FOREWORD
This is an experiment. The relentless Mark Coker -- He Who Rules Smashwords -- dared me to publish something. I don't want to put my fiction here (yet). But I did want to try the Smashwords publication method. I decided to take three very popular posts from my old blog -- Mike Cane 2008 -- and edit them into one "eReprint."
These posts were originally published on October 3, 4, and 10, 2008,
Sony Reader PRS-700
On October 2, 2008, Sony held a press event at the Library Hotel in New York City for a third model of its successful Sony Reader.
I was there.
Before I arrived, I made a point to stop at DataVision to see the Sony Reader Revolution promotion in full-tilt action. This is speed-reading memory expert Dave Farrow, sitting in DataVision’s window:
I wouldn’t use this next one at all except it provides an interesting statistic:
If you squint and lift up your monitor or eBook reader to the correct angle, you’ll find out the bottom right says: Page 2,829 of Day 2. He’ll be in that window for thirty days. He’s sleeping in that window too! There’s a shelf bed!
From time to time, he takes a break. Sometimes, a member of the general public is invited to take his place in the window to do some reading. See another post at my blog: Sony Reader: The Revolution Is Televised. The book titles and pages that are read are scrupulously logged by a Reader Revolutionary.
I was glad to see some concurrent promotion at DataVision:
I moved on to the press event. Before it began, I was pointed out by name by one of the Sony PR experts to Jim Malcolm, Director of Corporate Marketing for Mobile Lifestyle Products.
The Reader Revolution is his idea.
And he had read some of my blog posts. Particularly this one: Sony Reader Revolution: FAIL! He admitted to me he investigated that and it was a FAIL. Such things happen.
What I saw in front of DataVision was the excitement I’d expected — to a lesser degree — at Borders. There were eager Reader Revolutionaries outside introducing people to the Sony Reader and getting them to actually try it for themselves. It’s the kind of hands-on that’s not possible at the Borders vertically locked-down kiosks.
Malcolm told me that they’d done print ads. (Look on Flickr and you’ll see a ton of Sony Reader ads photographed.) Now he wanted to do something new that would really generate excitement and get people to try the Sony Reader in ways not possible with store displays. Hence the Reader Revolution.
Sony has hired a thousand people to fan out at various locations at various times to be Reader Revolutionaries. The goal made my jaw drop: they want to have two million people try the Sony Reader.
What’s particularly exciting about the DataVision location is that jillions of tourists pass by there. Many of them might have already heard of the Sony Reader but have never seen one in person, because it’s not yet in their country. With the Sony Reader launching in The Netherlands and Germany in 2009, some of those tourists will already be miniature experts on it and generate word-of-mouth. The impact of the Reader Revolution program will be international.
Malcolm regaled me with tales of the Sony Reader being used by his family. One had his son bringing it to school, only to have his teacher confiscate it, telling him “no electronics” were allowed. He finally persuaded her to let him demonstrate it and she was shocked to find out it was a book.
Then someone entered our proximity and was told it was Me. And that person was none other than Steve Haber, He Who Is Now eBooks At Sony:
(I warned you it would be blurry!)
Haber made it a point to tell me he had read the post in which I called for his firing(!). I stood my ground. He stood his.
He explained that he took over the Sony Reader about a year ago. Since then, he’s consolidated all of its parts under one roof. Hardware, software, and the eBook Store were all separate (and I know firsthand just how separate that eBook Store was!). Now they’re all together under his leadership. He explained that only now would we begin to see the results of the work he’s been doing, such as the Reader Revolution and tonight’s event.
I explained how I thought it was terrible that the abominable Kindle had stolen the eBook attention from the Sony Reader. He has a longer view of things (and, of course, he also knew what he was about to unveil! Don’t ever play poker against him.). He also has plans. He is very serious about the Sony Reader. Sony is now very serious about the Sony Reader too. So things will be happening.
I really pressed the issue of how I wanted to see the eBook Store opened to writers who want to do direct publishing and how tools are needed for them to create ePub (or even BBeB) files. He said all that is in the works.
I came away thinking, He Has A Vision.
Jeff Bezos, hear that knock on the door? It’s Sony and Steve Haber delivering your doom!
Then it was time for the event.
Prior rumors pointed to WiFi and a Mac OS X version of their eLibrary software.
