KOBO - Now More Than Ever

It's not too late to support your local independent book seller ...

Of all the reading platforms for ebooks perhaps the one with the most fortuitous name is not Kindle or Nook but Kobo. (Let's omit the unimaginative Sony Reader Store, the goofy Google Play Store, and the total misnomer iTunes.) So until someone starts selling a Koob or Obko reader, Kobo is the only one to call itself by an anagram of what it's all about: THE BOOK.

But I've become a fan of Kobo for more than just the name. It might be my best chance to defend my rights as a reader and to keep my friendly local bookseller in business.

Some history: In the beginning (1971) a fledgling ecosystem came to life. Project Gutenberg began offering free public domain texts after Michael Hart "invented" the idea of an ebook. By 1998 primitive reading devices came into existence, along with several variants of copy protected text formats, and they all began vying for supremacy, each offering their own limited selection of content, each supporting one or more of the available file types, but none of them dominant. They had dim, low resolution LCD screens, and were less fun to read on than your laptop -- which at the time weighed 6 pounds and heated up your legs like a toaster oven.

The first big breakthrough came with ePaper display technology. This replaced LCD screens with something much more clear, rendering black on off-white text at nearly the resolution of laser printers. Better still, these new screens drew battery power only when the page was turned, resulting in times between charges measured in weeks instead of hours. Now we're getting somewhere!

At this point Amazon exploded over the landscape like a nuclear bomb. Sony and other lesser known vendors came to market with ePaper more or less simultaneously, but Sony is now marginalized and the others are long gone because only Amazon recognized the key ingredient -- it's not the device, it's the ecosystem. Using its might as ubiquitous retailer and its ability to sell devices at or below cost, it was able to foist its own proprietary format on vast numbers of consumers who didn't care how much they were being locked in to a single vendor as long as they could get whatever they wanted from Amazon, instantly.

They key word there was instantly -- and wirelessly. It was Amazon's genius to "give away" cellular data plans with each Kindle so that you could buy your books at the beach instead of taking them with you, reducing the delivery time to zero. Can you spell "impulse buy?"

I confess it took time for this idea to grab me. My own first reading device (2008) was a Sony and it didn't even have Wi-Fi. (I didn't have it in my own home yet either.) No problem. Just download books to my PC, then plug in the USB cable and copy them over. A chore of few minutes followed by weeks of happy reading. It was much later before I experienced the instant gratification of hear-about-it / download it / read it.

I'm not sorry about the delay however. I instinctively shied away from the hermetically sealed world of Amazon with its books that can be read by nothing else. Faced with this juggernaut of competition, most other vendors had rushed to support the ePub standard and Adobe's digital rights management, in principle allowing you to buy content from whoever you wanted and read it any way you wanted. Most other reading devices will also view PDFs and plain text files, but if you want to read those on your Kindle you have to send them to Amazon first to be automatically converted to Amazon's proprietary format. This really rubs me the wrong way. I need permission to read a draft of my own novel? Not only that, they have the gall to charge you 15 cents per megabyte for the privilege.

So I trudged along with my Sony, taking advantage of the wealth of free digital books available from Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks, while still buying most of my new books in paper form. But that fledgling ecosystem was not standing still. Meanwhile the iPhone and iPad happened, then Android phones and tablets. Prices plunged and features exploded. My Sony with all its limitations cost over $300. Suddenly for a hundred bucks less you could get a general purpose tablet with full color display, sound, video, wifi, email, web browser, etc etc etc. And the miracle workers who first brought this to market was not Amazon but ... Barnes and Noble.

The venerable bricks-and-mortar bookstore had jumped on the bandwagon late, but in time to make a splash. The Nook was the first real budget priced Android tablet, subsidized and only slightly limited by having a restricted version of the App Market (now the Play Store) to prevent people from, for example, installing Kindle software and downloading books from Amazon. That's fair, right? Just try installing Nook software on a Kindle.

B&N did a lot of things right. Their hardware came out before the color version of the Kindle, and new models competed well on features as Amazon took a turn playing catchup. B&N followed up with the first back-lit ePaper device. The predictable price war ensued, benefiting the customers of both. But now it's beginning to look like the party could be over.

Faced with slumping sales in spite of its arguably superior product, B&N first began to whimper about getting out of the hardware business, then appeared to play a trump card by releasing a software upgrade that removed all restrictions on their Android tablet. Match that, Amazon!

Why would they do such a thing? Well, for the same reason I bought my Android tablet elsewhere. Namely, Google had got into the market, offering full featured tablets with no software restrictions for not much more than Amazon and B&N were charging for their locked up ones. Given the choice, why would you choose the ones that were needlessly crippled? On a Nexus you can install apps from both of the "other" booksellers and buy from whoever you want -- in addition to Google.

For awhile I was buying books from B&N on my tablet, if only to root for the underdog. But now B&N appears to be considering selling off its entire digital content division. I don't know what they're thinking. Dumping the up and coming thing to devote themselves to selling paper books and magazines? Haven't they learned anything from the experiment? Worst of all, the potential buyer may turn out to be Microsoft, which could mean the death knell for both parts of the company.

Which brings us to Kobo. Remember them? As I reported after hearing their presentation at the Miami Book Fair, Kobo was once going to be the salvation of Borders Books. The partnership was their answer to the Kindle and Nook, and it was Kobo's answer to having a brick-and-mortar anchor in the world. Kobo had great hardware at competitive prices, a commitment to open standards, and their own online book infrastructure. When Borders went under and Kobo became an orphan I was worried about them but maybe I shouldn't have been. They were orphans before the partnership, so they had little to lose while Borders needed them like a life raft.

