How eBook Readers Can Take Off

I have an ebook reader and I love it. For people who enjoy reading for fun and who are fine with the whole electronic screen thing they can be a great investment. They are not cheap however, so it's not a throwaway purchase by any means. I happened to get a great deal on mine and only spend £150 on it. It is still a niche product, so how can this change?

Some say the iPad is a game changer in this regard and maybe it is. It allows people to use a device which is more or less a handheld portable screen to watch and read content. One use of that is reading ebooks, another is surfing the web. Website pages are basically the same concept as magazine pages, except with interactive links. It therefore verges on the eBook reader territory, albeit with a different type of screen.

The iPad has opened up a sector which has been thought of long ago but never realised until the iPad. Now we'll see plenty of other manufacturers bring their own tablet PCs to market using Android, MeeGo, Symbian or whatever OS to power it. This means that more and more people will have the ability to install an app to give a good eReading experience on their device. This means that more people will have the equipment to be able to sign up for a subscription to a newspaper or magazine on their device. The more eyeballs who are capable of viewing it means that more eyeballs will have the inclination to do it.

If 1000 people can do something, maybe 50 of them will actually it.

If 1,000,000 people can do something, maybe 50,000 will actually do it.

The same ratio on a larger base gives a larger number. I am of course picking a ratio out of thin air to show the principle. From the number who actually do it the newspaper and magazine industry have their customers to fight over. How many of these people try your magazine, or subscribe to yours and someone else's? That's up for grabs. Make your content compelling and value for money and you'll get your share.

The thing with these multifunction devices is that the lengthy reading experience is not as good. The screen is harder on the eyes, the battery needs to power the screen every second it's on which means there's constant batter drain. Dedicated eBook readers on the other hand use EInk, which is looks like real ink on real paper, has no screen flicker or glare and only uses the battery to change pages. The choice comes down to people who read occasionally or want a single device to carry around, or people who like to read a lot and don't mind a dedicated device.

With multifunction devices, you're always competing with other services. One of the reasons I like my Sony eReader is that I don't have the temptation to check my email, rss feeds or IRC as the only thing the device does is books. On a PC it's incredibly easy for your mind to drift.

So how do the publishing industry get more people with comfortable electronic reading devices? One option is to aim for the bottom. There's a Binatone eBook reader which looks like it'll fall to pieces within months, can only do .txt files and looks very cheap; all for the bargain price of £130. Sorry, but £130 is not a throwaway price, people still expect something decent for that money. You can shrink the screen size a little as in the case on my 5" screen, the regular seems to be "6. The screen has to be comfy to read on, so you can't read on a postage stamp and have to turn the page after every sentence. You can leave out functions like bluetooth, wifi, and external storage. Or you can use the mobile phone industry model as an example.

Mobile phones come in two options, either prepay or a monthly contract. With a prepay phone you buy it like any regular appliance upfront then pay to top up your credit to use it. On a monthly contract you often get the handset for free when you sign up for an 18mth or 24mth contract.

Newspapers or magazines could offer a similar deal on their own branded eBook reader where you sign a contract to subscribe for 18mths or 24mths to their magazine or newspaper and get the eReader free. That way they have a loyal (at least for the contract period) subscriber, who will have a dedicated device and is very likely to get used to consuming their content in that way, after all they've chosen to sign a contract for a dedicated device to do just that.

Where mobile contracts vary per handset and minutes, SMS, internet etc eReader contracts could vary on which subscriptions are included, with bundles on magazines from the same publishing house, or newspapers from the same owners, or magazines on the same topic etc. The publishers could use an affiliate scheme with each other to get commission on subscriptions from each other.

If you're a Linux user who wants to subscribe to various Linux magazines, you'd be able to sign up for a free eBook reader on a contract and opt in for 4 or 5 Linux magazine subscriptions as your contract. The device itself may be branded as say "Future Publishing", but it's just a device made by someone else with that branding on it. You could also have them as interchangeable covers too, so you could buy a Marvel back cover to replace your Future Publishing one that you got with the device.

All of this depends of course on the publishing houses doing them the right way. If they insist on DRM, locked down, only works on Windows with subscription rates that match the dead tree prices, it will fail; and deserves to. If they do it in a spirit of collaboration with each other and giving the consumer the power to pick and choose what they want to consume, they will all benefit, as will consumers.

Pricing is very much a key here. People understand that paper, ink, fuel, and staff costs money. They see where the money is in a glossy magazine. A colour magazine costs money on paper, the same magazine on a screen costs nothing. To deliver that magazine as a physical item costs money, to transfer it to the device via the internet (in relative terms) does not. Real items have to be printed and stored, and hopefully sold, digital items only need one copy on a server and a copy is sent when required. So charging a reasonable amount for the electronic version is key, it does not even come close to having the same price tag in terms of costs as the dead tree version.

Gradually people are awakening to the fact that they want to use their devices in the way they like, not being dictated to by corporations. They want the full Google experience on their smartphone for example, regardless of what OS that smartphone is running. They want to be able to pick and choose. This is increasingly applying to the OS they sync with on their laptop, netbook or desktop. I understand the extra cost in making things Linux or Mac compatible, but building stuff to a recognised standard means you don't have to go out of your way to make them compatible, just don't build to a Windows only mindset. Many devices now are basically storage devices when hooked to a PC.

So, a new model awaits?