B&N Nook Tablet vs. Amazon Kindle Fire 138
DeviceGuru writes with this excerpt: "Barnes & Noble is expected to announce a 7-inch color tablet on November 7th, positioning it head-to-head with Amazon's recently announced Kindle Fire. B&N's Nook Tablet is rumored to have a slightly faster processor, twice the RAM and flash, and a $50 price premium relative to Amazon's tablet, among other differences. The quick-reference table in this article compares key features and specs of the two 7-inch Android tablets, based on a combination of leaked data published at Engadget.com plus some additional data from B&N's existing Nook Color specs, which seems to have much in common with this new, higher-end Nook model."
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:1)
Abandoning e-ink by introducing new e-ink Kindle Touches? Really?
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:3)
I I'm sort of wondering if Amazon is abandoning what was so good about the platform, namely electronic ink.
Five E-Ink Kindles vs one video-capable tablet doesn't quite add up to abandonment.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:4, Informative)
if they had stopped selling and coming up with new models of them, then sure, you would have a point.
but there's plenty of stuff the eink displays suck for.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:3)
Perhaps what you are hoping for just isn't possible with eink?
I'm sure if amazon could use eink for colour and *responsive* web browsing they would have done so. The fact that they have moved to LCD in order to cater to the people who do want exactly what you say you want should tell you something about the capabilities of the different screen techs and whether they see eink as ever doing well for web browsing and colour or interactive media.
Also, the addition of a touch screen to the normal kindle definitely is not a small step- it's a huge change in the way you interact with the device. If it weren't for the fire everyone would be more interested in it. If the fire does well I imagine they'll move all their eink readers to android too (hence the new touchscreen) so there's no point them developing lots of apps for an older kindle platform at this point. The kindle as a separate software platform from android will probably die off at some point, so really the fire is closer to future kindles than the kindle.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
I highly doubt the things the gp was talking about couldn't be done an eInk display. I'd be especially interested in better PDF support. I don't know why I have to pull out a device that eats batteries if I want to read PDFs on an electronic device.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:1)
I'm not sure there can be anything done to improve the "support" of PDF files by the Kindle. I think we need better tools for mungling the PDF file and returning a good combination of plain text and images.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Yeah, that would be best. I had a bit of luck using a webapp on xerox's website for converting a pdf file. Calibre's converter is too confusing, even with all of the hints that popup when you hover over an option.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
PDFs definitely could (and should) be done.
However as to everything else, colour is neither satisfactory nor cheap on eink just now, web browsing which works well is impossible due to refresh rates, video is similarly impossible, and stuff like a calendar etc doesn't really make commercial sense for Amazon when they are also pushing android apps via their store. Given the resources put into their android store I'd expect to see them move entirely to that at some point soon. So you may see android devices with an eink screen which can view PDFs etc, but at that point the limitations will become even more painfully apparent; stuff which requires scrolling is not going to work well if the refresh rate is still slow.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Web browsers that display static stuff well is viable and quite easy to imagine on e-ink. Any refresh rate that is enough for reading a book is also enough for reading an article on the web. Yet, it would need some developper time for customizing the browser (hight upfront costs, for a feature that is demanded from several people, no, big corportations aren't fit to that market).
Calculator, calendar and a few other tools are quite viable, and just common sense. I can't really understand why no e-reader comes with those.
Now, for color and video you are right. Those aren't fit for e-paper, at least for now.
What would be a killer feature of the newer devices is a highter refresh rate on non-epub files. Now that we have better bateries there is little reason not to put a faster processor on them and deal well with every kind of file. But I really don't expect that feature to come from Amazon.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity I went looking around and may have found out why you're not getting color e-Ink. I found two devices offering color e-ink displays and they cost $400-$500.
You may want color e-Ink, but are you willing to pay 3x the current Kindle price to get it?
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
I suggest you try actually using a web browser on a eInk device - any will do, but you can try with Kindle on display in the store. It may be okay in theory, but in practice, it's painful for anything other than quickly looking things up when you have no other web-enabled device - as a last resort.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
The "better PDF support" line has been mentioned a bunch, but I can't tell what it means.
I've had a Kindle since v2, and have the graphite one with the keyboard now. I don't read many PDF's, but on the rare occasion I need to, it seems to do the job. I could see a larger screen helping. Other than that, what needs to be better about it?
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
"I highly doubt the things the gp was talking about couldn't be done an eInk display."
Can they be done at the same price point?
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:1)
The Kindle e-ink devices already have some apps. The technical underpinnings are there to support many more very helpful and useful apps, and I for one would love to see that happen. Some examples of apps that already exist:
IMO, the other replies to this are full of crap. Not only are these apps possible and useful, but they already exist.
