What if Ebooks Were the Dominant Platform?

BoSacks Speaks Out: My friend Rex Hammock posted the following on one of his Blogs.
"What if Samir Husni & Bob Sacks Swapped Sides?
This post about trying out a "technology flip test" ( See Below) in which eBook advocates become defenders of paper and vice-versa made me think of the longest-running debate on the magozinosophere. Bob, Samir, give it a shot."

I responded back to Rex somthing like this:

I will take the challenge any time and any place. I love the whole concept of it. What a wonderful debate it could/would be. So long as Samir doesn't cheat. You know what I mean, we accept the challenge, we both do our homework and we both try to win . . . Except if Samir doesn't try to win too hard, I lose the long term real debate by winning the flip test debate. Not that Samir would do anything like that, you understand.
So, Samir, will you take the side that digital will win?
BoSacks
-30-
Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
R. D. Lang

What if Ebooks Were the Dominant Platform?
Posted by Mac Slocum
http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/08/what-would-the-world-be-like-i.html
I recently came across an old blog post from Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee that discusses the utility of the "technology flip test". McAfee writes:

At a conference years back I was sitting on a panel that was asked to talk about future of the book. As the discussion was heating up about the inevitability of the electric media, someone on the panel (I wish it had been me) proposed a flip test. He said "Let's say the world has only e-books, then someone introduces this technology called 'paper.' It's cheap, portable, lasts essentially forever, and requires no batteries. You can't write over it once it's been written on, but you buy more very cheaply. Wouldn't that technology come to dominate the market?" It's fair to say that comment changed the direction of the panel.

The ebook vs paper flip test is intriguing for a number of reasons:

It inverts the offense and defense: Ebook advocates become defenders and paper-book supporters become disruptors. Shaking off the vestiges of a default argument is always a good idea -- think of it as a "debate cleanser."
It amplifies the strengths of each format . . . initially: When I ran through the flip test on my own, I at first honed in on the cost savings of ebooks (no paper, no printing, no shipping) and the sensory aspects of print books. But further review revealed deeper complexities to this debate. And that led me to . . .
It upends assumptions: Print's dominant position in the real world causes me to challenge pro-print arguments, most notably the tactile experience overreaction that often derails discussions. But placing ebooks in the hot seat gave me a new perspective on ebook defenses. For example, if my default reading environment was electronic and networked, would I want (or need) a disconnected outlet? Would I crave solitude and a languid pace? Does the upside of ebook economics supersede the other reading/storytelling experiences I'm looking for, or would I welcome a print alternative the way I now welcome an electronic option?
What's your take on the flip test? Does inverting the argument open the discussion, or is this a diversionary trick that detracts from the issues at hand? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

(Original idea and McAfee link via Reading 2.0 list.)

BoSacks Speaks Out: Why Esquire Mag is your Future?

BoSacks Speaks Out: Why Esquire Mag is your Future?

BoSacks Speaks Out: Please, let's not all get crazy at the same time. So many people are over-reacting to the announcement that Esquire is using e-ink on their cover that I almost don't know where to begin. But almost isn't don't know.

First and foremost, this is a clever magazine cover gimmick for a 75th anniversary cover. Period, end of story, except for all the brouhaha. They deserve to do something special. And e-ink is going to be something special. In this case it is underutilizing the power and the possibilities of e-ink, but what the heck? You have to start somewhere. And this year our industry starts here on the cover of Esquire with a flexible, magazine-bindable production of e-ink.

We as an industry have been inserting and on-serting for generations. Believe me I know, as I was partly responsible for the AOL onslaught of on-serting and inserting first fragile plastic diskettes and then CD's into magazines. The computer and music sectors have been doing this for years. The women's service groups have inserted hundreds of items including such nutty ideas as shampoo samples which in the course of palatalizing squished and squeezed the samples all over the printer's bindery floor. So ease off on the condemnation that gimmicks are something new or distasteful.

And the same thing is true for the carbon footprint. Why is Esquire being singled out?
I'm the first to admit that we have been reckless as an industry when it comes to carbon foot-printing and inefficiencies, but to single out a single publisher . . . . pure and absolute rubbish. Anyone who is starting to condemn a single gimmick in a single magazine doesn't know the industry, the history, nor the true story of magazine sales and magazine production.

