Sorry Bezos, but I know a book when I see one, and Kindle ain't it. Neither are its E-Ink-based cousins, and that's a shame, because with a few tweaks they could actually replace dead tree.<BR><BR>Read More
Books vs. documents: what's wrong with so-called "ebooks"
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I must agree. I love books to the point of not simply reading them, but having a relationship with a book. Books offer a intellectual, visual and tactile experience, something that no electronic "book" can equal.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Wage Slave:<BR>I must agree. I love books to the point of not simply reading them, but having a relationship with a book. Books offer a intellectual, visual and tactile experience, something that no electronic "book" can equal. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Wait, you agree with Jon that eBooks can replace regular books someday, with a few tweaks?
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Well that and "eBooks" will be so hampered by DRM they can never get off the ground.<BR><BR>eBooks unlike iPods, there is no currently feasible way of ripping your library from the bookshelf to the reader. Nor is there a way of "burning" the text from the reader into a book. And like music and movies there is no standard scheme for the DRM. This forces the purchaser into a hardware / store combo, but for me at least far more importantly hangs the Sword of Damocles over the head of the buyer. If anything happens to the store and the reader, like say the company getting out of the market ala Sony did with music, then all of your purchases become unavailable, when that piece of hardware burns out.<BR><BR>While I have never purposefully made a note or highlighted text in any of my (non-workbooks) books. I do go back and flip through ones that are decades old.
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Er...a swing and a miss. A <I>well intentioned</I> swing and miss, mind you, but still a clean miss.<BR><BR>For one, Stokes misses the difference between medium and message. <I>Moby Dick</I> is still the same work whether in book form or carved into stone tablets or written on the sky in purple smoke. The book <I>transmits</I> the message, but the book is not (usually) the end in itself. A book can be (and often is) a beautiful work of art -- but the quotidian paperback transmits the same message quite well, and in much the same manner as the Kindle does.<BR><BR>When I'm reading a paperback, I'm not marveling at how well the book is printed or how great the cover art is; I'm <I>reading the book</I>. In this, Bezos is absolutely correct: the medium (whatever it is) should disappear and let the work itself shine through.<BR><BR>I love to read and take a second place to no one in my fondness for books, but really, this article is pretty weak tea.
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The eBookWise 1150 has had full-page, freeform markup, dictionary lookup, etc for nearly a decade under different brand names. It's not as light and modern as other choices, but you can get them for $100 on eBay which makes the shortcomings easier to live with.<BR><BR>That said, I agree this article is way off the mark. It gives the impression that Jon believes eBooks are "almost there" and that if only they had markup and duofold construction, they'd replace our libraries overnight. I find it hard to believe he's really trying to say that. There are a LOT of interface issues that need to be dealt with in general, and even the best of these units is only good for disposable reading.
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I believe that Amazon's "Kindle" can mark up books with highlights, etc. Although I agree with the two-page structure, especially if eBooks want to get beyond plain text and start incorporating comics, picture books, or those cool children's ancient history books with huge 2-page pictures of sphinxes, etc.<BR><BR>Imagine subscribing to a Japanese manga, and having every chapter automatically downloaded to your reader once the translations are finished. That would be a helluva lot faster than waiting a year for enough of it to be drawn so that a books worth of translations can be sold.<BR><BR>I don't think ebooks will ever totally replace paper books, because there will always be people who like the feel of a paper book (myself included). CD's and Vinyl still haven't died despite the fact that digital downloads are the most popular music format. This will definitely be a good way to regain some shelf space, as I definitely need it.
