Comments on: Why eBook Hardware Manufacturers Are Missing the Mark (and the Market)

By: Jane

Jane — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:46:56 +0000

@SAO Both the Kindle and the Sony 700 allow you to highlight text.

By: SAO

SAO — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:37:24 +0000

Text books are heavy and expensive, part of the expense is printing all that paper for such a short period of time. Sign up with textbook publishers and the market will boom. Students would be much happier carrying one e-book reader than 3 heavy text books. Once they have them, they’ll buy e-books.

This means there has to be a way to highlight text.

By: BlueRose

BlueRose — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:14:24 +0000

I have just skimmed the comments, but I would just like to add:

“women who read books live outside the US – in all sorts of different countries!!!!!!”

By: Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:15:51 +0000

I do agree. They’re not getting me until they make a waterproof one that I can read in my bathtub.

By: Daily Square — RT 1 « Wordpress Lab

Daily Square — RT 1 « Wordpress Lab — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:27:24 +0000

[...] G4 Why eBook Hardware Manufacturers Are Missing the Mark (and the Market)And Jane hits it out of the park (have now decided there is a BS all star publishing team, Jane bats clean-up for obvious reasons!) with a rant about women, devices, and marketing. [...]

By: MaryK

MaryK — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:39:28 +0000

@KJ: But MP3s cost about 1/6th of the price of an ebook. And when you buy a song, you pretty much already know you like the song - at least I do.

By: KJ

KJ — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:07:49 +0000

Do people who buy MP3s complain or care about reselling the music they buy? No. And I remember 15 years ago there was quite a market for used CDs. I even sold some myself back in the day.

So to get upset that you can’t resell an ebook is just a weird argument.

Used bookstores will still exist. Print is not going away. You can still get your fix.

By: Meg

Meg — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:16:05 +0000

I lust after the concept of an e-book reader, and they can try any advertising campaign they like to try to sell me an ebook reader, but until the following problems with the things are solved, I won’t be buying:

1) The high (anything above $100, IMHO) upfront cost of the (empty!)
reader, and the assumption that if you don’t want to buy a dedicated reader
you can just use your iPhone/PDA/laptop/other portable electronic device,
when I do not possess/have any use for any of those (also high-priced)
gadgets, either (well, I’d like a laptop someday, but that’s another
argument).
2) DRM and incompatible formats and their associated hassle. Proprietary
readers, like the Kindle.
3) The often decades-long gap between out-of-print and out-of-copyright,
where the content would be in limbo and unavailable for purchase if you
can’t buy used books, which is related to
4) The whole used bookstore and resale issue, which must be preserved
*somehow,* and to the
5) There’s always plenty of free stuff at Project Gutenberg and other like sources gambit. I am grateful for Project Gutenberg, don’t get me wrong, but the point is, it’s beside the point from my point of view. I can get *those* books from the library, and don’t particularly want them as keepers.

If I buy something, I want the right to sell it to someone else if I don’t
like it or when I’m done with it. You’ll pry my beloved used book stores
out of my cold dead hands.

We all have our differing tolerances for new media. I need mine to be
simple (on the level of a point-and-shoot digital camera with no formatting issues), inexpensive, and not tell me what I can or cannot do with my purchases. If we accept less than what we want, we’ll never get it corrected.

I just wish there was some way I could vote with my dollars, instead of just withholding them and hoping someone gets the point.

By: Debby

Debby — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:22:12 +0000

All good points, but why are you asking companies to come up with better ways to manipulate women into buying their product? It’s the same product whether the commercial shows it on a beach or riding a subway. I work in marketing in the electronics industry. I know that this manipulation is the bread and butter of marketing. What i am sort of shocked about is that women are asking companies to get in touch with their psychology so that they can be better manipulated. I am interested in eReaders, but I do not have any interest whatesoever in Harlequin just because i am a woman. I also don’t want my mothering instinct to be capitalized upon by tear-jerking ads showing mothers reading to their kids. I just want the products themselves to be good. I think the stereotype that women want products to be more touchy-feely is innacurate. I know most women to be avid label-readers and intensive product researchers. Make the product itself have great specs and features and fit into real life. Dont make the ads cater to my ego and sexuality so I think the kindle makes me a hot multitasker. That’s insulting.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:13:34 +0000

Excellent and enlightening post. I recall a Tom Peters book from maybe the late 1980s that really emphasized WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN. It made a deep impression on me. This one added to it.