E-ink or e-paper is special, in fact it is very special, and it is an integral part of the future of the magazine business. If we are going to have a big future at all, it is going to be digital. We will combine the ease of use of digital editions of magazines with the portability of brilliantly colored WiFi connected epaper, with a drastically lower carbon footprint than today and dramatically reduced manufacturing costs. What's not to like? What part don't we understand?
Publishers sell words and thoughts, not paper and printing? For those who need to hear me say it again, printing ink on paper is not going to go away; it is also not going to be the dominant distribution vehicle of information.
BoSacks
-30-


Esquire's Granger: Magazine Medium 'So Compelling We All Should Do More with It'
Editor responds to news of flashing anniversary cover.
Jason Fell
www.FolioMag.com

Since the report last week about Esquire's flashy e-paper October anniversary cover-and our follow-up on the technology behind it-I've been hearing/reading a lot of negative opinions about it.

One Web site called it obnoxious. Rex Hammock said it was "the worst use of technology by a magazine." Fast Company, in a blog post, estimated that the manufacturing process increases the issue's carbon footprint by 16 percent over other typical print publications. But, if you ask Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger, the technology could help revolutionize the way we read magazines, beyond the printed page and online.

"When I talk to groups I sometimes speak about the days I had when I'd get the new issue of Esquire and go through it and think to myself, 'Fuck, it's still a magazine,'" Granger said in a recent interview with FOLIO:. "What I mean is that the medium is so compelling that I and we should all be able to do more with it. The magazine experience is one of the last remaining opportunities to enter a hermetically-sealed world, an edited experience of our culture created by someone else. And, more importantly, it's an experience that encourages you to stay in it rather than constantly bounce in and out of it.

"We have an amazing medium, print, and if we can enhance the experience of it by putting new technology to use, then all the better," he said.

Bob Sacks, an industry consultant and frequent proponent of technology, says that Esquire's flashy cover may be a small step overall but offers a glimpse of what's to come in the next few years.

"It's not a representation of what e-paper was designed for, but doing the cover is the right thing to do," Sacks says. "It will be a demonstration of what it can be used for. In the near future we all will have flexible e-paper readers in our pocket and will be able to access all the magazine and books you want."

Right now, the technology is expensive and, if you believe Fast Company, not very green. Granger says that, with time, he hopes the technology will become cheaper. Maybe, after some refining, the application will become more realistic and environmentally-friendly, too.

----------------------------------------------------

The Real Cost of E-Ink
posted by Anya Kamenetz
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/anya-kamenetz/green-friday/real-cost-e-ink


An article in the New York Times earlier this week described an effort by the legendary print magazine Esquire to make "a nod to the digital age" by using something called E Ink on its cover. That's pretty much what it sounds like: electronic ink, so the cover can blink like a Times Square billboard, as opposed to a staid old highway billboard.


One problem: Did anyone stop to consider the environmental implications? Check out this description of the process, from the Times article:


The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine's distributor in Glazer, Ky.
Editor David Granger described it as "a 21st-century technology" combined with "a 19th-century manufacturing process." Can't argue with the second part, at least. The article goes on to note that this process is expensive, and hence requires sponsorship from a Ford SUV (not exactly a 21st-century technology itself). But what about the other cost . . . the carbon one? Some back-of-the-envelope calculations show it's not small, and Ford's not picking up the tab.


Let's start at the beginning. According to the article, "The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China." The manufacturing phase is the biggest question mark in the life cycle of any product. According to life cycle analysis by Nokia, the manufacturing phase, alone, of another battery-powered electronic device, their 3G phones, is responsible for 12.3 KG of CO2 equivalent per unit. Granted, the E Ink display is a lot simpler and uses much less material than a cell phone, so let's say the carbon footprint is one-tenth as much-1.2 KG per user. That would be 135 tons of CO2 for the entire run of 100,000 devices.
Next, the devices will be shipped to Texas. According to E-Ink, a comparable prototype device weighs about 150 grams (5.3 ounces). According to the calculator on ShipGreen.net, shipping 100,000 of those overseas from Shanghai to Houston is worth another 2.6 tons -189 tons if they for some reason chose air freight.

