Heric says the advent of the latest generation of e-readers raises big questions for both consumers and printers
Late last year the Amazon e-reader the Kindle was introduced in the US, and subsequently sold out in 5 1/2 hours in its on-line exclusive offering at US$399 (ed: in Australia Dymocks launched a similar device). This device is built as a 6 inch 800 by 600 e-paper display (e-paper is a display technology that utilises a black and white method for pixel display that mimics ink on paper in many ways). Unlike the traditional LCD displays that have become nearly ubiquitous in today’s gadgetry, this display technology has no backlight, and looks for most practical purposes very much like a black and white printed page.
The e-paper technology is very sharp, and very, very clear to read, while requiring very little power to maintain the display in a static image. This is the nearest an electronic gadget has been able to bring the experience of a printed “page” to a non-printed source. I have to say, that even when I have looked at Sony’s Libre or at the Kindle, I have been stunned at the quality. I say this as a man whom has long loved print, and have made my business in it for my whole career of over 20 years. The device has EVDO data access, which is based upon cell-phone infrastructure. This means that you can access its online “store” from nearly anywhere one can obtain a cell-phone signal. In a model much like iTunes, or Audible.com, the content available is an assortment of classics and modern best-sellers, and are all available… for a fee. Implications about purchasing content on this device leave me the most concerned. As a consumer, and a collector of media, I am an archivist at heart, and I enjoy re-reading or perusing media that interested me in the past. I love to look through my old books, and to look through my Uncle’s old books. As I have written about in the past... as we develop greater “technology based” publishing mediums, we are increasingly dependent upon the infrastructure that supports it.
The Birth of Printing and Publishing, Cuneiform tablets, were developed as early as 2500 B.C. and in use for well over 2-3 millennia. Cuneiform tablets required no infrastructure to read them other than literacy. The next technological innovation, Papyrus and Paper; have been in use for well over 1000 years. Movable Type, and Lithography have been dominant for the past 500 years as the most efficient medium for printed materials. (It should be noted however, that Paper is at the twilight of its usefulness at nearly 1/3 of the useful lifetime of its predecessor.) Modern media for films and video have shown a very short lifetime, and usability in retrospect. When was the last time you looked at a 10 year old video tape? Most users have had to go out and re-buy the copy of Fantasia that they bought from Disney 10 years ago on VHS, because they want one on DVD now. This mindset of temporary media is troubling to me as one involved in print, and a true lover of ink-on-paper.
Digital Document
As much as I love a well-formatted digital document, I foresee its lifetime as perilously short, mainly due to it’s inevitable tie to hardware platform, software OS, and file format. Even attempting to read a computer document from just a decade ago can become an issue when one attempts to find a floppy-disc drive, or software that can read archaic file formats on a modern computer… and that is just a decade! Do you see a trend here? As each technological innovation was introduced, and adopted, it’s lifetime was as little as (or less than) one tenth its predecessors. This exponentially shorter lifetime begins to scare me as people think less and less of the usable lifetime of their media.
While this tenuous nature of document archive, accessibility, and assimilability is not a hindrance to the world of periodical and timely information, it has the potential to relegate what had been a source of pride, and possession for much of recent human development: books. Books have traditionally been so valuable that good books are inherited in wills, stored for centuries, and considered to be some of the family heirlooms by many. When consumers en masse decide to begin
Historical precedent
iTunes is the harbinger of things to come. Many of you may recall my article of well over a year ago, declaring where is my print-pod? in which I point to the lack of a consumer-level e-reader in the form of a print-pod. In that I mention Sony’s Libre, and how we needed a more affordable version with an infrastructure of e-document feeding-stream. The Kindle is that, with the interface being an on-line purchasing engine for that content. The concern to me is that while there is no technical restriction into providing consumers the ability to author their own Kindle-formatted e-books, the publishers would not sign deals to have their content put into this format without heavy DRM restriction. While I understand the need for copy-protection and copyright-honour, I am worried that the good intent in keeping their content legal will be abused to put the consumer at the unenviable position of having to deal with awkward and even painful restrictions of DRM. I am concerned that is setting a nascent trend that we in the print community should be watching. After all, print is the media that this new tech is moving away from.