Sad to say, neither rumor panned out.
A half hour before the announcement, I already knew it was the PRS-700. Because someone was carrying a cardboard shipping box with that designation on it!
Too bad I didn’t have a way to broadcast that leak!
The announcement was made by Steve Haber, accompanied by a slideshow on a large flat widescreen monitor.
First he gave some context:
- Present with Sony tonight were five dying dinosaur print publishers (I will always refer to them as that!): Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Harlequin, and Penguin
- As I mentioned before, all Sony Reader operations are now under one roof
- Sony’s man from Japan has also relocated San Diego
- The Sony Reader will shortly be in three thousand sales outlets in the U.S., in time for this holiday season
-The Reader Revolution campaign was mentioned, with its staggering goal of two million hands-on demonstrations
- The eBook Store is getting a makeover to debut later this month
- Wireless was mentioned, but I’ll get to that later
And then the new Sony Reader itself was unveiled.
I have to say at this point I felt like I had slipped into an alternate universe. When the first image of the new PRS-700 was shown on-screen, my immediate reaction was, Where are the buttons?!
And then Haber mentioned the touchscreen. What?! Touchscreen?! Where did that come from?! And a Sony representative demonstrated paging through an ebook by swiping her finger on the screen itself!
And then Haber mentioned Search and Notes, and those were demonstrated. Search?! Notes?! Where did those come from?! (Flashback to the early days of the Sony Reader. I am in SonyStyle molesting it. A member of the general public mentions that it lacks Search and Notes. I say, “That’s why it’s called the Sony Reader and not the Sony Scholar.”)
And to top it all off, he mentioned the sidelighting and that was demonstrated!
I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None of it was what I had expected — none of it was what I’d ever imagined.
And things were going to get even weirder once I had my own hands on the new Sony Reader!
Let me go over the hardware design:
That press photo is actually a bit deceptive, but more about that point later.
Notice the new ribbing on the left side. This gives it a grip for people who prefer to use the Sony Reader without its cover.
Speaking of the cover, it attaches just like the one for the PRS-505. That is, there are two holes at the left side, top and bottom edges. However, the dimensions of the PRS-700 are different than the PRS-505, so existing color covers for the 505 won’t work. For one thing, the 700 is slightly thicker than the 505. It’s still surprisingly thin, just thicker than the 505.
The front of the new Sony Reader is clean, less immediately intimidating than past models. Notice the thin band of buttons beneath the screen:
What’s probably not immediately apparent is the continued genius of the hardware design. The three left-most buttons are where your left-hand thumb would go with a printed book. It’s also where your left-hand thumb would go with the two prior models, the PRS-500 and 505 (if you’re holding them properly!). So, that aspect of the design has been preserved, even though the buttons are different and now actually separate.
Let me remark here that the Option button brings up many options. One of them anyone who’s used a PalmOS PDA will instantly recognize: Calibrate Screen! Remember: this new Sony Reader has a touchscreen!
Next is the Home button, right in the center. This brings us back to a brand-new Home screen:
(This photo really brought the Philips crapcam to it limits!)
Notice how large and finger-friendly the areas are. Continue Reading (with current book title underneath), Books (with the total number loaded — internally and on card[s] — underneath), All Notes (again with the number underneath), Collections (which has no number here, as there were none). Then Audio, Pictures, and Settings.
Remember, this new Sony Reader has a touchscreen. So each of those can simply be tapped on with a fingertip (or included stylus) to activate.
On the bottom side of it is a wrist strap/lanyard hole, Lighting control (Off, Setting 1, Setting 2), mini-USB port, headphone jack, power jack, and Volume/Hold switch.
Neither the left nor the right side edges have buttons.
At top is On/Off, a Memory Stick Mini slot, a Secure Digital (full-size) slot (yes, two slots), and the stylus well at the right (as with past Sony CLIE PDAs).
Viewing installed eBooks now offers two types of views. The classic Lists of the 505 as well as a new Cover view in which each icon is a miniature of the eBook’s cover! This new Cover view can take a while to build. It immediately shows proxies and then builds the miniature cover for each eBook. Each Cover icon is large enough to be tapped with a fat thumb! I can see this view being useful when someone can’t remember an eBook’s title but does recall what its cover looks like.
