The Future of Reading
eBook technology
Over the next few years, books, newspapers, and magazines will continue to be available primarily as print. There is an anticipation that eBooks will become an important alternative, a new opportunity for quick, convenient reading. Over time, we expect that books and other content will be available in both print and in electronic formats, letting the customer choose which they will buy. And in the future, eBooks may come to be preferred, especially by younger generations.
We’re constantly faced with a barrage of information. Yet none of us has enough time to consume all the media available today. To stay informed, we all seek new ways to maximize the benefits of reading.
And like most good stories, it begins with one arresting fact: In the year 2000, state-of-the-art eBook technology will become available on PC’s, laptops and a variety of handheld devices.
Reading long stretches of text on a computer screen is usually one of those things people
do only if there’s no other option. You read onscreen what you have to e-mail, Web pages, documents you’re word-processing but hardly anyone does it by choice. The 72-dpi characters are hard on the eyes, and any light shining over your shoulder creates a
squint-producing glare on the screen. Then there are the aesthetics: the texts onscreen are usually undesigned, set in default layouts of insufficiently leaded Times or Arial type. On top of all that, you’re a prisoner of your desktop. Even if you have a portable computer, your position hunched over the display is far from the relaxed slouch you’re in when reading a book in an easy chair.
But one day you’ll want to read books on a computer screen–at least that’s the hope of electronic book publishers Everybook, Librius.com, NuvoMedia, SoftBook Press, and others. These companies are building up catalogs of fiction and nonfiction titles for
distribution by electronic bookstores, working out royalty rates and distribution formats for electronic publishers, and manufacturing the handheld hardware they hope will someday replace the printed and bound books on your shelves.
Publishing book texts for reading on a computer isn’t anything new. When the Apple PowerBook was introduced, Voyager took the laptop’s name literally and published books like Alice in Wonderland and Jurassic Park in HyperCard for the new device. When the Web was in its infancy, Project Gutenberg began digitizing as many public-domain texts as it could get hold of for downloading from the Net. Peanut Press is publishing texts for Palm Computing personal digital assistants (PDAs), and Glassbook is devising a system to publish texts for Windows and Windows CE devices. However, none of those approaches addresses the problems–the glare, the bad layout, and other annoyances–of reading onscreen.
The new generation of electronic books attempts to resolve these issues by requiring a specially designed hardware reader into which selected texts are downloaded electronically. SoftBook Press and NuvoMedia introduced their electronic readers last fall; Everybook, Librius.com should have their hardware out later this year and Microsoft Reader which will be available next spring.
WHY plop down hundreds of dollars for an e-book when you can pick up a Jane Austen novel for $5 in a compact, high-resolution, high-contrast paperback that requires no special hardware or power supply? Here’s why:
INSTANT DELIVERY E-books take the current rage for online bookstores one step further. You purchase a text from a Web site and then download it. Because you receive it as bits via the Internet instead of atoms via FedEx, any book can be delivered instantly.
PERSONAL EDITIONS, no publisher can take on the costs of printing, storing, and shipping texts on paper unless there is a strong demand. With e-publishing, those costs are gone. Any book can remain available, tucked away on a hard disk. No book need go out of print. Authors can self-publish by formatting their texts for e-readers and uploading them onto a distribution Web site. Scholars can retrieve and rediscover the value in that overlooked 20-year-old masterpiece. Teachers who now compile class readers by photocopying chapters from original texts (with or without the publisher’s permission) can compile customized e-editions for their students, and publishers can charge appropriately.
PRODUCTION ECONOMICS With minimal overhead for printing, storing, and shipping, the cost of texts should plummet. In fact, there’s no reason why classic literature and other texts in the public domain shouldn’t be available for free in online repositories. Newer books, for which the publishers will still need to shoulder marketing, royalty, and other expenses, won’t be free, but in most cases, e-editions should cost less than the same works in print.
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS E-books save lots of trees. We can use paper more selectively and print only what’s necessary. Newspapers and other quick consumables can be "printed" to e-books, then erased instead of recycled.
For all their electronic wizardry, e-books make you appreciate the traditional form of a printed book in ways you might not expect. Offering more than just words on a page, the book form presents context the two page spread, the surrounding pages, and the position on the page and in the book structure all aid your understanding and its multiple leaves provide an incredibly efficient form of random access.
