One Last Look At The Kobo Wireless

Almost exactly one year ago, I bought myself a  Kobo Wireless ereader. I liked it quite a bit at the time, but at this point I can’t say that I still feel the same. It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly; it’s more fair to say that my relationship with it has gotten a little complicated. I’m going to try to untangle that a little bit in what I hope will be my last statement on the topic.

Kobo: The Device

The Kobo Wireless isn’t a bad little gadget. As I’ve said before, its greatest strength is its simplicity. You load up a book, you read it, and that’s basically that. Its main weaknesses are the usual sort of thing you hear about cheap gadgets: It’s awfully slow, some times.

Also, it’s a little unreliable: I’ve had to do the factory reset thing four times in the past year, usually because the books in my library would, one by one, go missing over time. Trying to add them back never worked, so I’d reset the device and re-load everything, which was irritating the few times that it was necessary. But what do you expect for 99 bucks? (Better than that. At least a little bit better, anyway.)

It never seems to retain my wireless network’s settings, meaning I have to input a huge hex string every time I want to connect the damn thing to the Kobo store, and that is getting on my wick, frankly. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even bother anymore, and have taken to syncing the thing with a USB cable. Which brings us to…

Kobo: The Software

The Kobo Desktop software is basically useless. It does nothing beyond managing a basic connection between your computer and your reader, and it serves as a front-end for the store. It only shows the books you’ve purchased from the Kobo store, and allows you to transfer them to your reader. You can’t manage the books on your reader at all, which would’ve been nice.

Also, I’m pretty sure that this thing corrupted the SQLite database where the Kobo device stores many of its books. (That resulted in factory reset number three, if you’re curious.) I tried Calibre, which wasn’t much better: It also fucked up my device (reset number four).

But if you think the desktop software is bad, you should see…

Kobo: The App

We’ve been this way before. To sum up: Unlike the desktop software, which does too little, the iOS app does way too much. The over-abundance of features is too distracting, the interface is too busy, it’s dog slow, it bitches about not being connected to the Internet even when you’re just trying to read a book that you’ve already downloaded–and that’s when it’s working properly. In my experience at least, the Kobo app is the king of the mysterious lock-up. It is not a pleasing user experience, to put it mildly.

Kobo: The Fundamental Interconnectedness

Let’s say you buy a book from the Kobo store, and download it to your computer, your iOS device, and your Kobo ereader. Let’s say that you then do some reading on you iOS device while you’re on lunch break, and when you’re done, you sync it to your library, which is on Kobo’s servers. Later, you come home and fire up your Kobo Wireless, go through the painful process of getting on your wifi network, and sync it to your library.as well. Can you pick up reading where you left off? Sort of. It won’t drop you on the same page–you could actually wind up more than a hundred pages away from where you want to be. Same thing happens with the desktop app.

Kobo: The Store

I don’t trust all of the books offered by the Kobo store. For example, I don’t think I’ll be getting a copy of Persepolis from them. I downloaded a preview of it, and quickly discovered that the only content contained therein was the book’s front matter, and the first page of the Introduction. Which looked like this:

Now, I ask you, would you spend $19 for the book, based on this experience?

Conclusion

Look, it’s not all that bad. I just needed to vent my spleen on these issues. I will say, however, that if you have a low threshold for frustration, you may want to stay away from the Kobo. If you’re willing to work within its limits, however, you’ll probably be fine.

I’ve made piece with mine thusly: I uninstalled the iOS app;  I never buy books from the Kobo store; I never connect it to wifi; and I never load books on it using the Kobo software or Calibre (or Adobe Digital Editions, for that matter). Instead, I hook the device up to the computer, I download books from Project Gutenberg, and I drag them to the device via Windows Explorer.

It works so much better this way, I’d be willing to give the device a solid B+. It’s just that the last thing the Kobo Wireless ereader needs is, you know, everything else that Kobo the company does.

Two Sides To Every Page

“Anyone who cares about the financial viability of the book business should read Author’s Guild President Scott Turow’s open letter on the implications of the government’s threatened anti-trust suit against major publishers and Apple over alleged collusion in e-book pricing.” {From: The Millions : Letter from Scott Turow.}

Well yes, of course. But if you do read it, you should probably also read Tim Cushing’s rebuttal over at Techdirt before you make your mind up about this whole thing. After reading both, I don’t know quite what to make of the situation, but you will.

WHOA!

“As I’ve been reading a lot of eBooks lately, one thing I’ve noticed is that there are certainly themes in the type of eBook it seems popular to write and publish. ‘WHOA! I’ve got magical powers!’ seems to be a popular one and there are not as many variants on it as I might like.” {From: eBook Review: two series that are too much alike – Boing Boing.}

I sympathize. If you read enough self-published or free ebooks, you will never run out of subjects that seem over done. In the iBook store for example, you could spend your whole life reading books whose synopses all start with, “[Woman's name] already has enough problems in her life, and the last thing she needs is to meet a handsome vampire. But guess what happens??!!”

