And this is A book reader, written Jan 05, 2007, and concerning Hardware, LazyWeb, and Usability

I want to be able to read electronic books on the train. More importantly, I want everyone else to be able to do the same. "But, but, but, you can already do that! Sony's Reader does it! And Franklin's eBookman! And loads of others!" No, no they don't. They let people like me (and doubtless you, gentle reader) read books on the train. They're computers. Computers are not useful and not fun. People don't want to read books on a screen, they don't want to read one on a computer, they don't want to think about computers when they're reading. I mean, look at the Sony Reader.

That doesn't look like a book. That's a PDA. Someone looking at that isn't going to think, "I am reading a book". They'll think "I am reading a book on a computer", and then they'll hate it. What they want, I believe (based on asking quite a few people about it, and discussing it with a friend in the publishing industry) is what I'm about to describe.

What the thing looks like

Imagine something that looks like a book. It's about the same weight as a book, it's about the same thickness as a (thinnish) book. And there's text on it that is the same as a book; you can read it in bad lighting conditions, it's not lit up, it's well formatted. This is already possible with E-Ink's technology; it's what the Sony Reader uses, for example. An E-Ink "screen" looks like words printed on paper, doesn't need a backlight, and lasts for ages on one battery. It's like a printed piece of paper, in fact. The difficult technology bit of this is done. What's missing is how people actually read books. The device I propose would allow you to read books. Any book you can get onto it. It folds in half, so when it's folded it's about half the size of a book (and will go into your pocket or handbag or briefcase); when it's folded it's not running, and when you unfold it it's instantly working again. (This is the advantage with the E-Ink stuff; it doesn't use any power to maintain the screen.) To turn the page, you press on the bottom right corner (or bottom left corner to turn back a page). The "screen" is the whole width of it; there's no plastic border around the screen at all (so it doesn't look like a PDA).

How to use it

The way you get books onto it is that there's basically a mobile phone built into it. You press a "stop reading this book" button and it shows you a list of all the books, ever. Choose a book to read and enter your credit card number (somehow: I've got some UI ideas for this), and it gets the book for you and you can read it. The way you get books off it onto some other device is: you can't. There are no ports on it. None. The only thing you can plug into it is its power supply, and that only needs plugging in about once a fortnight (because it's very low-power, as mentioned). It has nothing to do with your computer. You never plug it into your computer, or bring it near your computer. This neatly avoids the whole DRM-for-books thing, because it is not possible to take the book off your reader and put it on the internet. The device can't browse around the internet; it can't play Tetris; you can't balance your checkbook on it. It reads books, and that's all it does. It doesn't ask you where to connect to, because it only ever connects to one place.

Who buys it

The market for it is all the people who read books on the train. They get the same experience from this that they do at the moment, but it can be all the books you've ever wanted, and you never have to go near Waterstones or any other bookshop. You don't have to worry about where to find a book; they're all available. You could even let people read the first chapter for free or something. It costs less than a hundred pounds.

Possible problems

You may be thinking: there are some problems with this. I sort of agree with you. One of them is: how do you get every book in the world onto it? Well, I'm prepared to say that it's limited to those books that can already be bought in electronic form, somehow. I'm not 100% clear on the legality of my proposal here, but here it is: when someone says "get me, say, Thud, the latest Discworld book", the server charges them $7.99, then connects to (say) http://ebooks.palm.com/product/detail/20229?book=Thud_, downloads the ebook from there (paying the $7.99 that the punter paid), and sends the ebook down to the device. We don't touch the ebook; you're just buying it and then reselling it without ever reading it. That's certainly allowed in the US (under the first sale doctrine) and it's likely to be fine everywhere else, because every time someone with my reader buys Thud we go and buy another copy of the ebook. We don't buy one copy and sell it more than once. After you've been doing that for a while, when lots of people have the device, then you approach the publishers direct and say "why not make your books available to this market, who will buy them, and it avoids all the existing problems with ebooks". You don't approach them beforehand because they'll say no, or worse they'll say yes if and only if you agree to sell only their books. That's a dreadful idea; people who read don't care who publishes the book. A second problem is: how do you put a mobile phone in it without charging a monthly subscription? Well, you build 2 years worth of mobile phone subscription into the original purchase price, and then you eat the cost after that, basically. The subscription should be pretty cheap anyway, because it's incredibly low bandwidth; pagers are subscriptionless too in (I suspect) the same way. The device only has to download 300K or so of book once every few weeks. Make it GSM rather than GPRS, make it as cheap and intermittent as you want, really.

So make it happen

I think this is doable, based on how all the technology exists. I think it'd be a roaring success in the market, based on talking to lots of people about why they're not interested in reading on a PDA. I also think that I have neither the capital nor the time to do it myself, as is usual with these things. So, go for it. Make a million. If you do make it, bung me one for free. And one for Tim, the chap who helped me cook up this idea over a few very late nights and early mornings.

Comments

Gavin

So when this thing dies on me (as all electronic devices eventually do), I have to buy all my books again? No thanks. Any device that won't allow me to have backups will never get any of my money.

