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SoftBook's James Sachs: A New Page for a Gadget Guru The man who holds the patent on the Mac mouse now has 10 magazines -- including Time -- willing to deliver downloadable content to his E-book subscribers When James Sachs ran out of reading material two hours into a grueling 14-hour flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong in 1995, he decided to buy himself "an electronic reading gizmo" once he reached his gadget-laden destination. To his surprise, he couldn't find such a product. He couldn't find one back home in the U.S., either. So he did what any self-respecting Silicon Valley entrepreneur would do. He went out to his Menlo Park garage, rigged up a rough model of what he had in mind, and ran it past friends and venture capitalists until he had $2 million to start a company. After two and a half years of quietly developing its first product, Menlo Park's SoftBook Press Inc. began selling its $599 E-book -- called the SoftBook Reader. The goal, Sachs says, was to make an electronic device that was as easy to use as any book sitting on a library shelf -- and, at the same time, easier to carry around than a pile of books. "The problem with books is when they gang up on you," he says. "There are 25 pounds [of books] in my 14-year-old son's backpack, one of which says that Reagan is President."
SoftBook's initial product isn't perfect, Sachs acknowledges: Its price is hefty and so is its weight of three pounds. But he points out that the first cell phones to come to market were heavier than a brick and had spotty service -- yet they were the forerunners of the ubiquitous devices ringing in pockets all over the world today. Neither SoftBook nor its primary competitor, NuVo Media's Rocket eBook, will say how many units have shipped so far, but analysts guess the numbers will remain low until prices drop and content becomes more readily available. And so far, only about 500 titles have been retooled for the SoftBook Reader. Sachs believes the SoftBook Reader will be compelling to gizmo lovers right now, though. An internal modem and streamlined operating system let the user plug the Reader into a telephone line and load it up directly with fresh text from books, magazines, and newspapers -- unlike other devices of the past few years that have required a PC for downloading material. SoftBook's screen is bigger than its competitors' so that readers don't have to scroll within a page. Users instead can push a button to turn electronically to the next numbered page. In addition, SoftBook is offering the device for $299 if customers agree to buy $19.95 worth of books or periodical subscriptions per month. Despite the slow start, Sachs remains confident that E-books in one form or another eventually will become ubiquitous. "I'm sure there will be a yellow waterproof version some day for taking to the beach or reading in the bathtub," he says. But he doesn't foresee them replacing books -- just extending the reach of the publishing industry the way videotapes expanded the market for movies. Sachs, 44, should know something about the ubiquity of new technologies. He holds patents on both the interactive toy Teddy Ruxpin and on the Macintosh mouse, an innovation that is credited with moving the now-pervasive computer mouse from the laboratory into the home.
He was hooked. Sachs completed an engineering degree at the University of Michigan and then moved on to Stanford University to study engineering design. There he met David Kelley, a product design student. Kelley started what would ultimately become IDEO, the design consulting firm that's now one of the tech darlings of Silicon Valley. Sachs signed on as software manager just in time to work with one of the firm's first clients, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer Inc., who had this crazy vision of putting a personal computer in every home. Jobs asked Sachs to join a group from Apple that was going to see a new computer at Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center, an historic visit that planted the seeds for what would become the Apple Macintosh. Sachs and the team at IDEO were assigned to work on the mouse. Xerox researchers told the team from Apple that they had been trying for years to make a reliable, inexpensive mouse. Sachs's team did it in less than a year. Shortly afterward, Sachs left IDEO to co-found and serve as director of engineering at robotics company Elfin Technologies. The plan was to make a personal robot that would be a cross between a toy and a PC accessory. Sachs's team developed software that made the robot easy to use. But Elfin never got enough venture capital to bring a product to market, Sachs says. "It was about a decade too soon," he says, with a shrug, noting that Sony's recently unveiled robotic dog is the same type of entertainment device that Elfin was hoping to produce.
But bringing technology innovations to market through toys eventually began to lose its appeal for Sachs, and he decided to take six months off to ski and "figure out what was next." It was during that period that he had his reading-material dilemma while flying to Hong Kong. The more he thought about possible uses for an electronic book, the more he began to believe that the device's time had come. Concerned about making technology promises he couldn't keep, Sachs kept SoftBook's plans secret until the company had spent more than two years developing an initial product. He was careful to follow the keep-it-simple lessons he had learned in the toy industry: Create a product that doesn't require a user's manual, make it do only a few things, and make it do them very, very well. Heidi Roizen, a former Apple executive who sits on SoftBook's board, believes that Sachs has what it takes to make the company a success. "He's bringing everything he has learned about consumer behavior and devices to bear on this," she says. "He has barely scratched the surface of what he intends to do." Eventually, Sachs would like the SoftBook Reader to replace the reams of paper that pile up on desks and fill commuter briefcases, student backpacks, and air-travel satchels. Users can create an electronic "bookshelf" of documents on the Web that will automatically download into the Reader the next time they dial in. And SoftBook is offering to let Web-site designers put a SoftBook button on their Web pages that Reader users could click to send a document to their electronic bookshelf for offline reading. "It's unbelievable the number of things you can do once you start thinking it through," he says. The challenge will be adding new features while still making sure that the device remains easy to use. And that's a subject about which Sachs could write a book. Make that an E-book. Rae-Dupree covers technology for Business Week out of Silicon Valley. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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 SoftBook founder James Sachs WEB POINTERS Click here to visit the site mentioned in the story: SoftBook Press RELATED ITEMS Click here to read related Business Week stories: "Downloaded Any Good Books Lately?" June 7, 1999 Photo of the SoftBook June 7, 1999 Tech & You Nov. 2, 1998 | |||||||||||||||
