“Where’s my Tolstoy, Sony Reader?”
by Brandon Schauer 
Sony has begun some heavy marketing around it’s Sony Reader, a device which reportedly can hold “hundreds of books” for you to “curl up with.” This echoes one of the great insights from Steve Jobs when he first introduced the iPod:
“How many times have you gone on the road with a CD player and said, ‘Oh god, I didn’t bring the CD I wanted to listen to.’ To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap in listening to music.”
Except that it differs in one respect… I’ve never said, “Oh god, I didn’t bring the Tolstoy I really wanted instead of Harry Potter.” People listen to music over and over and switch and mix it constantly. Books? Not so much.
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August 1st, 2007 at 11:04 am
In a somewhat-related story, Merlin Mann today introduced us to a service that will send you snippets of a book readable in 5 minutes. Maybe Sony and all of the eBook vendors have it wrong and the digital representation of books should be in “Clif Note” form, leaving paper to provide the complete title.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I agree that I’d not be devastated if I forgot my Tolstoy or Joyce while on the road, but I did once work for a company that produced eLearning courses on Oracle and Microsoft Products. When creating a set of personas for this company I came across an unexpected behaviour - users taking the courses on site on their laptops during consultancy gigs to use as reference works. The alternative was a back-breaking bag of O’Reilly’s latest. Maybe there’s a niche market there. Increasingly, I find myself buying audio books, so my iPod already fills the role the Sony reader aspires to.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Nice article and comments! The idea of notes or summaries as the best “electronic version” and full text as paper is what happens in higher ed. A few students will read whole texts in pdf format, but most don’t want to print out hundreds of pages, and indeed trade paperbacks are largely cheaper and more portable in that case.
Definitely there are niche markets who have needs for reference works. I am one of those niches, who would like nothing better than to have access to my entire library from wherever. While Tolstoy may be at the far end of the long tail from readers of this blog, I know of professors and students who have it lodged prominently at the head.
As for the Sony Reader itself, I have been sadly disappointed, as I was looking forward to this gadget. Within 15 minutes of messing around with it, I have decided to return it. Hard to read, only two magnification settings, needlessly and painfully byzantine interface, and unbelievably SLOW. Sigh.
In all cases it is a matter of preference. De gustebus non disputandum est.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Actually I’d disagree with you on that one, I do re-read books over and over…
Ok perhaps not as often as I listen to the same songs, but I read about a book a week (more if I’m travelling or on holidays) and I’ll re-read books I’ve read countless times before. I re-read my favourite books a couple of times a year each.
So I could see myself actually saying that if I was on a 6 month backpacking trip where I’d be constantly reading…
August 8th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
The alternative was a back-breaking bag of O’Reilly’s latest. Maybe there’s a niche market there. Increasingly, I find myself buying audio books, so my iPod already fills the role the Sony reader aspires to.