The Open Book
hackaday.io
This is a complete reimagining of the Open Book Project, but the original mission remains: As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading are closed objects, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners' interests are not always aligned with readers'. The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.

This is a complete reimagining of the Open Book Project, but the original mission remains:

As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading are closed objects, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners’ interests are not always aligned with readers’.

The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.

Check out the promo video as well:
https://youtu.be/vFD9V8Hh7Yg

      • Chobbes@lemmy.world
        271·
        9 months ago

        It’s not just mass production and economies of scale. That’s obviously a huge part of it, but the cheap Kindle devices are also definitely sold at a loss with the expectation that you’re going to buy a lot of ebooks from Amazon which will more than make up for it (and also some of the devices are ad supported).

        • GrappleHat@lemmy.mlEnglish
          14·
          9 months ago

          …and we can be sure Amazon finds ways to monetize user data as well (they see your book purchases, downloads, reading habits, etc)

    • henfredemarsEnglish
      18·
      9 months ago

      It’s also the economy of scale. You get better prices when you’re buying thousands of units.

    • Heratiki@lemmy.mlEnglish
      51·
      9 months ago

      I mean those Echo Dots come with a huge hit to your privacy as a cost. Not to mention how susceptible the Echo Dot has been in the past. Hell some expeditious hackers even got the Echo Dot to hack itself.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      It’s crazy how subsidized a Kindle is.

      No doubt Amazon sells Kindles with a thin margin or maybe even at a loss. But the cost to produce them is also lowered significantly by manufacturing large quantities.

      • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        3·
        9 months ago

        You mean the ad infested ebook reader that has less and less features with each version? Yeah sounds great. Buy a Kobo instead and host your own library with Calibre.

    • The Hobbyist@lemmy.zip
      2·
      9 months ago

      That version is ad-sponsored though, isn’t it? If you wanted to get it without ads, I believe you need to pay extra.

      • allstar@lemmy.one
        2·
        9 months ago

        You can ask customer service to remove it for free after purchase, or so I’ve heard.

        • 2ncs@lemmy.world
          4·
          9 months ago

          I’m pretty sure it’s a $30 dollar charge, from when I last looked into it. For that exact price difference you can get a Kobo, which isn’t Amazon and doesn’t have ads

          • SatyrSack@lemmy.one
            2·
            9 months ago

            If you want to just do it automatically through the settings or whatever, sure. But you can supposedly call up customer service, make up an excuse like the ads are inappropriate for your kid, and they will remove ads for no charge.

          • Heratiki@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Sadly a Kobo doesn’t support my Kindle library without a good bit of extra steps that, from my experience, can wreck some books.

            • 2ncs@lemmy.world
              2·
              9 months ago

              That’s fair. Fwiw that’s the main reason I tried to avoid kindle, so I would be able to take my library where i want and not be tied to Amazon

        • Heratiki@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah they usually won’t do this unless you’ve owned it for a while or purchased a considerable amount of content via the device. Also depends on how adamant you are about having them remove it.