Alex E-Reader from Spring Design Ships Today

People have been pre-ordering the Alex Reader for months now and they will start to get them soon. If you haven’t seen the Alex Reader, it’s just sightly taller than the Amazon Kindle, it has a small LCD screen on the bottom to let you browse the web and navigate your library of books, which will display on the larger E-Ink screen on the top.  This makes the device useful for more than just a reader. It will display videos and websites.

Notable features of the Alex Reader

$399

The Web at Your Fingertips

Browse the entire Web on the full color LCD screen to support what you’re reading on the paper-like EPD screen. Type your search on the virtual keyboard or tap to select and open a web site for more information, pictures, sound and video.

Build Your Own Library

Start building your library right away. Download from a wealth of online Adobe ePUB format digital books from Google Books and Alex partner bookstores and store them in the Alex Library on the removable SD card. Store your own images, videos, music and documents in many formats on the SD card for review at any time.

See-Hear-Read

On the Alex tech specs and comparisons pages, they have a couple charts in poor quality. Mine below are better. Same info though.

And they compare the Alex with the Nook and Kindle DX.

I thought the Kindles played music, but I guess I was wrong.   Hmm, an idea just came to me. You know how every mobile phone comes with a cache of a few ringtones?  I believe all Tablets and Ebook readers should come with a set of ambient reading songs and tones and ability to play them to add to the reading experience (and isolate you from distractions a little bit if it can.)

iPad launch – fans in line – talking about ebooks

I’ve seen a lot of pictures and videos of the iPad launch. Looked interesting, but I was happy to be snug in my bed. I caught a video over at ebook newser of a couple people in line, who were asked about their interest in ebooks and how much they’d pay for one. Curious answers. The man said he would pay a dollar and he thinks that’s the way things are going,because it was Steve Jobs who set the 99 cent precedent and things will stay that way just like music. He probably hasn’t been paying attention to the Amazon Kindle pricing model, nor the words actually spoken by Steve Jobs. Sure there might be some 99 cent books, like ones should normally be free anyway (public domain stuff), but MOST books will be $10 or more. And I suspect we’ll see enhanced books and those in specialty niches (Law Enforcement Interrogation Techniques) selling for up to $30-$50.

The female said she might pay $5 for the book she was reading at that very moment delivered in a digital format. Asked what the most she would pay, she offered a strange answer. She said she  might pay $50 – $100 if it was something she REALLY wanted and one that was limited edition or something.  I’m convinced she either heard the question wrong or forgot the question in the middle of answering it.  Or she doesn’t understand that a digital book means no Limited Editions, at least not in the original sense. Nor will there be 1st editions that will somehow be worth more.  Because what you have with these online book stores are an artificial scarcity created. Copies of these books don’t cost anything. There’s nothing special about the first copy vs the millionth copy.

And knowing that a copy of a digital book is not created by any kind of human labor or natural resources, it’s really a big question what these ebook will be worth to people.  Consumers have to be convinced that the “copy” is worth something.  You’re trading your money for whatever experience you get from the ebook. Owning the physical book gives you more rights / privileges than what you get with an ebook, except maybe the benefit that you can recover the ebook if it’s accidentally deleted. Misplace your physical book, that’s your problem.

Do Book Covers Matter? NYT Article

In a New York Times article today, they ask if book covers still matter in the age of the ebook?

I assumed they would be talking about attractive graphical content on online store views and whether or not attractive graphics still matter to sell books.  Of course they do.   In fact, book cover graphics matter even more, because you need to capture attention within these online stores often with just a thumbnail. Attractiveness in products always matters.

They brought up an interesting point, it’s more difficult or not possible to know what someone is reading in public. So if you are a curious people-watcher like most of us, you won’t have a visible book cover to read from if somebody is entranced in their ebook. They are staring at a screen and all you can see is the device.  Of course you can always just ask somebody “what are you reading?” or any of the hundred other icebreaking conversation starters and eventually find out what good book might be out there waiting for you.

But both with an ebook and a printed book, of course that person could certainly tell you to buzz off.  Just because somebody’s book cover is visible doesn’t mean they are looking for new like-minded friends or asking to be interrupted. The point was though that a person in public is no longer free advertising for books.

Here’s what I didn’t read in there. We have a fantastic replacement for this book covers in public problem. People have been giving away their “What I’m reading right now” status on their blogs, and on their “slice” of the social websites they belong. Sometimes they do this manually, sometimes automatic.  And here’s the big thing. The reader devices can transmit this information to share it.  If you open a new book, it might ask you, “Would you like your friends to know you are reading this?”

And if you say yes, it can publish it to twitter, Facebook or your blog ALONG with embedding the thumbnail and links to the store. If you’re smart, it will be your store affiliate link so if your friend or a stranger clicks and buys from there, you can get a cut.  If that same transaction happened because of an encounter on a bus bench, you’d never get anything.  Plus as these devices are more popular, there could easily be an app running that can transmit and receive (anonymously and by opt-in only) what people around you are reading.  You don’t even have to ask.  Problem solved… BIG problem solved.