From there, the little magic doohickeys will make their way to a Mexican maquiladora (where the work conditions are certain to be just lovely-ditto the Chinese factory) to be inserted by hand into the magazine covers (1.28 tons from Houston to Monterrey, Mexico), and from there, the completed issues, about one-third heavier than normal, will travel about 1,400 miles to the magazine's distribution center in Kentucky (11 more tons). Oh, and because of the delicacy of the electronics, they'll have to travel in refrigerated trucks. Certain kinds of refrigeration units can consume a half gallon of fuel per operating hour - that's an additional 10 gallons for that 20 hour trip-per truck. So for 5 trucks (let's say), the refrigeration adds about another half a ton. Then the blinking magazines go to their final destinations.

So . . . the total outlay in greenhouse gas emissions for this little experiment-again, this is based on loose estimates-comes to 150 tons of CO2 equivalent, similar to the output of 15 Hummers or 20 average Americans for an entire year, and a 16% increase over the carbon footprint of a typical print publication (based on calculations by Discover Magazine, Time, and In Style). The potential environmental impact of the E Ink covers increases even more when you consider that the units are designed to be disposable after one use and they'll make it more difficult or impossible to recycle the paper portion of the magazines.
Maybe Esquire should go back to the drawing board for a truly forward-looking concept of the possibilities of print. Fast Company would be glad to advise them on where to go to get printed on 100% recycled paper

BoSacks Speaks Out: "Fork in the Road: Which Direction for the Publishing Industry?"

BoSacks Speaks Out: "Fork in the Road: Which Direction for the Publishing Industry?"
By BoSacks
As I have published here before, I am a principal partner in mediaIDEAS which investigates and provides original research reports with actionable advice and analysis for the publishing/media industry. I have asked for and received permission from mediaIDEAS to send to my readers a small portion of a recent research paper whose conclusion after a detailed analysis was that full color flexible e-paper display will be available to the market by 2011.

The report goes on to say that publishing magazines and books incorporating high quality color artwork such as those involved in the fashion/design/art sectors, and looking to develop digital editions, need to carefully monitor developments in electrowetting display technology . . . Planning for this event is critical to the future profitability, and even the existence, of such publishing companies.

The reason I asked for permission from my business partners to release this portion of our Call to Action is that I believe it is critical for our industry to fully comprehend the technologic reality on our door step. We are on the threshold of a new digital age. As publishers we can adapt and prosper or wither on the vine of antiquated protectionism and dysfunction.

On February 7, 2005 I debated Samir Husni at Primex hosted by IDEAlliance in an event titled "Fork in the Road: Which Direction for the Publishing Industry?" After the debate I was asked an excellent question from the audience. I was asked how long till publishers have to start really paying attention and worrying about e-paper. My answer was that five years from that time epaper will be real, functional and a necessary item on any publishers business plan and watch list.

As a futurist with an impressive track record of prescient predictions under my belt for the last 35 years, I am sad to report to you that I was wrong. Yes, wrong. It didn't take five years but rather three years for e-paper to be available to the general public. And the technology is growing at an exponential rate. Look around you and read the writing on your Kindle, which is currently sold out and backlogged. E-paper is here and it is not going to go away. The report from mediaIdeas and my own research is correct. Publishers must be . . . . planning for this event as it is critical to the future profitability, and even the existence, of such publishing companies.

This is not and should not be a fearful transition. Everything stays the same except the actual reading platform. The paginated (metered), well designed, and edited magazine experience is the same. The same writers, editors, artists, and mostly the same publishing staff will be required to "manufacture" magazines of the future. I would also add that it is not an either/or scenario. There will no doubt be both a printed version of magazines and an e-paper version available to the general public. The question will come down to one of cost and reader preference.

Just this morning I've completed a review of the Amazon Kindle. As an experienced e-paper reader the future is clear and the current arguments about the future of e-paper are as relevant as the old discussion of whether or not film-based printing will ever be replaced by CTP (Computer-to-Plate). I'm sure we all agree that was indeed a very juvenile argument. As much as this sounds like bravado, I was right then and I'm right now. I will go further to say that someday, perhaps less than ten years from now, the e-reading experience will be more preferred by the majority of the reading public than the inefficient, costly, environmentally unfriendly, and extremely dated current magazine methodology. Are we there yet? NO! But you can bet your bottom dollar that we will get there. And if you don't believe and prepare for it, it will be your bottom dollar.

