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Kindle: Now at the Public Library

October 3, 2011 •

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.

KCLS-Alerts-re-Kindle-Book

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.

Kindle-Books-from-KCLS

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…

Kindle-Manage-Library-on-Amazon

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)

Scan-Opening-Page

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:

Book-opening-page

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.

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.

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