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Kindle: Now at the Public Library

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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?

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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.