E-Books: Reading to the future?

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta, vmahmud@yahoo.com

Michael Crichton's new book Prey was launch last week. Within three days I already had a copy. Purchased from Amazon.com? Couriered from the U.S.? Nope, I bought and downloaded the electronic version.

Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and notebook computers are for working beyond the desk, taking documents on the road, and showing presentations in the client's office. But they are also media for e-books, the digital versions of hardcover novels.

E-Books were supposed to be the answer to all of our problems. No more wasteful "dead-trees" (read: paper). No more heavy textbooks carried by students, causing back pains. And they were also supposed to make it easier for new writers to self-publish and sell their works.

Unfortunately, things haven't gone right for the e-book. Specialized hardware for reading text (books, magazines, internet sites) has not sold well and publishers are worried about a medium that can undercut their business.

The general public too hasn't been helpful. When horror master Stephen King offered a downloadable-only version of his series, The Plant, thousands downloaded the series but less then half paid the US$1 fee that was requested by the author. Piracy is a concern as reading fanatics scan or type in various popular books to be downloaded into a PDA. Books ranging from the latest Harry Potter series to the complete set of Lord of the Rings can be found online.

Does this mean that e-books are dead? Not really.

As a fan of Crichton, I have the option of waiting one to two months before the book finally arrives in my favorite bookstore. I could of course order it via the web but only the hardcover version is available and rather expensive (plus shipping and handling).

As the owner of a Palm Operating System-based Sony Clie PDA, I have the option of buying the digital version of the book to read at my leisure. The book, available at Palm Digital Media (www.palmdigitalmedia.com), costs about US$15 with no shipping costs. Users of Palm, Pocket PC, Windows and Macintosh operating systems can download the free reader for their purchases.

Not only that, there are also tools to make your own e-book. Would be writers, sick of rejection letters from established publishers, can publish their own books, set up a website and e- commerce module, market their books via the internet and receive money for their labor of love -- completely bypassing the cost and fees associated with established book publishers.

Some writers have actually taken this route. Agent to the Stars, a touching yet hilarious story about space aliens needing Hollywood agents to prepare for "first contact", is written by John Scalzi (www.scalzi.com), and can be downloaded from his website. If you like it, all he asks is a dollar. Should 500 people like it, that would be $500 for a book that was never sold to a publisher. Not bad for a book that nets zero dollars sitting on a computer hard drive.

The prices of some e-books are similar to those of paperback books and could be a lot less considering the low (or lack of) cost of printing, distributing and marketing for an e-book. The fact that a small number of people read books using electronic devices makes it a niche market that gives low profitability for the large companies but provides a nominal income for the struggling writer.

Of course, reading a novel on an electronic device is rather unique. You can carry the complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and not break a sweat (all on a CD), or read 10 novels crammed into your PDA during a 24-hour flight. The only costs you should be aware of is batteries. Of course, make sure you have a comfortable resolution on the screen when reading. You can even enlarge the text if your eyes are tired.

Some people may balk at the idea of reading a book on a small screen, and prefer the "real" feeling of turning pages and the texture of paper. That is fine, but one must remember the ecological costs of printing on "dead-trees", as some internet people call it. It will only be a matter of time before all the trees on the planet disappear. Save the trees, go digital!