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The reasons given sound a lot like the reasons purists give for why people would never give up buying CDs (and before that, wouldn't give up records for soulless CDs). Most books are about the written contents, not the typography, and a document that can flow in an infinite number of ways to suit the reader is ultimately better to read than one that's fixed in a certain facing page typography.<BR><BR>Most books - fiction or non-fiction - are long documents, and a long document reader is all that's needed. Multiple pages is a holdover, much like how Next Page-Previous Page in websites will go away once they figure out how to get web banner impressions and easy navigation for long web documents.<BR><BR>Of course, there will still be those that want books for a variety of reasons - the tactile feel, the look on the physical bookshelf (although electronic versions of that are coming around - for instance, the various electronic bookshelf apps on Facebook)... and obviously an e-book won't be replacing Gutenberg's bible, the same way JPGs aren't replacing real paintings and MP3s aren't replacing live concerts.<BR><BR>(And, obviously a touched-based annotation system would nicer than text based. But that goes for pretty much anything in handheld computing.)<BR><BR>There are a long of reasons that Kindle won't work, but I don't think facing pages is one of them. A long-battery-life 10" iPhone-like device (or even a good reader for the normal iPhone - I once read a book on my Palm without too many issues), on the other hand, could have real potential, and I don't think the lack of facing pages is going to be what holds it back.
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"facing pages" - absolutely. A "proper" eBook should actually <I>look like a book!</I> If you want to see it done right (and even it wasn't perfect), see almost any of the "Knowledge Navigator" videos put out by Apple in the early 1990's when John Sculley was running the show there. While his vision of marketing was screwed up (remember - he was from Pepsi), his vision of the Knowledge Navigator was remarkable. This is actually where Apple must go next. It will take Steve Jobs to get it done right.
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E-books aren't intended to replace "artistic" books. They'll replace books that really are basically just a stack of documents, just text and maybe some pictures that you're reading through. No e-book is ever going to give a reader that feeling of holding something special, feeling the cover and smelling the paper and ink, putting it into a collection in a set of bookcases. If you want that, you'll go out and buy the more expensive paper version (eventually maybe they'll only come in "collector's edition" if you want paper). For people interested in the story contained in the book, e-books are a good idea. (Do cheap romance novels need to be on paper? Does a travel guide? A foreign language dictionary?)<BR><BR>E-books do still have a long way to go to replace the full experience of reading a book, obviously. And they can't replace all types of books yet. Images probably can't be produced to look as good on current e-ink displays as they can on paper, and even paperbacks sometimes have embellishments that add to the experience of reading, like border graphics or maps in fantasy stories. Anything with color is still a problem of course, if you're looking for both the handheld book-size format as well as color and battery life.<BR><BR>Personally I'm not currently interested in e-books. I'm a collector. I've got perhaps 500 books on shelves right now and buy more every month. In this and other things, I like having a physical object when I make a purchase, rather than just a download. But for reading paperback novels, e-books with even a single page and only black text might one day be good enough for me.<BR><BR>Textbooks and reference books seem like something that wouldn't work well on an e-reader. I would miss the ability to just flip back and forth based on remembering vaguely where something is located. Having to type in some words to search for or guess at page numbers would be more awkward.<BR><BR>Then too, the generation of people that's getting out into the world now and in the near future often don't even have much experience with reading paper books. Not too long from now, the people buying electronic books might not even know any different. And I don't think they'll automatically be worse off for not knowing what it feels like to hold a real book, because the content is what's most important, and not every art form is popular forever. There will be new art forms, and it's only because we find the art of books interesting that we'll think future generations are impoverished by not knowing the same experience with them.<BR><BR>At any rate, I won't be buying an e-reader until I can be reasonably certain that when a book is published, I'll be able to get an electronic version as easily as I can get a paper copy, AND that it's cheaper than the paper version, AND that it's not encumbered with limitations that make it harder to enjoy. If I want to loan my brother my copy, I can legally do so, but once they encrypt a digital version, I'd go to jail for working around that so that he could read it on his own e-reader. I already pay 7 bucks for paperback novels these days, versus 5 dollars just a few years ago - I'm not paying just as much for a digital version that is less visually appealing and less functional and usable. I can discount the cost of a reader given that it's a one-time charge spread over my entire remaining life, so long as it's always usable with all new books.<BR><BR>I think standards are going to be the biggest problem. It's going to be hard to get all publishers to produce electronic versions of their products and to make them a single format that all e-readers are licensed to open and such that an e-reader I buy tomorrow will read a book I buy 10 years from now. Obviously that last part will be something manufacturers will fight to prevent.