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Jobs, Mags, and our Future

BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Jobs, Mags, and our Future
www.bosacks.com


Re: BoSacks Readers Speak Out: Jobs, Mags, and our Future
Your "loyal reader's" (below) comment reminded me of the experiences I have frequently had during the past few years with our magazine wholesalers and retailers. It led me to pick up an article in last week's Newsweek Magazine entitled "Era of the Super Cruncher". The gist of the article is that "expertise and intuition can be replaced by objective, data based decision making. Those who control and manipulate this data will be the masters of the new economic universe," according to the article.

This seems to tie in with "loyal reader's" statement that once he was a craftsman, now he is overhead.

The same could be said for newsstand distribution. Representatives of the publishers and national distributors used to rely on instinct, intuition, a study of past sales and like titles in categories and then work their business relationships with wholesalers who (at least the good ones) had long term ties to the communities and retail locations they serviced.


Now everything is managed remotely by people who have no ties to the retailers or the communities they service and the deliveries are, frequently, third party. There is no room for intuition, experience, salesmanship or even relationship building. The numbers are the numbers are the numbers (Of course, if you give us a little more discount and buy this promotion - which we won't guarantee full distribution on, we can change your numbers...). If this is progress, perhaps we should see what our sales efficiencies were before consolidation and after.


As a representative of smaller publishers, I can't change the distribution paradigm. I can believe in the Tooth Fairy and be all I want to be, but I can't change the paradigm. But I can and do work in and around it. I passionately believe that print and web and and should work together and can sell each other - so, I just try to live in this brave new paradigm and hope the bean counters keep thinking I am worth keeping around.

(Submitted by a Newsstand Guy who was also recently reminded by upper senior executive level "my stocks worth more than yours" management that he, too, is overhead)



RE: BoSacks Speaks Out: On Media Buyers, Mags, and Football
While you are correct that publishing a Sport magazine like a (Football Fantasy) is difficult to have timely information; you don't need e-paper to rectify the problem. All you have to have is a web-site that consumers can down load (print on dead tree paper) the most current information.

You remind me of those dorky kids that took metal lunch pals to school. Us brown-bagger don't want to walk around holding my e-paper all day. That is the beauty of recycle paper, I don't need to worry if it stolen, broken, etc. When its usefulness is done, I toss it out.

Besides, the new I-pods now will have Internet access, which have already made e-paper obsolete. The beauty of Magazines and down loaded printed info is the transportability of it. Like everything in life e-paper will work on certain categories and not on others.

Keep up the good job, enjoy reading your point of view.
(Submitted by an Unknown)



RE: BoSacks Speaks Out: On Media Buyers, Mags, and Football
Bo, I have three sons; ages 18, 16, and 12. All three read paper magazines about their chosen interests. The fact that in two out of three cases those interests are *electronic gaming* does not stop them for wanting to curl up with an ink-on-paper magazine at the end of the day.

Unless and until an "e-paper" solution has all the virtues of paper: portability, ease of

reading, disposability, low-cost of use, low entry cost, low risk (read in the bathtub, like I

read magazines and my husband, too) etc. I don't think niche/passion magazines will be dinosaurs.
(Submitted by a Multi-Title Publisher)



RE: BoSacks Speaks Out: On Media Buyers, Mags, and Football
I stopped buying the fantasy football pubs a few years ago. The online sites (I like thehuddle.com) are simply better sources of information and are up-to-the-minute regarding the latest player developments. The price for the online service is probably comparable to what you paid for three fantasy magazines, and it includes weekly match up forecasts and daily player news throughout the football season (after all, a fantasy owner's job is just beginning at the draft!)

Is this yet another indication that print is dead? No, it's an indication that for the very latest news and information, the web can't be beat. I am a firm believer that in-depth reporting and full-length magazine narratives will always be best received on a dead tree.
(Submitted by a Publisher)


RE: BoSacks Speaks Out: On Media Buyers, Mags, and Football
Thanks bo, It's readers like you that continue to support my titles. I publish several small niche titles for readers just like you. Your description is my mission. I publish titles that my readers feel they must have. It's all about understanding your clients and never, ever forgetting that without passionate readers you have nothing.
(Submitted by a Publisher)



RE: BoSacks Speaks Out: On Media Buyers, Mags, and Football
Great to hear about your love of football. Maybey ou can add a summary of game results on Monday morning? Or better yet add a demo based on the city you live to get your insights on upcoming games!

