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News & ArtsTuesday, March 16, 2010
Media / Books How You Will Read Books and Magazines in the Future (Maybe)
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:21 AM
Yesterday, Gizmodo put up this awesome video of a concept for the newsstand of the future. It involves tablet computers and seamless interactivity between devices:
(This reminds me of a tiny detail of Avatar that I loved: There was one scene where somebody—I think Giovanni Ribisi—was looking at data on a computer screen. He grabbed a tablet computer and pushed the screen of the computer onto the tablet and then walked around the room with the information. I thought that looked like a wonderful application for a computer, and I thought it was surely something we would be doing with our computers in five or ten years. Turns out, it was more like five or ten weeks.)
I think bookstores should look into doing the same thing with books. People—even people who primarily buy books on Kindles or similar devices—like to spend time in bookstores, and bookstores can't physically hold every book that's available. But with this interface, it'd be incredibly easy to physically sell ebooks to people with computers and broaden the shelves of bookstores to include every book all at once. The bookstore would make money off the sale of the ebook the old-fashioned way: By handselling the ebook to the customer. If I were the American Booksellers Association, I'd be looking into this right now.
1
You should build a Slog kiosk. Like, sure, people can read the Slog anywhere on their own box, but people like to spend time in bookstores. So they would travel by bike or car or bus to this sort of bookstore or newsstand like thing you've made where they mill around (and maybe interact!), and then load slog posts onto their thingy and read them.
It would be like the best of reading blogs combined with the best of tooting around town shopping.
What was Marshall McLuhan's saying about new media recapitulating old media?
It would be like the best of reading blogs combined with the best of tooting around town shopping.
What was Marshall McLuhan's saying about new media recapitulating old media?
2
That's a wee bit harsh, Elenchos. Point taken, though.
The problem with e-books versus regular books is in part that only a tiny fraction of books are available in electronic form (far less than 1%). And, despite, for instance, Google Books' extraordinary efforts, and stated intention, to scan everything, I'm not convinced that the percentage is even increasing. There is still a world of books published outside the US, for instance, that isn't available on Kindle, and is unlikely to be. These are also unlikely to ever turn up around here in physical copies.
One very promising area of scanning, which is in page images, not text, and thus unusable on e-book only readers, is back issues of magazines. Google's made substantial runs of such great resources as Ebony and Billboard available to browse. These would be terrific on a portable device, which is more likely to be a browser-equipped pad than an e-reader (unfortunately for me).
The problem with e-books versus regular books is in part that only a tiny fraction of books are available in electronic form (far less than 1%). And, despite, for instance, Google Books' extraordinary efforts, and stated intention, to scan everything, I'm not convinced that the percentage is even increasing. There is still a world of books published outside the US, for instance, that isn't available on Kindle, and is unlikely to be. These are also unlikely to ever turn up around here in physical copies.
One very promising area of scanning, which is in page images, not text, and thus unusable on e-book only readers, is back issues of magazines. Google's made substantial runs of such great resources as Ebony and Billboard available to browse. These would be terrific on a portable device, which is more likely to be a browser-equipped pad than an e-reader (unfortunately for me).
4
@1 nails it. This is a technology that will never, ever happen. Can you imagine a music kiosk where you can browse and buy mp3's? Oh, wait, I can do that through the web already without the need for a physical kiosk?
Fnarf…as for the availability of books. I remember that argument being made for CDs when they were released, DVD's, MP3s, etc.
I've just purchased my iPad, and have been making a list of the books I'm going to be buying on day one. The idea of reading a legacy book is not appealing to me anymore. Why? There are distinct advantages to reading an eBook. For instance, I mostly read philosophy and non-fiction, and the ability to highlight, notate, copy, paste and search the books is incredibly important to me. The inability to do that on legacy books has made reading them so inefficient as to be useless for me in this modern age.
Book nostalgia is now in the realm of analog audio nostalgia circa 1998 or so. I remember the impassioned pleas of the purists back then, but never hear those arguments now. Have we lost something? Probably. But, we've also gained a lot, and I'll take the gains.
If you need to read those millions of books that aren't available as eBooks today, they're still available, right? But, increasingly, it will be critical for publishers to have their catalog available in eBook format.
Fnarf…as for the availability of books. I remember that argument being made for CDs when they were released, DVD's, MP3s, etc.
I've just purchased my iPad, and have been making a list of the books I'm going to be buying on day one. The idea of reading a legacy book is not appealing to me anymore. Why? There are distinct advantages to reading an eBook. For instance, I mostly read philosophy and non-fiction, and the ability to highlight, notate, copy, paste and search the books is incredibly important to me. The inability to do that on legacy books has made reading them so inefficient as to be useless for me in this modern age.
Book nostalgia is now in the realm of analog audio nostalgia circa 1998 or so. I remember the impassioned pleas of the purists back then, but never hear those arguments now. Have we lost something? Probably. But, we've also gained a lot, and I'll take the gains.
If you need to read those millions of books that aren't available as eBooks today, they're still available, right? But, increasingly, it will be critical for publishers to have their catalog available in eBook format.
5
Ah…and I just noticed that this is a Microsoft technology. Figures. Microsoft always seems late to the game and then always manages to spend a billion dollars creating things that nobody wants. God bless the sales of Office that keep that behemoth afloat.