Just Throwing This Out There

“What is it that these literary men and women [Franzen, et al] are afraid of losing should the paper novel really go into decline?” {From: E-books Can’t Burn by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books}

Tim Parks then goes on to list a number of things you can do with a paper book that you can’t do with an ebook, but he’s missing something. For one thing, he’s looking at the difference between plastic and paper from a reader’s perspective.

It takes an awful lot of effort, talent, and luck to get your words printed and bound by a publisher, and then placed on a bookstore shelf. Every step that you take must be approved by a gatekeeper. A physical book with the right name on the spine, in the right corner of the bookshop is the final physical evidence that you are a Writer. Not because you say you are, not merely because you’ve written something; you have been officially validated by a number of third parties, and their approbation is made flesh (well, pulp) in the body of a printed book.

Meanwhile, any asshole can publish an ebook. It’s just a computer file after all. What’s so distinguishing about that?

Not that Franzen or other established writers are really all that concerned about this sort of thing. But, if we’re making a list of the differences between books and ebooks, well that’s something.

Hell, I don’t care–maybe nobody else does either. But they might–they might!

ADDENDUM:

After re-reading this post, I think that I should probably clarify a few things.

1. The main point is that there’s at least one possible perceived distinction between paper books and ebooks that Parks didn’t speak on: It is that the ebook market lacks a clear, bright line that separates corporately published works from self-published works, and that it is possible that some established authors would be concerned by that fact.

2. I am not accusing Franzen and the rest of being disingenuous when they do not number that concern amongst their previously stated ones with regard to the expansion of the ebook format. I do not know what they believe in their heart of hearts. I merely point out that this sort of thing might worry them, subconsciously if nothing else.

3. And I only bring that up because Tim Parks didn’t mention it, though I think his essay is a fine piece of work nevertheless.

Waiting For The Death Of The Death Of Books

I would be so happy if I never read another article about books versus ebooks and the future of publishing ever again. Firstly, what’s left to say? Things are changing, but they’re doing it slowly; until there is some new information to report, what is the point of rehashing what’s already been said every time someone decides, for whatever reason, to run their mouth on the topic?

Another thing: Can we at least agree that it is highly disingenuous for people with a vested interest in one format or another to pretend that they are each the clear-eyed, objective thinker that everybody should be listening to? Look, this is a controversial issue with a direct impact on your financial situation: It’s actually okay to admit to having a self-interested point of view. Anger at the 1% notwithstanding, the days when everyone would think you were an asshole for just wanting to make a living are over.

Now, a more general annoyance: Not that they get into it in the linked article, but something that is often implied when traditional publishing people talk about the “death of books” is that there exists a pack of slavering monsters whose sole purpose and goal is to destroy traditional publishing. I don’t know everything about everything, but in all my travels, I have yet to come across more than one or two examples of that at best–I mean aside from the ULA (remember them?).

I’m beginning to doubt the existence of this ravenous horde. I think that some defenders of traditional publishing are assigning ravenous intentions to people who may not warrant the label. I think that anyone who tries to make money with ebooks outside of the traditional publishing establishment is imputed by some to be a kind of club-swinging Visigoth regardless of their attitude towards traditional publishing.

I suspect, however, that these Visigoths (oh, let’s just stick with that for now) are less like, “We must destroy old publishing!” but rather more like, “Here’s a business opportunity that I can exploit, and while I’m doing that, I may not try very hard to protect the business models of the established cadre of publishing companies.”

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Neither do you. Neither do the people who keep writing (and being quoted in) these articles. I’d love for everyone on both sides to wind up rich, happy, and widely read. But we don’t know what’ll happen. The future is horrible in that way.

Look, I can’t tell anybody what they should or shouldn’t write. I will however, be happy to mention what I’m not willing to read–not that anybody gives a damn, which is exactly right. For god’s sake, don’t listen to me. I’m a goddamn idiot.

But maybe think about not simply repeating the same information over, and over, and over again just because someone famous piped up about it, please?

Fwd: It was the best of times it wa…

Social reading–it sounds so desperately tedious. Especially the example, given in the article, of sending an excerpt of the book you’re reading to your dad. Christ.

Technology’s social evolution has resulted in some interesting innovations, I will admit; but, in the end, it always seems to boil down to all of us flicking little bits of content at each other with the smallest expenditure of effort that we can muster. How sociable is that, really?

DRM Dooms Publishers

Everybody’s been talking about this Charlie Stross thing. And I think he’s right, you know?

I don’t know how to solve the DRM problem, I don’t know what an Amazon-dominated future would mean for the common reader, and I don’t have any advice for anyone as to how to prepare for whatever is going to happen to The Way People Read And Stuff.

Well, there is one thing.

I just want to remind everybody that their non-Kindle ereader options are not nearly as dire as they once were. There are several wholly adequate alternatives to Amazon’s magic slate, so please: before you invest in an electronic book machine, do some research, figure out what’s important to you, and choose accordingly.

