Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here and How Stuff Works sitting next to
Speaker 1: me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Chris.
Speaker 1: Download any good books lately. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I have, Well, I didn't expect that to actually work well.
Speaker 1: As you can tell, we're going to talk about electronic
Speaker 1: books today or e books, right. Um. I think we
Speaker 1: were inspired to do this because we, uh, we just
Speaker 1: recently put an article up on our website that somebody
Speaker 1: who wrote that that would be yeah, about the Amazon
Speaker 1: about the self promotion. Yeah, yeah, I wrote an article
Speaker 1: about the Amazon Kindle. But before we get into e
Speaker 1: book readers, because I mean that's really just part of
Speaker 1: the story, I guess we can talk about e books themselves. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, electronic books, that's just it's a book in
Speaker 1: electronic format, so that you read it with an electric
Speaker 1: an electronic device such as a computer or an e
Speaker 1: book reader or an iPhone or whatever. Right, it's just
Speaker 1: it's an electronic device that can access this sort of
Speaker 1: file and display it. And they were kind of it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of slow to catch on, um, considering
Speaker 1: that you know, we we we really got the Worldwide
Speaker 1: Web back in what like essentially and uh, and it
Speaker 1: was all text back then, there were hardly any graphics
Speaker 1: and uh. And yet the idea of using the Internet
Speaker 1: to distribute books took a while. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of publishers kind of dragging their
Speaker 1: feet on the whole issue. And in fact, I remember,
Speaker 1: back in two thousand you may remember this as well,
Speaker 1: Chris Um. There was a very famous author who kind
Speaker 1: of made a splash about trying to do an electronic
Speaker 1: book publication UM strategy that hadn't really been done before.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Stephen King. Do you remember this at all? Um?
Speaker 1: Actually knowing? Okay, So back in two thousand, he first
Speaker 1: he released and a novella, which of course is longer
Speaker 1: than a short story but shorter than a novel. It's
Speaker 1: called Writing the Bullet And he really published that electronically
Speaker 1: so you could download that and read it, you know, whenever. Um.
Speaker 1: And then he decided he was going to try something new.
Speaker 1: He was going to try and publish a book chapter
Speaker 1: by chapter, offering each chapter up for download for I
Speaker 1: think it was originally I think it was a dollar
Speaker 1: or a chapter. And uh, he said that he was
Speaker 1: going to monitor how many people downloaded the book, and
Speaker 1: as long as seventy of the people who downloaded the book,
Speaker 1: we're paying for the book. He would continue to write. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm starting to remember that now, and if it
Speaker 1: dipped below, game over. He stops. So first chapter comes
Speaker 1: out and apparently he does more than of the business,
Speaker 1: and so people actually pay for it. And uh, then
Speaker 1: the second chapter comes out and dipped a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think it actually hits seventent but then went ahead
Speaker 1: and did the third chapter, fourth chapter. As I recall,
Speaker 1: he doubles the price. Now it's two bucks for the chapter,
Speaker 1: but he also doubles the output, so it's about twice
Speaker 1: as many pages as you would have received in one
Speaker 1: of the previous installments. Um. I think it only got
Speaker 1: up to six chapters, and then it stopped in in
Speaker 1: two thousand. Uh and since then there's been no progress
Speaker 1: on the plant, just the name of the book. UM.
Speaker 1: So that experiment kind of fizzled, but I think it
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for the electronic books uh industry that
Speaker 1: we see today. It's just that it was one of
Speaker 1: those early tempts that didn't quite make it. Now there
Speaker 1: have been other publishers who have tried different experiments like that,
Speaker 1: and usually I think it's based on the the will
Speaker 1: of the author trying to you know, get the experiments started,
Speaker 1: people like Corey doctor Oh especially. I think the most
Speaker 1: recent effort, to a Little Brother, it did pretty well
Speaker 1: after making it available on you know, for free on
Speaker 1: digital download, It's still sold a lot of copies. Neil
Speaker 1: Gaiman has also offered some of his work um online
Speaker 1: for free. My wife's gonna kill me because I forgot
Speaker 1: the name of the author, but the author of the
Speaker 1: Dresden Files um. He always or seems to always uh
Speaker 1: offer up the first few chapters of whichever novel has
Speaker 1: just come out for free, so that it's essentially you
Speaker 1: can get a chance to get hooked into the story.
