From the 14 October Publisher’s Lunch:
The biggest growth at this year’s show comes, not surprisingly, in the Digital Market Place in Hall 4.2, which has grown by a third. Boos claims that at the Fair, “about 42 percent of exhibited products are books, while 30 percent are digital.”
This quote, from Frankfurt Book Fair director Juergen Boos, kicked to the front of my brain a thought I’ve been pondering for a few days now, since I put down the Kindle and picked up a paperback. It doesn’t surprise me that the Digital Market Place has increased by a third, because, and this was a surprise, there are a few elements to ebook reading that are a step above paperback reading for me.
I carry the Kindle everywhere. I love how it fits in my bag, I love that it’s lightweight, I love that I have eleventy-twelve-billion books on there, and that with two seconds and a location that’s not underground, I can get more. I love that wireless connection, and the feeling that I’ll never be caught without reading material again. This makes me sound like a melodramatic nutball, but it’s true. The absence of reading material makes me twitchy at the least and full on psychotic at the most.
But I’ve noticed, particularly when I grabbed a paperback and tossed it in the car one afternoon this week when I realized I’d been a slacker about letting the Kindle charge every now and again (BAD SARAH BAD) that the way in which I read paper is noticeably different from the way I read the Kindle.
When I read a digital screen, be it a monitor, a laptop screen, or the Kindle, I read very, very quickly. While the Kindle is very different from the eyestraining LCD screens, I still read the digital words much faster than words on paper. Of the three, the Kindle is far and away the easiest on my eyes – and I’m crosseyed so focusing my eyes is all kind of wonky.
But when reading a paper book, I have to go much more slowly – and I was thinking that the reason I have to slow down and focus much more intently, sometimes even using my finger or a bookmark to mark my place and move it along the page, is because of the weaker contrast between the cream/beige paper in a mass market paperback and the black ink on that page. The Kindle has a much greater constast, which I believe is also adjustable, as is the text size, and for that reason it is far and away easier on my eyes to read, as the words themselves are in focus and larger and clearer.
That increased contrast makes a huge difference to me. When reading the Kindle, even at a reduced text size, I don’t make the mistake of jumping down a line in the middle of a sentence and coming up with descriptions that make no sense. (He placed her shoulders on the table!? What?!) I do that all the time with paperbacks. While I do sometimes think I’m reading too fast on the Kindle at times – usually at times when the text at hand has failed to grab me and I’m scanning and not reading – I am able to read without raising my eyes from the device for much longer periods of time vs. a mass market paperback, where I have to focus on something far away from my lenses every now and again.
So it’s not just the moar-moar-moar that makes me an eager Kindle-ade drinker. It’s the increased comfort and facility with which I can read books, and really, I didn’t expect the ebook reader revolution to change the way and the comfort of my reading as much as it did. And while, no, I won’t give up paper books because not every book that I want is available on the Kindle, I do eagerly look for solutions that allow me to convert and send books to the Kindle, especially from file types that aren’t Mac-friendly (which is why Stanza is rocking my tights. Thanks Teddy Pig!).
I know many, many people have yet to take the ebook plunge, and I didn’t think I’d be such a squeeing fangirl so quickly. But when it comes to the physical limitations of my vision coming up against my desire to keep reading as long as possible, my eyes have it bad for the Kindle.
I’m a software developer who works in the e-publishing industry (and am a reader of this blog!), so I’m happy to answer a bunch of the above questions:
EmmyS: O’Reilly is slowly rolling out all of their front- and back-list technical books as ebooks that can be read on the Kindle, the Sony Reader or the iPhone.
Textbooks: There are going to be a bunch of e-readers coming out in the next year or two that are larger in size (8.5×11, even), and some of these might be directly targeted at the student market. Whether there will be e-textbooks to read on them is another story, but Harvard just started up a pilot program in which they give Kindles to students and provide electronic course material.
Silver James: The format issue is still a total mess and you’re right to be concerned. The one to watch is “epub”. epub isn’t by any one manufacturer or publisher, and lots of publishers have signed on to support it. You can read epubs on the Sony Reader or the iPhone (using the Stanza software, which was mentioned above). Annoyingly, the Kindle doesn’t yet support epub, but it almost certainly will at some point.
Lynn M: Some leaked pictures of the alleged Kindle 2 came out recently and the buttons have been redesigned. (I’m always knocking mine by accident). No word on if those photos were even real, or if the Kindle 2 is coming out any time soon.
God, I’m so envious! I live in Austria and no Kindle or any other kind of e-book reader here. I could import one, but the prices are not affordable right now. 🙁
I was hoping that they would launch it here before Christmas, but I have my doubts that they will make it… very sad.
So, paperbacks it is for me. 🙂
For everyone who said they want to see one before buying, check out this discussion page on Amazon.
I was just admiring one of those at the con this weekend. I really liked it, althoug it isn’t as easy to hold in one hand to read as it is the eReaders.
