| I remember when, some years ago, the idea of the electronic book was first mooted. Nominal plans showed a box-shaped object, unlike the wafer-thin "ereaders" of today. There was a good deal of scepticism as to whether such a device would prove successful commercially, let alone replace the traditional paper book. Then it seemed to slip from public notice. |
| Now, a few decades later, we find ourselves in the midst of what might be called the "eBook Revolution", when, for the first time, sales of books in electronic form are reported to have overtaken paper book sales. It would be hard for even the most hardened sceptic to retain his scepticism in the face of the current success of the electronic book. Like the PC and the mobile phone before it, it is here to stay and, though we might enjoy the feeling of novelty for a little while longer, we shall soon find ourselves wondering, as we do with those other devices, how we ever managed without it. |
| Looking on Amazon and other booksellers’ Web sites, I see that prices of ebooks have fallen, sometimes quite dramatically. In fact, the electronic version of a book is often cheaper than the paper version. But that’s not all: the ereader provides us with a comfortable way to read all those free books out there. Organizations like Project Gutenberg have been labouring away for years transposing out-of-copyright books into electronic form, but reading them was always slightly inconvenient in that you had to read them off the PC screen or print them out on paper. Now, suddenly, with the ereader, they have come into their own. |
| Even if you do not possess an ereader, you can still read ebooks: many sites offer you free ereaders that you can install on your PC, laptop or tablet PC. This isn’t as good as it sounds, however, for most of these are designed to get you to buy books from the company concerned and will let you download books from elsewhere only reluctantly or not at all. What we really want – and what we should insist on – is a reader that can download from any site and read books that have been stored on our computers and other devices. |
| I was fairly sceptical about ebooks until recently. I still believe that you cannot beat a "proper" book on paper. The look, the feel, the fact that you can flick back and forth between text, illustrations, index, etc by simply sticking your finger between the pages are qualities that the ebook cannot match. Not yet, anyway. However, if your book consists of a straight narrative without pictures or diagrams, then the ebook is perfectly acceptable. |
| Having obtained your ebook, though, what is the best way to read it? One obvious answer is by buying one of the electronic ereaders currently available on the market. Their prices are fairly modest (depending on how well stuffed your wallet is, of course) but you may still hesitate to fork out the money if you have little experience of ebooks and are not sure the expense will be justified. |
| This was the question that I faced myself. Initially sceptical about ebooks, I now wanted to try them out but was not ready to buy an ereader until I was certain that the expense was justified. There was, however, a solution. It was sitting on my desk in front of me: my smartphone! |
| In a previous post I mentioned the Ibis Reader. This is an online reader and provider of free ebooks. The list of available titles is not impressive but Ibis Reader has qualities that make it stand out from the crowd. It ought to be better known. As with most online facilities, you start by creating an account. All this requires is a username and password. This is simply to gain you your own bookshelf where your uploaded books are kept. |
| Once you have your account, you can load your bookshelf with books. You can obtain these from anywhere. There are books available on the Ibis Reader site but you can obtain books from other sites. The easiest way to do this is to download a book in epub format onto your PC, and then upload it to your Ibis Reader account. Then you read it! |
| The disadvantage of this system is that you have to be online to read. No reading on the London Underground, then. As long as you can get online, though, you can read your books without let or hindrance. Ibis Reader remembers, without prompting, where you got to in the text and obligingly opens it at that spot next time. |
| The advantage is that Ibis Reader is designed the work in any device. It will certainly work on you PC and laptop and on your Android tablet PC. It claims to work even on your smartphone. So, does it? |
| Well, yes it does! At least, it works perfectly on my Blackberry Curve. While Ibis Reader formats the text to suit the kind of device you are using, the final result will depend on the device itself. For example, I have two browsers on my Blackberry, the native RIM browser and Opera Mobile. Both display ebooks, but do do slightly differently. The native browser shows the text in a fairly small font. I can enlarge this by zooming but this also expands the width of the page beyond the edges of the screen, making it necessary to scroll left and right as I read. The Opera browser, on the other hand, show the text in larger print but still keeps it within the borders of the screen. It is thus the better option for reading ebooks. |