One I would personally like to find ("find", because it'd surprise me if it didn't exist already) is a better music player. The one that's built in basically has no GUI. I'd love for one to be integrated so it could popup a mini gui on the top of the page with a menu press. I'd also love to see micro sd card support in one of the e-ink models, and more file format support (I don't care much about PDF myself, but adding support for non-drm'd epub would save me a lot of calibre time).
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
The touch wasn't probably a huge step for Amazon as Sony already has had it on older models. Sony even treaded the water with a touch overlay on top of the eInk screen, which everyone hated, which meant that Amazon didn't have to fumble with it.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:3)
Amazon doesn't create the eInk displays, so if a color eInk display isn't available, how will they make a color eInk Kindle? The Fire is just another device, likely for Amazon to sell and sell subscriptions to streaming/downloadable media, in addition to ebooks.
And touch isn't a gimmick. Double tapping a word to get the definition or selecting a paragraph for highlighting beats the pants off of doing the same with a d-pad.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Kindle is a "content consumption device" that targets a very narrow niche - books - but does it extremely well. It's a good thing for what it does, and many people are happy with it, but a lot more people want something that can handle more than books.
Kindle Fire is a "content consumption device" that targets music, video and online shopping in addition to books, and directed at those people for whom Kindle is not enough. It makes sense for Amazon to go ahead with this, now that they have confirmed that the business model of making a device as cheap as possible, and making money off purchases made with that device, is viable for them.
Its the silk (Score:3)
The amazon tablet, as opposed to the amazon readers, is just another tablet. What is special about it and why it will win is Silk backed by the Amazon cloud. Now you have awesome power in a cheap tablet. B&N is trying to compete on specs at the low end and there's almost no amount of minot spec improvement that will rival the added power of the cloud. Amazons silk web pages will almost always open faster. Amazon can add a Siri like personal assistant. B&N can't add those things. some third party might do it for them but it won't be as integrated.
Re:Its the silk (Score:2)
> The amazon tablet, as opposed to the amazon readers, is just another tablet.
Nope, the Amazon product is, like all Kindles, totally tied to Amazon. No memory slot because you are supposed to keep everything in Amazon't cloud. No standard Android because you are supposed to depend on Amazon for everything. In other words it is a total loss leader to drive sales of other Amazon services.
Compare to the Kobo for $199 and the B&N for $249 that are actual Android tablets with the things you would expect in one. The amazing thing is Goggle wouldn't allow either of them access to the Market or Android 3.x.
It really is time for someone to ask Google some hard questions as to just what the hell sort of game they are playing. They SAY they only wanted to keep cheap crap out by imposing a minimum standard, to keep 3.x off of phones where it wouldn't work well, etc. But the Kobo is apparently good hardware and B&N certainly isn't a fly by night Chinese vendor, right? But neither could get Android 3.x and being tablets 2.3 seems to be an automatic exclusion from the Marketplace. If the Kobo & B&N had the 3.x and the Marketplace (and thus a high probability of quickly getting 4.0) the fight with Amazon would be over before it began.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:3)
Amazon is hardly abandoning e-ink, because you can still buy a Kindle with e-ink -- at lower prices than ever if you can accept their screensaver advertisement scheme.
As far as whether LCD or e-ink is better, I happen to have both a Kindle and a rooted Nook Color with the Kindle Reader software installed. So I always have a choice when I want to read a Kindle book of reading it on e-ink or LCD. There are some situations where e-ink wins hands down (reading in bright ambient light), others were LCD wins (photos; diagrams of almost any kind; reading in darkened rooms or in bed), and others where it is the touchscreen that makes the difference (highlighting text and entering notes).
So given a free choice of reading a book on a e-ink Kindle or an LCD tablet, most of the time I choose the LCD. With a larger, higher resolution touchscreen e-ink display, it might be about even. There's no question that e-ink in bright ambient light is the best for reading text, but I find the UI on the second generation Kindle irritating even after owning it for a couple of years. The semantics of "back" seems to be a bugbear in many UI designs; touchscreen reader UIs tend to use screen gestures to flip pages and buttons to back out of books. I find this works well, so the Kindle Touch probably brings the Kindle up to parity with reading a Kindle book on an Android tablet in the UI department.
Reading a Kindle book on my wife's iPad is even better, because the iPad's rendering is better -- at least if you read books with lots of math in them like I do. The Kindle mangles equations and makes tables a pain in the neck to read. The iPad reader also allows you to zoom in to photos, which as yet neither the nook reader nor the Amazon reader software for Android allow. Sometimes I keep an iPod touch handy when reading on the Nook or Kindle in case the formatting is messed up or I need to get a good look at a photograph or diagram.