Speaker 1: Now it's just the first few chapters, so you still
Speaker 1: have to go out and buy a copy of the book.
Speaker 1: But it has been a very effective way of of
Speaker 1: getting new readers. Yes, he wouldn't if you will Butcher, Yes,
Speaker 1: Jim Butcher, thank you, thank you. Yes. Now my wife
Speaker 1: will only name me instead of kill me. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm also a fan of the books. She she's the
Speaker 1: mega fan, and I'm also a fan. But there are
Speaker 1: other ones as well who do the same sort of
Speaker 1: thing that they authors either put up an entire book
Speaker 1: or part of a book as a way to but
Speaker 1: not but that's still usually a way to sell the
Speaker 1: physical book. Yeah, it's it's sort of a way to
Speaker 1: whet the appetite being offers. A science fiction publisher offers
Speaker 1: free books UM for download UM from time to time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times those are the first in
Speaker 1: a series. UM Tour, another science fiction fantasy publisher did
Speaker 1: that not too long ago, And when you asked me
Speaker 1: the question, it hadn't been that long ago that I
Speaker 1: downloaded six or seven e books from there, UM and UM. Actually,
Speaker 1: at one point McGraw hill, the educational publisher, was offering
Speaker 1: something that they called beta books. Now, last time I
Speaker 1: went on the site, I don't think they're doing this
Speaker 1: the same way they used to, but they were offering
Speaker 1: UM pre printed versions of the book. The point was
Speaker 1: it was in beta, it was unfinished. Um, if you
Speaker 1: had a correction that you saw, you know, hey, wow,
Speaker 1: this thing is completely wrong. What you mean to do
Speaker 1: is here? Or there's a type of in this page,
Speaker 1: you could actually contact McGraw hill and let them know,
Speaker 1: which was kind of a different thing. But you still
Speaker 1: got access to that content, which was, you know, pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but most of these are offered in PDF format or um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Windows Reader format, which has been the
Speaker 1: sort of the de facto the two de facto standards
Speaker 1: for for e books over you know, the course of
Speaker 1: the bookdom mainly because most people are reading them on
Speaker 1: their computers until the Amazon Kindle came along. Really well
Speaker 1: sort of, Oh you had other e book readers before,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they had the same sort of
Speaker 1: They didn't get the same sort of press or adoption
Speaker 1: rates as the Kindle, although it's arguable whether or not
Speaker 1: the Kindles even had a really high adoption rate because
Speaker 1: hardly anyone ever seems to see them. Well, Um, the
Speaker 1: two I first came in contact with him, We're talking
Speaker 1: more than ten years ago, um, are the Rocket Book
Speaker 1: and the Soft Book, both of which were very early designs.
Speaker 1: They basically supported text, and they had LCD screens. UM.
Speaker 1: And uh, they probably would seem more primitive to those
Speaker 1: familiar with the Amazon Kindle because you had to hook
Speaker 1: him up to your computer. Um, you know, the battery
Speaker 1: life was twenty hours. You know. Stuff like that really
Speaker 1: just didn't catch on, even though some of them, one
Speaker 1: of them had a leather cover, uh to design, and
Speaker 1: one of them was actually the size about the size
Speaker 1: of a paperback book. You'd think maybe, you know, some
Speaker 1: people would buy it, but it really just didn't take off.
Speaker 1: I'm and in a matter of fact, you may those
Speaker 1: of you listening may never have heard of these just
Speaker 1: simply because they just didn't get depressed. And I well,
Speaker 1: I think it goes beyond just the I think it
Speaker 1: goes beyond just the press issue. UM. I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, particularly of our generation or older, UM,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine replacing the experience of reading a
Speaker 1: physical book with an electronic version. Um. There's certain things
Speaker 1: that you just associate with reading. You associate that the
Speaker 1: feel of the paper or even the smell of a book,
Speaker 1: and they seem like kind of silly things to talk about.