One more point about these views. Remember those ten buttons the 505 had on its right side, to select eBooks? Those are gone now. In their place is an alphabetical tab system at the right side of the touchscreen in List and Cover views, sort of like the alpha tabs found in the iPhone’s Contacts list. One of those tabs can be tapped on to, for example, select all eBook titles that begin with A or with T. This will be very handy for people who really put many eBooks on the Sony Reader. Being able to quickly jump to something has been much improved. No more page-page-page through Lists! (That’s something I recently saw Dave Farrow have to do on the Reader Revolution cam! He’s using the 505.)
Once a book has been selected, there is an enhanced Table of Contents which now includes being able to jump to each chapter of an eBook.
Within an eBook, there’s the ability to move through it in several ways:
1) Use a gesture to change the page — this can be a swipe to the left or right, a tap, or even a swipe up or down! This is totally user-selectable.
2) Use one of the three buttons at the bottom right (when using your left hand’s thumb)
3) A new swipe and hold gesture that allows incredibly rapid page flips.
This is where I must stop to comment about eInk. Anyone who has ever tried a Sony Reader (or any eInk eBook reader) is familiar with the “black flash” that accompanies turning a page. That’s still here on the new Sony Reader PRS-700, but it’s greatly reduced.
But get a load of this: When using that new gesture I described above to rapidly page through a book, there is no flashing whatsoever!
The eInk acts as if it was a conventional LCD screen! (More about this point later.)
Once in an eBook, the fifth button at the bottom, Magnify, will bring up a dialog box(!) with five type size choices: S, M, L, XL, and XXL. That’s two more choices than past models. In addition, changing type size is instant. No repagination delay! There’s a brief flash of the screen but, boom!, done.
In addition, there is also a Zoom In feature. Here Sony has done something that’s also absolutely stunning. A page of text suddenly acts as if it was a graphic. A slider appears vertically at the upper left of the page and manually moving that — by fingertip or stylustip — will zoom into the page. This might not seem practical for text, but it’s great for illustrations. In addition to the Zoom In slider, four arrows appear at centered edge left, right, top, and bottom (think of Google Maps!). Those can be used to shift the page. However, just like the iPhone, a drag of the finger will also move the image around!
And again: There is absolutely no eInk flashing during this operation. Again, the eInk screen acts like a regular LCD screen!
By now, those who have a Sony Reader will be asking, Hey! What about Bookmarking?! This is where the touchscreen is now used. Double-tap at the upper right corner of an eBook’s page to set a Bookmark! It’s easy and intuitive! And yes, the folded-down corner graphic has been retained.
Two new operations have been added to eBooks: Notes and Search. Here you get to see some really great pictures, courtesy of Sony’s Jim Malcolm who grabbed them for me on his real camera. (Which turned out to be a Great Thing, as the crapcam had gone on strike! Thanks much, Jim Malcolm!)
The above is showing Notes open (with a blank Note open above the keyboard), but that keyboard is also what appears when the new Search button is pressed. Notice the clean design of the keyboard and how the soft keys are large enough to be used with a fingertip! Notice also above the keyboard to the upper left are three words. These are the last three words that were used as Search terms. Grayed out is a Done button, to save the Note. At the upper right corner is an X to closer the dialog box. Again, the eInk acts like a regular LCD screen, when this or any other function is invoked. There is no flashing whatsoever!
One other way to invoke Search: Highlight a word and then press the Search button. The word will automagically be placed in the Search dialog box. Searching is breathtakingly fast. I tried it on a long eBook and there was no spinning wheel or any wait at all. Nor was there any eInk flashing as Search moved from page to page!
This is the Notes mode within an eBook itself:
Here you can see part of a word highlighted. That’s right. In addition to adding notes, text can also be highlighted! At the top left of this screen is the Highlight icon, the Erase (Highlight Delete) icon, the Notes icon, Bookmark icon, and the X to close the Notes mode. Highlights can also be made invisible.
Tap the Highlight icon and drag across a word (an operation that is probably more suited to the stylus than a fingertip) to highlight it. After highlighting, tap the Notes icon to bring up the Notes mode (seen in the prior photograph), to add a text Note. (I don’t know how long a Note can be, but in the prior photo notice the 1/1 enumeration. This might indicate very long notes can be created.)
