Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

  • Home
  • Travel
  • Yoga
You are here: Home / Archives for ePub

Is It Time for Reading to Be Reinvented?

May 15, 2011 •

Why do peo­ple read books? For plea­sure or dis­trac­tion? For self-improve­ment or to learn some­thing new? For class assign­ments: text­books, lit­er­a­ture?

Are eBooks best suited for use cases that are fun­da­men­tally util­i­tar­ian, rather than plea­sure seek­ing?

Why do peo­ple read eBooks?

I’ve been pon­der­ing these ques­tions for a few days, sparked by an entrepreneur’s pitch. He dreams of rein­vent­ing how peo­ple read and expe­ri­ence books, at least among young peo­ple. He wants to host the con­ver­sa­tions that take place around books, via a new “social eBook app” for the iPad and other tablet devices.

A New App for eBooks

His eBook app will be enhanced by “a social wrap­per” — in order to encour­age online con­ver­sa­tions among read­ers of a book, or exchanges between book fans and the author. In brief, here’s the con­cept.

Read­ing as a social expe­ri­ence

Imag­ine a book opened in front of you. Each page of the book is dis­played on the right — pretty much what you’d see if you were using Apple’s iBook app on an iPad. On the left, where you’d nor­mally see the fac­ing page, his app’s UI dis­plays short mes­sages exchanged among read­ers of that par­tic­u­lar book — sim­i­lar to a Twit­ter mes­sage stream or a chat win­dow.

His notion of read­ing plus online con­ver­sa­tion may offer real ben­e­fits to stu­dents who must read the same book for a class assign­ment. As long as his plat­form allows peo­ple to express their ideas or ques­tions with­out the arti­fi­cial con­straint of the 140-char­ac­ter tweet, this tech­nol­ogy may lead to enhanced learn­ing and stu­dent engage­ment. Assum­ing, that is, that the books they need to read are made avail­able for his eBook app.

But I’d like to share my impres­sion about the impli­ca­tions of this approach for peo­ple who read for plea­sure.

First Impression — Not for Me

My reac­tion to the new con­cept was tepid, even though I own an iPad 2 and have been col­lect­ing apps for it. I’m a vora­cious reader: con­sum­ing between 100–200 books a year, for plea­sure, plus sev­eral dozen busi­ness books. You’d think I’d be the ideal cus­tomer for this enhanced eBook app given the value I place on read­ing.

But here’s why the propo­si­tion doesn’t appeal to me:

  • At my level of “addic­tion to read­ing,” the pub­lic library is the most cost-effec­tive source of books for me.
  • I love the look and feel of a well-designed book. So far, the eBooks that I’ve seen (iBook and Kin­dle for­mats) lack any real typo­graphic ele­gance — each page looks pretty much the same. Books become bor­ing as a result.
  • When con­verted to EPUB® for­mat, the book’s orig­i­nal page lay­out is dras­ti­cally scaled back when ren­dered by the dig­i­tal book reader. This sim­pli­fi­ca­tion can reduce mean­ing or com­pre­hen­sion — what­ever was intended by the way the designer laid out text, head­lines and images on the page to be printed.

For exam­ple, the sam­ple shown here con­denses a lot of infor­ma­tion to a sin­gle page, thanks to the design choices that are expressed through this lay­out.

sample-book-page-layout

But my most impor­tant rea­son for pre­fer­ring today’s book for­mat to a “social eBook Reader” is the desire to pre­serve the holy grail of read­ing: the state of flow, a won­der­ful emo­tional state that is the hall­mark of the world’s best books.

Reading & The Joys of “Flow”

When read­ing a well-told story, I’m immersed in the expe­ri­ence — caught up in the state of “flow.” My per­sonal bound­aries dis­solve when I enter the storyteller’s world: I feel the heat and dust of the North African souk, or the pen­e­trat­ing cold and damp of the Scot­tish high­lands.

Psy­chol­o­gists describe flow as a very desir­able state of mind (source: WikiPedia):

Accord­ing to Csík­szent­mi­há­lyi, flow is com­pletely focused moti­va­tion. It is a sin­gle-minded immer­sion and rep­re­sents per­haps the ulti­mate in har­ness­ing the emo­tions in the ser­vice of per­form­ing and learn­ing. In flow, the emo­tions are not just con­tained and chan­neled, but pos­i­tive, ener­gized, and aligned with the task at hand…. The hall­mark of flow is a feel­ing of spon­ta­neous joy, even rap­ture, while per­form­ing a task although flow is also described as a deep focus on noth­ing but the activ­ity — not even one­self or one’s emo­tions.

While it’s pos­si­ble to achieve flow while read­ing an eBook, the expe­ri­ence of flow is so reward­ing that choos­ing to inter­rupt it for chat mes­sages is the last thing I can imag­ine doing when read­ing for plea­sure.

But this may be a gen­er­a­tional pref­er­ence… Per­haps teenagers and young adults are will­ing to sac­ri­fice the expe­ri­ence of flow in order to check in with each other. Or maybe their hyper-active, multi-task­ing world is not one that’s amenable to flow; not hav­ing expe­ri­enced it, they have no rea­son to want it. For them, is con­nec­tion prefer­able to flow?

Per­haps my real issue with this con­cept is that I pre­fer asyn­chro­nous to syn­chro­nous social­iz­ing, when it comes to the expe­ri­ence of read­ing a book.

Yes, We Engage Socially around Books

My friends and I are highly likely to talk with each other when it comes to books or mag­a­zines we’ve enjoyed. Books are com­mon top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion among us. We bring bags of books to social events, for shar­ing with each other — our own lend­ing library, if you will.

We always talk about books (or movies) when we go for hikes or long walks, and often over a glass of wine or a shared meal.

Some are avid book club mem­bers, and love talk­ing about a book with oth­ers dur­ing semi-struc­tured club meet­ings.

After fin­ish­ing a book that’s made a huge impres­sion, we’re quite likely to email a rec­om­men­da­tion.

Most of us already own an iPad or a Kin­dle; all of us have com­put­ers. So it’s not the device that’s the issue.

It’s just hard to imag­ine that we’d want to chat in real-time while read­ing for plea­sure, when we so enjoy talk­ing about books face to face…

The entre­pre­neur is actively seek­ing financ­ing, so I chose not to iden­tify his com­pany nor his prod­uct. I wish him the best of luck, as long as there are enough peo­ple who will value dig­i­tal books enhanced by a social expe­ri­ence.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

© 2020 by Christine Thompson. All rights reserved. • Log in