As much as I hate to say this, it seems the bet choice in terms of convenience and user experience is using Amazon and Barnes and Noble's reader software on an Apple device.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Well, you're comparing apples to oranges really. eInk readers are meant for one thing: reading. They are book readers. Tablets are tough-based computers. Different technologies, and obviously the LCD will allow you to display PDFs better, allow for zooming in, etc. eInk is just not for that, and I don't know why people have a hard time keeping that in mind. As far as math equations, they'd render finr on eInk if they were published in ePub for eInk devices, but they aren't. Blame the publishers, not the device.
Also, for reading in bed, there are many covers out that have LED lights. You can buy a clipon LED light for $7. And they work great. They illuminate the text perfectly and evenly. Really, it comes down to one's preference and what type of reading they do. If I stare at an LCD all day, I'll likely choose an eInk display for a novel. If I want to read a service manual for my car, I'll use an LDC based device, even a laptop, over eInk (even though reading that manual would be fine on my Sony PRS-650, if I knew which pages I wanted for reference, but simply browsing and flipping from page to page is more arduous.)
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Page turn speed is subjective; I see a few people complaining about it, but, in truth, it's much faster on modern "pearl" eInk displays than it used to be 2-3 years ago, and most seem to be perfectly content with it. I've read several dozen books from my Kindle 3 by now, and it never annoyed me.
Resolution-wise, though, eInk does not have any advantages, even today. Kindle has a 6" 600x800 screen - there are many LCD devices that can beat that already.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
"Also, for reading in bed, there are many covers out that have LED lights. You can buy a clipon LED light for $7. And they work great. They illuminate the text perfectly and evenly."
So in order for my $200 device to work correctly I need to clip a cheap-ass light to it? Wonderful.
As to "Apples" to oranges, they both have screens, the both have Kindle apps, they both allow reading ebooks. You may think they're different, but in many cases they can do the same thing. The only really advantage an e-ink Kindle has is reading in direct sunlight, battery life, and cost.
And with several improvements coming in regard to dual-mode LCD displays and improved power management, the e-ink advantage is fading quickly.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Might want to give the touch-screen e-ink nook a try, then. The touch screen accepts swipe gestures, touching sides or middle, and there are two buttons on the side for flipping pages. You don't leave the book itself without touching the n button which is located in a place that you are not likely to hit accidentally across a number of different ways of holding the device. Also, the buttons on the sides can be flipped as to whether the top advances or the bottom advances, to allow the most comfortable holding position.
It actually has fewer features than the first gen nook, but the features it has are pretty well thought out. Also, it accepts ePub natively, which Amazon has yet to allow without wonky conversions for some reason...
And using the software on an iPad, B&N syncs your last page across the devices for purchased books.
\end{shill}
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
Amazon is offering a wide array of products to meet the needs of different market segments, which is a perfectly normal thing for companies to do.
Want a cheap e-reader? The entry level model is just $80.
Want easier text entry? Choose between the touchscreen version or the keyboard, both at $100.
Want to access the internet away from WiFi? Pay $40 extra for Whispersync.
Want a big screen for reading PDFs without pan & zoom, and have money to burn? Get the DX for $380.
Want to watch videos and play games and browse the web? Get the Fire at $200.
Here's your car analogy of the day: Chevy offers the electric Volt now, but that doesn't mean that they're going to pull all their gas-engine cars from the market.
Re:Amazon abandoning what was good about their pla (Score:2)
I do about three quarters of my reading on Kindle and a quarter on a Palm TX - yeah, I'm in need of an upgrade but it's an ideal adjunct to my cross trainer. And don't tell me backlit screens are bad for your eyes - it's like claiming music is bad for your ears when you have the volume turned up to eleven. Read gray text off a dark background with brightness at minimum and you have a display with similar contrast to e-ink that you can read in bed with the lights out. I swear so many people who claim to hate reading off a backlit screen have used some pretty program that attempts to emulate a bright white page and slapped it across their face like Geordi's visor.
Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the fuck are e-books so expensive? Many of them are just slightly less than the actual book! Why the hell am I going to spend almost as much money buying the e-book, but not actually get anything physical out of the deal?
It was one thing when it came to buying digital music. You could spend $1 to get the song that you wanted, rather than paying $25 to get a CD with the song that you wanted. That's a big enough price difference to make it worthwhile. But with e-books, it's just stupid to spend $15 on a e-book, while the actual book is only $17.
There's no excuse for e-book prices to be that high. While authors and editors do deserve to get paid, e-books reduce the manufacturing and distribution costs to almost nothing. I just don't buy that the $2 more spent on a real book will cover the costs of harvesting of the trees used to make the paper, the manufacturing of the paper itself, the shipping of the massive paper rolls to the publisher, the cost and setup of the publishing equipment, the ink used to print the book, the typesetting, the creation of the cover art, the printing of the cover (especially for hardcover books), the cutting of the paper, the binding of the book, the packing of the finished books, the shipping to the publisher's and/or distributor's warehouses, the storage costs at these warehouses, the shipping to the individual bookstores, and the salaries of the many people involved with all of this.