Especially hardcover books before they come out in paperback (like La Nora). I then buy the paperbacks of the “keepers†when the come out (again La Nora).
Except for a very few select authors, I seldom by HC anymore. The price and the space they take up are too much. I am all about the MM editions these days.
I am more than willing to let anyone come over and play with hubby’s eReader anytime. If you can pry it out of his hands. He loves his.
Be prepared. Once everyone is settled in one format and sales start to level off, I swear they switch on purpose.
I should go back to the other thread, but does the Stanza program work on Touch ipods??
Yes, Stanza is available for the iPod Touch.
I am working on dling now. For some reason iTunes does not like my laptop. No problems with it on my PC, just my laptop. Every time I try to Sync, I have to go thru all the bs again, and then it tells me my iPod is not registered.
Spamword- other69. there is another 69??
I think people’s visual preferences are highly individual; the same screen can be great or terrible for different people.
E.g. the iPhone gives me eyestrain (constant scrolling plus backlight, ouch) and doesn’t show enough text at a time, which significantly interferes with my engagement with the text. The Sony Reader works great for me—nice clarity, contrast, and size—but not for MoJo.
IMO you have to try the device—at least at a shop but ideally for a few days—to know how it suits your eyes and your pace and style of reading. I downloaded e-books from the library and borrowed devices from friends until I found one that worked for me longterm.
I’ve felt that too; is reading faster always a good thing?
See, I love the theory of a Kindle, but I got burned bad on Amazon’s ebooks before. Not only did the DRM prevent me from reading them after I had to reinstall Windows, but when I went back to re-download my purchases (around $80 of material) after a new computer purchase, I found that my “digital locker” had been phased out and nothing I’d paid for was available any longer.
At this point I habitually backup everything I pay for digitally, but Amazon is going to have to work to win back my trust. I was also thinking it’d be nice to get a discount on the paper copy of a book if you bought the Kindle version first—given that it costs the publisher fractions of pennies per copy sold to create an ebook, they’d ultimately make money on discounting the suckers. And I’d be much more likely to double-buy a book from Amazon instead of hunting up used copies elsewhere.
I also decorate with books. “Hi, you’re staying in the Romance room, hope you like pink…” “Aunt Harriet, you’re in Urban Fantasy, don’t mind the butt tattoos, it’s a genre thing…”
JenC, bingo.
RfP’s correct. The Sony was too grainy for my ease of reading. To me, it was like looking at dot matrix after the ribbon was worn thin. And I wanted to LOVE this thing.
what version were you looking at? I know hubby’s is very clear, he has the most recent (not counting the Nov 14 release). I do know the other’s before weren’t all that great, but this is very nice. I want the blue one though, I like the contrast between the page and the metal housing.
The 505/SC, the one they have at Target.
ev, if I lived closer, I’d be there ASAP – even though my mind is going all sorts of places in the gutter where it shouldn’t. lol
JenC, this made me laugh. Really hard. Thank you! I did the same thing when I was single. Once I married and we combined libraries, it just wasn’t practical anymore.
Liza Daly – thanks for the update on the proprietary wars.
EmmyS – checking that page now. Thanks.
Silver James: So, as Sarah mentioned, it takes barley a second to boot up a reader. I don’t know about the Kindle, as I have the much better Sony PRS 505 😉 but when I turn my reader off, which also takes barley a second, and then turn it back on, it is exactly in the same place I left it in. So while you do have an option to bookmark, I never do because it remembers where you are. Even if you open a different book, when you go back to the other one you have the option of going to the beginning of the book, the end, or where you left off when you stopped looking at that book.
As far as the downloading, I’m again for my Sony over a Kindle. Yes, Kindle does have the wireless ease to shop, but you can also really only get books on Amazon. With the Sony, I shop around for the price I like the best, and then use ConvertLIT and Calibre to pop them on my reader. (You can google those). You can also buy the PDF versions of books and look at them without converting, although they don’t tend to be in the best format. Then I plug in my reader to my computer and just add the new ones to the reader. No problem. Oh, and the books are there until you take them off. I’ve got 158 books on my reader right now, and that’s without putting in a memory card, which I think can hold up to 10,000 or so. I just leave them on the reader when I’m done and walk around with my entire digital library all the time. 🙂
joykenn: You CAN read library books on the Sony. If the library offers PDF books (which most have either those or Mobi, but I find mine has all of them in PDF with only some in Mobi), then you can check them out and put them on. I have a library card in Las Vegas and Phoenix (one from each parent) and the Phoenix online library has 4,000 romance novels to chose from. The book can be read for 21 days and then you can’t open it anymore. It’s not the best formatting, but for free, I’m not going to complain.
Mac: As far as getting mugged on the train, some people over at Mobile Read have made reader cases out of hollowed books, so no one would be the wiser. (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29503&highlight=hollow+book)
kalafudra: Sony has started selling their readers in Europe. It either already is or coming soon in England, France, Germany, and The Netherlands, so you should see if you could get it or not.