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An interesting point of view, one that is very similar in the observation of comparisons that Neal Stephenson (of "Snow Crash" fame) uses in his commentary "In the Beginning was the Command Line...". Ever read it? <br><br>The books vs documents dichotomy is an intriguing point, especially in regard to the overall perversion of the definition of "document" and the treatment of obsolete text documents in the face of marching upgrades as Stephenson puts it. <br><br>I also understand that he has since been meaning to upgrade the views in his text ever since MacOS X came out.... -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif --
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Mostly I agree with Lord Evermore. However...<BR><BR>I can really see a use for ebooks for those generic things you pick up for a buck and read quick before the pages fall out. I too have a room full to bursting with books, and of those maybe 60-70% could be replaced with a good, efficient ebook. There are those beautiful treasures though that won't be on the kindle, or on any other ebook until they can display 24 bit color and facing pages. <BR><BR>Maybe, just maybe, if kindle's successor, or its successor catches on books will start to be formatted with the medium in mind, just as they are in today's world. <BR><BR>In time these ebooks will get traction. The design will evolve into something useful and the price will come down to where non-geeks will buy it. BTW, if you think kindle's expensive, Jon's iRex goes for US$699.
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The article, I'm afraid, is far off the mark. Bullseye for the next lane, but missed the current target. Jon wants a two-display tablet, not an ebook reader. Most people read novels, magazines, newspapers, and comics; none of which are adversely affected by the monopage format of ebook readers. Very few people are concerned with books are art in and of themselves.<BR><BR>The problems with ebooks are lackluster hardware (most of it is still more complicated to use than would be a book), and two many formats. When the industry standardizes on a format, and makes ebooks readers simpler to just use, they'll take off. Or, at least, just put a decent ebook program (Mobipocket, for instance) on an oversized PDA. (This would actually be my vote; I read on my PDA using Mobipocket, and my sole complaint is the small display.) As it is, most ebook readers seem to be a lackluster ebook program on lackluster and poorly-designed hardware.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by drac:<BR>Why are these e-book readers all portrait in orientation?<BR><BR>I know that a closed book is portrait, but an open book is double face-page landscape.<BR><BR>Landscape, flexible annotation, with software that looks and acts like Tofu. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>It's easier to hold something one-handed if it's taller than it is wide. An open book can be held by the center so you still have more vertical than horizontal on either side.<BR><BR>When you're actually reading a book, even though the physical medium is wide, the actual text you're viewing is still only in portrait-orientation.<BR><BR>Also look at many website redesigns - research apparently shows that people prefer to read shorter lines that result in a longer page, than wider lines (within reasonable ranges of course). For one thing, having to move your eyes from one side to the other of a long page of text is less desirable than a medium-width line with more times that you have to move back tot he beginning and a new line. It lets your mind break the text up and read in blocks more easily.
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Okay, okay. I want an E-reader. I really really want one. But I don't want one with DRM, some lame attempt at cellular connectivity, or a Keyboard.<BR><BR>I want an e-book reader. I want to be able to read books on the damn thing. That means all the e-books I have I want to read, all .docs, all PDF's all .txt's, and anything from the Gutenberg project. Why is that so damn hard.<BR><BR>Why does every company screw up so horribly bad when implementing a simple idea.<BR><BR>God that Kindle is the most ugly hunk of crap i've seen this month.
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I think that the e-book reader won't really take off until they standardize the medium for electronic books.<BR>What I mean is that if the contents of the book could be transferred to something like a disc, micro-flash drive, etc... that could be inserted into an electronic reader than it would or might succeed. If the two could be made into what the cd-player and music CDs are today than we'd have a winner. If that were to take off than we could have a selection of cheap and feature-packed e-readers. The cheap ones would be very simple with basic navigational features. The expensive ones would come with built in storage to remember annotations for multiple books plus all the basic navigational functionality. <BR>I think that most people would still like something physical whether it's a paper book, a CD, or a tiny cd containing the text of a book. <BR>So with the exception of those that appreciate a finely/artistically printed book, who cares what the medium is? So long as there is a physical copy than we'd be happy, no?