I will not buy an e-book as long as it's clear that I'm getting blatantly ripped off.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
You also dont get the option to loan your book to friends. That crap system they call loaning is nothing of the sort. So we are expected to pay more for less.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:3)
You also dont get the option to loan your book to friends. That crap system they call loaning is nothing of the sort. So we are expected to pay more for less. ... ignobleepub.py ...
cough.. ignoblekeygen.py
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Why the fuck are e-books so expensive? Many of them are just slightly less than the actual book! Why the hell am I going to spend almost as much money buying the e-book, but not actually get anything physical out of the deal?
This is my thoughts on the matter, as well. I just can't see the justification for what most of the big publishers price their eBooks at.
It seems like they are saving a metric shit-ton of production costs but not passing any of those savings along to the consumer whatsoever. Plus, with eBooks, there's no paperback you can wait for...
Yeah, I think I'll wait until I'm being charged a price for a product more in line with the actual cost of producing and distributing it...
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Origination costs (including cover art, typesetting etc) are by far the highest costs when producing paper books. Then there are publicity & promotions etc. None of those costs go away when publishing online. Publishers don't typically make a lot of money from books (paper or not) unless they happen to publish someone like Dan Brown,and their costs for digital publishing are not significantly lower, but they are obviously slightly lower. Probably the biggest bonus is not having to deal with storage, shipping and warehousing.
It's interesting that you mention hardback books as a fair markup as typically the extra cost to produce those is negligible - they are simple a way of making money from early buyers who want the book badly. The markup on them is nowhere near proportional to the costs of production.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:3)
That's not true. The cover art costs precisely the same amount of money whether dead tree edition or digital edition, assuming you want people to actually want to open your book. You really need a good cover, good title and hopefully name recognition if you want people to read your book without a recommendation.
Typesetting is cheaper on ebooks, but it costs quite a bit more than you'd expect to hire somebody to make sure that the ebook functions properly. Making sure that tables function and that the images look right isn't exactly cheap. I'm sure we'll get to the point where that's not needed in the near future, but we're not there yet.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Read the first two sentences again; I didn't say paper covers cost more to design, I said the origination costs were the largest part of making a book (digital or paper), NOT the printing costs, unless you are selling hundreds of thousands. I'm sure we'll never get to the point where it isn't necessary to design a book properly for print or the web.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
You should reread both posts, creating the initial ebooks isn't necessarily any cheaper than creating the first hard copy.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:3)
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Even more puzzling is that B&N tries to charge $1 for books in the public domain. There is no content to pay for, the author has been long dead.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
The content might be in the public domain, but that doesn't mean that B&N's cost of providing those books is zero. There's the money for attorneys in many cases to identify works that are legitimately public domain, and then there's the money that it costs to run the book store and don't forget about bandwidth.
If you want those books for free, just do like I do and side load them off of Project Gutenberg or Google.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
It's probably takes all of a minuet or 2 check the copyright status. Most e-books are a couple hundred KB, so the bandwidth the transfer the book is less than a penny.
Yes, I do get most of my books from project gutenberg, and manage things with calibre. I was mainly pointing out that they are making pure profit, on something that amazon offers for free.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
There are plenty of public domain books that are available on Nook for free. But I usually find myself plenty willing to pay a measly dollar for a readable, corrected copy of a book than a bad OCR job that someone slapped up there.
I've never seen a public domain book in the Nook store with a cost attached that was published by B&N, so I'm not sure why you're blaming B&N. It's the publisher who put it in the store who decides the price, or lack thereof.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
But B&N offers you the option of getting them from PG, whereas amazon does not natively support ePub. If amazon didn't offer them for free, you couldn't get them for free.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
PG offers it's books in the MOBI (kindle) format.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
They went to the effort of scanning it, or converting it, or typing it, or paying the company that did the work, or something to get it into a format that can be displayed on their reader. They deserve a bit of profit for that - a buck might be high, but would a quarter be okay? And if you don't like their version, just get a text file from Gutenberg for free.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
It's probably not B&N setting that price, it's probably some person who is 'publishing' the public domain text, and slapped a $1 price on it. A nook version of Homer's Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler, entirely public domain, is listed for $1, and is published by "Buki Editions". The Amazon kindle store is full of low-quality spam public domain works, 'published' by people this way.