Forget about epaperm watch the next iPod for the first real digital handheld device for reading that will be sold to the consumer. This time next year, you will see kids reading on iPods! Schools are already purchasing ebooks for iPods.

The problem with epaper is there is no system to deliver the data. ITunes handles the delivery very well except you need to connect to a computer. With the iPhone you will be able to get away from the computer.
(Submitted by a Global Procurement manager)


Re: Bauer Upping Most Low-Cost Weeklies' Cover Prices
Bo, this is detrimental to true market demand and not good for unit demand. The consumer has determined Bauer's success, which has always been recognized by the publisher. The model works for the publisher, and you know what they say if it aint broke. The dollars will look good but it will again lead to a major decline in unit sales on an industry wide level and especially at publisher level. If a consumer chose a Bauer publication based on price over the competitive titles will they now chose to buy nothing as the price creeps closer to the competition? If so, how does this model work for the distribution channel? Essentially, when a newsstand customer purchases a low priced Bauer publication they are hiring the product to do a job........supply chosen edit content, which ever it may be, at a low cost. Clearly Bauer has carved our a niche. Wholesalers understandably want to carry less on their trucks of titles that do not sell, not less on there trucks of what used to sell.
(Submitted by an unknown from a major Publisher)



Re: And now, Grim Words from The Reaper
I've read with interest the Speak out series that gives everyone an option to vent their thoughts and opinions. Our industry changed years ago. Once the large became larger and the publisher and yes printers (accountants started to think pennies and not nickels) this industry changed.


Not being able to see beyond ones nose, thinking that if I can save a penny it will better the bottom line and more importantly having individuals in high management positions who do not have a complete understanding of our industry put another nail in our industries coffin. Sounds awful doesn't it. It is.

I've always respected the production people I've spoken to over the years. But the one's who know their stuff are disappearing or retiring (?).

We're losing the knowledge and expertise we one had. Too bad.
(Submitted by a Printer)



RE: My former employer
I just wanted to tell someone today that I am eternally grateful for my life as a self-employed writer. We all have our difficult spells, but I thank the gods and goddesses that I'm no longer at a newspaper.

My former employer, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville just had a major shake up. On Friday, they announced the abolition of Metro, Lifestyle and Features departments in favor of interest "groups". They also abandoned most of the existing beats--no more movie reviewer, no more music writer. All the existing reporters now have to reapply for newly created positions. So the guy who's been doing movies for 10 years and the guy who's been doing music get to both apply for one "entertainment writer" job which doesn't include reviewing at all. The former Home and Garden editor can apply for the "nesting" writer job or just become a GA. All this in an atmosphere where people dare not complain because there are been plenty of layoffs in other departments.


When I left there in 2004, I was the Features editor and I'm cannot tell you how happy I am to have been spared all this. Apparently, the Atlanta paper did a similar thing a couple of months ago
(Posted by a Writer)


Re: The Worst PR Debacle in History
Two points appear to be lost to the "media" etc.


1) That even though there should have been no lead in any of the paint no child was killed, injured or maimed. So where is the actual damage--except to Mattel.

2) That Mattel is supposed to be taking a sample from each day of production and sends them to lab --one in China and one in the USA. How come both labs didn't find the paint problem?

The fault should not be with China but with the American mfg that allowed this to happen.

(Submitted by a Toy Consultant)

Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books

Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books
By BRAD STONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/technology/06amazon.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1189166495-c+pbzSp3dgLhtKgJH2JKLA

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 - Technology evangelists have predicted the emergence of electronic books for as long as they have envisioned flying cars and video phones. It is an idea that has never caught on with mainstream book buyers.

Two new offerings this fall are set to test whether consumers really want to replace a technology that has reliably served humankind for hundreds of years: the paper book.

In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon's plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon's site.

That is a significant advance over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles.

Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database, according to people with knowledge of its plans. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available to its users.