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Jon, I think you nail it when you write, "I firmly believe that the term "ebook" is an unfortunate misnomer", but that you're barking up the wrong tree when you look for an ebook format that will step into the shoes of the paper book.<BR><BR>The paper book, for example, was not a better version of the handwritten manuscript. It lacked color, illustrations, cursive text. When Gutenberg published his Bible, he went to great lengths to imitate the previous technology. He created numerous type versions of each letter in the alphabet in order to imitate the variety of letter forms in older texts. Yet the success of movable type, and its tremendous social and political impact, had more to do with price and accessibility than with its resemblance (or lack thereof) to a monk's manuscript.<BR><BR>New technologies that succeed do so on their own terms. Social practices that had been fixed are opened up to negotiation. New patterns of use form, which may or may not eclipse previous usages. Email, despite the name, isn't an electronic substitute for paper mail - it's something else that took over many of paper mail's previous roles. Now email in turn is giving way to other forms of communication - SMS and instant messaging. But these are not improved version of email; they're something else - socially they do something else for a different generation of users with different practices.<BR><BR>So I don't think that the ebook reader that imitates the two page spread, the illustrations, the typographic conventions and the annotations of a conventional book will be the one that sweeps the market. Rather, it will be the reader that enables people to do something they couldn't do before, and that they want to do so much that they don't care that those features are lacking. From that perspective, the physical book may appear to be an inferior version of the ebook.
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The best comment yet: a successful e-reader would have to include some capacity to "rip" your current book collection to the device. I would buy a $500, $600 reader easily if it could store the library around me now...academic texts, cheesy paperbacks, and batman graphic novels...all of it.<br><br>After that, you can tie me into your store iTunes-style all you want. I'll probably even buy a lot of things from it. <br><br>And don't ask me how to rip...cross reference proof of ownership with a pre-existing database? Beats me...I'm not the one making the big bucks. -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --
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I think the article was misguided.<BR><BR>These very same arguments were presented when paperback books were first introduced. Even today there are people around who don't consider paperbacks to be real books.<BR><BR>The paperback lead to a revolution in the publishing industry. The ebook will do the same again, once they get the pricing and features sorted out.
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I fit firmly in to the group that wants it on the paper for any serious reading so I'm hardly positive towards e-books.<BR><BR>But one reason they will never replace paper (just remember the ideas about paperless office) is that it's just not as easy to use. Imagine a catalouge (I use them a lot for lab equipement). Often I have no ide about the name of the thing I'm looking for but can remember seeing it. It's a bit faster and a lot more convinient to flip through a paper catalouge than any net page/e-ink reader.<BR><BR>Similar can be said for any scientific literature (books not articles) where you aften flip between quite fara way from each other pages. <BR><BR>Only thing that could actually work was a blank book that is same as paper but can be "loaded" with different content (of course there is a slight problem of number of pages and similar).
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Okay, okay. I want an E-reader. I really really want one. But I don't want one with DRM, some lame attempt at cellular connectivity, or a Keyboard.<BR><BR>I want an e-book reader. I want to be able to read books on the damn thing. That means all the e-books I have I want to read, all .docs, all PDF's all .txt's, and anything from the Gutenberg project. Why is that so damn hard. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>It's not hard. But you probably also don't want to pay for it, and as you've described it, there's no revenue model. It's not that companies don't "get it," it's that they don't "get" how to pay for it. Nobody does, just yet. <BR><BR>"I'll buy it when it's free, and comes with a blender, too." That's a great philosophy on message boards, but it's not how products get to market.
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A lot of the gripes in this article can also be applied to other forms of media that have been digitized. For example, with mp3s we no longer have cover booklets that came with cds. And when it comes to any digitized media from photos, to art to music, to video, quality is lost in the transition, does this stop us from digitizing? Just because there are certain things I can't do with digital media that i could do with it's tangible form doesn't stop me from enjoying it nonetheless. It's always a matter of benefits outweighing the costs.<BR><BR>Digitization mainly serves to bring culture cheaply and efficiently to the masses. If you notice also no digital media has yet to completely eliminate the analog. There are still LP's, people are still painting with paintbrushes, some camera's still use film etc. And so by this rational there will always be printed books.<BR><BR>E-books and their readers are a relatively new thing, so I suppose future models will include stylus pens to allow you to interact, highlight and jot notes on the margins.
