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Eight screens, one e-book: What’s the lesson here?
August 16, 2009 | 6:21 am
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By David Rothman
Behold this photo—which shows the Kindle, Sony Reader, iRex and five other machines, all displaying the same book!
So what’s the lesson here?
Especially with shoppers loving easy wireless shopping and downloads on the Kindle, book publishers should ask hardware vendors to develop some really good color readers and book-friendly netbooks—even if this means using LCDs rather than oh-so-fashionable E Ink. Why get smug about the Kindle’s monochrome? And meanwhile the iPhone’s color screen won’t hurt.
At least if you read Japanese, wouldn’t you be far, far more inclined to buy the book if the cover displayed in color?
Perhaps the forthcoming Pixel Qi display which has color as well as an e-reading mode, will be a solution here. People could shop in color, then rely on black-and-white for e-reading itself.
Of course, e-paper at the moment suffers yet another problem: low contrast despite all the ballyhoo to the contrary.
Meanwhile, if I were a publisher or retailer, I would beware of relying too heavily on e-paper-based readers for now—not when decent color is probably several years off.
(Photo found via Mike Cane, ace E Ink hater. The miserable color e-paper machine is in the lower right is from Fujitsu. Because of the copyright situation—that’s a very conspicuous copyright notice from a professional studio, albeit in Japanese—I removed the actual picture on August 17.)
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Comments:
I have no desire to have a reader in color, and I find the contrast on my Cybook’s e-ink screen to be just fine.
What I want is a good reader for a good price, not a bunch of features that have nothing to do with reading.
Why don’t you stop pushing for e-ink readers to become a laptop, portable dvd player, mp3 player, digital picture frame, etc. and talk about the features that make it better for reading? Isn’t comfortable READING a goal worthy of a device?
At least the “miserable color e-paper machine is in the lower right” is in color, which to me makes it better than all of the b&w devices.
I have no interest in a dedicated reader for simply reading… my PDA does a fine job of that. But I’d buy a dedicated reader with a large, color screen if I could put my magazines and graphic novels on it.
But what I got out of this image is really this: Limit your formats to proprietary ones, and end up available on one or two readers. Use a universal format (like ePub), and end up on all of ‘em.
Huh? The Teleread folks are pushing for no such thing.
As much as I like e-ink, there are some books (and periodicals) that would benefit greatly from a high-contrast color screen. And yes, it is about ereader functionality, not frills.
>>>Mike Cane, ace e-paper hater.
Oh, so that’s me now, is it? I can’t say I hate e-*paper*, just the eInk variety of it. I’d need to see — in person, for myself — the full capabilities of the Pixel Qi screen e-paper mode before going that far.
And who knew you’d see that Twitter link from late last night? Ha! Glad you found it useful.
Nothing like having a rep.
I’ve been reading books since the mid 70′s, starting in 6th grade, and can’t remember one that would require color, expect maybe House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielweski (a book I own but haven’t read.) I’m not really interested in comics or Manga, so a color ereader would be next to worthless for me.
True, most books don’t really need color. Note I said “most”. However, most periodicals do use color. Like everything else, it depends on your needs. I like my jetBook for reading fiction. I would also like a large screen, color device for reading periodicals and technical material.
I’d just like to note that the photo is copyrighted by a Takao Saito of Saito Productions (http://www.saito-pro.co.jp/top.htm) and Leed Publishing (http://www.leed.co.jp) according to the text in the bottom right-hand corner. It’s nice to know that some publishers in Japan are paying attention to the e-book market, as there is really nothing available here in terms of e-book readers except for the very, very expensive Flepia.
Best of luck on the e-reader front, Matsumoto! Atually I myself owned the very first commercial E Ink machine from Japan (at least I think)–the Librie.
Thanks, meanwhile, for the translation. Since the Japanese copyright notice is so prominent and a professional studio is involved, I’ve replaced the actual photo with a link.
David
Personally, I would prefer easier and faster navigation and ability to search and do lookups like flipping through a book to adding color.
I still like the idea of a dedicated ebook reader and eInk. Backlit screens bother my eyes. I can read for much longer with more comfort on eInk. It’s cool that I will be able to read ebooks on my smartphone (once eReader gets ported to the Pre, anyway) but I don’t see ever using it as my main reading device. It makes an excellent backup, however.