Back to graphics now. In order to win a lot of sales in the ebook market, having author and publisher power will matter, but so will having great supplements, animations, videos, and a microsite. Anything that will pull a potential reader into the story just like and better than a cover graphic would. If it’s a Freakonomics or a Columbine kind of book, you can expect, at least for the interactive versions, to see animated graphs, emotional movie-style trailers and a lot of humor. These things like video trailers and commercials existed already for some books, but you’re going to see a lot more.  Many books will have an interactive team behind them, along with the editing and proofing and sales teams that publishers currently have.

My advice to authors, keep your eyes open for a technical agent e.g. somebody with a website / SEO / SEM background, because your books will need to surf the social channels and exploiting all of them the best way you can.

Plastic Logic Que Reader Delay is just bad

Most reader enthusiasts have heard the news about the Plastic Logic Reader delay. First it was scheduled for January, then April, and now summer of 2010. Some of us had been waiting a LONG time, ever since their first demo video way back in 2008. The unit’s features are the same as they’ve always been, though the device has sharpened up some.

The problem with this delay is the device is a business reading device which will not have anywhere near the power of Apple’s iPad. It’s arriving well after the iPad has circulated, and the Que has measly storage capacity for the price points.  A business person will be able to benefit more from the speed of going through documents on the very graphical iPhone OS on the iPad. And since the storage capacity is higher and the battery life reasonable for trips, seems like a no-brainer to skip Plastic Logic all together.  For as long as we’ve been waiting for the Que reader, it has really fizzled out for me. Since their first announcement, the Kindle DX has come into existence with a large screen and PDF support. Many other much cheaper readers exist too, including ones with SD card slots.

DocsToGo is so common to devices nowadays for loading common business documents, it almost seems like the Que Reader has no real winning features. Battery life maybe. Their demo of musical notes was fun, but if you were playing music, you’d much rather have the iPad or Android tablet on a stand in front of you for quick page swipes. Newspapers and magazines are scrambling for interactive content apps. Those will look REALLY good on touch screen tablets.

I write this as somebody who was VERY interested in the Plastic Logic reader. I was a fanboy for a while. They still again have a great advantage with battery life, and their plastic substrate means durability and a lighter feel over most readers. So perhaps it will remain an attractive option. This delay is nothing but trouble. When you see the action centered demonstrations on touch tablets, the slow refresh of a reader has little or no grip on our psyche.  And customers forking over $800 could buy a netbook AND a Sony reader AND a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, which would still all fit in their bag and hold all those business papers for reading. Plus allow for typing and web conferencing.

They already took pre-orders so the prices will stand. I don’t mean to bring doom on them, but my darker side makes me think they were jacking around with media partnerships instead of fixing bugs and building units. The lesson here might be, build your devices well, let the publishers create the content distribution systems.

So am I being too hard on them? Obviously it’s a complicated product, they’re innovating plastic transistors, ultra light technology, custom interface and it’s also a young company on the bleeding edge in a time of uncertainty.  Well I probably am just jerky. Something got to me in this video during Richard Archuleta’s response to Walt Mossberg about the expected price of the reader.  “The market sets pricing, we don’t set pricing.”  Archuleta states.

Even being  right in some sense, he’s wrong here, and a little smug. Is he thinking he’s got many of us interested so he should hold out for as much as he can get? Consumers don’t want to spend, “whatever you can get out of us”, we want to pay for a device done well that meets our needs, a price that also corresponds to the labor required to create it. And you know what else we want?  Something above and beyond.  What is the Que?  $650 for 4 Gigabytes. Are you kidding?  I can buy an 8GB stick of kingston, USB or SD for 12 bucks.  Their storage is embarrassing.  It’s just sad really. Now I consider this device worth about $150 honestly. Maybe $200 for the lightness factor. I mean it’s not immune to damage, even if it took a few dings. It’d still melt in the car in the hot sun, and it’s not likely waterproof either.

I’d like to get my hands on a unit still. I’m capable of a fair assessment.  Still at this point I’m thinking the Skiff Reader will show up and dominate this easily. Here’s the Skiff in case you hadn’t seen it yet. The Skiff is looking ready for war.

Wired takes apart the Entourage eDGe, calls it Frankenstein

Wired has become a great resource for learning about readers. They are definitely as obsessed as I am about them. However they almost look to be a little too iPad biased. They picked apart the Entourage eDGe today and using plenty of juicy prose,  labeled it “Frankenstein-ish monster” and “Quirky.”

They followed up with “The 50:50 option of the eDGe leaves you wishing you hadn’t compromised… Our advice: Make up your mind, and get either a Kindle or an iPad.”