Some public domain books *published* as e-books by B&N, *are* priced at $0. Other B&N-published PD ebooks, like Sun-Tzu, are a few bucks, but those apparently have new, non-public domain material such as translation or commentary, so a non-zero price is fair.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:4, Interesting)
The same reason why music companies wanted $2 a single song download.
They don't want digital disbrution cutting into their existing models so they are pricing them out of the park.
unfortunately there is no apple for ebooks who will stand up and say this is the price suck it up.
Also the difference between a ebook and real book is the printing, binding, and distbution costs. Since every ebook still needs to be typesetted for the given format. (pdf, epub, etc)
Get a real Android tablet (Score:1)
There are decent tablets out there for under $200 - such as the Vizio 8" ($189 at Costco). Or the Lenovo Ideapad A1 ($199 on Amazon, and includes GPS, cameras, and many other features).
With Black Friday coming up, there will probably be even better deals.
With a tablet, you can read any format. Plus use it for games, etc.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:3)
Why the fuck are e-books so expensive? Many of them are just slightly less than the actual book! Why the hell am I going to spend almost as much money buying the e-book, but not actually get anything physical out of the deal?
Agreed - I own a Kindle (and a Nook), but buy 80% of my books as used paper copies because they are cheaper. Often I can even find a *new* book cheaper than the eBook (including shipping costs).
I'd much rather read an eBook, I find the Kindle to be very convenient (especially when traveling) and I don't end up with a big pile of books that I have to take somewhere to donate after reading. But I'm not going to pay a 20% - 100% price premium to read something that cost practically nothing to deliver to me that I'm reading on a device that I had to purchase.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:1)
One solution I really hope to see come about (which I first saw with O'Reilly books that included a cdrom's with their books) is selling a combo of paperback + ebook, with zero or very very small extra price to get the ebook. That'd still let me loan out the paperback, or resell it, or read it in the tub, or whatever other benefit paper books have, and I'd still get the digital version which I like reading much much more and HAS SEARCH (which is indispensable in tech docs).
There are lots of parties to blame here too. Lot's of people point to the distributor (ex. Amazon), and many others point to the publisher. While both of those are valid, Apple should also get a lot of the blame. Their app store rules regarding pricing and no in-app purchases are hurting the entire industry (ex. AFAICT, you're not allowed to sell your book on Amazon for less than you sell it on the Apple App Store even though the Apple App Store takes a larger share of the profits, so you either have to raise your prices everywhere, or take a bigger loss on your App Store sales, or avoid the App Store altogether). Regardless of what red tape is in place, ebooks definitely need to find a way to come down in price.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
ex. AFAICT, you're not allowed to sell your book on Amazon for less than you sell it on the Apple App Store even though the Apple App Store takes a larger share of the profits, so you either have to raise your prices everywhere, or take a bigger loss on your App Store sales, or avoid the App Store altogether
Amazon was among several other companies that were temporarily excluded from this deal. Once the exclusion expired, they have simply removed link to the store [slashdot.org] from iOS version of the app. More recently, Amazon has made Kindle cloud reader [guardian.co.uk], which comes (among other options) as an iOS-aware HTML5 app, and thus skirts all iOS App Store restrictions. And yes, it can download books to be read offline.
Use the Library (Score:2)
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
"Considering 70% of the cost of a real book is wrapped up in printing and distribution..."
How about considering numbers other than those pulled out of your *** in order to make your point? Physical costs are about 11% of the MSRP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss [nytimes.com]
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
On a typical hardcover, the publisher sets a suggested retail price. Let’s say it is $26. The bookseller will generally pay the publisher $13. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 to print, store and ship the book, including unsold copies returned to the publisher by booksellers.
Book prices haven't really been fluctuating much, and the costs of printing, if anything, have temporarily increased. In the last 20 years, the industry has been steadily shrinking, losing its long held post as the largest in the world. In the last 8 years, the industry has enjoyed or suffered (depending who you ask) a massive reduction in competition. While at the same time technology has been increasing efficiency and producing savings — in reducing workforce pre/post-press — it is still the press itself that is the only real profitable asset, one which has seen an increase in cost to produce while at the same time there's not as much call for them (I'm watching ebay for when old Heidelbergs get really cheap... :p ); So the press is still the thing that makes the money, and while tech has been at work here as well, the mechanism for how it makes money is still basically the same, i.e. reproduction. And while logistics makes distribution more efficient as well, the cost of fuel has increased somewhat (heh). The publishers are lying about the printing costs and their motivation for doing this is clear: keeping the prices of ebooks as close as possible to the prices of physical books makes ebooks insanely profitable. Remember last year, when ebooks were 6% of the total number of sales of books [slashdot.org], yet represented about half the profits for any book sold? [citation needed]
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Yes, printing prices have increased, but printing and distribution is still not 70% of the cost of a real book. (Your original statement.) Heck, the publisher wholesales the book to the retailer for half the MSRP. If the retailer gets 50%, then printing and distribution, by simple mathematics, can NOT be 70% of the price of a book. (50%+70%=120%, with no profit and no royalties.)
