Sony’s new e-book Reader certainly seems like a marvel of technology but it’s also an example of a company forgetting to ask the most basic question of new product development: what is the customer benefit over existing products? With a nod to Chris Anderson and his much discussed long tail thesis, the real direction for Sony and other e-book readers is not in the realm of readily available best-sellers. Rather, the advantage lies in making available to a wider audience (and with a spiffier reading experience) currently hard to find goodies like out-of-print or specialty titles. It’s a marriage made in Google Book heaven.
Using the Sony system, a customer can purchase one of about 10,000 books online at prices that typically exceed an equivalent paperback. Once downloaded to the Reader, which costs $350 and holds about 80 volumes at a time, a customer can easily increase the font size and turn pages one at a time, 10 at a time or 10% at a time. The device can also be used to read Microsoft Word and PDF documents or play MP3 and AAC formatted audio files (though not files protected by a DRM such as those purchased from the iTunes store or Audible.com). There is no backlighting and no search function.
So compare the experience to buying a book. A physical book goes anywhere, needs no batteries, and allows easy flipping to any page. You can look something up in an index, keep a finger on that page and flip back and forth to the referenced pages. Text is crisp and highly readable. You can read anywhere there’s light. The price may be higher than an ebook (or not) but you can lend it to anyone you want and eventually resell it on eBay. And maybe best of all, if you lose it or ruin it on the beach, you’re only out the cost of the book.
Pluses and minuses of going all ebookish? The Sony Reader has a huge upfront cost, an annoying flash every time you turn a page, a battery that runs out and a fragile glass screen. You can’t manipulate pages easily and the selection of books for sale online is about 1/10 that of a typical superstore, without even getting to Amazon.com’s multiple millions of available titles. Documents in PDF format are almost unreadable unless you’re able to reformat them for the Sony’s 6-inch screen. The Reader does let a reader increase a book’s type size, carry a bunch of books at once and lighten the load of really heavy books (it weighs 9 ounces). Even as an gadget user, early adopter and avid reader of books, I’d have to call those pretty minimal advantages.
As bloggers like Mike Masnick at Techdirt noted, the Sony Reader seems to be a solution in search of a problem. It’s nothing like the iPod situation. People do want to carry a large number of songs around. They were already using electronic devices to do so. Shopping for songs online provides greater selection than most stores. And so on and so on…Sony missed the boat. So did mainstream reviewers like David Pogue and Walter Mossberg. Both give the Sony medium-positive reviews, implying if it just had slightly better technology it could take off. Mossberg concludes the Sony is “impressive in some ways, but clearly a work in progress.” Pogue The New York Times miscasts the entire issue with a poor headline on Pogue’s review: “Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete.” The reviewers have correct answers, but they’re asking the wrong questions.
It’s not too late. Sony should quickly reposition the Reader by striking deals with Google and as many publishers as possible to get out-of-print and niche books available online in a proper format. The device would also be great for reading blog posts, news feeds and other web content offline. Sony should add features to its software to highlight that use and make it it one-click simple (like subscribing to podcasts on iTunes).
For example, I’m interested in the development of the U.S. railroad system in the 19th century. Around the Boston area where I live, that’s not a topic that libraries care much about. Amazon has a bunch of offerings, like Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like It In The World : The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad and David Bain’s Empire Express (hurry – only 1 copy left) but there’s a limit to how much even I can spend. Plug the phrase “railroad history” into Google’s book search, however, and you end up with many thousands of fully viewable and downloadable titles. A search for the golden spike (that completed the transcontinental railway) leads to over 500 full-view books and 8,000 overall. The problem is downloading to a PDF creates a file that will be almost unreadable on the Sony reader. Back to the drawing board, folks.
(Updated on 10/16 to make clear Pogue didn’t write the headline to his review.)
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