There’s also an area to see all Notes. This has a great feature too. Tapping on a Note will open the eBook it’s from, to the page the Note is on! Each Note in the list view has a few words from the Note and the eBook’s title.
I brought along an SD card with a bunch of eBooks I willy-nilly plopped onto it at the last minute: LRF, PDF, and ePub. I didn’t get to systematically test these. This was a Just In Case on-the-fly kind of thing. I was able to put in the SD and try a few of the files.
Paul Biba from TeleRead was there witnessing all this. LRF and ePub went fine. The ePub, in fact, looked gorgeous. I ran into a problem with one PDF. The text reflow results were tragic. Biba said there was no way to tell what was happening with the file. He’s had plenty of experience with this and said results vary depending on how a PDF was created. The text reflow software is from Adobe and needs improvement. I’m sure that’s in the works too. Right now, this capability is best described — with some PDFs, at least — as Better Than Nothing. (I still recommend using the Sony guide to creating PDFs formatted especially for the Sony Reader.)
Three other items about this ad-hoc SD card thing:
1) The SD card was from my LifeDrive. It’s 1Gb in capacity and Windows Explorer reports 564MB used. I have over one thousand files on it, mostly Palm DOCs and videos. It took several seconds for the Sony Reader to parse the files.
2) The Sony Reader added all the readable files to the Books total on the Home screen (there were 15 eBooks already in it; my files pumped the total to 33). In addition to the test files I dropped on the SD — all of which were at the top level — the Sony Reader plucked five text files from within my Launcher folder! (Note to Paul Biba and Jim Malcolm: Sorry, they weren’t Palm DOC files as I mistakenly thought!) I opened one of these text files. The type size could be enlarged!
3) Keeping my record intact, I managed to thoroughly crash the Sony Reader! This happened twice. Once during one of the test files (I’ve forgotten which) and then a second time after a full reset (more about this shortly) during another operation (either Search or Notes). Don’t worry! This will not happen with the Sony Reader that goes on sale next month! These were special demo units, not from-the-factory finished units! I wanted to mention this because crashing demo units is one of my burdens specialties. I would have been shocked if I hadn’t whomped it!
That full-reset? It’s accomplished by removing the stylus, unscrewing one of the tips to reveal the threaded portion, and inserting it into a wee Reset hole on the back of the Sony Reader. Just as in the old PDA days!
The full-reset gave me the rare pleasure of seeing the splash screen new owners will encounter when first powering-on their units. It says something along the lines of, “Welcome to the Reader Revolution…” and displays a BBeB Book logo, the Adobe logo, and the Sony logo. It’s very exciting!
At the beginning of this post, I stated that the Sony press photo of the new Sony Reader PRS-700 was a bit deceptive. It is. Go back and look at the two great pictures Jim Malcolm took for me. Look at how the black tends to slip out of your vision, leaving you to see the page and the silver trim. It makes the Sony Reader look a lot smaller than it actually is. This new design really focuses your attention on the page.
The Sony Reader’s original incarnation was in Japan, as the Librie.
The Librie used only Memory Stick for storage. And the eBooks and eMags people could buy — at very, very low prices — were basically rentals. They expired — disappeared — after only sixty days. Sony basically modeled the entire reading infrastructure like a video-rental scheme.
Can you say FAIL? That’s what it did in Japan.
Unlike Japan, America already had a vibrant eBook marketplace, thanks to pioneers such as Fictionwise and Peanut Press (now eReader, and owned by Fictionwise), which saw PDAs (principally the PalmPilot) as a conduit for eBook sales.
There had been prior attempts to launch dedicated eBook readers in America, but they too failed.
What made Sony’s entry into the marketplace remarkable was the paper-like eInk display, which only drew power during page turns, offered a higher-contrast reading experience, and a larger screen.
Sony America basically said to Japan, “Let us try that here. But we want to do it our way.”
The result was the original Sony Reader PRS-500, which I wrote about in four parts in another series of blog posts.
What people seem to still miss about it:
- it allowed the use of Secure Digital cards. This was an amazing concession from Sony, which stubbornly clung to Memory Stick for its PalmOS line of CLIE PDAs.
- it could read text, RTF, and PDF files from the start. So it was already “open.”
- it was designed to be book-like. This initially confused people who were used to PDAs and prior eBook devices.