"Even if ebooks were priced 50% of the retail cost of physical books publishers stand to make much more profits with ebooks."
As pointed out, most ebooks ARE basically 50% of the price of the hardback's MSRP. You seem to be saying that publishers need to mark down the cost of a book to 25% of the MSRP, in order for the price to be half of some retailer's 40% discount loss-leader price.
Start over with facts. Retailer's get 50% of the MSRP. Publisher's get 50% of the MSRP. Any discount a retailer makes comes out of his 50%. So when you see a $25 book on Amazon selling for $16, it's Amazon that's discounting the book 36%.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Printing and distribution. And if the book is printed to begin with, the ebook is done (made from the digital materials used to produce the print version). Printing encompasses design, typesetting, proofing, prepress, pressing and binding. That's a lot of activitiy and labor, but I didn't say that it alone was 70%, and I'd guess it was closer to 35-40%. The rest is distribution - packing, shipping, transportation, delivery, stocking, display - logistics. Publishers appear to be claiming they are spending money producing an eBook, when that product is a side-effect in the ordinary process of producing the physical book. Many mid-sized publishers have recognized this, and for at least a few years have been offerring digital versions for free with purchase of the print version.
Compare eBooks to debit cards. Banks used to offer incentives to merchants and even pay them to accept debit card purchases from their customers. Once debit cards have become accepted, banks are now attempting, and having some success, at charging for the same thing they were paying for not too long ago. eBooks are following a similar trend. eBooks used to be, technically, a waste product of printed books. If a publisher is printing real books, any talk of the costs of eBooks, other than bandwidth (which is not zero but still negligable compared to the actual printing/distribution), is a fairy tale. eBooks are literally free to *whomever pays for a book to be printed* - who can even then turn around and charge the author, if they wanted, for the eBook. Most publishers —"publishing" is starting to lose meaning, so publishers except for those rare publishers that do not produce physical books — are selling a story about all the hardship and cost of an eBook when it in reality doesn't exist. The eBook is a digital shadow of a printed book... they all have it. Publishers are trying to say there are real costs to a phenomenon that occurs independently of the market for eBooks... even if no one ever wanted an eBook publishers would still be forced to make them.
Now, I'm not saying the value of an eBook is nothing... that it indeed took an author, editor, proofreader, typesetting and design... the labor that went into producing the eBook is surely real. What I'm telling you is it is already paid for if they printed anything... even if it never made it to the shelves... and the story they're selling you is either that they had to do it twice or it cost them twice as much. The costs they're trying to introduce would be like banks charging you for, say, transfering $200 from your bank account in NY to your bank in LA, the cost of physically moving a $1 bill 200 times from NY to LA via armoured security, even though it actually takes a clerk a few keystrokes and not an expensive, obscenely fuel-inefficient truck and a million miles of driving by a well-trained and compensated security team.
Cost is secondary to one's freedoms with the work. (Score:2)
It was one thing when it came to buying digital music. You could spend $1 to get the song that you wanted, rather than paying $25 to get a CD with the song that you wanted. That's a big enough price difference to make it worthwhile. But with e-books, it's just stupid to spend $15 on a e-book, while the actual book is only $17.
But you're merely haggling over price, as the old joke goes. I don't think digital handcuffs become acceptable at any price because I don't want to be taken advantage of. The physical book confers rights of ownership DRM is designed to take away regardless of how little one pays for the DRM-riddled alternative. As George Hoteling saw first hand years ago, one might not have right of first sale anymore [hotelling.net]. Even ostensible advantages one might imagine come nearly free in digital format aren't necessarily there like they should be as Wil Wheaton saw when he updated his iPod software with Apple software and lost all of his tracks [digitalcitizen.info] only to learn Apple would restore them in what Wheaton called a "one-time only do-over to replace all of your purchased music, free of charge". Magnatune.com [magnatune.com], on the other hand, lets you restore purchased tracks as many time as you want, share tracks with others, and Magnatune always sold its wares DRM-free. Inexpensive digital media doesn't become more attractive with restrictions management.
Re:Cost is secondary to one's freedoms with the wo (Score:2)
So it's Apple's fault that Wheaton didn't back up his music? WTF?
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
Publishers already mark down the ebook price to half the price of the hardback. It's not their fault that some retailers discount the hardback retail price 30%-40%, or even 50%-60% as loss leaders.
And the physical cost of a typical hardback is about $3. Everything else is base costs, marketing, author royalties, publisher profits, and retailer profits. (The store that sells it likes to make money too, you know.)