| If you like to read books in French, however, you will probably find that Ibis Reader lets you down. This is because the French seem not to use the epub format at all. Their preferred format for ebooks is PDF. Ibis Reader, unfortunately, cannot read PDF files. |
| I found the solution to this quite serendipitously. I had Documents to Go installed on the Blackberry and recently updated it. Included with the update was… a PDF reader! So I can still read PDF files on my phone though I have first to load them into memory. On the other hand, I don’t need to go online to read them. |
| There are now many sites online that offer to convert files between all the different formats. In theory, you could convert a PDF into an epub file and read it in Ibis Reader but in practice that is not very satisfactory. The result is never perfect and the faults in formatting may make to text difficult to read. |
| Now that I have perfected the art of reading ebooks on my Blackberry, an even better solution has come along. Before I say what it is, let me make a further point. The explosion in electronic inventiveness has brought a problem in its train: a proliferation of devices. With regard to portable devices, we first had the laptop computer; then we had the mobile phone; this was followed by the PDA and, more recently, by the tablet PC. And now up pops the ereader. The way things are going, you will need a special bag to carry all these devices around with you. What is the solution? |
| The solution, of course, is consolidation, the creation of devices that are multi-purpose. This has already happened to some extent with the mobile phone and the PDA becoming parents of the "smartphone", which is not only taking on the functions of a computer but also adding to this many entirely new functions such as that of the electronic wallet. |
| The only difficulty with this is one of the main virtues of the smartphone: its tiny size. No matter how good the screen resolution, I cannot imagine anyone wanting to surf the Web or read ebooks for long periods at a time on a smartphone. That is to risk eye-strain. In response, enter the tablet PC which, with its larger format provides a much pleasanter experience for surfing the Web and for… reading ebooks. It just so happens that, thanks to Tigger, I have joined the ranks of the tablet PC owning classes. Once I have got to grips with it, I will be able to say more about it from the point of view of reading ebooks. |
| Copyright © 2011 SilverTiger, http://tigergrowl.wordpress.com, All rights reserved. |
My better half bought me a NextBook eReader last year (a colour device with wi-fi but no webcam, running Android 2.1 and able to make use of removable SD cards, for under US$200) and it’s been quite useful for me as I develop a piece of new technology.
I can create and edit plain text files using a useful free editor as I’m brainstorming away from the desktop, and since it reads a variety of formats including PDF, I can transfer PDF versions of my PowerPoint presentations from the desktop (some of which contain graphics and diagrams) onto it either via the Net or USB and then peruse my notes so far while I continue to work on expanding my knowledge of the theoretical space for the technology I’m exploring.
It’s not leading edge by any stretch of the imagination, but it was cheap and cheerful and a way to investigate whether eReaders were worth getting into.
I set up an Eclipse development environment on an old (Pentium 4!) desktop and until we lost our apartment in March I was successfully undertaking Android app development on that desktop and transferring the resulting .apk onto the NextBook for testing.
I also explored MobiPocket Creator with a view to creating my own eBooks (there are other routes but they usually tie you into an agreement with the service provider that basically neuters you as an author) and I’m sure as time passes there will be more opportunities to gain more control over self-ePublishing.
There are some limitations, obviously, but I have other eReader applications running on it – Amazon Kindle, Borders – and there are others I could add. So in some respects it’s closer to a tablet than an eReader, and the distinction will probably continue to blur.
My conclusion is that (a) Android is a force to reckon with for the foreseeable future and (b) eReaders/eBooks are going to be a vital tool in the working environment, let alone in the field of personal entertainment and development.
In the last week or so I’ve been made aware that there’s something of a gulf between authors (essentially storytellers to give them a more generic title) and the technologies that have been developed in recent years that greatly expand the types of storytelling that are possible.
Since that ties in to an aspect of the new technology I’m exploring, I’m taking a very keen interest in this gulf, especially as I straddle it, being both a techie and an author.
One useful springboard is http://bookhackers.com. Another is Clare Hooper’s blog at http://clarehooper.wordpress.com.
How this will impact libraries is anyone’s guess. My prediction is that the physical nature of libraries may change but the need for them will increase dramatically since they will probably be the go-to places for accessing the best guidance as to what’s good and what’s crud.