Using the first e-book readers–the NuvoMedia Rocket eBook and the SoftBook reader–is a surreal experience. Reading text on a computer feels like reading text on a computer. Reading an e-book almost feels like reading a book. Instead of bright white paper and crisp type, you’ve got a fairly low-resolution LCD, but the weight in your hand and your angle and distance from the page feel familiar and comfortable.
In the case of the hardcover-size SoftBook reader, the weak link is the screen: a 72-dpi grayscale LCD with all the usual problems of low contrast and glare. The paperback-size Rocket eBook’s display–with 106-dpi resolution and higher-contrast backlighting is easier on the eyes, but the 480-x-320-pixel screen is too small to offer the relaxed reading pace of a book; the line lengths are too short even at a smaller type size. Both display only one page at a time. (In comparison, reading a Peanut Press text downloaded to a Palm III PDA is even more annoying, as only 13 lines of text appear on the 2G-x-2L-inch screen.)
You find your page in the e-books using scroll bar like controls. The control in the SoftBook reader; indicates locations by page number. The Rocket eBook gives a percentage a much less exact, as well as less familiar, method of determining your place.
You can also navigate the e-books using their text-search features, which is less useful than it might sound. Attempting to search the Rocket eBook’s included Random House Dictionary underscores the limitations. When you search for a word in the Rocket’s dictionary, the software doesn’t go directly to that word’s definition but instead begins searching through every word of every definition in the book. You can find what you’re looking for a lot more efficiently using the print version’s alphabetical organization and corner keywords.
Another drawback is the design of the texts themselves. Both the Rocket eBook and the SoftBook reader use text formats based on HTML, which the SoftBook reader displays in a comfortable, if inelegant, 14-point Bookman. The Rocket eBook displays its texts in 10-point Verdana. (On both units you can bump the typeface up a size.) Both support illustrations (grayscale on the SoftBook, black-and-white on the Rocket). However, neither supports hyphenation, let alone other typographical niceties such as kerning or adjustable leading. Texts run right up to the edge of the screen, without the helpful white space of a margin.
Some of the limitations of the first wave of e-books may be addressed by Microsoft Reader the driving force behind this reading revolution. And unlike any other eBook technology that has come before, it delivers a quality reading experience that begins to rival paper. It gives publishers the power to deliver content immediately, across the web and via other digital media. And it will be available next Spring on the largest installed base of personal computers in the world.
Let's be honest, the computer screen has never been comfortable for reading especially for books and other long works. Compared to paper, the type is jagged, margins vary, the display is blurry. That's why people tend to print any document longer that a few pages. Poor on-screen reading is the main reason you may have believed that successful eBooks are still many years away.
Microsoft Reader designed specifically to address the shortcomings of today's computer reading experience, Microsoft Reader brings to the screen exactly what we all love about books: clean, crisp type, traditional layout and an uncluttered format.
At the heart of Microsoft Reader is ClearType, revolutionary display technology that dramatically improves the resolution of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens. ClearType technology delivers a huge improvement in on-screen readability, creating distinct, sharp and clear characters. It provides a truly comfortable, immersive reading experience.
In addition to ClearType itself, Microsoft Reader delivers the finest qualities of traditional typography, ample margins, fully justified text, proper leading and kerning, and a book like user experience that eliminates the distracting icons, buttons, and bars that clutter computer screens.
Like paper, Microsoft Reader lets you highlight text. You can mark a place with a bookmark. Annotate at will. And, like print, you turn pages instead of scroll. While the paper book was Microsoft's blueprint useful ways were found to improve upon it. You can search for words and phrases. You can look up unfamiliar terms with the built-in-dictionary. You will be able to resize the type to create an instant large print edition. And use the power of the computer to create a library that stores and manages a large collection of books and periodicals. Microsoft Reader also supports audio, you will be able to listen to spokenword titles as well as read on screen.
Protecting intellectual property. Microsoft Reader includes a flexible copy protection system designed to protect the copyrights of authors and publishers. Their Bookplate technology is an unobtrusive method for keeping honest people honest. It electronically encodes the purchaser's name on the title page of their book or magazine to discourage unlawful distribution.
Microsoft supports the work of the Open eBook (OEB) organization, which provides publishers with a standard way to format their titles so that they can be read on all compliant eBook software and hardware. Titles that are formatted according to the OEB specification can easily be distributed to the Microsoft Reader. For publishers, that means an incredible benefit, format once and publish anywhere. From desktops to laptops to handhelds, and dedicated eBook devices as well.
