3 ms·

Yawn, this old saw? Despite the fact that every person who cares about this has a blog where they complain about it, the market is indicating pretty clearly th

Yawn, this old saw? Despite the fact that every person who cares about this has a blog where they complain about it, the market is indicating pretty clearly that this is not so important that it needs to be solved today. I'm sure this will get better over time and I suppose posts from people like this will help motivate it, but don't we all get it by now? Recalibrate your expectations a little - buying an ebook is a lot like buying a physical book, but it's not the same thing. Maybe I should start blogging about how unhappy I am with the portability of physical books or how I was in an airport and wanted to rip the first chapter out of a book in the store to read on the plane but the store owner TOTALLY wouldn't let me!

marquis 15y ago
Until a publisher comes along who takes the effort to present eBooks properly, grabs a big share of the market and others follow suit. (see: iPhone for an example of how manufacturers take note of selling trends).
- slipperyp 15y ago
  What I'm saying is that I'm not convinced that this would move a significant chunk of the market. I could be totally wrong but my impression is that this is a lot more like the a gold rush with all parties scrambling to lock in business with the factors that are most compelling to potential customers and I believe those factors are things like selection, platform cost, and maybe other functionality of the device. Whether the fonts are beautiful or whether the books are rendered with more than one style of the "-" glyph is probably somewhere like priority #153. Which is NOT to say that I disagree that it matters. I just expect it's going to get better, because the platform / technology is relatively immature. And I think it matters a lot less today than people who blog about things like this (or those who downvote dissenting comments about things like this rather than trying to be persuasive) might think.
  - marquis 15y ago
    Sure, you're probably right about vendors trying get lock-in, that makes sense. I'm personally curious about what premium we'll end up paying for physical books, like how CDs are no longer the primary music delivery mechanism yet music lovers pay a premium for vinyl.

marquis 15y ago

Until a publisher comes along who takes the effort to present eBooks properly, grabs a big share of the market and others follow suit. (see: iPhone for an example of how manufacturers take note of selling trends).

slipperyp 15y ago
What I'm saying is that I'm not convinced that this would move a significant chunk of the market. I could be totally wrong but my impression is that this is a lot more like the a gold rush with all parties scrambling to lock in business with the factors that are most compelling to potential customers and I believe those factors are things like selection, platform cost, and maybe other functionality of the device. Whether the fonts are beautiful or whether the books are rendered with more than one style of the "-" glyph is probably somewhere like priority #153. Which is NOT to say that I disagree that it matters. I just expect it's going to get better, because the platform / technology is relatively immature. And I think it matters a lot less today than people who blog about things like this (or those who downvote dissenting comments about things like this rather than trying to be persuasive) might think.
- marquis 15y ago
  Sure, you're probably right about vendors trying get lock-in, that makes sense. I'm personally curious about what premium we'll end up paying for physical books, like how CDs are no longer the primary music delivery mechanism yet music lovers pay a premium for vinyl.