Amazon and Google would not comment on their plans, and neither offering is expected to carve out immediately a significant piece of the $35-billion-a-year book business. But these new services, from two Internet heavyweights, may help to answer the question of whether consumers are ready to read books on digital screens instead of on processed wood pulp.

"Books represent a pretty good value for consumers. They can display them and pass them to friends, and they understand the business model," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, who is skeptical that a profitable e-book market will emerge anytime soon.

"We have had dedicated e-book devices on the market for more than a decade, and the payoff always seems to be just a few years away," he said.

That disappointing history goes back to the late 1990s, when Silicon Valley start-ups created the RocketBook and SoftBook Reader, two bulky, battery-challenged devices that suffered from lackluster sales and a limited selection of material. The best selling e-books at the time, tellingly, were "Star Trek" novels.

Hopes for e-books began to revive last year with the introduction of the widely marketed Sony Reader. Sony's $300 gadget, the size of a trade paperback, has a six-inch screen, enough memory to hold 80 books and a battery that lasts for 7,500 page turns, according to the company. It uses screen display technology from E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creates power-efficient digital screens that uncannily mimic the appearance of paper.

Sony will not say how many it has sold, but the Reader has apparently done well enough that Sony recently increased its advertising for the device in several major American cities.

"Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books," said Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony. "That is where we see people, on the go, in the subway and in airports, with our device."

Book publishers also seem to be preparing for the kind of disruption that hit the music business when Apple introduced the symbiotic combination of the iPod and its iTunes online service. This year, with Sony's Reader drawing some attention and Amazon's imminent e-book device on their radar, most major publishers have accelerated the conversion of their titles into electronic formats.

"There has been an awful lot of energy around e-books in the last six to 12 months, and we are now making a lot more titles available," said Matt Shatz, vice president for digital at Random House, which plans to have around 6,500 e-books available by 2008. It has had about 3,500 available for the last few years.

Amazon has been showing the Kindle to book publishers for the last year and has delayed its introduction several times. Last fall, a photograph of the device, and some of its specifications, leaked onto the Web when the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get approval for its wireless modem, which will operate over a high-speed EVDO network.

Several people who have seen the Kindle say this is where the device's central innovation lies - in its ability to download books and periodicals, and browse the Web, without connecting to a computer. They also say Amazon will pack some free offerings onto the device, like reference books, and offer customers a choice of subscriptions to feeds from major newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the French newspaper Le Monde.

The device also has a keyboard, so its users can take notes when reading or navigate the Web to look something up. A scroll wheel and a progress indicator next to the main screen, will help users navigate Web pages and texts on the device.

People familiar with the Kindle also have a few complaints. The device has a Web browser, but using it is a poor experience, because the Kindle's screen, also from E Ink, does not display animation or color.

Some also complain about the fact that Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies like Adobe. That means owners of other digital book devices, like the Sony Reader, will not be able to use books purchased on Amazon.com.

Nevertheless, many publishing executives see Amazon's entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device.

"This is not your grandfather's e-book," said one publishing executive who did not want to be named because Amazon makes its partners sign nondisclosure agreements. "If these guys can't make it work, I see no hope."

For its part, Google has no plans to introduce an electronic device for reading books. Its new offering will allow users to pay some portion of a book's cover price to read its text online. For the last two years, as part of the Google Book Search Partner Program, some publishers have been contributing electronic versions of their books to the Google database, with the promise that the future revenue would be shared.

The service could be especially useful to students and researchers who find information they need through a Google search, but it is also likely to include material suited for leisure reading. It will be separate from an effort called the Google Book Search Library Project, which is digitizing the collections of some libraries. That program has angered publishers and led to several pending lawsuits over copyright issues.

Both the programs of Google and Amazon are drawing attention, and some skepticism, from traditional book retailers. Barnes & Noble, the largest bookseller in the United States, once invested in early e-book creator NuvoMedia and sold its RocketBook in stores before getting out of the business in 2003.

Stephen Riggio, chief executive at Barnes & Noble, argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete with Google and Amazon. Mr. Riggio said in an interview that the full texts of many books will become available on the company's Web site over the next year to 18 months. He also said that Barnes & Noble was considering introducing its own electronic book reader - but only when it can sell one at a low price.

"If an affordable device can come to the market, sure we'd love to bring it to our customers, and we will," Mr. Riggio said. "But right now we don't see an affordable device in the immediate future."

