time ago; I don’t read books on dead trees anymore. I use an ebook reader I bought from a French company called Bookeen, which unfortunately appears to have imploded since. I also own a Sony PRS-505, a much better reader. Ebook readers are great: they use E-Ink displays instead of LCDs. This type of display does not emit light; it relies on actual black or white particles shifting position behind the panel. if a black particle comes up, that’s a dot on the display. This means:

  • The displays are monochrome for now (though color versions are on the way)
  • Reading on such a display does not strain the eyes, like a CRT or LCD monitor does. It really is exactly like reading on a slice of dead tree.
  • It takes a long time to draw something on the screen — easily a second to refresh the display. These aren’t photons being shifted, after all, but real blobs of stuff.
  • The display needs electricity only to shift those particles; once they’re in place, no power is required to keep them there — unlike LCDs, CRTs, and so on. This is called a bistable display. But hey, battery life is great: I typically charge my reader once every couple of weeks, while using it for hours nearly every day.

This is great technology, and obviously the future of books. Some people will dispute that, of course: they’ll come up with retarded arguments like the “texture” and the “smell” of books. These are the same kinds of people that will insist that music sounds better on vinyl, and movies look better in a theater. But you can’t stop progress: the music industry had its business model turned upside down by the internet, and the movie industry is getting its lunch eaten as well.

The Dying Dinosaurs Of Print, in the words of the incomparable Mike Cane, are mostly ignoring ebooks. Where they’re not ignoring it, they’re requiring DRM to restrict your freedom on what you can do with your purchased book. Is any of this starting to sound familiar? You bet. That’s another reason why I’m sure ebooks are the future: the publishing industry is just as blind to the coming disaster as the music and movie industries were.

The smartest player in the industry is Amazon, whose Kindle reader integrates seamlessly with its online ebook store. The ebooks on Amazon are cheaper than the dead tree version, as they should be — typically $10. But that’s only in the US, and only if you have a Kindle. I’m in Europe, and I don’t have a Kindle. In fact, they’re not for sale in europe, and neither are Amazon’s ebooks.

Sony sells ebooks through its online store — for US residents only. They sell the reader in the UK as well, in partnership with Waterstone’s, whose ebook store doesn’t even HAVE that book. Even if they did, something tells me they wouldn’t sell it to us non-brit European beasties anyway. There’s also Mobipocket, whose online store only sells DRM-encumbered ebooks in the outdated mobipocket format — and they don’t have that book either.

So where do I buy this book? Quite simply, I can’t. Nobody will take my money! But of course, just as in the music and movie industry, if you fail to sell people what they want to buy at the price they’re willing to pay, they’ll just download it for free. The book is already on some torrent sites, albeit as an audio ebook. I’m not interested in that: I want the text-only ebook version. But it’s only a matter of time until it appears.

So this is what I’m going to do: I’ll wait for the book to appear as a text ebook on some torrent site. If at that time I can legally buy it online for $10 (or even €10), I’ll buy it. If not, I’ll download it for free.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s going to kill the dead tree book publishing industry.