Unfortunately, Sony’s abrupt exit from the CLIE line of PDAs left a sour taste in the mouths of millions. It only compounded Sony’s prior defeat in the VCR wars, where it was trounced by the superior marketing of VHS. This shadow fell over the introduction of the Sony Reader and many people wouldn’t touch it because of a perception that Sony would eventually abandon it.
Many people were surprised when Sony released its second-generation Sony Reader, the PRS-505. I was also surprised.
In the year(!) since, I even went so far as to declare all eInk eBook reading devices dead in another blog post.
So why have I continued to keep up with the Sony Reader? And why my renewed interest lately?
Call me mad, but there’s something about it that’s gotten under my skin and can’t be removed.
Maybe it’s because it focuses on books. Just like those silly people who insist eBooks can “never” take the place of the “smell and feel” of a printed book, there’s something in me that just as idiotically feels that, for example, an iPhone or even an iPod Touchbook can’t take the place of the Sony Reader. The entire concept of not using electricity while reading a page and not being distracted by the Internet appeals to me. Plus, with its leather-like cover and perfect device size, it just screams, “Book! Book! Book!”
And Sony has shown a seriousness about supporting it — even before the PRS-700 announcement — by giving it the ability to do ePub files (which, aside from supporting an eBook file standard the dying dinosaurs of print have rallied around, also meant being able to borrow eBooks for free from public libraries). Sony also offered early buyers of the 500 a $100 trade-in discount towards the 505 and its ePub capability. Plus there was the recent introductions of the 505 into England and France and pre-announcements of it coming to both Germany and the Netherlands.
Then came the PRS-700: touchscreen, sidelighting, stylus, a huge leap in software, etc.
The Sony Reader is here to stay and doesn’t intend to go away in face of the abominable Kindle.
This brings us to today and my conclusions about what what I saw and heard on October 2nd.
I can’t overemphasize the new software the PRS-700 will have. It uses eInk in revolutionary ways. But it’s not just that. That alone would be breathtaking. What the software points towards is a future when eBook readers will have full-color screens.
Before writing this, I was in J&R (a big electronics retailer in New York City). I made it a point to go see that OLED TV Sony’s Howard Stringer has bragged and bragged about.
It’s no brag!
You have to see it for yourself. Color, contrast, brightness, and viewing angle just shame every other television on sale.
That’s a side view. The screen really is shockingly-thin. (Of course, that’s a bit of a gimmick, isn’t it? If you add the electronics that are separated into the base to make it wall-hanging, there goes the thinness, right?) Now, what happens when Sony finally nails the production run of OLED screens? Would a six-inch one finds its way into a future model of Sony Reader? It’d probably be expensive as all hell, but that’d be only for the first model (targeted to businesses and publishing professionals). Prices would eventually drop.
Let me say one more thing about that Sony OLED TV that pertains expressly to eBooks: it would make eBooks on par with high-quality full-color printing that’s now available. In fact, it’d be higher quality than what we see in weeklies such as Time and Newsweek. We’re talking high-quality full-color Japanese magazine printing (which, if you haven’t seen that, you should!).
With the new software the PRS-700 has, it’s been made future-ready.
Just imagine full-color eComics. Imagine electronic editions of current magazines downloaded to a color Sony Reader. It’s poised for that day.
This amount of foresight is another indication of Sony’s seriousness towards eBooks and shouldn’t be cavalierly dismissed.
I would have liked to have been there in the planning sessions for the PRS-700. How was the touchscreen idea introduced? Was it always planned or was it a reaction to the iPhone and a move by Sony to pre-empt an iPod Touchbook? There must have been some mild gnashing of teeth when Plastic Logic was the first to show an eInk touchscreen! (Unlike the Plastic Logic device, the new Sony Reader has a Zoom In feature.) The Sony Reader can be considered a mass-market version of Plastic Logic. (Or, the Plastic Logic can be considered a half-baked Sony Reader for a very small, and very niche, market. Good luck proofing that slideshow in bed, Mr. Suit! No sidelight for you!)