All of the other costs you mention would be terrible if they were born by the cost of a single book. But they're printed in batches of thousands at a time, and shipped across the ocean in a single container along with thousands of other containers who are also subsidizing the costs involved. Same for the other trucks, warehouses, and so on. The additional costs, applied to a single book, MIGHT be a buck.
IOW, you're not being blatantly ripped off.
Re:Why the fuck are the e-books so expensive? (Score:2)
The ebooks are $35. The ebook set is marked down to $29. (not great) The physical books are also $35, but Amazon, the retailer, NOT the publisher, is choosing to mark them down to $21.
Now, what reason might Amazon -- who sells ebook hardware and has an ebook platform -- have for discounting the price of one below the price of the other?
Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bah! (Score:1)
When a slashdotter thinks he is being funny but is only displaying his ignorance, then he is funniest of all.
I collect epub's, mobi's, azw's, lit's, pdf's, and even cbr's and read them all on my Nook.
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
What's the joke supposed to be then? The Kindle supports other formats. So does the iPad. What is this supposed to be a reference to?
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Care to explain the whoosh in this case? The parent recognized the grandparent's humor, and responded that the Nook doesn't in fact lock you into B&N's own format.
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
And the OP said he didn't want a Nook because it didn't lock you into B&N.
Re:Bah! (Score:3)
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
But why go for a lock in that only applies to books? Amazon will also sell you movies that will only play on the fire, and your entire cloud drive full of music.
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Watching movies while on fire? That doesn't strike me as being particularly safe. I suppose I have to waive my right to sue if I buy one.
How to write (Score:1)
"and a $50 price premium relative to Amazon’s tablet"
Human beings would say "and is $50 more expensive than Amazon's tablet". You don't have to write in an unnatural way to justify your position as a journalist.
Viewsonic G Tablet (Score:2)
You can get a Viewsonic g tablet for about the same price and it has more ports:
http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/viewsonic-g-tablet/4507-3126_7-34431221.html?tag=mncol;subnav
Re:Viewsonic G Tablet (Score:2)
Unfortunately, Viewsonic doesn't make anything any more, so it's all just cheap rebranded crap, with the only change being their logo. Most of it doesn't even have the cute embossed logo, let alone any quality worth mentioning.
Re:Viewsonic G Tablet (Score:2)
I'm curious what type of display this tablet is using. If it's TN then no way, if it's IPS than it might be interesting.
Re:Viewsonic G Tablet (Score:2)
Nope. I had one of those, and while the hardware was somewhat interesting about a year ago (one of the earliest Tegra 2 devices) the TN panel basically made it suck. Then to discover that the early Tegra 2 platforms had flawed silicon that impacted the behavior of a critical register, I gave up on hacking the thing and took it back to the store.
Now I have a Nook Color, whose better screen and smaller form factor have made it a much more interesting hack target. I'm very interested in the Nook Tablet if it's as readily accessible as the Nook Color was.
Re:Viewsonic G Tablet (Score:2)
1.5lb, holy heffer batman.
Kobo Vox (Score:2)
Don't forget the Kobo Vox [kobobooks.com] - 7" colour eReader w/ web browser and Android apps for $199. The big advantage of Kobo is that you can run their software on the Kobo, iPad/iPhone, Android, BB, Palm or computer. Each title is fully transportable so you don't need to worry about device lock-in.
Nook Color running CyanogenMod? (Score:2)
I wonder what the difference between the "new" one and my existing Nook Color running CyanogenMod?
Re:Nook Color running CyanogenMod? (Score:3)
I was wondering why TFS was implying that B&N was introducing a competitor to Amazon Fire, when Amazon Fire was introduced as a competitor to B&N Nook Color. This is just a case of B&N releasing a new product revision to replace their previous model.
It does look like you get a fair amount for that extra $50. If this leak is to be believed, you get a 1.2ghz dual core processor rather than a 1ghz dual core processor. 1 gig of ram versus 512mb of RAM and 16gb of built in storage versus 8gb. Not to mention slightly more pixels on screen.
The only two things that Amazon Fire appears to win on are having a stereo head jack and price.
I would be really tempted to get a B&N Nook Color if these turn out to be correct. Especially if B&N remains so neutral towards jailbreaking their products.
Re:Nook Color running CyanogenMod? (Score:2)
About the only thing it'll win on are some aspects of battery life and the price, I'd be surprised if the Nook Tablet didn't have a stereo audio jack considering even the Nook Color has one.
Re:Nook Color running CyanogenMod? (Score:2)
The new Color Nook is less worth it (Score:2)
A few years back, an Android tablet for $249 was a BFD.
