Archive for October 20th, 2007

Back in the day Palm used to sell expansion packs.  Expansion packs were MMC cards with a collection of games, productivity software, or e-books.  These cards were copy-protected and for the most part were not too expensive.  I have the dictionary and the SciFi ebook pack.  I don’t know if these expansion packs were ever popular, and I gave up using the couple I had because the card took up my memory slot.  Now that devices come with more internal memory, additional card slots, and memory cards have gotten so much cheaper, I wonder if some sort of e-book expansion pack could be of use today.  Let’s say I buy a new hardback book written by my favorite author.  Included with that book would be an MMC or SD card.  On it, the publisher could include a few of the author’s older titles on the SD card.  What would be better is if the book I am buying is included. That way I could give away the paper copy and keep my digital edition.  I believe that this could boost sales of hardback books.  The publishers then could include first chapter excerpts of other works in the same genre.  Then once a book goes to paperback, the publisher could sell the SD alone, or bundled with the paper book and charge more. 

Textbooks could benefit from this tactic too.  Either the book could be included on an SD card or a CD.  If it’s on a CD the publisher could allow viewing on a PC and one download to another type of device.  The student could sell the book back and keep his digital copy for reference.  The book that’s used in my literature class came with a CD.  Most of the students haven’t used it.  So those who buy a used copy that doesn’t have the CD or SD card probably wouldn’t care.  If it does matter then they’ll have to buy a new book.

DRM should not be an issue since the text is tied to the memory card or CD.  If it can’t be copied then what’s the problem?  Format could be an issue, but if the text couldn’t be copied then how about HTML?  Or do the right thing and put the e-books in different formats?  I think I could be happy with prc and pdb.  Chances are this is not a new idea, but I keep thinking that there has to be a compromise where we get most of what we want.  Ideally, I just want e-books to be successful.