Speaker 1: But I think I think for some people it really
Speaker 1: is part of what they associate with, you know, reading
Speaker 1: a book, and if you don't have that, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really feel like you're reading. Um. Also, things like the
Speaker 1: l c D screens they tend to to cause a
Speaker 1: lot of eye strain, so after you were it's just
Speaker 1: like if you've been staring at a computer all day long.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea what that's like, Chris, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too. And after you've been staring at a
Speaker 1: computer for a while, you do get ice train, you know,
Speaker 1: your eyes get tired. And that was part of the
Speaker 1: problem with some of these earlier e book readers as well.
Speaker 1: They used the same sort of technology that you would
Speaker 1: find in an l c D computer screen. And UM,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that I think I played a factor into
Speaker 1: the whole slow adoption rate as well, where yeah, you
Speaker 1: have the availability, but the technology just didn't appeal to
Speaker 1: people quite as much. Yep. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, which are the
Speaker 1: current generation of e book readers. Um, that's a big
Speaker 1: part of it is. Uh, this little company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Inc. Yep.
Speaker 1: I love the inc. I actually have. I I don't
Speaker 1: have an electronic book reader. But I have messed with
Speaker 1: the Sony Reader in a Border's bookstore, um, which is
Speaker 1: one the retail outlets that you can find them in.
Speaker 1: And you should at least take a look at it,
Speaker 1: because the INC is completely different from l C. D UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: inside the display of a Sony Reader or an Amazon Kindle,
Speaker 1: what you have are little capsules, and inside the little
Speaker 1: capsules are more little capsules that are floating in a liquid.
Speaker 1: Um on on either side of the larger capsule is
Speaker 1: uh an electronic um yeah, an electrode and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: which is the funny name for them. It's okay, I
Speaker 1: just wrote the article, Chris, It's all right, all right.
Speaker 1: Um So, what happens is you put a positive or
Speaker 1: a negative charge and it draws the little capsules inside,
Speaker 1: which have pigment in them, to one side or another,
Speaker 1: and you can actually, uh by fine tuning that charge,
Speaker 1: you can actually make different shades of gray or black
Speaker 1: or white, and you form pictures and letters. And that's
Speaker 1: how that's why it looks like INK, I mean really
Speaker 1: kind of is INC. And uh so it it's designed
Speaker 1: so that there's no backlight to these screens. Um. So
Speaker 1: it looks to your eye kind of the same way
Speaker 1: as what if you were looking at a piece of
Speaker 1: paper with ink on it. It's really remarkable the similarity.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever looked at it, did that
Speaker 1: experiment in science class where you had to look at
Speaker 1: a piece of newsprint under a microscope, you could see
Speaker 1: that it's you know, made up of tiny little dots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same principle, really. Yeah, it really works very
Speaker 1: very similarly. And the the nice thing also is that
Speaker 1: it takes less energy to run one of these devices
Speaker 1: than it would for an LCD screen because it's not
Speaker 1: powering a backlight. Essentially, it only needs to exert energy
Speaker 1: whenever you're changing a page, when you're changing an image,
Speaker 1: Like if you're not just changing a page, but if
Speaker 1: you were like increasing the font size or whatever, it
Speaker 1: would have to exert some it would have to exert
Speaker 1: some energy in order to to make the change visible.
Speaker 1: But between those it doesn't have to use up any electricity,
Speaker 1: So you have a battery charge that lasts a longer time.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Kindle Amazon claims the Kindle can last
Speaker 1: for more than a week on a single charge. If
Speaker 1: you're just you know, reading books if you're not using
Speaker 1: the wireless capability. That's We should probably also talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the differences between the Kindle and the
Speaker 1: and the Sony book Reader. The Kindle is a wireless
Speaker 1: device and it uh it works really well with Amazon's
Speaker 1: Electronic bookstore, so you can purchase books directly from your
Speaker 1: Kindle and have them download straight to the device. You
Speaker 1: don't have to sink it with a computer. Um. You
Speaker 1: can connect it to a computer and transfer files over
Speaker 1: from the computer to the Kindle, but it's not necessary
Speaker 1: for the Kindle to work. Uh. The Sony one is different.
Speaker 1: You have to sink that with your computer. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, the new version of the Sony e
Speaker 1: Reader has a touch screen, which the Kindle does not,
Speaker 1: and you can even change pages by swiping your finger
Speaker 1: across the screen, which to a lot of people that's
Speaker 1: that's so much more attractive than pushing a button. Um.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it kind of brings back that feeling
Speaker 1: that you're reading a book, you know, you're turning a page. Uh.