Some random notes:
Steve Haber in a little-known but official Sony podcast stated that “hundreds of thousands” of the Sony Reader have been sold and that the eBook Store has done “millions of downloads.” In person, I tried to nail him down to a number, citing that “hundreds” of thousands has as its minimum the plural two hundred thousand. But Haber is a tough customer. He wouldn’t give me a number. But that’s how Sony sometimes operates. I want Sony to issue a number to deflate the nonsensical numbers thrown about for the abominable Kindle. I want to see Sony tell Amazon, “This is what we’ve sold. Now put up or shut up!” [Since the time this was written, Sony announced it has sold "over 300,000" of the Reader.]
Another thing Haber mentioned in the podcast is that eventually all download services level-out to the same offerings. How iTunes first had one million songs, then another service did, then iTunes went to five million, and now most services all have the same download inventory. I argued that Sony shouldn’t think like that. Sony must go after exclusives, just as Amazon has for the Kindle. Haber said his statement was marketese. The only concession I could get out of him was “Sony is talking to publishers.” And then came the PRS-700 and five dying dinosaur print publishers were there in the room too, to show support.
That’s a critical thing, I think, those publishers being there. Amazon has already acted against its best interests with print publishers. The Sony Reader gives them the ability to fight back against an Amazon monopoly (more about this shortly). And since the dying dinosaurs of print have finally seemed to standardize on one file format — ePub — for sales to the general public, Amazon will feel pressure to drop its current file format lock-in or remain its own island (like, say, Alcatraz).
In the introduction presentation, Haber specifically mentioned the PRS-700’s lack of wireless. Eerily echoing a statement once made by Palm Computing — “Color is very important to Palm — color done right.” — Haber stated that wireless was important for the Sony Reader but it won’t be added, paraphrased, “until we can do it right.” It will be “an open platform” (that one is a direct quote).
I’m not going to address the kind of software that would be necessary to accommodate wireless. The abominable Kindle uses a conventional web browser (termed experimental by Amazon). That might or might not be the way the Sony Reader develops. But the essential thing to consider is this: Upcoming wireless for the Sony Reader will not lock you into one store for eBook purchasing.
This is already the case with the unwireless Sony Reader. It can do ePub. ePub can be bought from any online store. ePub can be had from public libraries. Previously, DRMed eBooks for the Sony Reader were restricted to purchases from Sony’s eBook Store. The adoption of ePub has liberated the Sony Reader from Sony’s eBook Store. It’s already the most open eBook reader out there. Adding wireless to it will essentially make it the first universal eBook reading device.
That kills the possibility of an Amazon monopoly of eBooks.
(I must go off on a side note here to address those who will protest that the Sony Reader can’t do eReader or MobiPocket file formats. This is true. But consider that major publishers have embraced ePub. eReader and MobiPocket are formats that will die. Not even the abominable Kindle does Amazon’s own MobiPocket format for DRMed ebooks! [For those who didn't know, Amazon owns MobiPocket. And changed that file format for the K, abandoning millions of users.] How long do you think major publishers will support file formats that will increasingly be seen as niche? Small print publishers who never before entered eBooks won’t even bother with any format other than ePub. eReader and MobiPocket are dying, Jim. All of you will pay the price for early adoption, though much later than most early adopters. eReader, owned by Fictionwise, might allow format swapping down the road [when that's possible], but Amazon? Good luck!)
What Sony has done is make the Sony Reader truly the iPod of eBooks. Just as the iPod from its introduction could use DRM-free MP3 as well as Apple’s DRMed AAC files, the Sony Reader can now use universal ePub (MP3) or Sony’s DRMed BBeB (BroadBand eBook, the file format used at the Sony eBook Store).
One concession I was able to extract from Haber is absolutely great news for writers. Sony’s eBook Store will eventually be opened for writers who want to do direct publishing. Also coming are the tools to create such eBooks. In another post, I listed five things (plus one from a reader) that I believed the Sony Reader must have and Sony must do. Items three and five are being done now. Most of the rest are on their way. This is great progress.
Of course, I’ll stop here to harp once again on the need for Macintosh compatibility for Sony’s eLibrary software. Print designers love their Macs. So do writers. So do eBook readers. I hope CES in January will bring at least a sneak preview of something to give OS X users hope! (Sony, I know it’s tempting to forgo OS X compatibility when wireless is added to the Sony Reader, but don’t ask Mac owners to give up the ability to read their eBooks on their machines! This backup feature is crucial in case a Sony Reader is dropped and its screen is broken!)
