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E-books that aren’t
August 4, 2009 | 9:47 am
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By martinkochanski
Everyone knows what an e-book is. You read it on a screen, probably one that you’re holding in your hand. You tap or swipe or click to turn the page. And there’s a table of contents that helps you get to what you’re looking for.
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.
I’ll illustrate this with Universalis, because I publish it and it’s what I know best.
Universalis is an e-book. It gives psalms, prayers and readings for the seven daily Hours of the Catholic Church, plus Mass readings and a couple of other goodies. These all change every day, so the table of contents is a calendar. Tap on the date you want, select an Hour, and start reading. Obviously an e-book.
The new definition of an e-book is “something that comes in an ePub file” (or .mobi, or AZW, or PDF – it doesn’t change the argument). No-one notices the change, because all e-books come as files anyway, don’t they?
No. They don’t. They can’t. Universalis is the example I know best but I’m sure it isn’t the only one.
The thing about pages in ePub files is that they exist. They sit in the file somewhere and they’re pulled out and formatted when you want to look at them. The thing about pages in Universalis is that they don’t exist. There is no section of the file that contains the text for 29 July 2013 – but when you tap on “29 July 2013″ in the table of contents, then – and only then – Universalis synthesizes the page and presents it to you.
We don’t do it this way because it’s admirably geeky and makes for a small download (4MB). We do it because it’s impossible any other way.
Imagine Universalis as an ePub file. How many chapters would it have? One for each date, obviously. And how many dates are there? Not 365. Not even 7×365 once you take days of the week into account. Because there are 2-year and 3-year cycles of readings, and because Easter moves around in the calendar, there have to be well over 6,000 chapters in the ePub file. At maximum compression, that would be 170MB in ePub, which is monstrous and impracticable.
You may say, ‘Then don’t do it like that, issue annual volumes instead at 9MB a go, and it’ll be a nice new revenue stream for you’. There is a lot to be said about subscriptions and repeat sales, and I’ll say it one day; but not now. For now I will just point out that you are saying, ‘Any ordinary person would say that your e-book is an e-book, but we say that it isn’t any more. So tear up your business model and start again. Change, or die.’
It may have to come to that. Mass markets are based on standardisation and so there will always be casualties. There is something to be said, as well, about the tension between appliances and programmability, and I’ll say it one day.
For now, though, I have a simple question:
Are we alone, or there other e-books out there that need some degree of intelligence and programmability and can’t be packaged into a dumb, passive ePub file?
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Comments:
That’s an interesting question.
I suspect there are other ‘books’ out there that could do with a bit of intelligence. But I don’t think they should be called ebooks.
Universalis is a computer program that looks like an book. The ePub standard explicitly forbids the execution of scripts in ePub ebooks, probably because of the danger posed by such scripts. It’s bad enough having to worry about every program one uses. Trojan Horse ebooks would be much worse.
I’d dislike having something called an ebook actually running code behind my back. I think Universalis is a good idea – but I think it should be labelled explicitly as a computer program, not an ebook.
Despite the whines you will no doubt get from the ePub Gallery, I’m for you. You have a true DIGITAL BOOK, not a lame, flat, static one-dimensional lightly tarted-up text file.
>>>Everyone knows what an e-book is.
No, they don’t!
What other uses would there be for Universalis type system? I’m probably never going to read liturgical or religious documents; and if I did, I’d mostly likely read straight through or selections for whatever research I was doing, so the kind of functionality described wouldn’t be of much use to me.
Almost all texts I have ever read or would read are linear with a few exceptions. Anthologies with a good table of contents allow me to skip around if I want to. For me the “one-dimensional lightly tarted-up text file” (mobi, epub, et al) does just fine for my reading needs. Anything else would probably just be confusing.
However, if the Universalis works for your reading needs, then go for, though I doubt it will be coming to an eink machine anytime soon.
I am somewhat familiar with Universalis… and in fact I am a big fan of it. For someone who is interested in praying the Divine Office, it makes things a lot easier. Normally if one wants to pray the divine office, it would require 4 reasonably hefty volumes and there is generally a fair bit flipping between sections as you say the prayers and the readings. Depending on the date and the season, different combinations of prayers and readings are read. Universalis makes it easy by doing away with all the flipping by presenting the user with a single page with all the readings and prayers on it.
The thing is, Universalis has always tended to be more an application than the conventional ebook. Certainly no previous standard supported it directly. In fact, I would say the biggest problem with Universalis as an ebook is that it is a head of its time. It has capabilities that the vast majority of ebooks don’t have. It points to the potential of the medium — not so much for novels and the like, but think about technical manuals, text books (and student work books) and a host of other books where the idea generally is not to read the whole book but to read the specific part that is important to you right now.
Ultimately we are entering a world where we are combining a number of different media into new unique combinations… its not just application, or text, or video or audio, but a combination of all of them and more.
this is the most freaking interesting thing i’ve read in ages. are you telling us that you have an e-book whose content is stored as database, the experience of which is dynamic — constructed on the fly by the user, who is sending a query to the database, whether or not s/he know that’s what’s happening?
how head-spinningly *cool*!
