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The future of reading and writing

SFG75

SFG75

Well-Known Member
A great discussion among the many stakeholders of books.

WaPo: The future of reading and writing

The opinions of the publisher and bookstore owner really mirrored each other. I love the mentioning of the "great disruption" as being something that is under way at the present moment. I'm not certain what the future portends, but I think that is why we are all so fascinated by topics like this.
 
Anyone who has attempted to borrow an e-book from a library to use on a personal device will tell you it’s anything but simple. The assumption is that a patron can borrow any book at any time, but that’s not how it works. Libraries purchase licenses for e-books, and each particular license places ramifications on use. It determines how many people can borrow a book at one time, and restricts use to particular communities.

I notice that patrons become frustrated when they can see that a library owns a particular e-book, but that it’s “checked out” and they have to wait. Or, another example: An academic library will license an e-book, but since that material can only be used by members of that particular institution, services on which patrons rely, like Interlibrary Loan (provided by most academic libraries who share resources) are not applicable. The model for e-books isn’t anytime, anyplace, anywhere; it’s fairly limited to users who meet very specific criteria.

The tradition of libraries is equitable access. E-books illustrate the exact opposite. I hope their use forces people to think about aspects of access they’ve never had to confront before — that they recognize there’s a huge difference between a printed book that can be read by everyone and an e-book that’s only accessible to privileged people.
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I thought that these comments from a librarian were of particular interest. Because of the way use of an e-book is stipulated in copyright law, no-one ever owns an e-book, (which would be why you can't ever resell or lend your e-copy) which certainly has ramifications for lending libraries if the future is increasingly electronically orientated.

Hopefully there will always be a place for the traditional hard copy, but as the publisher noted, the barriers to traditional publishing are even higher than they used to be, which means that more and more authors will turn to self publishing in electronic format in order to get their work out there.

We are in the midst of a revolution, perhaps part of the solution is for publishers to set up a means for people to access some aspects of publishing the traditional hard copy more easily again.
 
I think that e-books need to be used and marketed for travel. E-readers and e-books are great as a lite way to carry books if you can't take your library witoh you but I don't think that they should take over or replace printed books. If I had a choice I would buy "real" books over an e-book.
 
No. There are no color E Ink readers out yet. And people need to stop comparing tablets to E Ink ereaders.
 
yeah I know - the E Ink is like paper right? Which the colour screens are not. Will they ever do a colour E Ink though?
 
Color E Ink is actually now in its second generation of devices: http://www.jetbook.net/

That being said, I don't think it's really ready for prime time. As soon as it is, you will see the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc. offering color E Ink readers. Maybe 2 more years?
 
hmm I gathered that the issues are contrast, definition and most importantly cost. I honestly don't see the point. A dedicated e-reader with E Ink which is so much easier to read than a LCD screen does what it does best - a paper-like non-reflective screen which can be read in bright light just like paper. Although I must admit not being able to read in the dark with an e-reader without a light is mildly annoying.

Perhaps dedicated e-readers will go the way of the dodo sooner or later as people want more integration with their devices, but until colour screen technology offers the same reading qualities as E Ink there will be a place for them.

but you can still load your travel guides onto your tablet, with your talking dictionary, google maps and whatever other helpful bits n bobs you need to navigate foreign shores.
 
A tablet's battery life isn't long enough for me to consider using it as an ereader, especially when traveling, and I know I am not alone in that feeling. The big selling point for E Ink devices are that they are easy on battery life and don't fatigue the eyes. Tablets can't match either of those.
 
well now that's stating the obvious ;) but you were the one wanting colour for your travel guides.

read your e-reader on da plane and load your travel guide on your tablet with your dictionary and maps = best of both :)

Only sane option at present until such time as colour monitors catch up with easy on eyes and battery life OR until such time as E-ink improves its contrast and cost issues with colour.

But with people wanting to cut down on the number of devices they have I think for most it's one or the other at the moment.

I have just faced this dilemma with the USB on one of our readers packing it in :( - so what do I get - a new reader, a tablet, or a laptop - seemingly unrelated choices but not really. We needed a second device, but looking at the needs - 1. reading, 2. music and 3. a bit of writing 4. a game or two - that sort of left out a reader and a laptop was slightly overkill leaving us with getting a small tablet a. because of the cost and b. because the bigger ones are just too big to hold comfortably in one hand (or even 2) for long. So while realising that its not ideal for reading, but the need for something to do a bit more than just reading on was too great to just ignore.
 
sparkchaser said:
Corollary article: Why ebooks are a different genre from print
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"Guerrilla editing"-not sure if I like this concept. Bolded concern is me. Oh my :eek:

The ebook gathers a great deal of information about our reading habits: when we start to read, when we stop, how quickly or slowly we read, when we skip pages, when we re-read, what we choose to highlight, what we choose to read next. For a critic like Franco Moretti, the author of Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History, this data is priceless. For publishers, it might very well come with a price tag. What would publishers do with the data? If 50% of readers stopped reading your postmodernist thriller at page 98, the publisher might recommend that for Version 2.0, the plot twist on page 110 be brought forward. While the book's relationship to the reader is one of privacy, with the ebook we are all part of an unacknowledged focus group. Would the small codices containing The Gospel of St John or Tom Paine's Rights Of Man have had the impact they did if each and every reader were known before they had opened the first page?
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I'm the dinosaur who lags behind. I'll buy it when I see it, when the price is right. Whatever "it" is. I don't much care how they thrash it out.
/devices here multiplying like rabbits :)/

Afterthought: Waiting for the ultimate is an algorithm for buying nothing. :eek:
 
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