Speaker 1: For another, the Amazon One of the criticisms that the
Speaker 1: Amazon Kindle has a has had over the brief period
Speaker 1: of its life is that the button placement is such
Speaker 1: that if you pick up a kindle, you're almost guaranteed
Speaker 1: to accidentally turn the page because the buttons are on
Speaker 1: the side of it, so you don't you know, you're
Speaker 1: trying to put your hands in such a way where
Speaker 1: you're not covering up the screen or smudging the screen,
Speaker 1: but that means you're touching the sides. That's where all
Speaker 1: the next page or or previous page buttons are found.
Speaker 1: And they're large, so it's very easy to accidentally hit
Speaker 1: one of those and then next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: on the wrong page. Um. So yeah, they each have
Speaker 1: their own merits and their own drawbacks. UM. I think
Speaker 1: they're both, from what I've seen, very good devices. I
Speaker 1: think they're both also probably a little more expensive than
Speaker 1: the average consumer would care to spend for something that
Speaker 1: they would think of, Hey, this just this just lets
Speaker 1: me read books. Um. The Kindle I know is I
Speaker 1: think three right now, and that's all unless you use
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfree's coupon, in which case it's it's three oh nine.
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfree uh called the Kindle her favorite gadget recently,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that gave a nice boost to Kindle sales. Um.
Speaker 1: The Sony one I think is a I believe the
Speaker 1: new one is going to be four hundred. Well, um,
Speaker 1: but that's you. You bring up an interesting point because
Speaker 1: neither of these is just an e book anymore because
Speaker 1: they both um, they both handle a variety of files. Um,
Speaker 1: and both of them play music, right. Um you can
Speaker 1: listen to uh MP three's on on either one of them,
Speaker 1: so you can listen to an audible book on your
Speaker 1: book reading device. UM. And uh you know, the Kindle
Speaker 1: can download our s feeds and uh you can also
Speaker 1: get newspapers and things on their teams. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's uh, these are much more sophisticated than those
Speaker 1: those very early e book readers. UM. And talking about price,
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that people who are particularly
Speaker 1: critical of the e books I think UM really point
Speaker 1: out is you know, hey, I got to spend three
Speaker 1: or four h dollars for this machine, and on top
Speaker 1: of that, I'm paying full price for the books because
Speaker 1: in the bookstores, essentially you're not really getting a discount
Speaker 1: at least not much of a discount on on electronic
Speaker 1: books themselves. So UM, you know that's something that you
Speaker 1: have to to weigh. Now there are conveniences too. You
Speaker 1: can take a whole library full of stuff in your
Speaker 1: backpack and it doesn't weigh anymore than the electronic reader. Um,
Speaker 1: which is nice if you're going on a trip or UM.
Speaker 1: You know, they've been talking for a long time about
Speaker 1: students who could download textbooks. You could have a stack
Speaker 1: of xbooks and not have to worry about it. Are
Speaker 1: people who use a lot of literature, like UM, physicians
Speaker 1: or lawyers who are going to have to carry lots
Speaker 1: and lots of documents and lots of books for reference.
Speaker 1: This is a great thing for them. Um. Then again,
Speaker 1: those materials, I'm not sure how much of that is
Speaker 1: available because it seems like the majority of this stuff
Speaker 1: I've seen is entertainment. Right. Yeah. The the kindle can hold,
Speaker 1: according to Amazon, up to two hundred titles, so when
Speaker 1: you think about that you can carry it's the same
Speaker 1: as being able to carry two hundred books wherever you go.
Speaker 1: And there's a capacity for smart cards, so you can
Speaker 1: hold even more than that. Really and um, and not
Speaker 1: only that, but you can delete the stuff that's on
Speaker 1: your kindle and it actually still exists on a on
Speaker 1: a online cloud. Computing kind of UM account, so you
Speaker 1: can always download it again for no additional charge because
Speaker 1: you've already purchased the book. So yeah, you've got this
Speaker 1: potentially unlimited library that you can carry around with you
Speaker 1: because since again since it's wireless, you could always download
Speaker 1: a book that you already purchased and to lead another
Speaker 1: one whatever you want to do. UM. So the convenience
Speaker 1: factor definitely is there. The question about the price is
Speaker 1: a big one, the price of the individual books UM.