As others have alluded to, what you have may look like an e-book on its surface, but it is really a database and retrieval system. Calling it a “book” is a lot like calling a dictionary “literature,” just because it’s in similar packaging. Obviously, this doesn’t make it any less valid than an e-book. But it is different. (This is one of the pitfalls of using generic labels for things, which tends to exclude things which don’t fit exactly into that label.)
ePub is supported by many of us e-book readers as a good universal format… but I don’t think any of us want to cram something into it that doesn’t belong. And many of us agree that there will likely be other formats that are better suited for specialty applications, such as yours, leaving ePub for the more typically-formatted literature.
Instead of trying to maintain its definition as an “e-book,” and worrying about trying to fit your square peg into a round hole, you should seek to redefine it as something more akin to what it is–A reference database–and approach its formatting, and its future, that way.
This sounds like the difference between a static website (HTML, CSS, maybe Javascript) and a dynamic website (using, say, PHP). Both are considered websites.
I can think of an immediate application for the sort of ebook described. We publish an annual report of data on about 140 countries. In the printed version, this means 140 pages, each with a table. An ebook that showed one table but populated it with the data for the country chosen from an index would be much better than an ebook that reproduced the 140 pages from the printed version and asked the reader to page through them.
LTM
So… the ePub standard doesn’t take into account dynamic/interactive/intelligent information? Hadn’t realized that.
Seems very limiting in this day and age.
I would call something like that an interactive eBook. How the actual words are stored shouldn’t matter since the reader (person) isn’t going to care.
Time for a standard for interactive/dynamic reading material? iPub/dPub? Or an extension to the ePub standard (one hopes it isn’t written in stone and bolted to the side of a mountain where it can’t ever change.) You could even use the ePub “container file” to store it in.
I don’t know. An e-book sounds very specific, and is different from an e-calendar (which sounds like what you have, though calendars as enhanced as yours are often found in book form), e-pamphlet, e-poster, e-journal, e-greeting card, e-etc., which can all be lumped as e-publications.
Are you saying e-publication = e-book, or are you arguing enhanced e-calendar = e-book?
Another form of “ebook that isn’t” is the Visual Novel format which is quite popular in Japan.
The point, which has merit, is that some people still think of ebooks *solely* as linear data constructs; print books minus the paper.
Realistically, that is but a subset of a what an ebook is/will be.
An interactive “book” that abstracts data from a database and formats it on the fly is as much an ebook as a statically-rendered reflowing text stream. And a very useful invention in the professions for reference material, if a standard format is crafted.
Have to remember, people, the HTML/XML allow for dynamic content and *logic* execution. In fact, a “standard” for these kinds of documents already exists; AJAX. All that is needed is to embed a full-feature browser into an ebook reader gadget. And how many people have been clamoting for that?
Nice to see an example of the future arriving early…
Simply query: can a dictionary be an ebook?
A thesaurus?
An atlas?
A handbook of thermodynamic properties?
All exist on print so why not electronically?
I’ve read this piece twice over, and I’m having a hard time understanding the point it’s trying to make.
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.
Chris Meadows Says:
“How can Universalis be considered an “e-book” at all, rather than an application?”
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?
As I said, the problem is in the labeling. Using the word “book” is the biggest misnomer, and perhaps the thing we need to be moving past. All of these are electronic files, or documents if you will, and we can sub-type them down from there to literature, reference, database, etc.
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?).
Steve Jordan Says:
“Multiple devices and multi-function devices will be more common than dedicated one-trick readers”
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.
Did I miss something in the story? Which organisation is changing which definition of what an e-book is? I wasn’t aware there was any kind of agreed standard definition. Or are you just talking about the general perception of what the term e-book means?
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.
Felix: Sorry, but you don’t get to redefine the definition of “e-book” all by yourself. Words don’t mean what you say they mean, unless you’re a certain character from Alice in Wonderland.
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.
Twenty-five years ago an ebook was ascii text hard-formatted for a VT-100 terminal.
Fifteen years ago an ebook was a Palmdoc file supporting bold and italics.
Five years ago an ebook was an HTML/XML file with color cover and an embedded table of contents, supporting internal and external hyperlinks, search, embedded zoomable graphics, search and multiple dictionaries.
Want to be what an ebook looks like in five years?
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…
Example. Would publications produced by NoteTaker and NoteShare from Aquaminds be ebooks?
LTM
That is fantastically interesting, and thank you for introducing me to Universalis. As Bill McHale says, it is a solution for someone who is interested in praying the Divine Office which obviates the need to flip through 4 hefty books. Call it what you will, an e-book or an application, it is nicely and efficiently done.
Interactive ebooks already have a multi-decade history. One key point of development occurred with the release in 1987 of the HyperCard system for the Apple Macintosh computer. It was among the first widely deployed and successful hypermedia systems, and it used a scripting language called Hypertalk.
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.
Interesting discussion.
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.
Note that most of the advancements that Felix lists (fonts, graphics) don’t fundamentally change the reading experience. The more application-like advancements (builtin search and dictionary lookup) are general enough to be worth building into the reader application.
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.
oh and by the way, have you guys figured out yet
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
-bowerbird