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DRM is the deal-killer for me right now. I have zero faith in any DRM protected files remaining viable for an extended period of time. I can still read books I got two decades ago. In 2027 will I be able to read an e-book I bought today?
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I'm curious about the web browser. That 400 bucks is a lot easier to stomach for unlimited net access with no monthly fee...<BR><BR>Does anyone know if it works with gmail?
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This is not a yes-or-no question. For many people and much of the stuff they read, something like this (maybe with more/different resolution / colours / size etc) would be perfect. And when flexible screens are the norm, the possibilities are even better.<BR><BR>For people who love the look, feel and smell of a "real" book, these devices will never replace them, and that's fine. <BR><BR>Both will exist, and everyone's happy, or should be.<BR><BR>But, I simply don't get the fixation of the two-page format. Did "calligraphers and typographers" really design "books to be read in facing-page format"? Or did they just make the most of what was the easiest(?) way to build and bind books? I'm sure that if books were one-sided from day 1 (err.. how?), Jon and others would be decrying these new-fangled landscape-format screens and ebooks! I note that this site isn't in a two-page format, and I'm pretty sure that Jon and co aren't bombarded with emails requesting a format change...<BR><BR>Lots of people just have trouble adjusting to change, and that's fine. But change doesn't mean that the old will be thrown out, and it's strange to see some people think that the introduction of something "new" must mean that the "old" must by necessity disappear. (Look how vinyl took off a while after CDs were introduced, and good watches after the Swatch, etc...)
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RogerGraham:<BR>This is not a yes-or-no question. For many people and much of the stuff they read, something like this (maybe with more/different resolution / colours / size etc) would be perfect. And when flexible screens are the norm, the possibilities are even better.<BR><BR>For people who love the look, feel and smell of a "real" book, these devices will never replace them, and that's fine. <BR><BR>Both will exist, and everyone's happy, or should be.<BR><BR>But, I simply don't get the fixation of the two-page format. Did "calligraphers and typographers" really design "books to be read in facing-page format"? Or did they just make the most of what was the easiest(?) way to build and bind books? I note that this site isn't in a two-page format, and I'm pretty sure that Jon and co aren't bombarded with emails requesting a format change...<BR><BR>Lots of people just have trouble adjusting to change, and that's fine. But change doesn't mean that the old will be thrown out, and it's strange to see some people think that the introduction of something "new" must mean that the "old" must by necessity disappear. (Look how vinyl took off a while after CDs were introduced, and good watches after the Swatch, etc...) </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
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As soon as they have one that will unfurl from something the size of a marker to paperback size, I'll buy it for big money.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by sheyinghi:<BR>I too have a room full to bursting with books, and of those maybe 60-70% could be replaced with a good, efficient ebook. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I agree with this. Books look nice, but I've got thousands. They're a pain to move and organize, and modern trade paperbacks frankly don't have that classy appearance. Any time I sell a book, I end up re-buying it.<BR><BR>I would like for modern technology to make it so that I own fewer things. To the extent that ebooks can replace the majority of my books which aren't particularly beautiful to look at, <BR>I'm game.