Speaker 1: From a publisher standpoint, uh, I'm sure it has to
Speaker 1: be a little frightening because theoretically an author could bypass
Speaker 1: a publisher completely and self published and allow, you know,
Speaker 1: sell these electronic books on his or her own website. Now,
Speaker 1: the author would have to pay for hosting services and
Speaker 1: probably for bandwidth as well as people downloaded the book.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the author would get to
Speaker 1: keep pretty much all the profit. I mean right now,
Speaker 1: I can tell you from uh, from my own experience.
Speaker 1: I'm the son of authors, both of my parents that
Speaker 1: are published authors and uh son of two authors actually,
Speaker 1: but uh, the others do not get to keep a
Speaker 1: percent of the profits from their books. Actually, the percentage
Speaker 1: is very small in comparison to them to what the
Speaker 1: public publisher gets, and they don't get to keep the
Speaker 1: copyrights either. And because they've publisher the now you can't
Speaker 1: sit there and call the publishers necessarily like big, mean,
Speaker 1: greedy people because they're they're very real costs associated with publishing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking about using hard uh materials to
Speaker 1: create books. So you're talking about paper, and you're talking
Speaker 1: about ink, and you're talking about a the actual printers, distribution, marketing, marketing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of these things are just money, right and UH,
Speaker 1: now e books takes a lot of that and eliminates it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about production costs as much.
Speaker 1: You have to worry about hosting, and you have to
Speaker 1: worry about bandwidth. Uh, marketing can be a lot more
Speaker 1: simple when you're using just electronic versions of marketing. You know,
Speaker 1: social networks things like email, Twitter or newsletters, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, it has the potential to really kick
Speaker 1: publishing in the pants, which I think is another reason
Speaker 1: why we see the e book phenomenon taking longer than
Speaker 1: you would imagine it would take. Because I don't know
Speaker 1: that a lot of publishers are really eager to jump
Speaker 1: on that train. Just yet, there's still a little wary
Speaker 1: of where this is going to go. Sure, and for
Speaker 1: good reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are plenty of good
Speaker 1: reasons from a business perspective to be a little nervous now, granted,
Speaker 1: if they can find a way to capitalize on that,
Speaker 1: to monetize it. Um. First of all, I don't think
Speaker 1: that physical books are ever going to go away. Uh.
Speaker 1: They just have to make sure that they are able
Speaker 1: to balance it out just right so that they produce
Speaker 1: enough physical books to meet that demand without overproducing and
Speaker 1: then operating at a loss. And also a way to
Speaker 1: monetize the electronic books so that it makes sense from
Speaker 1: a financial standpoint to offer both. Um. If they can
Speaker 1: find that, then you know they've hit the holy grail.
Speaker 1: Which is what's interesting is this doesn't apply just to
Speaker 1: to publishing. You could say that online distribution, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the future of delivering entertainment and information.
Speaker 1: It already is to a large extent here. But you're
Speaker 1: you're not just going to see this in the journalism
Speaker 1: and publishing. You're going to see it in television because
Speaker 1: and it's already happening in television and music, movies. All
Speaker 1: these things are are looking at online distribution as the
Speaker 1: next big thing, and it's either the next big scary
Speaker 1: thing or the next big this is awesome. We're all
Speaker 1: really filthy rich thing. I'm for the last one. I
Speaker 1: would uh yeah, I would not object to being filthy
Speaker 1: rich right now, you're just filthy. Yeah. I hear that.
Speaker 1: I hear that wealth is a burden, but it's one
Speaker 1: I'm willing to bear. All right, then, well, I guess
Speaker 1: we've pretty much covered this topic from from start to finish.
Speaker 1: I think cover to cover, cover to cover, nice good one.
Speaker 1: I think it's time to turn the page. That you
Speaker 1: were ahead, You were ahead, and now you're behind again.
Speaker 1: But if you want to learn more about e books,
Speaker 1: you can read lots of articles such as how the
Speaker 1: Amazon Kindle works. That's gonna be lie at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and we'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: But more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
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