Kindle: Now at the Public Library

Despite being an avid reader, I’ve been a late­comer to the Kin­dle. A year ago I tried a Kin­dle DX but gave it up for var­i­ous rea­sons.

Amazon’s recent announce­ment of a Kin­dle beta test with pub­lic libraries rekin­dled my inter­est (so to speak), so I decided to try again — with the Kin­dle app for iPad.

Here’s my ini­tial take on bor­row­ing an ebook from the King County Library. It’s con­ve­nient, but not with­out issues for peo­ple who love the way books are designed…

A Match Made in Heaven?

My first attempt to bor­row a Kin­dle for­mat book from the pub­lic library went nowhere: it was too early — the local library had not yet updated its sys­tems for Kin­dle. On a sec­ond attempt a few days ago, I found the “entry point” in KCLS’ online cat­a­log, and iden­ti­fied a hand­ful of books to bor­row for use on the iPad/Kindle. But I’d have to wait; none were avail­able that day.

Today I received an email announc­ing that my first ebook was avail­able for down­load, but I’d have to act fast: it would expire within 4 days.

I clicked on the link, dis­cov­ered that the web page had kept my library card and pass­word cre­den­tials from the prior ses­sion, and I autho­rized the “dig­i­tal book loan” (a process that took sev­eral steps).

The lend­ing process takes you to Amazon’s web­site, where Ama­zon links the library’s ebook to the autho­rized Kin­dle reader (or your “cloud reader”). I imag­ine that this is part of the behind-the-scenes infra­struc­ture that enforces the DRM pol­icy pur­chased by KCLS — the lim­its on how many copies of this ebook may be in cir­cu­la­tion at the same time.

So far the process worked smoothly (with a fast broad­band con­nec­tion).

The only glitch occurred with the Kin­dle app on the iPad — and it was prob­a­bly just a tim­ing issue with syn­chro­niza­tion. That said, the first cou­ple of attempts to down­load the library’s ebook to the iPad yielded no result.

So I went back to Ama­zon to ensure the ebook showed up in my autho­rized Kin­dle repos­i­tory, and that this book was prop­erly linked to my iPad. I was pleased to see a clear indi­ca­tion that this was a library copy, ver­sus one that I have pur­chased…

On my next attempt to down­load the library’s ebook to the iPad/Kindle, the process was quick and easy.

When the library’s online sys­tem is work­ing quickly (which is not always the case), I’d say this whole process would take 5 min­utes or less.

Much faster than get­ting in the car, and dri­ving to and from the near­est library branch.

Which leaves me with my remain­ing reser­va­tion about the cur­rent state-of-the-art for books on Kin­dle (or ePub for­mats): the lack of typo­graphic sophis­ti­ca­tion. The cur­rent stan­dards may be fine for pulp fic­tion, but they are a real dis­ap­point­ment for bib­lio­philes who pre­fer higher qual­ity “trade fic­tion” and books with an intrin­sic design sen­si­bil­ity.

For the book I bor­rowed, The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dun­nett, the loss of typo­graphic styling makes it dif­fi­cult in places to com­pre­hend the author’s intent — or even to dif­fer­en­ti­ate lit­er­ary embell­ish­ments from the flow of the nar­ra­tive.

The Loss of Fidelity Detracts from the Story

To illus­trate what I mean, here is a cropped photo of the first page of The Game of Kings, as ren­dered by the Kin­dle app on my iPad 2. Except for the chap­ter head, all the text is styled the same. There’s no addi­tional white space as you would see in the print ver­sion.

The Kin­dle Ver­sion (via iPad)

Although it’s not obvi­ous in the photo above, The Game of Kings begins with a poetry excerpt that pre­cedes the first line of nar­ra­tive. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s noth­ing in the typo­graphic treat­ment or page lay­out to sig­nal that this block of text func­tions dif­fer­ently from the main body of the story.

To make mat­ters worse the poem uses archaic lan­guage — and the com­bi­na­tion could be off-putting as a first impres­sion.

The Print Ver­sion

By way of com­par­i­son here is what this page looks like in the print ver­sion that’s cur­rently in cir­cu­la­tion:

With this lay­out it’s easy for the reader to under­stand that the poem sets the theme for the chap­ter as a whole. It’s clearly set apart from the first line of the nar­ra­tive.

The loss of typo­graphic and page lay­out fidelity in the Kin­dle ver­sion is a huge issue for books writ­ten by Dorothy Dun­nett, an author who lib­er­ally embell­ishes her sto­ries with poems and lit­er­ary allu­sions in mul­ti­ple lan­guages.

Early Days — Or a Battle for Control?

I under­stand that the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing work­flow is still in embry­onic state, that it’s dif­fi­cult for pub­lish­ers to adapt the print ver­sions to Kin­dle and ePub for­mat with­out loss of fidelity.

Among other con­straints Apple and Ama­zon seri­ously limit the num­ber of type­faces avail­able, a huge obsta­cle to any designer who wants to pre­serve artis­tic intent across all ver­sions and ren­di­tions of the book. For the tech­ni­cally adept, there are workarounds with embed­ded fonts for authors and pub­lish­ers aim­ing at Apple’s iBook for­mat, but not for pub­lish­ers going to Kin­dle. (At present I sus­pect we’ll see embed­ded fonts pri­mar­ily from the self-pub­lish­ing com­mu­nity…)

I look for­ward to the day when ebooks are full-fledged alter­na­tives, with addi­tional con­ve­nience ben­e­fits, rather than artis­tic com­pro­mises that trade off design intent for ease of adap­ta­tion. Leav­ing you with so much less of the orig­i­nal expres­sion of the author’s intent. And a dis­ap­point­ing read­ing expe­ri­ence.

I hope we won’t have to wait another 10 years before ebooks achieve typo­graphic and design lay­out fidelity.