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DRM kills it for me. I have books that are very old and should I decide to pick one up and read it I should be able to do it. DRM would not be there in 2027 as someone else has already said. DRM is the deal-killer for me.<BR><BR>That said, eBooks are cold devices. eBooks are less rugged. eBooks are harder on the eyes to use. eBooks are not dual paged like the author suggests. I can toss a book into a backpack for a plane trip, stuff the bag in an overhead bin and never worry about damaging the book to the point where it wouldn't work when I took it out mid flight. Books don't cost me hundreds of dollars so if I spill a Coke on it, I can buy another one (Copy of the book and possibly a Coke). Plain and simple, books are a much more intimate form of reading and the eBook isn't about to replace them any time soon. <BR><BR>Now if an eBook wants to replace the Book it needs to do a few things...<BR><BR>1) Provide a two page interface. Two screens representing each page so that when I am reading an eBook, my peripheral vision is mostly cut off. Believe it or not distractions rip someone out of a story and the physical design of a Book actually helps to minimize distractions.<BR><BR>2) Provide a significantly higher resolution screen with 300 or so dpi. It's bad enough that the light emitted from an eBook is direct light to the eyes is more fatiguing(sp?) than the reflected/softer light from a Book. Combine that with a standard monitor's resolution and then take that and place it a foot from your face while lying on a couch or in bed and its not a pleasant experience. I always get tired much quicker when using an eBook and I swear, though I have no scientific evidence to prove it, that it is from the nature of how your eyes interract with an eBook.<BR><BR>3) Let me share the book with a friend. I can't tell you the number of people I have hooked on RA Salvatore by simply sharing one of his books with them. From that point on they get caught up using what I have, BUYING the books I no longer own and then standing in line behind me to BUY books as they come out new. Sharing is not theft but then again Big Content can't figure that out yet so the step on themselves shutting down network effects and secondary markets. This can't be the case with an eBook which leads to the main deal killer for me, DRM.<BR><BR>There's more but if they could fix those elements, the eBook would be better in my opinion.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> . It's bad enough that the light emitted from an eBook is direct light to the eyes is more fatiguing(sp?) than the reflected/softer light from a Book. ... </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Kindle and the Sony Reader use e-ink displays that are read by reflected not emitted light.<BR><BR><BR>I'm all in favor of ebooks for fiction and general reference materials.<BR><BR>Baen, for example, sells a 7-book set of David Drake's "Isles" fantasy series, with no DRM, for $15.<BR><BR>These are thick novels so that's about a foot of shelf space freed up, and they will load onto any reader including Sony and Kindle.<BR><BR>Amazon has to sell DRM versions to get the mass market started, just like Apple had to for paid song files. As the market grows and matures I expect they'll one day offer "Kindle Plus" titles just like iTunes now does.<BR><BR>Meanwhile, you can still fill up your Kindle or Sony Reader with DRM-free titles from other sources such as Baen and Project Gutenberg.
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I disagree with this article. I think the facing-page format is unwieldy and difficult to use. A single page is effortless to hold and convenient to use. This is why the spiral binding was invented.<BR><BR>E-books will never replace dead trees for the purpose of annotation. This doesn't break my heart - I annotate only one book, my scriptures, and that grudgingly.<BR><BR>From my point of view, e-books are potentially exciting for a few reasons:<BR>+ Potentially cheaper (though if music is any indication, this is unlikely to happen)<BR>+ As a college student, I move frequently and live in tight quarters. Dead trees take up too much room, and I wind up leaving most of mine at home. It would be nice if my books took up no physical space.<BR>+ Three words: full-text search!<BR><BR>...but, I agree that neither the hardware nor software nor service is there yet. An e-book reader needs to be cheap ($50-$80); be highly legible, including zooming; support rich typography; and have good and fast full-text searching. I think this is perfectly possible using current technology.<BR><BR>And, we need more e-books. Lots and lots of e-books. It should not be too expensive to incorporate adaptation to e-book form into publishing workflows. But it does cost money to do it right, and we have the chicken-egg problem of nobody wanting to invest much in an unproven market.
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Mr. Stokes, you rock. You rock hard.<BR><BR>This is just a beginning of what I <I>hope</I> becomes a kindling (sorry) of real, deep, fruitful thought about e-books by typographers, book designers, human - machine interface designers, engineers, programmers, and so on. There's a great future for electronic reading -- in fact, it's most likely the only future of reading -- let's as humanity start to bring a little passion and dedication to it.
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It seems somewhat misguided to me to make the size of the e-book reader twice as big just to accommodate a format that may or may not be necessary.<BR><BR>I've been an avid reader since I was able to visually string two letters together to represent a sound. One of the biggest draws of the e-book concept is it's storage capacity. It's usually unwieldy to carry more than a few day's worth of books around. An e-book would rectify that problem. But it would do so less effectively if it had to be twice as large just to match the dead-tree format.
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I would only buy an ebook reader when the total cost of ownership is about equal to that of buying books. I read alot of books so but a ~$300 device with ebooks at $10 is just not worth it. At that cost for the device ebooks would really need to be ~$2 which is probably too low of a price. If the reader was ~$100 I can see myself spending $5-10 for ebooks.
