At a recent meeting for budding young, and not so young, authors, we once again came upon the subject of ebooks. That’s not entirely unusual seeing as how one of our members is Jeff Kirvin, Cyber Prophet. Jeff’s a nice guy and definitely full of opinions, no matter how wrong they may be. Being the thick headed, stubborn as a mule kind of guy that I am. I felt the need to do battle with him once again.

Picture if you will a pair of big horn sheep, mindlessly slamming their skulls together hour after hour. Or perhaps the north bound Zax and the south bound Zax. Which ever picture of stubbornness that trips your trigger.

Now if you so please, you can read Jeff’s account of this butting of heads over at writingonyourpalm.net. What’s truly amazing is that I think I managed to bring him around to my way of thinking.

Dedicated ebook readers have been done before, and they’ve failed. I know there are several hypothesis out there, and the stance that Jeff takes so often is that convergence devices are the key to success. If it doesn’t do a whole bunch of things what good is it?

Well I happen to have the opposite opinion. I want something that does one thing really well, rather than something that does a whole bunch of things poorly. My cell phone, a Sony Ericsson P800 which I’ve written about before, is a convergence device. However I bought it because it’s a great phone first. While I could read ebooks on it, I have no desire to do so. Quite frankly the screen is just too small to make reading comfortable for any duration. Not to mention that airlines still frown on the use of cell phones in flight, despite the fact that I can turn the cell phone off and still use the device, it’s simply easier not to argue with the flight attendants.

I think Jeff is correct that the dedicated ebook readers like the Rocket Ebook, the HIEBook, and the EbookMan are “Walled Gardens.” The devices are tied to a particular service which means you can only read what that service offers. Sound like a device you want to own? I didn’t think so. I want the ability to read my ebooks wherever, whenever. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe twenty years from now. Devices that are tied to one service are far too restrictive to entice me to part with my cash.

So what would I buy? Well if you’ve read Jeff’s column then you know, but in case you haven’t I’ll restate it here: I want a device about the size of a DVD case. A good quality black and white screen would be fine, something that would be easily viewable with the reading lights on airplanes. Most importantly I want a device with a battery providing 24 hours of continuous use.

I don’t want PDA or Cell Phone functionality. I want this device to read books, and in order for me to buy it, the hardware has to stay out of the way and let me read. If I have to think about how I’m reading, the device is a failure. I also want to be able to put my own content on the device. I don’t want to be tied to any particular service or format. I want ebooks that I can read today, and ebooks that I’ll still be able to read long after the current hardware has failed.

Jeff, the poor convergence soul, still wants the PDA functionality. I can’t blame him. It would be nice to have wireless networking in such a device, as the screen would be big enough to web surf, and being able to download ebooks directly is appealing. The problem is that when you start adding that kind of functionality you have to make compromises. More functions mean more advanced hardware. More advanced hardware means more expensive. I don’t want to buy another computer, I have plenty of those already.

The business model I would love to see applied to ebooks is Apple’s iPod. Those things are marvelous. I have one and it travels with me everywhere. The ability to have all of my music collection with me, in a compact device is fantastic. When I’m on the road and away from home, it’s nice to be able to sit back and enjoy my favorite music. Any of my favorite music. Seriously. That damn thing holds my entire CD collection. Any song I want to hear is right at my fingertips.

The beauty of this business model isn’t just the device. iTunes plays a key roll. It makes it easy to maintain my music. I can add new songs, organize playlists, and it all gets added to the iPod automatically. You can argue that it’s a proprietary solution, but since it supports mp3’s just fine, you’d have a hard time convincing me to switch to something else.

A lot has been made of the iTunes music store lately. It’s a built in part of iTunes that connects to servers over the internet and allows you to buy new songs. Cheap. I’ve seen people railing against it, but the simple fact of the matter is; if it wasn’t the way to go, no one would be copying it.

Such a system for ebooks would be heaven for me. A dedicated reader that does nothing but books, and does them extremely well. A piece of software on my computer which will organize all of my books and load them onto the device whenever it’s connected. It will allow me to put in my own content if I so chose, and have an easy link to a store where I can find and buy the newest books, magazines, and newspapers. Heck, it should even allow me to subscribe to periodicals and automatically download them.

The real kicker here, and the reason ebooks are not going to be mainstream anytime soon, is the cost. It’s got to be cheap. I’m willing to pay for ebooks, but I’m not willing to pay the same price as a hard bound paper copy. Especially if it’s wrapped in some kind of proprietary format which won’t be readable in the next software release. I’ve seen all the arguments as to why ebooks have to be expensive and quite frankly they’re crap.

eBooks remain expensive because they are a cash cow. Just like CD’s are for the music industry. Fortunately Apple has turned things around there. I just hope someone can do the same for ebooks. Give me value in the books. Convenience in reading and carrying my library, the ability to add in my own content in non-proprietary forms, and you’ll have a customer for life.

I’ve heard that it’s not possible. Quite frankly that’s a load a crap too. Just the other day I saw an add for Radio Shack. They were selling touch screen personal organizers for $5 US. These devices don’t have to be complicated and expensive. Make then easy, provide value for the consumer, and they will become ubiquitous.