Six Practical Problems With eBook Readers

A major romance publisher announced that it is going eBook only, which prompted the usual range of reactions from “traditional publishing will survive” to “traditional publishing is doomed“.

It seems plain, looking at the rapid growth of eBook readers, that the eBook is the way of the future. But future or not, I remain leery of them. Which is somewhat out of character for me – I make my living with technology, I have a website and multiple blogs, and my entire music collection has been digital for years. So why remain wary of eBooks?

Thinking it over, I concluded that there are six practical problems with eBooks.

ADDITIONAL ENTRY COST – To read eBooks, you need a device upon which to read them. An obvious point, but an important one, because eBook readers cost money. The cheapest available Amazon Kindle will set you back $139 dollars, the cheapest Barnes & Noble Nook costs $149, and a Sony Reader weighs in at around $160. A printed book, on the other hand, is its own delivery system – no additional devices or purchases are required.

This is troubling because one of the advantages of (mostly) universal literacy has been the ubiquity of books – anyone, regardless of their personal finances, can go to a public library and read to their heart’s content. Will reading become the province of people who can afford an eBook reader?

SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE – The necessity of an eBook reader means that access to your library of books has a single point of failure. If your device malfunctions, is damaged, or is stolen, you lose access to your books. And if you have made no backups of your library, your entire collection is lost. For that matter, if your device is damaged or stolen, will you be able to get your eBooks back from the vendor who sold you the books? Which leads us to the next practical problem:

RESTRICTIVE DRM (DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT) – Being a writer myself, I am not in favor of piracy in any circumstances. That said, DRM on eBook files presents serious problems to the average user. Suppose that my computer crashes, or that my eBook reader breaks down? Will the DRM permit me to use my library on a new computer and a new eBook reader, or will I have to repurchase every single title? Such things have happened in online music sales.

The prospect is singularly unappealing.

THE FRAGILITY OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA – Anyone who’s ever worked with computers can tell you how very, very easy it is to lose all your data through a single mishap. Backups and redundant copies can mitigate some of this risk, but it’s much easier to permanently destroy 1000 ePub files than it is to destroy 1000 hardback books.

DEVICE-LOCKING – Amazon sells Kindle books in a single proprietary format. What happens if you change devices – or if Amazon goes out of business or stops producing the Kindle? Will you be able to convert your eBooks to a different format, or are they lost forever? This isn’t an implausible fear – think about how difficult it is to open an old WordStar or WordPerfect document on a new copy of Microsoft Word.

Will Kindle books still be readable in 15 years? In 25 years?

GOVERNMENT MEDDLING – This might enter tinfoil hat territory, but it is nonetheless a real danger. You might have heard how Amazon deleted a pirated edition of George Orwell’s “1984” from users’ Kindles. (Amazon did refund their money.) This is the equivalent of say, Barnes & Noble going to your house and setting a book on fire because it was a pirated edition.

This kind of centralized control is worrisome all by itself, but what if the government gets its hands on the ability to remotely delete content from computers and devices? Think of what the Soviet government could have done, had the technology existed at the time, if it had the power to delete an offending text from the eBook reader of every Soviet citizen. And think of what the American government might do if it gets its hands on that power. It would not be all that hard for the government to decide that opposing political opinions, or unpopular religious views, are “hate speech” and therefore must be deleted from the public’s devices.

Governments have always been keen to censor – but the power of censorship has never been easier. As mentioned above, it is a lot easier to destroy 1000 computer files than it is to track down and destroy a 1000 printed copies of the same book.

So there are strong practical problems with eBooks – problems that printed books solve quite handily. The eBook might be the future, but with any luck, printed books will stick around to mitigate some of the risks.

Of course, the eBook might have problems, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to exploit it for my own ends – my novel “Demonsouled” is out of print, but you can get it for free in handy PDF and ePub format here!

-JM