“The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age”
I found this article through Richard’s Notes, which I found very interesting as the topic is one that is very close to my heart.
The article is long – and at times, winding – and I have to confess to not having read every word of it. But what I got out it, helped me to know I am not alone in reading ebooks.
First off the bat, John Siracusa gives quite a bit of space to one of the pioneers of the ebook business – Peanut Press – and its evolution through various owners, including Palm Digital Media which employed him in 2002 to develop their web store. Peanut Press – which went on to become PalmReader and eReader, a name it still uses today – was the first ebook company I bought from, and which I still buy my ebooks from until today. So it was nice to read about the company’s history, so to speak.
Siracusa also discusses the “baggage” carried by ebooks as the electronic cousin of the printed book – the word “ebook” is actually meant to refer to the content, while the print version, “book”, refers to both the content and the medium. This print version definition, however, has carried over to the electronic version so that “ebook” has come to mean both content and medium.
I can understand this confusion. When I was writing an article about ebooks for Quill, a local magazine produced by MPH Publishers, I ran into a similar confusion trying to describe a physical ebook reader and ebook reading software, which would also be called ebook readers (but of the virtual variety).
It’s partly due to this confused expectation of an ebook as a medium that many book lovers have rejected ebooks – because ebooks don’t have the same touch and smell as a “real” book. To overcome this rejection, manufacturers of ebook reading hardware have tried to come out with ebook readers that look like “real” books and even allow pages to be flipped, but only in a virtual sense.
The above is just my take on the general objection against ebooks as a medium, but Siracusa discusses it in more detail in the section called “The device” in his article.
Siracusa takes on another regular objection to reading ebooks – the quality of the screen. Some of the objections he mentions include “I can’t read an entire novel off a screen!”, “I’ll stick to paper with its vastly superior contrast ratio” and “Eye strain! Eye strain!”
According to Siracusa:
With very few exceptions, all the unfavorable comparisons of bitmapped displays to print on paper are technically accurate. I’m here to tell you that they don’t matter.
The amount of time people in the industrialized world spend reading text off a screen has long since nullified this complaint. Literally billions of people have proven that they’re willing and able to read huge volumes of text off absolutely horrible screens. Think of text messaging on pagers and early cell phones, for example. Text messages are short, you say? I’m willing to bet that the average American will read substantially more text off his or her cell phone screen this year than from a book.
…
People are clearly willing to read text off screens. Plain, old, often awful screens with tiny, ugly text and large pixels. Vast amounts of text, read over extended periods of time. Up to 40 hours a week at work alone, in the case of most office workers who sit in front of a computer all day. And more at home for pleasure. Hell, you’re likely doing it right now (unless you printed the PDF version of this article or are being paid to read it).
I’ll say it again: people will read text off screens. The optical superiority of paper is still very real, but also irrelevant. The minimum quality threshold for extended reading was passed a long, long time ago.
Siracusa goes on to discuss digital rights management, and how Apple missed the opportunity to take over the ebook market. You can read all that in the actual article itself, but the other thing that was really interesting to me personally was his own reasons why he finds “reading off of this tiny PDA not just tolerable, but (apparently) satisfying enough to keep me from returning to paper books”:
Here’s what I came up with. First, I was more likely to have my Palm with me than a book. When I had an opportunity to read during the day, my Palm was there, and a paper book, had I been in the middle of one, would not have been. (Incidentally, this also lead to a vast expansion of the definition of “an opportunity to read.”) Second, I could read in the dark next to my sleeping wife without disturbing her with bright lights and page-turning noises. (The tan-on-black reader color theme was affectionally known as “wife mode” at Peanut Press.) Third, I was loathe to give up the ability to tap any word I didn’t understand and get its dictionary definition.
I totally identify with his “I was more likely to have my Palm with me than a book” reason. I carry my Palm TX with me whenever I’m out and about. I even have it in bed with me at night. And I don’t just use it for reading – okay, I’m digressing here a little – but also for games, music, and a notepad in place of real pen and paper.
I especially like the last two sentences in his article – an appeal to non ebook (human) readers out there:
… maybe you’ll never be satisfied by reading anything other than a paper book. All I ask is that you give it an honest try.
