Reporters' Roundtable Podcast: Books' future
This week: Books, future of. With the success of the Kindle and its store, and the announced upcoming release of the Barnes & Noble Nook, there are very interesting question for consumers and publishers: What is the future of the book? To discuss this on the Roundtable I have two experts on digital media. First, from CNET, executive editor David Carnoy, who has reviewed the latest e-book readers and who's an e-published author -- see "Knife Music" on Amazon, a 5-star rated book. And joining us from O'Reilly Media - Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Media Initiatives and a well-known thinker on the print-to-digital transition.
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Reporters' Roundtable #7: The future of the book
Show notes and talking points...
The reason I picked this topic was the introduction of the B&N Nook, which I think makes the game of e-books more interesting, since it's a serious competitor to the Amazon Kindle. David, overview of the Nook - hardware and store and catalog?
Other vendors overview: Cue, Sony, Apple?
Looking forward: Is the book dead?
Let me ask this another way: What is a book?
With the Kindle and the Nook (and Sony etc)... are we there yet?
What about non-reader access on mobile (or PC)
Andrew: What is Safari, and can you give us a progress report on it?
Discussion of DRM and books: Will it go away, as it did on iTunes?
The concept of books needing platforms, the way software does: What does it mean for the act of reading?
Best market for e-books? (Texts and references, if you ask me.)
What will e-books do to publisher revenues? Authors? Does content necessarily become cheaper when it is digital?
How to sell used books, or lend a book?
What kind of reader do you own / would you buy if you could only have one?
What's next?
Next time on the Roundtable:
I have some ideas... stay tuned.
Comments to: roundtable@cnet.com
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
Rafe Needleman is editor of CNET's Webware. He's been covering technology since 1988, and has interviewed thousands of tech execs. He blogs at 
1. I don't have to pay $100 or more, upfront, before I can even start to read a book.
2. Books really are pretty portable. Most book readers aren't going to need to read more than one book at a time, so the 'storage capacity' between the covers of a single book does tend to be adequate.
3. Rights management is pretty straightforward - It's not particularly easy to copy/paste a physical book.
4. For the hippies out there, cellulose is 'captured carbon', and the thing requires only the energy required to manufacture it. No recharging, no exploding batteries, plus it uses the lights you already have on!
5. When I get sick of the book, I can sell it and recoup some of my costs, or just plain give it away. Try doing that with a DRM'd download.
6. Given the off chance I were to drop my book, the chances of the reading surface becoming broken and unusable is pretty slim. If my bookshelf were to spontaneously disintegrate, my books don't magically vanish.
Or if you need a second opinion:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/
Another thing, "http://reviews.cnet.com/fully-equipped" does not work, while "http://reviews.cnet.com/fully-equipped/" does.
I suggest that you type the guests' websites/blogs in the page in addition to saying them in the episode.
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by raygun01
October 31, 2009 1:12 PM PDT
- If you experienced half of the audio episode missing, re-download now. I uploaded the full episode again to overwrite the truncated audio file. Sorry folks, not sure why the full episode didn't upload the first time.
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