Moderator’s note: The IDPF is holding the Digital Book 2008 conference today. May companies there heed Ficbot’s advice! – D.R.
I enjoyed the recent TeleBlog debate on resizing text on the fly. Is this a feature people really use on a regular basis? And do we need an e-book standard like ePub, which allows easy resizing and could work for everything from a cell phone to a book-optimized tablet?
One’s not enough
In a word, yes, because many e-book fans read on more than one device. They can pack their p-books in their bags and take them anywhere, so why shouldn’t they be able to carry around their e-books just as easily, no matter which device they are toting (an aside: that’s not my bag in the photo)?
They also need to be able to resize fonts easy to allow for different reading conditions, such as when their eyes are tired; and that’s not the only issue. On some devices, such as a cell phone or PDA, the fonts in formats like PDF may display differently compared to a tablet or desktop with a much-larger screen.
Potential boon to publishers and e-retailers, Amazon included
And why might readers be carrying different devices? Because some of their devices may be tools they use for other purposes. Letting them carry books between them would be a boon to publishers because it lets people do more reading and be more inclined to buy books. If the only device I have with me on a given day is my Eee PC and I can’t read a certain format on it, even though the book is important to me, then eBabel has once again reduced my productivity.
I hope Amazon is reading this. Remember, you can’t display an e-book from the Kindle Store on anything but a Kindle, not even your desktop machine. This eBabel is no small reason, among others, why I don’t own a Kindle even though, yes, it would let me change fonts within a certain range. Even Amazon’s Mobipocket is no solution since it can’t run on many computers, including my Linux Asus. We need a true nonproprietary standard.
A not-so-secret diary which Jeff Bezos should read
For Amazon and for those who wonder just what an avid e-reader means by “multiple devices” and why the reader might need them, here’s a glimpse inside the last week or so of my techie e-reading life:
MONDAY: This is my Day of Many Duties at school; no breaks until 12:30, so I am not sure how much writing I’ll get done. I’ll take the eBookwise today. It’s the best choice for reading on the subway, and that’s probably all I’ll have time for. At home, it’ll be the Macbook tonight. I’m tutoring after school, and need the bigger screen for the on-line reading activity I have planned for my student. And I have some of my own Internet stuff to do, for which I prefer the Mac’s bigger screen. If I do get around to any reading, I suppose I can finish some DRMed stuff I have on the Mac from my first Fictionwise explorations. I wasn’t able to get the Wine program working, so none of it will load on my Linux-based EEE.
TUESDAY: The Grade 2’s are in the computer lab during my only prep time, so I’d better take the EEE. I’ll spend my prep period going through the massive pile of French song lyrics I’ve been accumulating. We have many of these songs on cd, but we’ve lost some of the booklets. Thank goodness most of the kiddie French songs are public domain. I have found nearly everything on-line, and I am working on putting together a booklet for our music teacher with the lyrics to the songs we have. And another advantage of collecting them together in e-form—they are ready to go if I want to make them into Powerpoint shows for the kids.
WEDNESDAY: It’ll be another day with the Eee. I still have some editing to do on my own little e-book, but I have also downloaded the free e-version of Cory Doctorow’s new young adult novel, and if I get my work done during my morning prep, I am hoping to sneak in some reading in the afternoon. I won’t buy this book for myself because I don’t buy hard covers, but I am evaluating it as a possible gift for one (or both) of my teenaged brothers. They are both avid readers, but I am not sure if it will be too techie for the older of the two, or too scary for the littler one. One thing I love about E is its try-before-you-buy possibilities. I have no problems paying for the book later if I enjoy it now!
THURSDAY: Another duty day at school, and I’m meeting my mother after work, so I’ll be on the bus for awhile. eBookwise it is! I love that I can transfer my own files onto the eBookwise fairly easily. I’ve got my French e-book on there for a proofread, but I also did an export of everything in the Word file I keep on recipes I have saved but not yet tried. Mom and I will swing by the grocery store after our meeting, and I want to take advantage of having access to her car. I’ll spend my lunch hour on the eBookwise going through my shopping list, then try to get some fun reading done on my way to the meeting.