Today, you can get a real Android tablet, with GPS, and cameras, etc., for under $200.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Today, it's silly to fuss with rooting/hacking an ebook reader to get a sub-standard Android tablet. Just buy an Android tablet, it's better, and cheaper.
Premature (Score:2)
Too expensive - get a real Android tablet (Score:2)
Why even mess around with something that can only read one format? You can get an 8" Vizio at Costco for $189. Or you can get a Lenovo IdeaPad A1 with GPS for $199.
Here is my quick-n-dirty review of sub-$300 Android tablets.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Re:Too expensive - get a real Android tablet (Score:2)
Nook Color is a real Android Table, the only difference is that it's optimized for books. You can install apps like you would on a normal Android tablet. If you really insist upon using stock Android, you can always jailbreak the thing and install it.
I'm not familiar with the Vizio or IdeaPad, but the build quality on B&N Nooks is quite good. If you look at your list, those cheaper tablets also cut down quite a bit on the specs to do it. Now, I'm sure there are folks that need bluetooth or GPS, but your being a bit obtuse if you don't notice that the cost comes with a significant improvement in performance.
Re:Too expensive - get a real Android tablet (Score:2)
I have a B&N Color Nook. I have set up to boot from CM7 on a micro-SD chip.
In some respects, it is an okay tablet. But the performance, especially for web-browser, is not very good. I suspect the the kindle fire is much better for web browsing.
Also, the B&N Nook Color lacks many features that are common in tablets, such as GPS, or cameras.
Check the specs, and features, of those cheaper tablets, and compare then to the Nook. You will find the Nook is clearly overpriced.
The new Nooks at $300 - $350 are a total joke. Spend a little more and get an iPad.
Re:Too expensive - get a real Android tablet (Score:2)
As I said in a previous post:
A few years back, an Android tablet for $249 was a BFD.
Today, you can get a real Android tablet, with GPS, and cameras, etc., for under $200.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Today, it's silly to fuss with rooting/hacking an ebook reader to get a sub-standard Android tablet. Just buy an Android tablet, it's better, and cheaper.
Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:3)
How rootable is the Kindle Fire? It's trivially easy with the Nook Color; that's why I bought one.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:3)
Kindle Fire hasn't been released so nobody really knows, same goes for the new Nook Color. I would expect it to be a lot easier to jailbreak the Nook than the Kindle, just because the Nooks are all sold at a profit whereas the Kindle Fire is reported to be sold at a slight loss.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
One big difference: the kindle has no micro-sd slot.
I can pull the micro-sd out of my color nook, and it's right back to factory condition. You will never be able to do that with a kindle fire.
But today, for my money, I would get a real Android tablet. Then I can read any ebook format, and I don't have to fuss with rooting and/or hacking. Plus, I get way more features like GPS and cameras.
Real Android tables are cheap. For example the Lenovo Ideapad A1 is only $199 at Amazon. And you can get a Vizio 8" at Costco for $189.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
You don't have to jailbreak the current Nook. Just install CM7 to an external micro-SD. The original Nook software is untouched.
But, today, you are much better off buying a real android tablet, instead of buying an ebook reader and trying to use that a make-believe andorid tablet.
You can get a real android tablet for under $200. A real android table will have features like GPS and cameras, etc. No sense in fussing with ebook readers anymore.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
I read the link and if you look at the spec sheets those cheaper ones aren't as good. GPS is hardly a must have feature, same goes with camera. But, on top of that you're having to make due with less RAM, less processing power and less storage space.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
I did the same with a $149 refurbished Color Nook that I bought from overstock.
It's okay, but just barely. Performance is sluggish, and web browsing is horrible. I suspect the kindle fire is far superior for web browsing.
Also, the B&N Color Nook lacks features like GPS, and cameras.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
Also, the B&N Color Nook lacks features like GPS, and cameras.
Considering that the first thing do with any new android install/device is to turn off the battery-sucking data leak that is GPS, it's lack isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Re:Posting from my rooted Nook Color (Score:2)
Me too. But I would not do that today. Real Android tablets are cheaper, and better, than a converted Color Nook.
Poor Australians (Score:1)
There is no point in an Australian buying these devices, since it's impossible to download e-books in Australia from either Amaxnone or Barnes&NotNoble.
How fucked is that?
Library Compatibility (Score:2)
The deciding factor for me was that the nook was compatible with the library lending systems around here, and the kindle was not. If you pirate your ebooks that isn't an issue obviously, but if you want to check them out online from your local library it's a good thing to look into before purchasing.
Re:Library Compatibility (Score:2)
Get a real Android tablet. Then you can use ePub, or Kindle, or whatever format. Plus real tablets have features like GPS, and cameras.
Here is a list of sub-$300 Android tablets:
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3500884