Four reasons for electronic books to succeed, and four more reasons why they never will

(This story is translated from the Spanish original, and is also available in La Cafetera Rusa on LaVanguardia.es and Conexiones on Clarin.com)

Lately, any mention of e-books as a viable publishing format raises reactions ranging from ignorance to visceral opposition (the screen will never replace paper!), from business fears (pirates!) to kind obligingness. However, it's just now that the available technologies have achieved the required quality level, at a reasonable cost, for us to do a sizeable part of our reading on digital media, mostly on mobile devices: the displays in current handheld computers provide high brightness and definition levels, and online book sales channels are quite in place.

Electronic books have many benefits, including:

• E-books are convenient. Any e-book reader software allows searching words or sentences in the text, setting unlimited bookmarks, writing annotations and looking for the meaning of words in dictionaries installed in the same device. Moreover, e-books can be read in a dark room without disturbing your bed companion; laying on your side, just choosing the landscape screen layout; and hands-free, enabling auto-scrolling.
• E-books are compact. Digital formats don't take up any place. Literally. Maybe you won't read more if you take e-books on your vacation, but you won't regret carrying them in your suitcase. The three dozen titles I am carrying in my pocket right now (from Michael Moore and Douglas Adams, to Naomi Klein, Bob Woodward, PG Wodehouse and Graham Greene) take less than a tenth of my Palm's memory card, but their paper counterparts would rise more than one meter in height.
• E-books are discreet. The digital equivalent of wrapping your tomes in newsprint. You will avoid looks of cultural contempt, being considered a satyre or tagged as a radical. People sitting in front of you on the subway will never know if you are reading a marketing manual, a romantic pulp, a sex handbook, the DaVinci code or the European Constitution.
• E-books are more complete. For cost and technology reasons, an e-book can be much richer than its paper counterpart. The digital version of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon includes an interview with the author, the transcription of the release press conference, the Wired article on transoceanic cables that preceded the novel, a detailed cryptography glossary, additional bibliography and excerpts from other Stephenson's titles. All of it, easily browsed through hyperlinks.

However, it's unlikely that e-books ever make a sizeable part of the publishing market, specially if the following situation remains:

• E-books are expensive. Digitizing content was supposed to lower the cost of delivering it. Publishing e-books does not require cutting any trees, they don't take up physical space in warehouses or bookshops, and you don't have to ship them. However, the price difference between the electronic and physical versions of the same title tends to be minimal, or even none, and in some cases, the e-book costs more than the paper tome. We all know that authors do not take the largest cut from the retail price, so one wonders what e-publishers really want.
• E-books are in English. You may not be aware if you're reading this, but except for some experimental initiatives in Spanish and in Catalan, finding commercial e-books in non-English languages is extremely difficult. The digital production and delivery industry operates from the USA, and US readers almost don't read any books by foreign authors, not even translated. In the case of older works, already in the public domain, the situation improves a bit, and you can find many classical texts, such as Cervantes' Quijote, mostly converted by volunteers.
• E-books are sparse. E-book catalogs are much more limited than regular book catalogs. The production of an electronic version is not yet integrated in the publishing process, so only clear candidates to best-selling status are released simultaneously in paper and e-book. Even though it is well known that older catalog assets, both in publishing, music and movies, are a gold mine waiting to be worked thanks to digitisation, looking for an specific title to read it on our handheld can be a frustrating experience.
• E-books are too personal. The fear of piracy in the publishing industry has led technology providers to embrace protection systems ranging from the annoying (e-books that must be registered in a specific device or hard-coded with the buyer's credit card number) to the ridiculous (e-books that expire after two months). The result is that the buyer of a commercial e-book can't lend it to a friend or give it as a present, unless he/she is willing to provide the recipient with such sensible data.

An equally promising and deceiving situation. What do you think? Do you read e-books? Please share your experience with fellow readers in this forum.