As “mobile” as you and Tigger are, a tablet PC is perfect for you. Its size is an advantage to you with your flat space being limited, and its multifunctionality is also a big plus in its favor. Since I spend so much time in one place, I couldn’t justify getting one. However, I am enjoying my Kindle immensely. It solves my “book storage” problem as I have a finite amount of “book space” One of my favorite authors has, with two of her fellow authors, set up a website where copies of her books and her fellows’ are available as DRM free files one can download for a reasonable fee. To hear them tell it, this is the future of publishing, where authors self publish their own works as downloads.
Looking ahead to a future post, following on from this one, I must say that being able to use a tablet PC as an ebook reader is one of its most appealing features to me.
Until about the middle of the 20th century, it was reasonable to describe some new gadget as “the future of X” but the concept has since then become much more problematic and only the reckless rush into such naive prophecy. These days, new products are launched with huge publicity to persuade us that they are the ultimate solution to our dreams, only to be superseded the following year by other products launched with even louder fanfares. We can be sure that this process will apply to the world as publishing as much as it does to any other domain.
“To hear them tell it, this is the future of publishing, where authors self publish their own works as downloads.”
I’d agree wholeheartedly.
I suggest that before that can happen some important developments need to occur. Firstly, there are competing formats for books which means that not all ereaders (whether standalone, desktop or online) can read all formats. Kindle is obviously trying to corner the market in ebooks by using a specific format that other ereaders do not read. As with the “industry standard” PC, that has to change before ebooks become the universal medium.
Secondly, there is the problem of licensing and copyright. Because ebooks are able to be downloaded from anywhere to anywhere, this is going to conflict with copyright laws that differ from country to country. People in the UK, for example, might find themselves charged with theft for downloading a book that people can download in the US, say, with impunity.
Related to this is the issue of piracy: you can already download for free from pirate sites ebooks that, legally, you can only purchase. There’s a risk of the fiasco with music downloads being ported into the world of ebooks.
Thirdly, the presentation so far is pretty poor. It works for novels where you only need print but what about pictures, diagrams and pull-out maps? And has anyone so far invented the “coffee table Kindle”? No, I thought not. Yes, you can have pictures in some formats but they are generally of paperback quality.
We are only at the beginning of the “ebook revolution” (roughly, where the PC was in the 1980s) and in the time that the market takes to regularize itself and evolve, new developments are sure to come along as will new modes of producing and marketing books.
A few points occur to me.
1) There are standards for presentation – it’s more a question of whether the provider of the hardware chooses to include the capability to handle the various forms. Refusing to provide a capability means (a) you limit your market for your product and (b) you open the door to third party providers who’ll eagerly make good on the omissions. Remember that there was a time when no-one provided PDF reading capability on PCs as standard – you had to download a reader from Adobe (likewise handling .zip files – you had to download PKZip or some other app to be able to open such files sent to you).
2) I don’t think anyone will be charged with theft if they can show legitimate ownership of a given publication. Google Books is probably going to be the biggest go-to site for publications IMHO.
3) The NextBook3 plays audio and video files (not all formats yet) with stereo output through either stereo headphones or inbuilt speakers. I can’t speak for other hardware but I’d guess they’re all heading in that direction if they’re not already there. The sale of hardware MP3 players has been steadily declining for a long time now, since just about every portable device can play such files. I don’t think there’s going to be a sudden rush to download pirated music onto eReaders – chances are that if you were going to do that kind of thing, you’d have already done it on other devices.
4) The presentation depends on the product – my NextBook3 does a really good job of presenting colour images and diagrams. Again, I can’t speak for others (although I have heard negative comments about the older Kindles). This is obviously a function of the resolution and colour depth of the display, which parallels the development of quality displays in the PC world (the Mac world was always years ahead of the PC). Early PCs had really crappy displays, as you may recall. I have a 300 slide PowerPoint presentation with text, diagrams and other graphics converted to PDF using a freebie driver that I transferred onto my NextBook and the quality is great.