Well, that was probably more than was necessary. I suggest, if you want more info, heading over to Mobile Read, since I didn’t even know what eInk was in May and look at me now. 🙂
Now if someone could just tell me how to make hyperlinks in these comment posts…
Man, I keep trying to release myself from attachment, but cool stuff keeps getting made. Anyone had any experiences with ebook reading on the Balckberry Curve?
Doh. Blackberry.
As interesting as the Kindle sounds, I will keep reading my books via paper because of headaches. I get headaches from computer screens and TV screens. I’ve seen the Sony ereader in person and the black flash when the screen content changes is awful. It takes barely two hours with any screen for me to get a headache. I do have regular eye exams and wear glasses. Reading a paperback book doesn’t bother me at all – in fact, I find it soothing.
My biggest problem with ebook readers?
NO COLOR!
I’m one of those strange peeps who enjoy the artwork on the covers of the books and get really annoyed when I see some blurry b/w on the front page that should be in color. I can get a color cover on my PDF’s; what’s the problem?
and yes, the price. Drop it below $100 and I’ll get one in a second. But between the confusion on formats and the DRM issues and the lack of color and I’ll be on the sidelines for a bit longer enjoying my freebies and using the Adobe digital reader on my laptop.
I had read on my laptop almost exclusively for over a year now, since I discovered fanfiction, starting with free stuff and moving on to per-pay PDF ebooks. I had never read that way before and, although I have experienced some eyestrain, I love it. Not that I would probably ever stop get getting some titles in print (and I am also someone who will read it online first, then buy the hardback if I like it enough), but I love paying less for books and I love not killing trees and I love having everything in one location. What I would love better is being able to curl up comfortably in my chair or lay on my stomach in bed and read electronically, and a devoted reader is attractive to me for that reason alone (though all the other reasons to get one are there, too).
My concern about going over to reader, regardless of manufacturer and besides the device cost, is that the majority of my reading right now is still done online for free on sites like Nifty and the multiple HP fanfiction sites. My understanding—and correct me if I’m wrong—is that I can’t switch between the two (i.e. no real web access). I do read online via my LG iPhone wannabe, but if I could get away with only one device for reading, I would be super happy.
I’m waiting for my public library to get ebooks before I invest in a Kindle/Sony Reader/whatever; at the moment most of my reading material’s free or available for a very small fee on CDs…
For those that are looking for annotation and can afford the investment, the iRex iLiad might be a viable option for you.
I love my Kindle. I do spend a bit more than I like, but I also ahem, “manipulate” mobipocket overdrive books I get from my (digital) library to work on the kindle. The reduction of paperbacks lying around is worth $120+ to me alone (the cost of a new bookcase plus somewhere…. to put it).
I also own an iPod touch and hands down, I <3 the kindle to bits and pieces. The touch screen is tiny and I just do not like reading on it. I use my touch as a roving e-mail client/calendar so I can get to the meetings that I really need to get to while my laptop is booting in its own sweet time.
I’ve been considering getting an ebook reader, but there are boring ideological reasons that stop me from buying into the system (it’s not that I’m cheap—until recent events caused some budgetary reevaluation, I bought a lot of books); any discussion of ebook readers, especially the Kindle, is incomplete without at least a mention of Mark Pilgrim’s The Future Of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)… even if I am posting on a dead thread.
On the other hand, there some good unencumbered stuff out there; maybe I will purchase one of these some day.
For those who are looking for annotation/clippings/notes/etc., the Kindle does all of that. And then you can download the clipping file to your hard drive to reference it (or search, or copy/paste, or whatever) later. You can highlight a section as a highlight (which will be copied to your clippings file). You can save a whole page as a clipping. You can add a note, which will appear in the “My Notes” list, as well as copy into your clippings file. You can, of course, bookmark (that’s available in most e-book devices, including the Sony).
Yeah, you can’t do it with a pen/stylus, but you can do it with the keypad (that’s what all those extra buttons are for!)
I recently read a non-fiction book on my Kindle for work and used all the annotation features heavily so I could drag and drop the notes I needed right into my research notes and, later, into my paper as references.
I would happily pick up a few reference books for my Kindle—a searchable reference book? Are you kidding? Who wouldn’t?!? I mean, sure, with a shortcut-ready wikipedia search (@wiki in the search field), maybe you don’t also need a pre-loaded reference book…. but I can think of a few dozen writing-related references that I would love to have loaded onto my Kindle!
And, yes, you can play audiobooks on your Kindle. You have to authorize it to play your audbile-DRMed books if you use audible, but otherwise, it plays audio files just fine—books, or music.
I love my Kindle and the number one reason is the readability. Being able to adjust the print size depending on how tired my eyes are is a huge plus since I mostly read before bed.