Ebooks Struggling To Find a Niche
Lack of content and standards and a plethora of platforms are stumbling blocks, but is the future in phones?
By Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 6/15/2006
While ebooks in various incarnations have been on librarians' radar screens for roughly a decade, publishers, designers, and business execs speaking at the International Digital Publishing Forum: Connected & Mobile 2006 in New York City, May 24, claim ebooks are still struggling for a foothold. IDPF president Steve Potash contends that “from all the available content in the world, audio/video and pictures have found a larger audience” than ebooks.
The reasons are many. First and foremost is lack of adequate content. Dan Rose, Amazon.com's director of digital media, claims that it's a “chicken and egg” scenario: “Publishers don't want to pay for conversion because there's not enough customers, and there's not enough customers because there's not enough content from publishers.”
Another hurdle is a lack of standards and a plethora of platforms, many of which are brandcentric. Speakers traced at least ten different platforms for individual manufacturer's devices. Most consumers won't invest in more than one, leaving them blocked from the others' content. Potash advised all content providers to use the OEBPS format (which Adobe announced it is embracing), so consumers can access ebooks across platforms.
Although nearly all previous ebook reading devices withered, consumer giant Sony is trying its hand with the release of the Sony Reader. The diminutive gizmo (it weighs nine ounces) holds 80 titles, the screen is viewable in direct sunlight, and the battery is good for viewing 7500 pages on a single charge. No word on price. Along with ebooks, it also handles business documents and Word text files. Whether Sony can succeed where so many others in the U.S. market have not (many speakers say this country is years behind others in certain areas of technology) will be interesting to see.
Cells from hell
While hawking his company's new reader, the iLiad, William Endhoven of iRex Technologies said that despite all the hours now spent in front of computer screens both generating and absorbing information, most people still don't read at length on PCs: “Beyond three or four pages, people still print everything out.” Endhoven and others assert that ebooks need to be more than just digital images of pages. They have to find their own identity as a new entity, capitalizing on all the riches that technology can bring.
Martin Gorner, Mobipocket's senior software architect, says that the public soon may be holding the future of ebooks in the palm of their hands—literally. Predicting that PDAs and BlackBerrys are endangered species, Gorner believes that in five or so years, everything—Internet, email, and all assorted downloads including ­ebooks—will be handled by smartphones. Screens are getting larger, and resolution is improving to the point where the public will read on their phone screens, he said. Mobility is key. People don't want to download files to their PCs only to have to copy them over to the PDA; they want wireless access through a single device, and that magic wand will be smartphones by Nokia and other manufacturers.
Information snacks
Elizabeth Mackey, general manager for ereader/motricity, concurs with Gorner, saying that smartphones will be 25 percent of all phone sales by 2010, as portability creates demand, and offered the frightening mantra, “If you're not on their screen, you're not in their world.” Agreeing that there's a shortage of ebook content, Mackey went a step further, adding that along with full-length texts there should be “information snacks,” shorter, smaller texts.
Mackey maintains that every electronic device sold should come with free ebooks to ensure that “reading is part of what these devices are about” and suggests that publishers bundle an author's popular recent work with backlist titles. She also says device developers need to form relationships with librarians who know the public's reading desires better than anyone.
Panelist Malle Vallik, Harlequin Enterprise's director of new business development, quickly answered the call for information snacks. Since launching an ebook line of its signature romance novels in October 2005 with 65 titles, Harlequin has had such an overwhelming response that it is moving 40 percent of its frontlist into the digital realm by this July and, as a bonus, is launching “Harlequin Minis,” 10,000-word short stories that can be downloaded for 99¢.