Oh, and by the way: EPUB. Buy an ereader that supports the EPUB format. PDF support is nice, but seriously, this is important, you really, really want something that will work with EPUB files.

Weighty Tomes?

“Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.” {From: E-readers get heavier with each book – Telegraph | Via: Slashdot}

Well now, that’s interesting. Someday of course, storage will be so cheap that we’ll all be carrying around devices that can store billions of gigabytes of data, so expect this weight increase to be a serious problem in the next 200 hundred or so years.

But we might start seeing some negative effects much sooner than that: You just know that airlines will start charging luggage fees calculated to the nearest 0.000000000000000001th of a gram.

Social Reading

So: This morning I got an email from Borders that told me it would be a really good idea to convert to a Kobo account, which I did because I’m ever so obedient about that sort of thing. Also, I have a Kobo ereading device, so I was practically already about 99% converted over anyway.

As part of all this razzum frazzum, I ended up installing the Kobo app to my iPod, and it’s been a weird experience, so far. Pros: It syncs with the Kobo stuff I’ve got already, which is nice, and it integrates with Instapaper, for some reason. (But the standalone Instapaper for iOS is $4.99, whereas the Kobo app is free, so that’s a plus.) Cons: It seems to be constantly transmitting or receiving data, which is weird. Also, um… is this really reading?

What I mean is that there are so many social connectors and sharing options that–even though I don’t use any of those services–it makes me feel exactly the opposite of how I normally feel when I’ve got a book in front of me. When I read I connect with the book and, to a certain extent, to that book’s writer. With the Kobo app I feel connected to everyone else.

To me, books might be social, but reading isn’t really–unless you’re reading to somebody, or they’re reading to you. Sadly, (or not) these are hardly common occurrences in my life. but I don’t see how every action I take (He turned a page! He downloaded a book!) being recorded to an electronic register-tape of activity, just in case someone out there would like to peruse it in the future, makes up for that.

When it comes to the social aspects of being a reader, this log-file approach strikes me as being unnecessary, or even downright undesirable. The piddly trivia of my habits is not interesting; I don’t know who you are, or what kind of person you might be, but I can just about guarantee that you don’t give the slightest fuck what I’m reading, what page I may be on, or whether or not I “love” my Kobo library. You may not even care what I think about what I’m reading, but I really feel that that’s at least a better starting point for a conversation, if there’s going to be one, than the mere mechanics of my reading process.

Perhaps those people out there who feel an obligation to provide content of whatever type to their Facebook or Twitter friends might enjoy this sort of thing. Everyday reading in the Kobo app will effortlessly generate that stuff, and thus the content will be provided and, perhaps the nagging mental tic assuaged, briefly. One suspects that most of the people at which this ephemeral, meaningless stream is directed won’t give a much of a damn, but that’s really a downside: Lack of an audience has never stopped anyone on the Internet from talking, for example (hence the continued existence of this very site).

And, in the end I suppose that just because I can’t see the usefulness of a thing, well that’s not necessarily a knock against it either. Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for the brief period of time when book blogs were social enough to meet people’s need to connect, and required at least some effort. But I’m a bitter curmudgeon, and therefore rather prone to grousing about this stuff.

The Kobo Ramble

So: It’s been about two weeks now since I bought a Kobo ereader, and I since there’s not much else going on here today, I thought I’d say a few things about my experiences with it.

It’s going pretty well, so far. The setup was easy enough, and getting books onto the thing is no problem. Actually, I’m spoiled for choice here: You can use the Border Desktop, or Adobe Digital Editions, or Calibre, if you want a kind of iTunes manage-my-library-then-sync kind of experience, or you could just drag and drop epub and PDF files directly to the device (it shows up as a disk drive when connected to your computer).

The Kobo only does one thing, and it does it pretty well–I mean, it’s not going to win the “Impress Your Friends” award. But at least they won’t think you’re an idiot. I know people who own (and regularly evangelize for) iPads and Kindles. When I mention the Kobo’s near total featurelessness to them, they mostly nod and say, “Yes, I could see how that might be a good thing for someone like you.” Well, they know how easily distracted I am. Also, when I mention that I only spent $99 on it, they smile politely and change the subject. It may appear to an outside observer that my pals are simply humoring a crashing bore, but I just know that they appreciate my frugality.

This thing may be the least gadgety gadget that I have ever owned.  Of the techie toys that I’ve owned, I think it’s the one that I am least likely to grow bored with, simply because there’s nothing to get bored at. Once you load a book on to the thing, it politely gets out of your way and lets you read. If you like reading, it will always have a place in your life. Right now, my Kobo lives on my nightstand, which is traditionally where I keep whatever book I’m reading at the moment.

It has not fundamentally changed the way I read, except that it’s made it much simpler to consume the free ebooks available at Project Gutenberg. But aside from that, nope, it’s just a book. That’s what I like about it.