The Pie Whisperer

I read a lot of books.  I also like geeky, techie things so me owning an eReader should be a given, right?  I keep trying to convince myself of that, but it hasn’t worked yet.

There are things that I just can’t do with ebooks… yet.  I have 3 or 4 people that I am constantly swapping books with, which is a big no-no in ebook land.  I also get quite a few books from my local library and while it does have ebooks that can be downloaded, they currently only have 68 of them… all military history books.

There are some upsides to jumping on the ebook wagon.  I really like the idea that the Kindle syncs it’s titles across it’s devices.  Being able to read a book on a Kindle device and continue reading the same book on my iPhone right where I left off is very appealing.  The $300 to get a Kindle 2 into Canada is not that appealing.

The Kobo eReader is interesting, too.  I really like the hardware, the price (it’s $149 Canadian), that it supports the ePub standard (as opposed to the Kindle’s proprietary ebook format) and the fact that it’s from a Canadian company.  What I don’t particularly like is the fact that for now I can only get books onto it by connecting it via USB to my computer.  (The Kobo eReader does allow you to purchase books on a Balckberry and sync via Bluetooth, but apparently iPhone Bluetooth sync will not be available at launch.)

Of course, there’s the iPad.  The idea that I could buy books from Amazon, Kobo and iBooks (if they ever launch it in Canada) is nice, but I think the device would be too big for me to enjoy reading for extended periods and - from what I’ve read - would be almost useless if used outdoors (which I do a lot in the warmer months).  A $500+ price tag doesn’t help the iPad’s cause, either. 

Out of the three hardware choices I’ve listed, if I had to choose right now, I’d probably pick the Kobo eReader.  It’s positives outweigh it’s negatives and I really like the way it looks.  The hardware, though, is not the big stumbling block that’s keeping me from truely jumping into ebooks.

The biggest hurdle for me is the pricing of books themselves.  Now that agency pricing is in effect (Kobo has a pretty good blog post that explains agency pricing here) ebooks are at par or, in some cases, higher than their paper counterparts.  For example, Michael Connelly’s Blood Work is $11.99 Canadian from Kobo Books but the paper version is $9.50 Canadian from Indigo Books (this title was not available in a Kindle eBook format at the time of writing).  Having to pay more to buy a book with less features (I consider being able to share a paper book a feature) does not sit well with me.  However, I do not need to own my books (I very rarely keep any the books I buy), so I’m open to other options.  How about a monthly subscription fee that allows me to download and read as much as I want as long as I have an active subscription, much like the way Microsoft’s Zune Pass works for music.  Or here’s a better idea: book rentals.  Give me option to rent a book for a week for $2 or $3.  Lots of companies have figured out how to do this with online video; would it be much harder to do with ebooks?

For now, I really don’t think there’s enough compelling evidence to convince myself to get on the ebook train.  I hope this changes soon, though.   I can’t wait for the day that I can say to someone “I only read ebooks.”