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Absolutely, positively, 100%... backwards. The bound book wasn't designed to support facing-page typography and gutters and illustrations, those evolved over time in response to what became the best way of binding a set of loose set of pages together for reading--along the long edge. Do so, print front-and-back to save paper, slap some covers on for protection, and bingo: The modern facing page bound book.<BR><BR>Further, the single document you're currently reading (the web page) shows that designers can and will work with new mediums to get the best use out of the features they support. <BR><BR>Look at an early web page and a modern version. We've come a long way design-wise, in a very short period of time. Similarly, I think comparing an early crude version of a black-and-white e-ink display to what we'll be using a decade from now is... well, using the word "shortsighted" would be making a severe understatement.<BR><BR>Finally, one of the definitions of "book" is "a literary composition or work that is published or intended for publication".<BR><BR>Seems to me that "electronic book" (to differentiate from the dead tree kind) works just fine.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Finally, one of the definitions of "book" is "a literary composition or work that is published or intended for publication". </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>That definition of course was created when electronic media was new, or was only an idea, or was unimaginable. Publishing and publication was just assumed to mean printing and putting into a binding for physical sale. Just because the definition is so old that it couldn't have taken new things into account doesn't mean that it DOES cover new things. The meaning that nearly everyone on the planet would give for a book would be paper with text and/or graphics bound together in some way so that you can sequentially move through the pages.<BR><BR>However, we can REdefine "book" to include electronic versions, which it seems everyone but Jon accepts.<BR><BR>What about "audio books"? Why don't those deserve organized resistance to the name?
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">1) Provide a two page interface. Two screens representing each page so that when I am reading an eBook, my peripheral vision is mostly cut off. Believe it or not distractions rip someone out of a story and the physical design of a Book actually helps to minimize distractions. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>So the larger the book, the better? Just make them wider and wider so that you can't possibly be distracted? What about when you're reading text along the edges of the book, your peripheral vision then can see past the pages and you might get distracted. Maybe 6 inch blank borders? I think for most of us, the risk of being distracted because our book doesn't cut off our vision enough is an acceptable one.<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">2) Provide a significantly higher resolution screen with 300 or so dpi. It's bad enough that the light emitted from an eBook is direct light to the eyes is more fatiguing(sp?) than the reflected/softer light from a Book. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Light is light. A different form of lighting for a display could do just as well to relieve the eye-strain. Brightness, contrast and color make a big difference (that's why newspaper isn't bright white). Higher resolution would be nice, as long as it means smoother text rather than just smaller text, but I don't think it needs to get too much higher to be okay, to fit about the same amount of text in each line as a paper book, with similar font sizes, and still keep the text smooth.<BR><BR>As for spilling a Coke: at least with an e-book, you could slurp the soda off the display. If they make them sealed around the display area at least, then you wouldn't even need to buy another drink. Preferably they could be made somewhat rugged by sealing them entirely (perhaps with a door with a sealing ring for a memory card) and using heatsinks/pipes and a heatsinked casing. I can't see them producing all that much heat. Integrate a hard cover to protect the screen and it becomes almost as safe to toss around as a book, albeit more expensive if you go past the threshold.
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This article is pretty wide of the mark; which is to be expected, since Jon has no idea what the Kindle is supposed to do, or what purpose it serves.<BR><BR>Jeff Bezos has explicitly stated that it is not his goal to "out-book the book." The Kindle's purpose is to keep Amazon in business when their bread & butter (trade paperbacks) are replaced by digital content. When books go digital, he wants Amazon to be iTunes instead of Tower Records.<BR><BR>And they most certainly will go digital. eBook readers are more than sufficient to read romance and murder mystery novels, the sales of which are a big chunk of Amazon's business. The fact that they're also good enough to read the morning news on during the train ride to work is also a nice opportunity for added value.
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you complain a lot.<BR><BR>pdf based ebooks allow you to mark up to your heart's content. facing pages included.<BR><BR>and, of course the reason why facing pages aren't common on standalone ebook readers is because cost outweighs old age comfort. true, some books are set so that page facing matters (hell, it matters in playboy, right?), but it shouldn't be a deal breaker like lack of markup is.<BR><BR>anyway. pdf also allows you to have the book read to you. as long as you dig hawking, it's fine.
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