FRIDAY: We get out early on Fridays, so there’s not going to be any ‘work’ happening, but I’ll take the EEE anyway. I may stop by the library on my way to Mom’s for Friday night dinner, and if I see any new cookbooks there, I may want to make notes. Plus, my niece and nephew enjoy some of the games on it. My niece always asks me if I’ll bring my ‘board’ for her to play with!
SATURDAY: Babysitting tonight. It has to be the eBookwise! I can read it one-handed on the subway downtown, and if I want to do any shopping while en route, it leaves space in my bag. Plus, I can read it in total darkness without distracting the baby. I like having it with me while I tuck him in because he cries if I leave him before he’s fully sleeping. And besides that, I worry about the stamina of the EE’s battery on nights like this. Nothing inspires boredom like a house of sleeping children and a dead laptop battery! The eBookwise can go for days.
SUNDAY: Some Mother’s Day commitments in the morning, but I have some downtime before dinner with the other half of the family. I have some work emails to send out. Thank goodness the EEE has Onternet too—I can get that done, then switch over to e-reading without having to change devices. I am so into the Doctorow. I want to finish it tonight!
So, as you can see, there is no one tool that meets all my needs right now, and I swap among my various devices as the need arises. I have enough going on that I am not inclined to fiddle needlessly. If I can’t transfer my files and read them with ease, I simply don’t take them with me, and that’s why the two DRM’d Palmdoc titles I own have been languishing on my Macbook while I read on the subway and at work on my other devices.
Is there a way I could get my devices down to just one or two? In time, maybe. If the Eee evolved to have an OLPC-style tablet mode, and a battery life that was competitive with my eBookwise, maybe it could be my on-the-go one and only. But right now, there are times it doesn’t meet my needs, and I am glad I have a techie toolbox with some other choices too. Of course, a standard e-book format would help as well.
Image: CC-licensed from Normanack.
[…] TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home wrote an interesting post today on A week in the life of a gadget-loving reader who hates eBabel and wants to resize the fonts in her e-book bagHere’s a quick excerpt Moderator’s note: The IDPF is holding the Digital Book 2008 conference today. May companies there heed Ficbot’s advice! – D.R. I enjoyed the recent TeleBlog debate on resizing text on the fly. Is this a feature people really use on a regular basis? And do we need an e-book standard like ePub, which allows easy resizing and could work for everything from a cell phone to a book-optimized tablet? One’s not enough In a word, yes, because many e-book fans read on more than one device. They can p […]
[…] TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home wrote an interesting post today on A week in the life of a gadget-loving reader who hates eBabel and wants to resize the fonts in her e-book bagHere’s a quick excerpt Moderator’s note: The IDPF is holding the Digital Book 2008 conference today. May companies there heed Ficbot’s advice! – D.R. I enjoyed the recent TeleBlog debate on resizing text on the fly. Is this a feature people really use on a regular basis? And do we need an e-book standard like ePub, which allows easy resizing and could work for everything from a cell phone to a book-optimized tablet? One’s not enough In a word, yes, because many e-book fans read on more than one device. They can p […]
I want to be able to change the colour of the text and background as well. The best reader I have used to date for this was uReader, but unfortunately it doesn’t run on my Windows Mobile 6 phone (HTC S710) – no touch screen. In uReader one touch on the screen allowed me to change from day-time colours (White text on black background) to night-time colours (maroon text on black). I read in the dark at night so as not to disturb others in the bedroom when I read late so I want a less bright display.
Mobipocket supports colour changing although it is more onerous.
Finally I could not care less about text layout or graphic design. I read books for the ideas in them and the author’s words get those to me fine. I don’t want graphic design or pieces of dead trees to be involved. I can keep 12000 ebooks in a tiny space in my house electronically and I can read them anywhere. I can get a dump of Wikipedia onto a phone using a micro SD card and have a searchable encylopedia with me all the time. (Does epub handle reference docs like tomeraider?)
When the DRM nonsense is finally buried and people get used to having etext or audio books on their phones the whole issue of print books will be forgotten – just give it a few years – we are only 20 or so years into the whole www experience. You don’t see many people riding a horse to work these days….