Charles Omfort-Eagle

I am an avid reader on the train (Boston subway trains). I generally read a book every 2 weeks (is that a fortnight?), and hate the idea of reading off of a PDA-like device.

If something simple and truly book-like existed, I think a market exists.

My only problem in purchasing books online is the retail price.. I buy my all my paper books used on Amazon for ridiculously low prices already.

If the paying mechanism was something like Paypal so you only had to login rather than enter your full card details everytime, if Gavin accidentally dropped his book down the loo or something, then his account would have details of which books he'd bought so he wouldn't have to pay a second time when he downloaded them to re-read. Assuming he's a re-reader :)

sil

That's definitely one solution, but I suspect that Gavin would see the book reader people keeping a database of the books he reads as a privacy violation...

In that case, I'd have some really bad news for him about what happens everytime he buys a book with a credit/debit/loyalty card, or from Amazon/ebay etc....

Assuming I see your point though, how about either (a) an automatic back up everytime you plug your thingy into charge and/or (b) an opt out of having an account set up with your Bookpal.com account so you can make one-off payments when you want to buy and no record is kept, but you're aware of the lack of back-ups this offers, plus your handy bookpal can't do like amazon and recommend things to you if you're stuck for something to read.

(I'm a luddite who's never bought an e-book - what's the position there if your PC dies - do you have to pay to get it again, or can you get another copy without charge by proving you had bought it already?)

Leaving all that aside, I'd be interested in the potential eyestrain problems of your device. I've never seen a paper book come with a health and safety warning about looking away every 10-15 minutes and taking a proper break from reading every hour.

Finally, there's the obvious problem of your device's smell compared to a book...

Gavin

I'm not particularly bothered who knows what books I read, the fact that I'm a big sci-fi nerd is public knowledge anyway :-). What does concern me about the re-download solution is the vendor lock-in.

I'm not a raving Free nut like Aq is ;-) but now we are in a digital age I see no reason to pay for the same thing over and over again. Which is what happens when you buy into non-open formats.

I really would like an ebook reader, but I can't see one ever being made that meets both my technical and my open-ness requirements frankly. Oh and be reasonably priced too :-).

Gavin

Having just reread my comment, I realise that a truly enlightened company could allow me to re-download my books onto a competitors device. That would work for me, though I don't think it's likely any company would do that.

sil

N: yes, yes, thankyou, Giles. Maybe I could make the thing generate mustiness. :)

On a more serious note, current e-book approaches mean that you buy and download a file; keeping the file is your responsibility. If you've backed it up, fine; if you lose it, tough (you don't get to get another one for free, same as with a real book). The problem is that, if you bought a simple downloadable file, there's nothing to stop you giving it to all your mates for free; this is what all the "DRM" stuff is about, which tries to lock down your file so only you can read it, and only on "approved" devices. The point of the device above is that it sidesteps this by not actually giving you a file that you can give to friends. The automatic backup approach when you charge it might be a possibility, though. Clever.

Gavin: I can't think of a reason why a competitor's device shouldn't be allowed to connect to the same back end as the device above, and if the back end kept a record of what you'd bought (based on your credit card number) then you should be able to get them again. Careful on the "non-open formats" charge, though; that's not the problem here. The books themselves could be (and probably would be) in HTML or something equally open. There is, however, basically no way to give someone a file and stop them giving it to other people for free; DRM is a lost cause. This tries to get around that by not actually giving you a file; open formats or not are not part of the equation.

There are issues with the back end remembering which books you've bought (what if you lose your credit card *and* the device? what if the FBI subpoena it to find out who's been reading The Communist Manifesto?) but iTunes has similar problems, I expect.

Tom

I like the basic idea, especially the effort to make it as book-like as possible: folding size, light conditions, etc. I don't however get the DRM side of it. It doesn't so much avoid DRM as implement the most brutal form of it. With books there is no expectation of doing anything else with it as you physically just can't, unless you want to photocopy it which produces something undesirable to read (and is a lot of work to produce). The cat is out of Pandora's box with electronic materials and I still imagine people wanting to manipulate them even if they don't do it a lot. I have an instintive reaction of "why can't I put this on my PC?" Why can't I produce an Excel file of all the books I own (I know people who have been know to catalogue or classify their collections)?

I can also see a device like this having lots of further uses beyond the novel, e.g. newspapers (if they haven't died a well-earnt death by then). Another example would be academic textbooks which are, I believe, a large part of the ebook market as it now stands. I frequently see people reading these on trains and buses, or at least the ones light enough to carry. These would greatly benefit from manipulation, searching, copying and pasting, inserting metadata into reading list software, and so on. The competitor that provides this will win. Similarly, why not have the ability to put personal/company papers and reports and so forth on it? Business people I fear would relish the opportunity to produce extra gadgets on the train table: laptop, Blackberry, mobile phone, ebook reader.

In conclusion, a few plugs and sockets wouldn't go amiss, artfully disguised. I understand the appeal of having something that is just a book, but I can't imagine marketing something on the grounds that you can't do some things with it. The DRM issue has to be faced off legally I think.

