DISQUS

Robin · 10 months ago

Interesting discussion points. The major thing I take issue with is that being able to get one's existing library on the device is unimportant. It is certainly a major stumbling block for me. About 50% of my books are ones I have never read. I went through them a couple of days ago as I am moving house, and I still want to read most of the unread ones, however my time is fragmented, and I don't have the books that I want to read with me when I have the time - particularly not the ones that have been sitting on the shelf for a while.

I would immediately buy a kindle if I could have them at hand, and not have to spend $5000 re-buying them.

What occurs to me is that I would have less objection to buying them again if I knew for certain that I was actually reading them.

If Amazon offered a $1 per chapter model payable after you read past the first page in the chapter, I would also immediately buy one, and I'd probably read a lot more. A lot of the deterrent for this stuff for me, is laying down $20 for a book I'm not sure about and dropping it after couple of chapters.

'Strangely' enough that's one of the core value propositions of the iTunes store too.

felix · 10 months ago

Robin, huh! I think that for most people an existing library of books isn't as critical as it would be for an existing library of music - a nice thing to have, but not critical. At least most *normal* people. ;) I usually have a small stack of unread books - but it's usually pretty short, so it wouldn't be a problem. On the other hand - I am very interested in re-purchasing some key tech books I already own but that's life, I guess.

I suspect that buying a book chapter by chapter prolly would be too much to deal with. I think that their one free chapter (combined with instant wireless buying and downloading) is a reading revolution. I would certainly not say no to the ability to try more, but I think a chapter is fair chance to get a sense of the book.

I imagine that I'll be getting a Kindle at some point - but that point would be sooner if O'Reilly would make their stuff available! :)

Robin · 10 months ago

Most of my books are non-fiction, and many of them are pretty dense,
so it would be tough for me to have read them all cover to cover soon
after purchase.

However, I'll grant that I am very much an outlier given figures that
I've heard that the average number of books owned per person is in the
single figures. Saying that, early adopters - i.e. people who want to
read a lot may not be the average either.

My point about buying a book chapter by chapter wouldn't be too much
to deal with for the end user - it would be transparent - I didn't
mean that they should force the user to keep making purchasing
decisions. Imagine being able to read any chapter of any book on
amazon right now for $1 - that's what I'm talking about. Maybe a
chapter is too arbitrary and gameable and it would need to be
quantized into chapters / blocks of page numbers, but you get the
idea. If we're going to put the worlds books online, we don't need to
keep selling them as if they were still printed on blocks of woodpulp.