Although the Internet is an important new delivery vehicle for eBooks, readers still value the comfortable atmosphere of their favorite bookstore. In fact, the coming of the eBook creates new opportunities for booksellers. eBook titles for Microsoft Reader will be available to bookstores on CD-ROM, as well as via the web. They are also developing in-store facilities that can bring web distribution into the bookstore, enabling booksellers to transfer eBook titles directly onto their customer's reading devices. It's efficient. It's low overhead. And profitable.
How will eBook technology impact education? How will it impact libraries?
The idea behind the paperless classroom is to give students and teachers more control over the learning process. The objective of the digital revolution is not to render paper obsolete, but to leverage the vast power of digital technology for the management of educational content.
The goal is to ascertain if electronic books can save schools money, time, and space by switching from pulp to pixels.
The success of electronic publishing has created enormous opportunities for eBook users to create, assemble, and distribute easily searchable reference information for the education audience. Education experts are optimistic about the nation’s first eBook classroom at Dayton’s Resurrection Catholic School and about the learning potential this pilot program offers students. Ted Nellen, Carnegie Fellow and renown "Cyber-English" teacher from New York’s Murry Bergtraum high School, expects to see improvements in the learning process for schools implementing the eBook system.
"Since the eBooks are portable, students can take them anywhere and learn on an individualized level," said Nellen. "School districts in every community are always under pressure to perform and to be fiscally responsible," said Nellen. So there are some bottom line benefits for the school, including savings in paper and book costs but what’s more critical is the need for progress in teaching and learning methods. Nellen also believes that companies that offer eBook services are paving the way for what he sees as a major advance in the administration of education and the transfer of knowledge. He feels the eBook can be a part of the solution.
Educators in Dayton also view this program with enthusiasm. "We are optimistic that both students and teachers will experience the eBook as an enhancement of traditional learning," said Debra A. Johnson, principal at Resurrection Catholic School. "By streamlining the amount of paperwork that both students and teachers must manage on a daily basis, the hope is that a more concentrated effort can be placed on learning."
eBooks are an ideal extension and management of the technology already present in the classroom. Students can work with a medium they find attractive, highly user friendly, and that improves learning. Teachers can draw from an incredible array of knowledge from traditional sources, and to some degree rein in the vast unedited content of the Internet. The eBook will help teachers make lesson plans highly relevant, topical, and appropriate.
Librarians are beginning to familiarize themselves with the new technology and grapple with all the nitty-gritty questions that arise for each new format of eBooks. How do we decide what to buy, integrate it into our collections, and provide access to it? What policies govern use? And in case of eBooks, do we buy and lend eBook readers as well?
According to Lynn Silipigni-Connaway, director of the Library and Information Services program at the University of Denver (DU). One of the immediate changes is "in the traditional library loan period." In this environment with scholarly reference and professional books, there may be no need for a two week loan model. eBook services such as netLibrary insists it can give any library an edge over print books by allowing them to offer access to full-text of several thousand titles 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Since users are not permitted to print or download large sections of text, there is concern that scholars could lose notes they might make while reading. Connaway explained that any time users access a book, their notes would reappear.
Though some may fail to see eBook's advantage over print, I would begin to embrace that its search and retrieval features result in more relevant information. Additionally I contend that the netLibrary service would be a great boon to distance learning. This opportunity creates a virtual library environment for remote students who do not have access to scholarly materials. Students that have physical or mental impairments could use eBook services at home or some other convenient location. Libraries would be able to expand their collections without building new storage facilities, and deliver eBooks to patrons in remote locations without transporting books from library to library.
References
1. "This is a story about the future of reading." Content: The independent voice of the information age. Jan. 2000: 1-8.
2. DiNucci Darcy. "Electronic books." The future of publishing?" Graphic iq. Aug. 1999: 1-5.
3. "Bad news for trees." The Economist. 19 Dec. 1998: 1-5.
4. "E-books: Coming faster than you think." Library journal. 1 Jul. 1999: 1-2.
5. "netLibrary brings next wave of electronic books." Library Journal. 1 Apr. 1999: 1-4.
http://www.ksinclair.com/ebooks.htm
http://www.homebiznews.com/ebook.htm
http://www.ebooknet.com/wwwboard/