I think they were being a little too harsh myself.  I watched a CNET video review and the reviewer was a little more positive on it. Also I’d like to point out that a day later, Entourage already had a software update released for the device fixing / enabling a couple features. The eDGe is a device a lot of people are hoping to get the most experience out of.  Maybe wired has a point though. You can’t argue the fact that a device really must ship with all it’s features working.  And maybe a reader really needs to be lighter than a book and do perhaps a few less things than a computer for most people to enjoy the experience or not have to think about it. Especially at the price of a decent new desktop computer.

I wouldn’t take reviews from Wired as seriously as I would take commentary from actual users who have had the device for a few weeks. Owners of the eDGe can settle into their usage habits and talk about how it works for them and what pieces don’t get much attention. Unlike Wired a device owner isn’t  constantly comparing it to other devices feature by feature.  After my initial read of Wired’s review, I was a little bugged, I mean they actually dinged the device for not having as many books as the Kindle.  Duh!

In the comments are some good points from a tech-savvy eDGe owner, Jeri writes:

Wired makes a few good points. Battery life REALLY needs to be up to Entourage’s claims. Stay tuned for that. We still think it’s quite a cool idea and we also expect the version 2.0 of all these new readers to be fantastic and the iPad will have to innovate unless they trap enough people into their system quickly enough to stay with them.

BookServer for your reader device

If you had a reading device, would you enjoy borrowing books for a short amount of time? Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive appeared in a short Forbe’s news video, he and the host discuss “leveling” the ebook market and a site within the Internet Archive called BookServer. BookServer aims to create a more open platform to download, buy, lend / borrow books to many different devices.  An author, a publisher, a library can connect directly with readers and their ‘readers’. Device agnosticism and convenience is the goal. As easy as the large retailers make their Ebook stores, they are still walled gardens.  And when you want to leave the garden, it’s not all too clear what happens to your books when you take your device with you.

So there is a need for an open repository for books for sale, loan and free. Not sure where BookServer is exactly in their project timeline though. After a few attempts on the search box it appears to return older public domain entries and not much else. Still it’s a long term project.

From the Bookserver site:

Who Benefits?

Authors find wider distribution for their work.
Publishers both big and small can distribute books directly to readers.
Book sellers find new and larger audiences for their products.
Device makers can offer access to millions of books instantly.
Libraries can continue to loan books in the way that patrons expect.
Readers get universal access to all knowledge.

Device makers would certainly like places like BookServer to make these devices more useful. But when the device makers are also the content distributors, is the benefit there too when they control everything with a store of their own. Look at Apple. They have a Kindle app, but that didn’t stop them from creating a brand new iBookstore to keep their users inside the garden.

Costs of Ebooks going up?

The New York Times has a story about publishers demand for control to raise ebook pricing.

There is really only one important part of this article, and that’s a quote.

“I just don’t want to be extorted,” said Joshua Levitsky, a computer technician and Kindle owner in New York. “I want to pay what it’s worth. If it costs them nothing to print the paper book, which I can’t believe, then they should be the same price. But I just don’t see how it can be the same price.”

Josh is not alone of course. A survey on a popular tech and lifestyle site Lifehacker took an online survey and found that the majority of people wouldn’t buy ebooks at $15.00.  Only 1% would in fact.  The majority, 45% said that the sweet spot for them was between $5 and $10. Now you might say Josh and Lifehacker readers are obviously techy and don’t represent the mainstream customer. But until the Reader prices meet mainstream wallets, Josh DOES represent most people.

There are a few important details here.   The worth of Ebooks are largely identified as text files. And we know that certain devices are able to display a lot more than just text and images. The way you might be able to increase a books worth is like anything else.  Creating a better experience with it.  Of course people don’t want distracting widgets to go with their story just because it can be done.  But that doesn’t mean they won’t want the option to see it after they’ve read the book.  I’d love to see beautiful animated introductions with motion and music.  And certain non-fiction books with the signature of images in the middle, imagine reading that on a tablet where the author / illustrator has taken that to a whole new level. We have the ability to put new life into old titles. Even classics and public domain books can get an injection of features. Nothing wrong with that.  It’s conceivable that Plato and Aristotle might have ten different versions by designers wanting to take a shot at it.  It’s exciting because the format will evolve.  PDFs support Flash and video and ePub is essentially HTML. Both are very capable.

On the other hand, the more capable the book, the more a book becomes like a website. And websites are mostly free. So it’s an interesting game to create value in an ebook package.  I personally see no option for publishers other than to make enhanced books. And I see a fun opportunity for designers to work with authors creating that experience.  And better still, an ebook can evolve easier than new additions, so one might buy the ebook and enjoy incremental feature updates as part of the journey.

At first, enhanced books will be pretty simple, like DVD menus. Nice designs, some sound clip transitions, maybe a few making of videos, slideshows or author and production notes.  Later, you’ll see them integrate with other media more and more.   The big books at the head of the Long Tail will have to have more to offer.

Whenever you see an article on ebooks, if enough comments are present, there’s always the person who puts it simply. Why not just give the ebook free with the purchase of a real book. Then you encourage more book sales and increase the value and convenience of the overall purchase.  I agree.