6
@4, if you haven't used current technology to search, highlight, etc., you may be in for a bit of a shock when you get your iPad. The iPad will undoubtedly be better at those things than a Kindle, but it almost has to be; the Kindle's implementation of those features is absolutely unusable. Current e-books, including Kindle, Nook, and Sony, are only good for undifferentiated text narrative streams -- popular fiction and so forth. There's a reason they're so successful amongst readers of romance, mystery, and science fiction, and so UN-successful amongst readers of serious non-fiction (i.e., anything with footnotes or and index).
I have a Kindle, and I've read all kinds of stuff on it, and it's cool -- but it's boring, with its uniform font and pagination, and it's defective for a lot of real-world usage of the type you describe, and it hasn't replaced more than a fraction of my reading. I wish it had; that's why I got it. But my nightstand is still crowded with books.
I have a Kindle, and I've read all kinds of stuff on it, and it's cool -- but it's boring, with its uniform font and pagination, and it's defective for a lot of real-world usage of the type you describe, and it hasn't replaced more than a fraction of my reading. I wish it had; that's why I got it. But my nightstand is still crowded with books.
7
@6 Fnarf…yeah, I've been playing with friends Kindles and noted that it was still clunky. So, I'm banking on Apple getting right, or at least right enough for me to begin investing in a collection of books allowing me to begin collecting research notes, etc.
I understand that it won't be perfect on day one. My purchase of technology has become relatively stable over the past 5 years; I not only buy for the capability of the device, I also buy for the potential development of the company supporting the device. Apple has a great track record of improving their products, making them not only useful in version 1 (I bought my iPhone on day 1 and it is still incredible tech today).
I understand that it won't be perfect on day one. My purchase of technology has become relatively stable over the past 5 years; I not only buy for the capability of the device, I also buy for the potential development of the company supporting the device. Apple has a great track record of improving their products, making them not only useful in version 1 (I bought my iPhone on day 1 and it is still incredible tech today).
8
…which is part of the reason I never bought a Kindle. Amazon is a book store. I get why they felt compelled to build a device, but in the end, the Kindle is dead. Amazon will go back to providing books, and they'll do so for lots of devices. They may continue to develop the software to read books on those various devices (I read Kindle books on my iPhone), but buying a gadget from a non-gadget making company rarely makes sense. And, it has played out just that way with the Kindle.
9
@7, no matter how good Apple's interface is, serious non-fiction will never be useful on an e-reader until publishers deem it important enough to, for starters, hyperlink their indexes. And figure out a better way to indicate position besides "location" or percentage. Bring back page numbers! I don't see Apple doing either of these things.
Also, when it becomes possible (or rather, practical) to imbed different fonts and other typographical settings, maybe. You won't believe how tired you get of reading the same old layout for everything; it's like your whole reading universe got turned into a stack of work memorandums written in Times New Roman.
Also, when it becomes possible (or rather, practical) to imbed different fonts and other typographical settings, maybe. You won't believe how tired you get of reading the same old layout for everything; it's like your whole reading universe got turned into a stack of work memorandums written in Times New Roman.
10
Fnarf…still, select/copy/paste is a function that increases the speed by which I can copy passages from books, compared to typing them from legacy books. So, that function alone will increase the value of reading a book exponentially for me.
…Also, Apple states that you'll be able to change fonts and size in its application. So, that will take care of one of your complaints, right?
…Also, Apple states that you'll be able to change fonts and size in its application. So, that will take care of one of your complaints, right?
11
@10, mmm, not really. The thing is, books are designed objects; someone CHOSE the font it was printed in. In most cases I don't even know what font it is. Even if I can change the font, that doesn't mean I'll choose a good one, and there are a hundred other layout issues besides just font. You might not think this makes as big a difference as it does, but designers get paid for a reason. It's a big part of the character of a book; whereas with e-readers today it's a part of the character of the e-reader.
I personally like the Google Books model of scanned pages (image files) better, but their resolution is poor, and they wouldn't be locally storable on the same scale.
I'm not saying it's not going to happen, just that it hasn't fully happened yet. There are a LOT of great ideas in this area that haven't been had yet.
I personally like the Google Books model of scanned pages (image files) better, but their resolution is poor, and they wouldn't be locally storable on the same scale.
I'm not saying it's not going to happen, just that it hasn't fully happened yet. There are a LOT of great ideas in this area that haven't been had yet.
12
Timothy ftw @4.
All your future is belong to iPad.
By the way, they're great for vid-enhanced manga too. And old DC comics ....
All your future is belong to iPad.
By the way, they're great for vid-enhanced manga too. And old DC comics ....
13
The irony about the fraction of books that has been scanned not increasing is that all these new publications were in electronic form long before they were committed to paper. The whole exercise of getting the book, prying it open and scanning the pages, and encoding the images to text could be avoided if the publisher would email the original file to Google.
But publishers are dragging their feet as long as possible on this. I wish they would all finally sit down and make a deal so everyone could get paid and the public could buy their content in whatever format is needed, for a realistic price.
But publishers are dragging their feet as long as possible on this. I wish they would all finally sit down and make a deal so everyone could get paid and the public could buy their content in whatever format is needed, for a realistic price.
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