Electronic paper is catching up with the real thing

"I no longer want my MTV"
Bart Simpson


Paper chase
From Economist.com
Electronic paper is catching up with the real thing




AN INVENTOR meets a venture capitalist in a bar. He pulls out of his pocket something that looks like a grubby handkerchief, straightens it out on the bar top, and begins his pitch for $10m of venture money.

It's a video display that can be furled, folded or rolled up into a ball, the inventor enthuses. He shows how it can be viewed from any angle, is easy to read in bright sunlight, has a contrast ratio better than a laptop's liquid-crystal display (LCD), is light and portable, and can run for months without being recharged. It will change the way we view the world, swears the wide-eyed inventor. "Naw, it's all been done better and cheaper before," says the unimpressed VC, as he crumples the newspaper he was reading and tosses it into the bin.

Ink on paper has evolved over the millennia to become the easiest medium to read and the most efficient means for conveying information. And despite all the talk about paperless offices, computers have contributed mightily to today's deluge of printed material instead of helping diminish it. But that hasn't stopped researchers around the world from trying to replicate print on paper electronically.

The one thing going for e-paper, which the dead-tree version can't hope to match, is its programmability. Imagine a newspaper that could be updated as events developed during the day. Think of a book that could change its contents after you'd finished reading it. How about a laptop-sized screen that unfurled from your mobile phone so you could watch TV while strap-hanging to work? What if your tee-shirt could flash intimate messages to attractive passers-by?

Sony is the latest in a long line of gadget-makers to flaunt a paper-like electronic display. The flexible 2.5-inch display it demonstrated a couple of weeks ago was notable for two reasons: it offered full-motion video and was in living colour.

E Ink Corporation



In some ways, Sony is playing catch-up here. LG Philips, a joint venture between LG of South Korea and Philips of the Netherlands, has been showing off a 14-inch colour screen that's flexible enough to wrap around a lamp post. Prime View International of Taiwan has something similar. So does Samsung of South Korea and both Seiko Epson and Fujitsu of Japan, as well as a handful of start-ups in Britain and America. But until recently, few of them were able to display colour video properly.

While making flexible displays in monochrome has been difficult, adding colours and making them switch fast enough for full-motion video has been a tougher nut to crack. The trick to making such furlable displays has been to fabricate the electrode arrays for switching the display's millions of picture elements ("pixels") from either conducting plastics or extremely thin metal foil. Fortuitously, the recent improvement in plastic electronics for ink-jet printers has invigorated the whole of the e-paper business.

Like real paper, e-paper has to be both highly reflective and passive-ie, it should need no juice for backlighting or for maintaining the image. The best way to do that is to use a medium that's bi-stable. Like a tossed coin, a bi-stable material can flip between two possible states-and then remain stable, and require no energy, in one or the other state until flipped again.

The first attempts to devise a bi-stable ink were made 30 years ago at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Centre in California. Called Gyricon, the technology was based on a transparent silicone sandwich with millions of tiny polyethylene spheres floating in oil between the upper and lower surfaces. Each of the tiny beads, less than a hair's width in diameter, was black on one side and white on the other, with each hemisphere carrying an opposing electric charge. When an external charge was applied to an electrode array on the upper surface of the sandwich, the beads floating beneath them rotated promptly to reveal either their white or black sides-spelling out words and images, depending on the pattern of surface electrodes switched on or off.

Nowadays, a Xerox subsidiary called Gyricon LLC sells its SmartPaper-the polarised-bead form of e-paper-as reprogrammable displays for draping inside retail stores, hotels, conference centres and colleges. The flexible signs are connected wirelessly to computerised databases so they can be changed with the click of a mouse.

The bi-stable technology that has progressed the furthest, however, is a refinement perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 1990s. This uses tiny microcapsules filled with electrically-charged particles of white titanium dioxide suspended in an oily solution of black dye. The capsules themselves are trapped in a liquid polymer that's sandwiched between two arrays of electrodes.

When a negative charge is applied to individual electrodes, the titanium-dioxide particles move to the top of the microspheres and make that part of the display appear white. As with the Gyricon, the pattern of electrodes switched on or off determines the image on the display.

