Amazon has, as many of you know, launched an e-book reader and associated e-book sales service, called Kindle. I’ve seen the ebook debate go around a few times. But this has sparked it off to the extent that I was inspired to produce the following verbose missive on the general subject, and the Amazon Kindle ebook reader specifically.

There are a lot arguments for and against ebooks readers.The first thing to realise is that most of the arguments miss the point — they assume that ebook readers must replace books, and of course ebook readers only need to catch on to the extent that they are sustainable as a category in themselves. An ebook reader market that was, for example, 10% of the size of the book market would still be very healthy. So ebook readers do not need to replace books, only supplement them, to be successful. But inevitably, comparisons to books are going to be a decisive factor in determining whether ebook readers are going to be seen as a good idea.

One argument is that e-books will never replace real books because you can’t curl up with them in bed, you can’t stick them in your bag to read on the train, you can’t throw them at the cat or prop up wonky tables with them. OK, half of this is nonsense, throwing and propping tables have nothing to do with reading, and are irrelevant, but I mention it so you can get the usual creaky luddite flavour of this sort of argument (and people — prominent SF fans, who you might expect to be somewhat technophilic, even — have actually made these arguments to me in all seriousness). But the rest of them are worth considering, and thats why I agree you need a dedicated e-book reader type device, generally with something like the relatively high resolution (167dpi) electronic-paper display in the Kindle reader (maybe we will yet have a display technology that is perfect for all uses, but we don’t now), and it needs to be a bookish size, before the ebook market becomes reasonable.Here is a not entirely serious example of this rather silly argument, that to replace books for reading, a future device must duplicate ALL possible uses of a book, including all those that have nothing to do with reading. Its like arguing that no one would ever want the convenience of watching DVDs at home because it would deprive them of the chance to eat movie theatre popcorn. Books will still be right there for those that really want to read in the bath without risking an expensive device, or for those for whom a books potential as missile or construction material is at least as important as the act of reading. But for ebook readers to succeed they only need to be purchased by enough people, not by all book readers.

A variant of this argument acknowledges that the physical form of books isn’t important, but insists that every aspect of our interaction with the printing on its pages, even those that are by-products of its physical form, are essential, and because of their lack e-books are mere ‘documents’ not true books. In essence, its much the same argument as ‘the books must be usable to prop tables’ argument, simply shorn of its obviously sillier parts. The aspects that are claimed as ‘essential’ here are two page layout, and underlining/highlighting and marginal notes. Two page layout would again seem to be taking elements that are coincidental to the physical form of a book, and assuming they are essential, changing to single page layout as a standard format will change very little, for most books probably simplifying design. And while marginal notes etc are useful for books used as textbooks and similar references, the vast majority of books are never so marked, so its obviously not an essential element of what a book is. E-books need not be the same, merely mostly the same, and other advantages (full text search, for example) may outweight some minor uses of the printed word.

Another argument, in many ways opposite to the ‘ebooks must do everything real books do’, is that e-book readers are pointless because they are too much like a real book, that really, e-books readers should be combined into that one magical device that is also our phone and our music player and the way we watch tv and that receives email and so on. In a funny little counterpoint to luddite sf fans arguing against high tech replacements for book, this argument was made recently by a friend of the squid whose involvement in, and knowledge of, the dead trees book industry (especially the SF part) is extensive and profound. I think there is a little truth in this, but not enough. Being able to move my e-books to another device for convenience would be a really useful and desirable feature for me. I’m almost always lugging a giant laptop around with me. It would be great, and very useful, if it had a big bundle of reference works of various kinds on it. But ultimately, I don’t have any desire to read most books on a device the size of a phone, and I don’t have any desire to make my phone the size of a book. Plus the display point mentioned above. A true do-everything device ends up being something too big to do half of those jobs the way people want. And a multi-purpose device that IS big enough, like a laptop, generally ends up being too big, and generally not as good (due to display, battery life, etc) as a dedicated device. It’s probably inevitable that some sharing of ebooks between ebook readers and other devices will take place — Amazon, as we will see, regards this distinctly as a sideshow, but it may well be an important part of its appeal for purchasers.

So, I think the Kindle is pretty much the right kind of device. I’ve never used or seen one, so I can’t tell if its the right actual device (iPods and Zunes are both the right kind of device, but only one of them is the right actual device). It does seem, compared to the iPod, to have been hit rather hard with the ugly stick. But I think that about a lot of consumer electronics (most laptops made by people that aren’t Sony or Apple, for a start) and people seem to keep buying them anyway. My suspicion is, so far, that its mostly the Sony earlier devices repeated with mild improvement, increased marketing muscle and publisher sign on thanks to Amazon clout, and the same mistakes repeated.

What are those mistakes? Well, essentially, greed. Greed, and the desire for control. This is essentially what has crippled most attempts to sell ebook readers so far. Generally, a new product media category goes through a few cycles. You get a few attempts that fail due to either content provider greed, or lack of content provider support. A company launches a new product with nifty features that they think consumers will like, and it turns out early adopter consumers either think it’s a nice idea, if there was actual content to use it with that was easy to get and legal, or it’s a nice idea, if it wasn’t priced in such a way as to obviously be a bad idea to actually use if you aren’t rich enough to not care about being ripped off, or sometimes it’s just a good idea badly made. Greed manifests partly as crazy overpricing, and partly as incredibly restrictive rules on what you can do with the device, in case someone somewhere actually uses the device for something without paying them money.

Eventually, a median is reached whereby the content providers’ greed is held in check enough for someone to actually want to buy their product. The content providers then have a prolonged inner war with themselves, during which some people who work for them will decide that maintaining high margins and control is the most important thing, and some smarter people will decide that making money is actually more important and it’s better to sell more (even if the margin is smaller and some misuse slips through). Eventually, a compromise device arrives that allows people to use content they pay for easily, to use content they don’t pay for with a bit more work; most people are honest and enjoy their devices (and buy heaps of them) and everyone is happy.

This was pretty much how it went with the portable music players market, for example. Early devices were in a weird legal limbo because digital music services were under constant legal challenge and companies like Sony fell over themselves to make devices with less functionality and crazy pricing in order to protect their investment. They protected their investment so well they ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars in players that nobody wanted, and sometimes whole generations of product (commercial DAT tape and Minidisc, for example) that never caught on outside a tiny core of enthusiasts or niches for professionals. Apple succeeded with the iPod mostly because it’s a smart, well-designed product. But they succeeded with the iTunes store because they tried hard to minimise music company greed, and so people were prepared to spend money there.

Sony is the textbook example of corporate greed destroying their ability to make good products in other areas, including ebook readers. Prior to the Kindle, Sony was the leader in ebook readers. They made great readers, but tried very hard to make you only buy books from Sony. They actually charge far more for an ebook version of a book than for a paper version, and then restrict your rights so it’s less useful than a paper version. Unsurprisingly, people didn’t buy that many. And then they virtually crippled its use for works not from them, deathly afraid that someone else might work out how to make money from the device when they couldn’t. People who buy Sony ebook readers either do a lot of their own format conversion, or hack the things like crazy.

The big question is not whether the reader device is the right idea (I think so). The big question is, has Amazon overcome the greed impulse to make a device people actually want to buy and use?Part 2 soon…