Charles

Well I've given this a lot of thought over the years, having been a bookseller for 10 of them, and I think the mention of mobile phones is the most telling.

Let's pretend that the power-hunger, display resolution and contrast (that is actually what makes reading off a screen tiring, the fact that ink on paper has superlative contrast) problems have been solved. Let's also give the device a USP (do you like my use of dilbert-speak) of being water resistant like a watch, so it is better than a book, as I can read it in the bath fearlessly.

Whether it can do pointless extras is immaterial because already we are looking at a device that will sell contract-free at £200-300 (and I use that mobile phone terminology advisedly).

So what do you do with such a gorgeous looking device? Simple, you give it away just like the mobile phone companies do. If bookshops are clever, they will get in on this and be beating off their customers with sticks, because they will be able to sell dead-tree books (as they will forever..ever..ever), but get in the bookpod of 2010 or whenever it would be.

Hordes of people will not care about DRM, and doing what people have been doing for centuries with books and joining a private subscription library, because they will have something shiney! for free!*

And the bookshops will still sell the musty books, as the 'gift' version of a book to put under the tree. Oh the booktrade will continue to wither and die, but it will only collapse so far. Just as Ikea will never put antique shops out of business.

*although of course free means just-give-us-power-of-attorney-over-your-finances, just as with mobile phones.

Meriblog: Meri Williams’ Weblog » links for 2007-01-10

[...] as days pass by » Blog Archive » A book reader Stuart has some great ideas about what an electronic book reader REALLY needs to look like. I agree with him on most of his points, although given I have NADD, I’d personally like more than 1 book available at a time as well. (tags: books digial technology ebooks design ideas great) [...]

lomagirl

Why should anyone allow you to download an electronic book again for free if your PC crashes? Do publishers send replacement copies for physical books that get dropped in the loo? no. (Don't try this at home, by the way.) If hard copy books can be destroyed and you don't get one free, why should you get a free e-book? Markets are driven by built in obscelence.

sil

lomagirl: it'd be nice to try and build a world where you don't make it the customer who suffers when something not their fault goes wrong, wouldn't it?

Robo

I am a Design Student Currently developing a product much like you have described. It has a flexible e ink display that can be rolled up inside or wrapped around the electronics.(look at the phillips polymervision site for mor details.) It can download content wirelessly or via USB. and HAS A 2Gb internal memory.long battery life, it measures 90mmx 35 x 25 so is compact and lightweight.I am toying with the idea of incoperating customisable leather/rubber bindings.

would this sort of product be what you are looking for, do you have any other ideas or suggestions

Gavin

Looks like the hardware is getting there, I've been wanted a device with a rollout screen ever since I saw them on Earth: Final Conflict years ago.

ratfish

I am a book publisher and have been watching this eBook thing with interest for at least ten years now. I still beleive all the predictions that it will take over. I believe it will take over totally. Once 75% of the market shifts to paperless books, it won't be economic to do paper editions so they will go the way of vinyl records. Major publishers will stop releasing them overnight. No less an institution than the British Library has set this tipping point at 2020. I would guess they're being conservative as usual. It doesn't bother me that it's taken a few years longer than expected. It took 40 years for telephones to catch on. When it does catch on, all of the permutations discussed above will come into use and more. The model delivery system exists out there right now in the form of audible.com. It has millions of audio book readers piling on like crazy. They download to all sorts fo devices from desktops to iPods. Audible has all the issues concerning storage of books purchased in a personal library already worked out. They keep them on file andyou can re-access titiles indefinitely once you've purchased them, but only to your registered device. If you drop it in the loo, you are allowed 1 or 2 replacements, then you have to re-register. The thing that will drives demand, even though Audible Books are priced far above their print counterparts, is instantaneous access to content. People will pay a lot for that. I do. There will be free readers, but they won't be popular. People will be falling over themselves to buy deluxe readers for $500. You can get a perfectly good MP for $25, but people prefer the trendy iPod at $150-$350. Tell me people are price conscious when it comes to electronic gear! People will read books on iPods and desktops (especially reference books) and innovators will try to combine cellphones and PDAs with readers but I suspect the specialized reader that is about book-sized will hold the main market for a long time because book readers will want the big, e-ink screen, which is unnecessary for PDA-cell phones. I still believe the Sony Reader will be the killer ap for eBooks but it won't take long for a herd of imitators improve on the present clunky design in dozens of ways, including download technology. It's taking a long time because the content has not been available in digital form and still isn't, but that is changing, thanks to Google. It would be worth my buying a $500 device just to read all the public domain books in the Stanford and Oxford libraries, which Google will soon be supplying for free. I've spent a lot more for a lot less. Now Google is signing up copyright-protected books by the millions as well. Harper Collins and other big publishers and publishing associations are racing Google to put digitize their titles. This is all that's needed to get the eBook economy rolling, and it's just months away now.

sil

Oh, while I think about this: the charger backs up the names of your books, suitably crypto'd up, so that you can re-get them from the server if you get a new book reader and put your CC number in again (not to buy them again, just to confirm that you did before), but it doesn't back up the books themselves (so it needs very little storage).