I take your points as well, and I guess it’s a matter of individual choice. Especially with the screen size. Regarding that however, phone screens are getting larger. So even while you may have less text on screen at one time, you’re going to be able to get larger text on screen (e.g. N97, HD2).

For myself, I just like convergence and don’t want any more gear laying around than I need have, so I accept the sacrifice of a nice e-ink screen.

Thanks again for commenting!
David

The problem, once again, is cost. Either drop the price to $99 for the player and <$5 per book, or bundle the player free with a service package.

That's what I am willing to pay, take it or leave it. So far they have been leaving it

I'm off to the library now…

I have to say I agree with you, and your blog post. To me it seems common sense. More than that, the music industry has proved that this model can work. Sure, MP3s are somewhat over-priced but I can live with the current situation. I don’t know why the book and movie industries fail to see this as a solution.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

Think about it. With no material cost, no middlemen and miniscule distribution cost, the price of an e-book is almost all profit. And yet they insist that e-book price = paperback price. Ridiculous. And DRM makes the e-book substantially less valuable; I can resell, lend or give away a paperback, multiplying its value. Locking it to a particular player is just plain silly. Why not have an “passalong” option that removes a book from your player and puts it on someone else’s? Because the publishers _really_ don’t want it. Oh, and lifetime+80 copyright is way too long to be useful.

The publishers seem to be stuck on the early CD business model (Get them to pay more for something that is cheaper to produce and manufacture).

There are two business models that will work: Cellphone business model (free reader with subscription or price of reader folded into purchases), or PDA business model (expensive reader, cheap content).

I blogged this four years ago. In spite of the Kindle, nothing has changed.

http://wizardprang.wordpress.com/2005/06/07/why-e-books-never-caught-on/

I take your points, but I stand by my comments. Of course there are out of copyright books, like you mentioned, which are available. Two good sites for getting these are Project Guttenberg and Feedbooks. Although, contemporary, and even not so contemporary books, which sell in very large volumes are under copyright are and not available in DRM free digital form without breaking the law.

On device inconvenience, I accept this is subjective to a point. Although, I can hand-on-heart say, from personal experience, that phone screens are more than adequate to the task. As I say in the caption of the image – which would you rather carry around with you?

“Currently, the only way to get DRM free e-books and movies is illegal.”

You may not have DRM-free option for every single book, but there are loads of books with expired copyright and released under open licenses.

On device inconvenience – you are behind times. Practice had already proved that those people who can afford ebook reader are perfectly fine with using it.

And mobile phones and other supposed alternatives aren’t alternatives as long as they don’t offer comparable quality of reading.