The hardware hard sell

The public's insistence on thinking of e-books in physical terms—books with batteries and a screen—rather than in terms of their content has a direct analogue in the business world. Businesses, after all, are composed of members of the public.

To both consumers and businesses, dedicated reading devices seem to be the obvious answer to the e-book question. During the early days of e-books (i.e., the 1990s, not 2006, as many seem to believe these days), a steady stream of purpose-built e-book reading devices were launched, in many shapes and sizes, using many different technologies, and at many different price points. Today, even those in the business are hard-pressed to remember all their names.

Ironically, the very thing that motivated the creation of all those book-like dedicated reading devices is the same the thing that kept customers from buying them.

Dedicated readers were actually a bit of a running joke back at Peanut Press. Especially in a nascent market like e-books circa 2000, it's difficult to get people to shell out $100 or more for a device that then requires them to pay again for each e-book they plan to read on it. The Peanut Press guys saw this from the start and wisely decided to concentrate on creating e-book reader software for devices that people already owned.

Back then, PDAs were the richest target, and Palm PDAs in particular. No other device had a better combination of computing power, size, weight, screen technology, and most importantly, market penetration.

Compared to contemporary e-book devices, the Palm PDA seems like a woefully inadequate reading platform. Early Palm PDAs were tiny, and the screen resolution was, from today's perspective, inconceivably low: 160 pixels square. Even when using very small text (itself a problem) it was hard to fit more than a few sentences onto the screen.

And yet, while the technically and optically superior dedicated e-book reading devices came and went, the few companies that had wisely chosen to ride the hardware wave of PDAs (and, eventually, cell phones) were the ones that came out on top.

Ironically, the very thing that motivated the creation of all those book-like dedicated reading devices is the same the thing that kept customers from buying them. Businesses couldn't see past the physical connotations of the word "book," leading them to produce book-like hardware devices. And customers, when presented with said devices, compared their value proposition to the obvious physical analog, paper books, and decided that they sure as hell were not going to pay triple-digit prices for such a thing when they could get a paperback for less than $10.

(I know many of you are probably already thinking of the Kindle, but remember that, thus far, I've been talking about the past, not the present or future. We'll get there eventually, I promise.)

The inevitable e-book

The straightforward application of logic and reasoning to the actions of large groups of people is a futile exercise. All of the previous arguments about screen quality and medium/content separation crumble to dust in the face of these inconvenient truths: broadly speaking, people aren't buying e-books; people don't want e-books; people do not want to read book-length texts off of a screen. Or, to paraphrase a long-forgotten but nevertheless surprisingly applicable movie from the 90s, people love their books.

But the truth is, these things always turn out the same way. And I have some bad news for the bibliophiles. The beloved, less technically sophisticated information conveyance with the pedigreed history doesn't win.

Time and again this happens, and it can happen without changing a single person's mind. To put it bluntly, people die. Indeed, death is arguably the single most important driver for all human progress. Even in a community as reason-based as science, it's often necessary to wait for one generation of scientists to die off before a new theory gains mainstream acceptance. It's a bit much to hold consumers' text-based media preferences to a higher standard.

So, death and the passage of time—hardly romantic. It doesn't have to be that way, of course. Plenty of new technologies gain widespread adoption without the aid of a generational turnover. But so far, books have held their ground. The message here is simply that, on the long graph, the result will be the same.

The next generation, though influenced by the prejudices of their parents, are nevertheless more likely to judge new technologies on their merits, and so on for each new generation. And in the case of e-books, the merits are there, as plain as day. In fact, they're some of the same merits that have driven other successful media transitions.

Convenience: One thousand songs in your pocket? One million books in your pocket. Carry your entire reading list with you at all times. No loose bookmarks. No dog-eared pages. No rips, tears, or smudges. No shelf space required. No trip to the store. Purchase and start reading in seconds. Read anywhere, any time, using only one hand. Stop reading at a moment's notice without fear of losing your place.

Power: Search the text instantly. Look up the definition of any word with a single tap or click. Add and remove highlighting an infinite number of times without degrading the text. Annotate without being constrained by the size of the margins. Create multiple bookmarks and links from one part of the text to another.

Potential: Consume, share, and remix all of the above with anyone, an unlimited number of times.

Fine. Great. But is that really enough? Are these things so important that they're going to inevitably foment a media transition? That seems like a pretty dubious claim. To gain a better perspective, think about some of the other media transitions that have happened in your lifetime.

What advantages did CDs have that allowed them to replace vinyl records and cassette tapes? The geeks are surely thinking about audio quality (although vinyl fans may debate that) and the possibility of digital copies. But digital copying was not mainstream when CDs first burst onto the scene, and increased audio quality doesn't exactly have mass-market appeal (as we'll see in a moment).

The CD's most important characteristics were much more mundane. CDs were more durable and smaller than vinyl, and you didn't have to fast-forward, rewind, or flip them over to play a certain song. (Oh, and record companies couldn't wait to have everyone re-purchase all their music, but that's true of every media transition, so it cancels out.) The audio quality and futuristic shiny appearance were just icing. And the digital copying, well, even most geeks weren't thinking about that in the days when CDs first arrived (when computers still had RAM measured in kilobytes and CD burners did not yet exist).

Speaking of which, let's consider another transition, from CDs to digital downloads. We're in the midst of that one right now. What advantages do AACs and MP3s have over CDs? Time for some more extremely boring features. You can purchase a digital download without leaving your house, and you can start listening to it immediately. The physical storage space for each album is also eliminated. That's about it.

What about the audio quality? That's actually gotten worse during this transition. Consumers also gave up lyrics and liner notes, and accepted decreased fidelity for the album art. This is an upgrade? In the eyes of consumers, the answer is a resounding "yes." Behold, the power of convenience and instant gratification!

Now look again at the virtues of e-books listed above. I hope you'll agree that they're more than sufficient. Still not budging? Okay, time to go to the nuclear option…

Horses for courses

If you remain unconvinced, here's one final exercise, in the grand tradition of a particular family of Internet analogies. Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word "horse" for "book" and the word "car" for "e-book." Here are a few examples to whet your appetite for the (really) inevitable debate in the discussion section at the end of this article.

"Books will never go away." True! Horses have not gone away either.

"Books have advantages over e-books that will never be overcome." True! Horses can travel over rough terrain that no car can navigate. Paved roads don't go everywhere, nor should they.

"Books provide sensory/sentimental/sensual experiences that e-books can't match." True! Cars just can't match the experience of caring for and riding a horse: the smells, the textures, the sensations, the companionship with another living being.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Did you ride a horse to work today? I didn't. I'm sure plenty of people swore they would never ride in or operate a "horseless carriage"—and they never did! And then they died.