My deepest fear is that DRM (digital rights management) technology is getting too intrusive into the ultimate usability of ones media. The nature of digital media being easily duplicated… identically, has struck fear into the hearts of content and media publishers. These entities have been so adept at their negotiations with hardware manufacturers that they have been successful in restricting in a highly intrusive way how ones media is used in comparison with previous media. Think about it: when you bought a CD, VHS tape, a book, a magazine, or a DVD… there is nothing to prevent you from selling it later, sharing it with a friend when you have finished reading it, or watching it at your cottage in Nelson Bay. In the world of DRM-controlled media, all of those activities can, and are likely to be, restricted or even prevented.
Even though I have purchased many, (perhaps too many) songs through the iTunes music store they have a DRM file-format that prevents their use in things non-iTunes, or non-iPod. They also prevent me for moving them to a new format if I should choose. The saving grace is that iTunes itself is pretty flexible in how it is used, and is an excellent front-end to manage large media collections. iTunes will allow me to burn an audio CD from those files, and that is a pretty good middle-ground. The e-text for money analogy however I fear is going towards a trend that is far more restrictive.
I wish that devices such as the Kindle were functionally open enough to allow me to make my own e-books, from my own text or PDF files. Here is a great device for much more than just e-book reading, but also for collaborative authoring, document accessing and archival access and more, alas however, it is mired in restrictive technology that will force one to purchase media multiple times; one for each intended use.
Content drives the wheels:
The reason we will not have one of these open devices as I describe is that the media distributors, or content creators, have all made deals with the hardware manufacturers with the basic premise of “If you want to use our content on your device, you will need to lock it up so tight it could never be used on more than one device per sale.” This puts the hardware manufacturers in the difficult position of making a device that has no mass-appeal content available for it (a tough sell), or one that is restrictive to the consumer, but with the content they will be willing to pay $$ for. The DRM of these devices can cause problems for customers whom have had devices broken, stolen, lost or otherwise defunct, as the files are restricted to each device. The files a user has on their Kindle, will not open on another Kindle. When the device dies, so does the users’ library. I want a Kindle, but I want one I can put my own stuff on too! (Amazon offers this in a minimalist way, by offering you to be able to email your documents to the service to make them available on your device, but I find that an awkward if even acceptable solution.)
Overall, I think this is an outstanding device, and could well become a great member of the first wave of digital media devices. The fact that all of the e-paper type devices are proprietary does not make it easy to choose the winner or the one that will actually be that print-pod that everyone wants. Memories of VHS vs Betamax come to mind here, but at some point, one format will take-off, and perhaps it will be the Kindle. I still say that I am reticent to purchase any DRM’ed content, unless it is a matter of complete abject availability or convenience. (I will buy a song from iTunes if I can only find it on iTunes or if I am travelling, and it is not convenient to buy the CD, but if I have the choice, I often go for the CD.) I recently passed buying a book online for a long-flight, and bought the hardcover book in the airport bookstore instead. It was more expensive to do so, but I have a first-edition hardcover, that I can pass on to my children, read again or refer to in 20 years with no device, and read while the airline stewardesses implore me to turn off all electronic devices.
As I have alluded to in the past, book and magazine printing is in a period of transition and some publishers may be looking for a viable excuse to stop using print as its mainstream channel for distribution. While print-media like packaging is firmly in a growth trend, the publication and periodical publishers are chomping at the bit to make revenue that does not require the services of the expertise of our industry. Their responsibility to the customer/consumer ends once the file has been delivered to the server they are sold from, and they just get the cheques from then on.
We, in the world of print should take the time to look at the trends and begin to plan for the future… our customers are.