5) I suspect that true coffee table books will become a curiosity and may remain in paper form for many years to come. On the other hand you may provide local wi-fi access to your favoured collection of coffee table type publications for visitors to your home to peruse on their ubiquitous readers while they slurp your coffee
The biggest problem that we’ll face is the huge torrent of publications that will become available, many for free. Deciding on what’s hot and what’s not will be the workspace for librarians, IMHO.
What I really love about e-readers is being able to search and look up words so easily. If you’re getting mixed up between Okinu, Orito, Utako and Uzaemon you can just call up all the places those people come into the story. Wonder what exactly is a ‘palanquin’? My Kindle has a pretty amazing dictionary – and it works on the Tube too. That’s something I was wishing for long before the relatively recent popularity of the Kindle etc. Apart from that though, I’m still not convinced to buy e-books instead of paperbacks. It’s true the cost of the reader will soon outweigh the cost of books, but what about lending them, sharing with the rest of your household, leaving them on a shelf for 20 years and finding you’ve changed so much it’s a completely new book. As for free books, it’s a nice idea but we’re talking about 19th century out-of-copyright authors, and how much of that do you really want to read?
There is a large – and growing – quantity of free books available, from novels to technical books. The quality varies tremendously, as you’d expect – some are professionally produced while others are incredibly amateurish, which is to be expected when there’s no filter.
Some are made available by the big publishers while others are variations on “vanity” or self-publishing (the market most likely to expand rapidly).
These are not 19th century (or earlier) publications (although you can get those by the bucketload from places like Google Books and eBooks or Project Gutenberg).
eReaders are useful for other things too – for example, you can store PDFs or graphic images of all your bills, bank statements, and so on (even manuals for your various other devices, including the microwave, cooker, and what have you), making it more of a repository of useful information than merely an electronic version of a bunch of paperbacks.
Later versions of Android support at least 32G of removable SDCard storage so there’s plenty of space for everything – not just eBooks.
While I accept that an ereader has many functions that some people will find useful, I also see that not everybody has a need for these functions.
I therefore conclude that while some will be enthusiastic users of the Kindle and its kin, others will never bother with it. You cannot sell a hammer to someone who never knocks in nails.
SilverTiger – Sent via Blackberry
My subjective experience has been that users frequently perceive that they don’t have a need for many functions until that perception is changed (usually by a changing awareness, the result of an Aha! moment).
I guess one counter analogy might be that you can sell someone a knife but you can’t predict when they’ll need something other than a knife. However, if you sell them a Swiss Army Knife…
The nice thing about some of the upcoming devices is that users can use them in Kodak Instamatic mode until such time as they realise there’s more to eBooks than just reading…
A better analogy might be the mobile phone which many people originally bought to leave in the car for “emergency use”, only to discover its general usefulness.
Some of the uses you suggest for a Kindle such as storing bills or manuals are far too esoteric for most people while PDF files can be read conveniently enough on practically any device using a free PDF reader. In fact, as I found, PDF seems to be the format of choice for ebooks in France, largely eliminating the need for a dedicated ereader.
However, it is a case of “horses for courses” and some people will love their Kindle while others will never bother with one just as some have never bothered with a mobile phone.
I couldn’t respond directly to your response. I guess there’s a misunderstanding somewhere: the bills and manuals ARE in PDF form; the advantage to having them on your eReader is that you always have them at your fingertips.
Many companies these days provide a minimalist paper-based manual with their products and offer a much fuller manual in PDF form on their website, and at least in the US most companies offer your bills as downloadable PDFs.
The Kindle’s probably a bad example as an eReader – other devices like the Nextbook are much more than that, and as time goes by the distinction between a tablet and an eReader will probably dissolve.
You can store ANY file on your eReader – not just the ones that you can view on it – it saves having to have a separate memory stick to store files in a way that they can be transferred between machines (all eReaders are usually seen as FAT32 external storage devices when connected via USB to a regular PC).
I agree with you though that there will always be some people who prefer to stick with older technologies. For example, I don’t have a mobile phone (cellphone) because the sound quality is atrocious compared with a landline and the Android apps I might run on the tiny screen of a phone I can run much more legibly on my Nextbook.
I think that for the foreseeable future paper books and ebooks will run a parallel course, each performing the functions it does best, though there will, of course, be overlap.