When it came to Jim Malcolm, Sony’s Director of Corporate Marketing for Mobile Lifestyle Products, I brought up the hardware pricing issue.
He saw this poll result:
I’ve wailed for lower prices. As recently as this week, so has Dear Author.
This is basically what Malcolm told me. The poll results are from those who are tech-savvy early adopters. They already know the price of things and so, of course, would love eBook reading devices to even be as low as five for $20.00. Malcolm claims that Sony’s own research shows that hardware price is actually not a factor. Can I argue with their expertise and proprietary, professional research?
Yes. I know. I’m stubborn. Or I’m just an absolute eejit when it comes to real-world marketing, but I can’t but help to point once again to the example of Henry Ford and the Model T. Plus, there are the more recent examples of the Commodore-64 and the Asus EeePC.
I pressed the issue, asking what would Sony do if Amazon decided to do the razor-and-blade approach, reversing their current strategy. That is, increase the price of eBooks yet cut the hell out of the price of the abominable Kindle hardware. I think at this point Steve Haber fortuitously showed up, to save Malcolm from an answer. Not only should you never play poker with Haber, you should watch out for him knowing his cue!
The final thing I learned that night was entirely by accident. Yet it was telling. I rode the elevator down with one of the representatives of Penguin Books. I think her name was Molly (being one of my mortal enemies — a dying dinosaur of print — I did not ask for a card). It was a real mutual beat-down that lasted a quick two minutes. My snap questions versus her snap answers.
Me: Oh, you work for Penguin. Penguin just gave away some free samples.
Molly: Yes.
Me: Does Penguin believe in DRM?
Molly: We’re on the fence about that.
Me: What about eBook pricing?
Molly: We believe that eBooks should have the same prices as print.
Me: No no no! People see you’re not paying for paper, ink, distribution, or returns. They have to cost less!
Molly: We believe that eBooks should have the same prices as print. Our highest costs are creative.
Me: No they’re not! I’ve seen charts. It’s mostly physical costs!
Molly: Our eBooks will contain additional material that’s not in the print editions. They’ll be enhanced eBooks.
OK, she got me, dammit. She played the eBook As DVD Card.
And what she says is most likely true too. I can’t find the link now, and I didn’t post about it at the time, but I did come across a description for an eBook from Penguin that listed material exclusive to the eBook version.
That’s an interesting sales strategy. I hope it translates into fatter royalty checks for their writers!
Some final notes. With its classy textured black cover, the PRS-700 felt like a church hymnal in my hands. I think with its new features and sleek design, Sony has a real opportunity to sell a ton of them to businesses. And that will greatly expand the eBook market. Because you just know that when the missus sees Mr. Suit using it, she’ll become curious and then want one too!
Will I buy one? I want a Sony Reader. But my head is all bollixed now. I love the red 505. But if I were to buy it and strangely discover that I want to read in the dark or in lighting too dim to bring out the eInk contrast, I’d have to spring some $60.00 or so more for the light wedge cover. That puts the total price within exhaling distance of the 700! And the 700 offers not just the built-in sidelighting but the giant leap in software too! So maybe the best thing for me to do is just wait to have the red 505 and 700 together for a fondle face-off in a store. (Yet even now, the more I think about it, I just know the 700 will win. Alas, red!)
For anyone else out there who’s been thinking of buying the abominable Kindle: Don’t! Don’t do that to yourself. Yes, the wireless aspect has an appeal to it, but you’re locked into one store, one eBook format, and shut out of public libraries and shut out of the ePub future. Plus, if it breaks, you can’t read your eBooks on your desktop in the meantime.
For all of you Macintosh owners: Hold on. I know your aesthetic revulsion to the abominable Kindle. I share it too. I will keep hammering on Sony for your sake! They’ve already shown their seriousness. I trust it will expand to include OS X too.
The last word goes to Paul Biba of Teleread, who summed it all up in one sentence: “This is the first Reader to have The Sony Touch.”
AFTERWORD
To see more posts about Sony and the Sony Reader, visit my old blog. Type "Mike Cane 2008" into Google to find it. Once there, click on "Tech -- Sony" in the right sidebar. This will bring up Summaries of all posts in that Category. Click on each post headline to display the full post.