PDF eBooks are Here to Stay

Simon & Schuster’s March 8 press release about Stephen King’s eBook,
‘Riding the Bullet,’ was fairly low-key. Sounding like he
thought it was more of a weird science experiment, King
suggested he was ‘curious to see what sort of response there is
and whether or not this is the future.’

The PDF-based novella, ‘a ghost story in the grand manner,’
was published exclusively on the Internet on March 14. After
just 24 hours, there were 400,000 orders – more than the
first-day sales of his hardcover books – and I’m pretty sure
this convinced King that eBooks are here to
stay.

Some sites, such as target=’_NEW’>Amazon, HREF=’http://www.barnesandnoble.com/&#8217; target=’_NEW’>Barnes &
Noble and target=’_NEW’>Chapters initially offered the novella for
free, while target=’_NEW’>SoftLock headed up a group of vendors,
including target=’_NEW’>netLibrary, charging a nominal US$2.50 for the
story. (Barnes & Noble and Chapters later began charging for the
eBook.)

Over 400,000 copies of ‘Riding the Bullet’ were
downloaded in the first 24 hours – that’s 4.62 per
second.
Karl De Abrew

Things were hotter than expected, judging by the message that
Keith Loris, president and CEO of SoftLock, sent to prospective
purchasers, telling them that more than 200,000 orders had been
received, jamming their server. That’s US $500,000, which says
this is a worthwhile venture. And that was just the first
day.

A rubber bullet for Mac and UNIX users

The eBooks industry has turned heads recently. However you
look at it, King’s eBook release has been amazing. Consider that
400,000 copies were downloaded in the first 24 hours – that’s
4.62 per second. And in contrast to the music industry, eBooks
have come outfitted day one with
(DRM) software designed to protect the rights of authors and
publishers.

But what’s good for the publisher and author isn’t
necessarily good for consumers. The majority of eBook systems
lock their content to the individual machines of purchasers,
preventing the rampant piracy said to go on in the MP3 world.
And the DRM technology initially used for King’s eBook worked
only with PCs or hand-held devices. (HREF=’http://www.glassbook.com/&#8217; target=’_NEW’>Glassbook
provided the encryption and reader software for the PC
version.)

For the first two weeks after its release, Mac and UNIX users
could not read ‘Riding the Bullet.’ This didn’t go unnoticed –
not by King’s fans or the author himself. In a statement, King
said: ‘As a dedicated and long-term Mac user, I am surprised and
a little unhappy at how hard it is for Mac users to access the
story.’

A red-faced Simon & Schuster posted an apology on its HREF=’http://www.simonsays.com/ebooks/&#8217; target=’_NEW’>eBooks
page, noting that it was working with vendors to solve the
problem and inviting readers to request an e-mail notification
when a Mac solution became available. Amazon, a key distributor,
approached Adobe and brokered a deal to offer a free Mac version
of ‘Riding the Bullet,’ using Adobe’s cross-platform HREF=’http://www.adobe.com/products/pdfmerchant/main.html&#8217;
target=’_NEW’>PDF Merchant software for encryption and the
free HREF=’http://www.pdfstore.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=381&#8242;
target=’_NEW’>Acrobat Reader for viewing.

However, while there is a version of Acrobat Reader for
Linux, it doesn’t include the HREF=’http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/webbuy/main.html&#8217;
target=’_NEW>Web Buy technology necessary to read eBooks.
For now, it looks like UNIX users will have to ‘ride’ over to HREF=’http://www.whartoncredit.com/bill.htm&#8217;
target=’_NEW’>Bill’s house to do their reading.

The eBook is cool

Let’s talk about King’s eBook itself and the download
experience. I was so interested in this that I tried to ride the
bullet four times. I started with Glassbook and SoftLock, then
took a trip with HREF=’http://www.peanutpress.com/book.cgi/0743204670/087222-13634-3210762522&#8242;
target=’_NEW’>Peanut Press and my Palm Pilot, finishing off
at Amazon with a version for my Mac.

My first attempts at most sites weren’t too fruitful. The
phenomenal success of King’s eBook seemed to surprise the
distributors, who didn’t have enough server capacity to handle
the traffic. I finally was able to download the PC version of
‘Riding the Bullet’ at the lower-traffic Chapters site in
Canada. Since I’m already an owner of the full Glassbook Reader,
I was spared the viewer download and grabbed the 394KB file in
just a few minutes.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Glassbook Reader has an elegant
interface that is much better suited to reading eBooks than are
other PDF viewers. Plus, it has the benefit of supporting
formats such as HTML and OEB. In short, I like it – and I think
you should take a look. However, if you are a UNIX or Mac user,
you’ll have to stick with the Acrobat Reader – for the moment
anyhow.

Aside from the initial jam-up, my downloads were
trouble-free. I’ve used the SoftLock system before, and I can
report that they’ve made many improvements to the purchase
process, to the point where now it’s quite seamless. The
SoftLock system has the added benefit of encouraging the
super-distribution model. Super-distribution lets you freely
send copies of works you’ve purchased to your family, friends,
and acquaintances. Upon opening, the recipient can only see a
snippet or evaluation version of the content, but has an option
to visit a secure online Web page and acquire the entire
eBook.

In fact, you can check out my HREF=’http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/ridingthebullet.pdf&#8217;
target=’_NEW’>SoftLock-purchased copy [PDF: 410 MB] of
‘Riding the Bullet.’ See what you think – you’ll be able to view
the first seven pages.

The Peanut Press version, which works on PDAs running the
Palm OS or Windows CE, had an interesting security feature. A
custom copy of the book was generated on the fly at purchase
time, with my name as the user name and credit card details as
the password for the book – clearly not the sort of thing you’re
likely to pass around to more than your closest friends or
family.

Last but not least, the Mac version of the eBook (encrypted
using Adobe’s PDF Merchant) that I downloaded from Amazon worked
without a hitch.

Paper or pixels?

With all this hoopla about ‘Riding the Bullet,’ you’re
probably wondering whether or not it was a good read. Well, I’m
not an avid Stephen King fan, but I read this one
screen-to-screen in just under an hour.

Which brings me to my favorite hobbyhorse: throw out your
printers, like it or not! All versions that I came across were
disabled for print. It’ll be interesting to see if this approach
holds up over time.

Ironically, King seems to feel a strong tie to the printed
word. ‘While I think that the Internet and various computer
applications for stories have great promise,’ he said, ‘I don’t
think anything will replace the printed word and the bound book.
Not in my lifetime, at least.’

Of course, a few days later – possibly after calculating his
royalties – King was apparently keen to try the process again.
‘If I were to do something like that, whether they wanted to or
not, it would force a lot of people to read online,’ he
noted.

This revolution has well and truly begun. As King says,
‘What’s fun is fun and what’s done is done.’

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About the Author: Karl De Abrew

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