Business

E-books turn page on paper

I'm not an early adopter of technology. But I jumped at the chance to buy an electronic book reader more than a year ago.

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  • The Sony Reader, foreground, and Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader. Amazon sold more e-books than paper books on Christmas Day. zoom

I'm not an early adopter of technology. But I jumped at the chance to buy an electronic book reader more than a year ago.

My Sony Reader goes everywhere with me. I revel in the luxury of carrying 50 books around in a device that weighs less than one hardcover.

Electronic books are starting to muscle in on physical books. It's a narrative that will pick up speed in the next year, creating winners and losers. Amazon.com, the online bookseller that sustained losses for years, now makes money thanks to its Kindle e-book reader, finally available in Canada.

This week, Amazon said its customers bought more e-books than physical books for the first time ever on Christmas Day.

Investors are taking interest, pushing Amazon's stock price from $51 (U.S.) a year ago to $139.41 on Tuesday. The shares pay no dividends and have a lofty price-to-earnings ratio of 82.

Indigo Books & Music, Canada's dominant book retailer, recently announced it will develop its own e-book reader to come out next year.

It already offers e-books through a spinoff company, Kobo, that is backed by Borders Group, a big U.S. bookstore chain. The e-book service is available on Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices.

Indigo's share price was $15.84 (Canadian) yesterday, up from $12 a year ago. It pays a 40-cent annual dividend and trades at a reasonable 13.5 times earnings.

Book retailers without a foot in the online world will suffer – such as McNally Robinson, which said it is closing its Toronto megastore, which it opened last April, because of losses.

However, we're only a couple of chapters into this story. There's too little variety in e-books to satisfy an avid reader.

I can buy current bestsellers at Sony's store for $9.99 (U.S.), such as John Irving's Last Night In Twisted River, which has a regular price in Canada of $34.95, or $21.91 plus shipping at Amazon.ca.

I can also buy classic works from long-dead authors for next to nothing, such as the epic War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, which sells for 99 cents (U.S.) at Sony's store.

But aside from blockbusters and golden oldies, you won't find many e-books written 10 or more years ago by authors who aren't household names.

That could be a result of Amazon's proprietary technology, which doesn't allow a Kindle library to be transferred to another electronic reading device.

Book publishers are reluctant to transfer older titles to an e-format unless there's a common standard.

GalleyCat, a publishing newsletter, checked the 100 e-books on the Kindle bestseller list and found 64 were available for free.

"How can publishers interact with this new readership and still earn money?" it asked.

The pages may not be turning as quickly as Amazon wants us to believe. Apple could change the game with its tablet computer, to be released next year.

It's said to have a 10-inch screen, versus a six-inch display for Kindle and Sony, and a price of around $1,000 (U.S.).

The e-reader, expected to be known as iSlate, will be integrated into a fully functional computer – putting to shame a $300 to $400 price tag for a device that does only one thing.

"Amazon and Sony ought to be terrified," says GalleyCat's eBookNewser about the Apple plan rumours.

Still, there's something to be said for an "old-fashioned" electronic reader that isn't connected at all times to the Internet.

I agree with Jack Illingworth, who wrote about the pleasures of his Sony Reader in CNQ, a Canadian literary magazine:

"The real genius of the machine is its existence as an unconnected platform, with no rabbit-holes of links to disappear down, no emails or instant messages asking for attention, nothing but that familiar experience of encountering words on a page."
http://www.thestar.com/business/2009/12/30/ebooks_turn_page_on_paper.html
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