E-Ink, the company spun off from MIT to commercialise the idea, supplies such displays to electronics firms around the world, including LG Philips, Samsung, Motorola and Prime View as well as Sony. The first e-book reader launched by Sony in 2004 used an E-Ink display with electronics supplied by Philips.

Sony's latest announcement promises to bring e-paper even closer to everyday use. This time the device appears to be a home-grown development. Unlike the electrophoretic displays used in E-Ink's products, which rely on charged particles being physically moved by an electric field, Sony's new imaging device uses an organic electroluminescence display (OLED). Such displays emit light in response to an electric current or field being passing through them.

OLEDs generally use a glass substrate, or backing material. But Sony has found a way of forming the organic transistors for switching the pixels on and off on a flexible plastic substrate. The 2.5-inch prototype is little thicker than a sheet of actual paper and weighs about the same without its associated electronics.

Don't expect such a clever innovation to be wasted on something as prosaic as a portable reader for e-books. Apple's multimedia iPhone may be the gadget du jour, but Sony may trump it with an all-singing-and-dancing gizmo, built around a foldable display for downloading television, which can run for days without recharging. Now that's something not to be sneezed at.

Hearst newspaper to publish on e-paper

HearstSeattle newspaper to publish on e-paper



US newspaper publisher Hearst has announced that it will trial versions of the Seattle Post Intelligencer on electronic paper within the next two years.

The 120 year-old company, which dates back to William Randolph Hearst's proprietorship of the San Francisco Examiner in 1887, will pioneer flexible colour LCD displays from LG Philips to deliver real-time daily news.

Articles carried on the electronic newspaper will be today's, rather than yesterday's, claim Hearst officials.

They hope to run the trials in other cities where Hearst publishes daily newspapers. The company owns 18 newspapers, 29 TV stations, 18 magazines and numerous websites in the US.

The electronic display will be a colour tabloid size (A3) screen the thickness of card, so that readers will be able to roll up the screen and carry it.

Turning the page, i.e. refreshing the screen with a new page image, will involve touching a pressure-sensitive control at the page edge.

While the screens will be made by LG Philips, they use technology developed by E Ink, a company in which Hearst invested when it was spun out of MIT a decade ago.

LG Philips Launches Bendable Color E- Paper

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is just a small article and a heads-up on the four color future of information distribution. E-paper is continuing to make great strides. This primitive device is just another shot in the very beginning of a soon to be vibrant industry. The technology will get better and better and the cost of manufacturing will plummet. We are not there yet, but soon, easy to read, quality e-paper will be everywhere.

"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."
Milton Friedman (American Economist, b.1912)


LG Philips Launches Bendable Color E- Paper
by Matthew Broersma,
Techworld
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131798-1/article.html? tk=nl_dnxnws

LG.Philips LCD on Sunday took the wraps off the world's first A4-sized color "e-paper" display, following up on its black and white display of the same size a year ago.

The 14.1-inch, 4,096-color display is paper-thin and flexible, and can be viewed from up to a 180-degree angle, meaning images remain crisp even when the display is twisted around, the company said.

The image is designed to be comparable to print quality, LG.Philips said. The display is less than 300 micrometers thick, and only uses power when the image changes.

E-paper is a concept designed to open up new frontiers in the world of LCD displays and to replace paper in some cases. A number of companies have debuted prototypes of such lightweight, thin, flexible displays, including Taiwan's Prime View International (PVI) and Japan's Seiko Epson.

LG.Philips' version of the technology uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, making the display flexible and allowing it to return to its original shape after being bent. The latest display includes a color filter coated onto the plastic substrate.

The company's development process for the color display centered on overcoming processing difficulties related to the lack of heat resistance in metal foil and plastic substrates.

That meant developing processing technology that minimizes panel deformation and prevents circuit structure change during high-temperature processes, as well as research into the lamination technology and the design of the transistors and color filter, the company said.

PVI recently introduced Vizplex, an e-paper technology that, like LG.Philips' displays, uses electronic ink from E-Ink. PVI's smaller displays, between 1.9 inches and 9.7 inches, are due out this summer and are designed for mobile phones, music players, bulletin boards and electronic books.

Seiko Epson introduced a high-resolution, A6-sized e- paper display using E-Ink and a manufacturing technique called surface-free technology by laser annealing (SUFTLA).