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By Paul Biba

This was emailed to me by Ficbot and I know David extends his thanks:

By Ficbot

If there were only three things I could tell publishers who want to fully embrace a modern,e-friendly business model, it would be these three things: one, the technology needs to get simpler (see: my review of the ebookwise, which I love in spite of its quirks but which my mother would never manage unless someone else loaded all of the content on it for her); two, the selection of available titles needs to dramatically expand (see: the genre listings at any of the main ebook sites, which lean heavily to the romance and sci-fi at the exclusion of literary fiction, foreign language and other genres) and three, that the world wide wed is, surprise, populated by the whole wide world. It’s third third point that I want to address in this article, and I’ll start with a few examples:

1) Amazon Kindle. It’s the latest gizmo, a tad pricey, but widely praised. And…available only to Americans. I understand that there are some technical issues
regarding the accessibility of the built-in network which at the moment inhibits the Kindle’s use outside of the USA. But…well, they should have picked
another network, then. Or worked out the glitches before they sold the product. Because yeah, the whole wide world has a lot of people in it, no? A lot of
potential customers. It just boggles my mind that articles are coming out about how the Kindle has not led to a mass adoption of ebooks—how can it when
large chunks of the reading public can’t even buy the thing?


2) Foreign Language Support. Now, as for non-American devices, the ebookwise (available to Americans, of course, and to Canadians too, but nobody else), has a built-in English dictionary. Lovely concept. You can click on any word and look it up. It’s a great idea, but it’s a bit of a limited one because the feature was not made modular or expandable in any way. I confirmed this with tech support shortly after I got my device: the clicky look-up thing can only work with the English dictionary the device comes with. Now, here’s my thing—I never use a dictionary when I read in English, but I do when I read in French. I would love to have the ability to download a French book off manybooks.net, download it to my ebookwise, and be able to click on any word as I read and get some information, maybe a translation, even. Open/Neo Office has modular dictionaries one can add on to. Microsoft Word does as well. How hard can it be to enable this feature? Why assume that every reader only wants such help in English? I’m not saying the dictionary needs to come pre-installed and ready to go. I’d pay for it, absolutely, the same way I would pay to buy such a dictionary in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. But alas, no capability for it!

3) Availability of Foreign-Language Titles. Now, come on. I can’t be the only bilingual North American here :) Does any vendor offer current titles in languages other than English? If so, I haven’t found them. All of my French content comes from manybooks.net, and a French website (http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php) which has a handful of titles available in PDF, Mobipocket and other proprietary formats which can’t be read on my ebookwise. I’ve been using the sometimes glitchy ‘personal content server’ to upload them in HTML, in the absence of other options. Would be nice to get some current stuff on-line though and save me a trip to the one and only bricks-and-mortar French bookstore in town. My buying habits are also different for French titles. Stuff I wouldn’t buy in English because I’d only read it once, I’d buy in French and read multiple times as a learning tool to improve my language skills. There is an untapped market here…

I know what the publishers would say about this: not enough readers to justify the extra work. But how are you going to get those readers if you never even give them the option in the first place? It’s the worldwide web, you guys. Be open. Invite the world.

 
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