So Kobo is still around, with newer and prettier devices. They were acquired by Rakuten, said to be "the Amazon of Japan," and have made another savvy move. They replaced Borders with a network of independent booksellers. With a bold stroke, one underdog hooked up with another. Now you can have the best of both worlds, acquiring ebooks while giving your support to your favorite local bookstore. You can create a Kobo account and install their reading app on your tablet or PC even if you don't have a Kobo device. Just be sure to register through your bookstore's website so your account will link to them.

Better do it quick. Today, no Borders. Tomorrow, perhaps no Barnes and Noble? What about the day after that? It's not that I hate Amazon. I buy from them too. I even have a wish list. I just don't ever want them to be the only place I can go.

Optons, Kindles, and eBooks

In his novel, Return from the Stars, Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem imagined a device called an “opton.” It was a “book” with a single page into which you would plug a small crystal containing whatever book you wanted to read, and the text would then appear on the page, along with places you could touch to display other pages. (You can read his description here.)

Sound familiar? As with much of the science fiction paraphernalia of a few decades ago (this one dates from the 1960's) the device has quickly popped into reality about a century ahead of schedule. Today's ebooks may not have pages exactly, but thinner and more flexible displays that would resemble them are already in development. And Lem failed to foresee that not only a book but a whole library could fit into a much smaller chip than he had in mind, and that the device would be able to wirelessly acquire new material for itself, and thus to function as a newspaper as well.

That last feature, of course, belongs to Amazon's new Kindle reader, the latest in a series of progressively better attempts to redefine the book for the digital age. I will refrain from giving yet another review of this device, because the Internet is crawling with them already. However, I have to share my experience with its chief competitor, the Sony eBook Reader, which came as a wonderful Christmas gift from my wife.

Sony's been in this game longer than Amazon, and this year's model has technical improvements over last year's. But they haven't done nearly so well at marketing it. Amazon may have done Sony a big favor here by “kindling” (you knew it was coming, didn't you?) interest in the concept. [There is also an impressive reader called the Iliad from iRex, a spinoff of Phillips, which boasts more bells and whistles but a price tag twice as high as Sony's.]

Which of these devices you prefer has more to do with how you like to select your reading material than what it is like to read on them. They both have comparable “epaper” screens that present black on off-white text which you read by reflected light, like a normal page. They have a resolution at least double that of a computer screen, making the text sharper and easier on the eye. Unlike computer screens, the legibility of these displays is actually improved by good light-- even sunlight--again, like a real page. And because they only draw power while the page is being drawn, they have unbelievable battery life--about 2 weeks even with heavy reading. You really don't even have to think about it, it's not going to die on you. And unlike trying to read on a laptop computer, your legs don't get hot.

In short, if you are at all interested in trying this new way to read, there is no longer any reason to wait for a better solution. No doubt the pages will continue to get bigger and more clear, and the devices will continue to offer new features, but they are already good enough for years of use. And there is plenty to read, even for free. Project Gutenberg alone could keep the most avid reader busy for many years, and publishers are getting more interested in putting out digital versions of current titles.

Which brings us to the subject of Digital Rights Management, or DRM, and the reason I prefer Sony's reader. DRM, of course, is how content providers (AKA publishers) will prevent you from passing along your used ebooks to friends, hospitals, thrift shops, and used bookstores, as you have been doing throughout the rest of your life. Henceforth, they hope, you will be satisfied to email a link to the book's web page to your friends, encouraging ever more sales. In exchange for this, they will discount the price you and your friends will have to pay for each copy.

Whether this brave new world will pan out as intended is still a matter of ongoing debate. Even though it rubs many the wrong way, myself included, I have to admit that if I am willing to pay half the cover price for a used paper book then I should be willing to pay something comparable for a new digital one. But it still bothers me that I won't be able to rush up to a friend, full of enthusiasm, and press it into his or her hands with the admonition, “You've just GOT to read this!”

I'm sorry, but an email suggesting that they hurry out and buy one is not the same. I guess we'll just have to get used to treating books the way we do movies.

The other downside of DRM is that it requires infrastructure that gets between you and the book. This comes in the form of software that has to be installed on your computer (in the case of Sony) to “authorize” you to download from their ebook store and control which devices, including your computer and your ebook reader, will be allowed to view the book. As we know, the best laid software “gang aft aglee,” so there has to be customer support, in the event your privileges are lost, to get them restored--which sounds a lot like having your voting rights given back after you are no longer a felon.

See, I have this nightmare. In it, I walk into my living room where all the books I've collected throughout my life, and have not culled out through periodic moving and cleanup, lie in state on their shelves, with a moderate degree of organization so I can usually find the one I'm looking for when I want it. But in this dream I select a book and open it, only to discover its pages are either blank or filled with gibberish. Frantic, I place a call to the bookstore (not the publisher), and find myself in tech support hell. It seems they no longer have a record that I ever bought that book (after all, it was years ago), so they are sorry, but I will have to buy a new copy if I want to read it again. Then I discover the same thing has happened to the rest of my library. At this point I wake up in a cold sweat.

Amazon has taken this a step further by electing to use a proprietary format for everything you read on your Kindle. That means, in case you're wondering, that if you have a PDF or text file you'd like to read, even a draft of your own novel, you have to email it to Amazon where, for the modest fee of ten cents per file, they will convert it for you and send it back. This puts my nightmare to shame – now I can't even read my own handwriting without permission!

Sony has been generous enough to let me read my own stuff, at least text files and PDF's, without paying extra for the privilege--at least so far. And this, combined with a lower selling price, makes their reader my preferred choice. [The Iliad does this too.] Though it lacks the Kindle's magical ability to grab Amazon's contents from thin air, at least I can plug it in and put whatever I want on it, including a wealth of free books from Project Gutenberg. Such a wealth, in fact, that I will have to write more about it in weeks to come.

Until then, happy reading, whatever the format of your choice.