You have written a program that resembles a book. Demanding that you be allowed to call it a book, that everyone elses definition of book is wrong, is ludicrous.

-bowerbird

I could see some hybrids emerging, where a reader app provides a plugin interface and some books come with custom plugins (detachable from the content – the concern about embedding scripts in ebooks is well taken). The custom plugins could provide additional controls, e.g. selecting the appropriate text for the day. But the “book” would still appear as such to the reader’s library management screen.

That would be one way in which the app-book and ebook segments could converge. There would still be lots of other applications that look less book-like, but perform tasks (e.g. atlas, encyclopedia) that we have traditionally handled with books.

Yes, the terminology is still in flux – and the boundaries between ebook and application are really blurry in places.

The term ebook usually implies (to me) the existence of a reader application; usually one that can manage and display a whole library. Calling Universalis an ebook would, in that context, be misleading.

It is more closely related to the app-books for the iPhone – bundles of ebook content plus reader software (although the content and software appear to be more tightly interconnected in Universalis).

But on another level, in terms of the reader’s experience, these app-books (including Universalis) *are* ebooks, in ways that Google Maps really isn’t. Reading is the whole point.

Interactive books, expanded books, whatever we wind up calling them, also have a role to play (end here the lines really get blurry – is mobile-phone anime a book? or a movie?). In particular, this is one area where ebooks have the potential to really add value over and above what paper books can deliver.

Among the earliest commercial ebooks were the titles The Complete Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Annotated Alice, and Jurassic Park which were released in 1992 by The Voyager Company. They were called Expanded Books and they were built primarily using HyperCard.

The value of interactivity for ebooks has long been recognized. Yet the term “expanded books” was used to suggest something more than a book. Adding functions to an ebook makes it more like an application program and less like a static text plus pictures. At some point the added functions dominate and the term ebook is probably misleading. Chris Meadows, Steve Jordan, Felix Torres and others discuss this issue in comments above.

The computer game Myst was built using HyperCard. Should Myst be called an ebook or an application? Collections of maps are found in atlas books. Does it make sense to call Google Maps an ebook atlas? Monetary transactions are recorded in a ledger book. Does it make sense to call an accounting application an ebook ledger? I do not think that applying the term ebook really helps our understanding much for these three examples.

The website for Lexipedia illustrates the tension between the descriptive terms “ebook” and “application” I think. Lexipedia provides a powerful tool based on the information traditionally found in dictionaries and thesauruses. Yet it goes beyond these books by dynamically constructing a graphic representation of the web of relationships between words. Lexipedia could run on an ebook reading device with a powerful enough processor and a sizeable memory.

Martin Kochanski mentions that Universalis synthesizes and presents pages dynamically. However, it still seems much closer to a traditional text than an application. Hence the term ebook might expand to include it. The term “ebook applications” is now being used for iPhone software. Terminology has not been rigidly fixed yet.

LTM

I’m not making anything up; I’m merely reporting what I see, what is happening around us right now. Believe it; don’t believe it… Won’t change a thing.

But if you stop looking at *how* books are assembled and delivered and look at *what* they are delivering; functionality vs plumbing, you’ll see a clear trend towards greater end-user control, grrater functionality, and more sophisticated ebook behavior.

Take a look at the emerging market for ebook textbooks; just look at the criticisms levelled at the Kindle DX to see where the market is going. Look at the expectations for the Applet tablet. At the ebooks selling on iPod. It is happening. Now.

I’m making up nothing, honest.
I’m just reporting what I *see*.
And what I see is change and change that is accelerating…

That may be a reference tool, but it’s a reference application. Books are static. That’s been their defining characteristic ever since they were clay tablets. The medium may have changed, but the nature of the content has always remained the same.

If you’re going to call something like Universalis an e-book, then you might as well call a number of database-lookup apps that are already in existence “e-books” as well. And once you redefine “e-book” to have so much overlap with apps, all you end up doing is just confusing everyone.

