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Thoughts on eBooks

There is one reason and one reason only that people read eBooks:  convenience.  I can have dozens, even hundreds of books on my iPhone and iPad.  I can read downloaded books even when there is no service and no internet.  I have a veritable library at my fingertips 24 hours a day 7 days a weeks and that is convenient.

There are two top survivors of the eBook wars.  They would be Kindle (Amazon) and iBooks (Apple).  Amazon was one of the first.  Barnes & Noble tried it with their Nook device for a while, but that has gone the way of the Dodo.  Amazon has dedicated devices, called Kindles that store books and allow people to read, even in the brightest sunlight.  Their eInk technology is supposed to mimic paper.  Amazon also has Kindle apps for every device and all these devices sync.  So if I am on page 153 on my iPad, and I open my kindle it will zoom forward to page 153.

Apple started putting iBooks (the app) with IOS 4.  It debuted with the release of the first iPad.  iBooks is supposed to have more animations or “live” books.  You can have audio and video and hyperlinks in an iBook, while a Kindle book tends to be just the text and still illustrations.  Hyperlinks in the Kindle don’t work very well.  iBooks do not sync, so if I am on page 153 in my iPad and open the book on my iPhone, I will be on page 1 on my iPhone.  Kindle has a much larger library of offerings than iBook with pretty much the entire Amazon book store available on Kindle.  Both Kindle and iBooks allow a user to upload their own text and PDF files.

I say convince is the number one reason for using eBooks, because price cannot be.  I can buy a used copy of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits book for a penny on Amazon, but the Kindle book is still $14.95.  There is no way to buy a used eBook and the price will remain the same as a new release for all books, it seems.  Amazon does have specials, and there is a deal where a kindle book is offered at a reduced price if a print book is bought, but eBook prices are artificially high considering there is no inventory and no cost in shipping the item.  Both Amazon and Apple were charged with price fixing and colluding by the FTC and both had to pay fines.

Bible software companies like Olive Tree, Logos and Accordance are really in the eBook business.  Back when all these started, the reader application was free, and people just payed for the books.  Today, Accordance and Logos are putting major functionality in their reader, so it now costs money too.  However, these software companies are primarily selling electronic books.  Their offering is different than the Kindle or iBook, however.  The goal of Bible software is research and cross referencing and having dozens of books open at the same time.  Logos, especially, has done great work in indexing every word in every owned book.  So entering a topic like atonement would produce dozens or hundreds of aggregate articles on the subject to product a sermon from.

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