Your introduction claims that the definition of “e-book” is “being changed in a way that will illegitimise a lot of extremely useful e-books”. But I don’t see that. The definition of “e-book” is the same as it’s always been—the only one trying to change it is you.

On that point I seriously doubt the suggestion that everyone knows what an e-book is. The readers of this fine site will have their own ideas and I think it’s an interesting topic worth discussing, but a significant proportion of the public have probably never even heard the term.

To be honest I would never have considered what you describe above to be an e-book. It sounds more like an application, but then again aren’t these app-book things on the rise and isn’t this just a variation on the app-book?

I’m sorry if that all sounds a bit negative, I just think the article is based on a few pretty big assumptions that aren’t necessarily true.

But who says ebook readers aren’t going to evolve?
PCs have evolved tremendously since the days of the Altair, why can’t ebook readers?
Color is coming, so is animation, and probably video.
Multi-tasking should also show up real soon.
A chemistry textbook should be able to present molecular models and let students rotate them and flip them at will if it is to get them to prooerly understand isomers (one example that comes to mind from the post above this.)

And, I’m sorry, but I also disagree on the semantic argument: if you ask an assyrian what a book is, he’d say only a clay tablet is a book; a pharaoh would say a role of papyrus, and a medieval monk would say a handbound sheath of parchment.
Times change, technology rules, and objects evolve. A modern chair is no less a chair for being made of molded plastic and vibrating instead of unmoving hand-planed wood.
The future is coming and fast; trying to pretend otherwise is more likely to result in getting run over than getting it derailed.

I understand Martin’s concern: In a world where a Kindle-type device dominates, how does a non-Kindle product sell? If ePub is seen to be “the” e-book standard, how do you sell e-books in other formats? The concern that a dominant format or device will edge out all others is a legitimate one, especially when the dominant format/device isn’t perfectly suited for everyone.

However, I honestly don’t think this will be the case. Multiple devices and multi-function devices will be more common than dedicated one-trick readers, and there will always be room for specialty formats out there. Sure, having multiple formats may add complexity to the user, but with properly-designed devices, even this shouldn’t be a problem (how many times do you click on a Word file or a PDF, and your computer does not know which app to use to open it?).

Easily.
Its a reference book, is what it is.
Look past the delivery vehicle–just like iPod “book app” buyers do and look to the functionality, instead.
Its a book with interactivity.

The fundamental question being raised is whether interactivity is an ebook feature. Obviously we know many publishers want to banish *all* interactivity from ebooks and redefine ebooks as electronic microfiches; static images in sequence. Preferably sold at hardcover prices.

However, the key technologies that underlie ebooks allow for much more. And these additional forms of interaction *will* come into common use; in e-textbooks, in professional grade references, in new forms of expression and creativity.

Ebooks are *NOT* pbooks minus paper; they are an entirely different species of information distribution evolving before our eyes. It’s not going to stop just because Hachette or Random House says: stop. Ebooks are not just about novels and short stories and newspapers. They aren’t just static steams of text. Not now and certainly not in the future.

It is a very simple question he poses, really.
Static vs interactive.
Yes or no.
Just remember; hyperlinks to citations and foot notes are interactivity.
Tables of content are interactivity.
End-user typographical controls are interactivity.

Why should it stop there?

This definition is in the process of being changed. It is being changed in a way that will illegitimise a lot of extremely useful e-books. And worst of all, in all the talk about formats and standards and channels and DRM, no-one even notices that the change is happening, so nobody thinks about the damage it’s doing or whether this is a price worth paying for progress.

Who is changing the definition? What are they changing it to? How will this “illegitimise useful e-books”? Is Universalis one of the books changing the definition, or one of the ones that will be illegitimized?

How can Universalis be considered an “e-book” at all, rather than an application? Google “synthesizes a page” dynamically when you search with it, but that doesn’t mean Google is an e-book.