e-books, hardbacks or paperbacks our thoughts.

[LadyLara]

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Not necessarily. Amazon is a major player in the book retail industry, and they have shown that they understand book (and ebook) selling better than anyone else. It's entirely possible that this hypothetical ultra-ereader could very well be made by Amazon in a few years. Let's not forget that while ereaders have existed for years, it wasn't until the Kindle came out that they became mainstream and the opened the floodgates.

I think Amazon are more concerned with the sales of ebooks, rather than with the devices themselves, hence all the free Kindle for X free software. Amazon will probably be heavily involved with whatever comes along next, but I just don't see the dedicated e-readers lasting all that long.

[Cayal]

I was of the same opinion as the Original Post about e-readers/books. I hated the idea and preferred physical books.

But I recently bought a kindle after a friend got one and loved it and my mind changed. It's easy to read (like a book) and the idea of carrying hundreds of books in something that fits into a sleeve is appealing, especially when I am going on holidays and the idea of lugging around books to read wasn't ideal.

[Dornish First Sword]

I think dedicated ereaders will be around for quite awhile. They have 3 major selling points over other devices at this point in time, these selling points are also technological sticking points. Battery life is quite fantastic, e-ink readability, and price. Until these things can be replicated on other platforms or more multiple use devices I really do not see them being ousted anytime soon.

[antiloquax]

Originally Posted by LadyLara

I think the most important aspect of a book is always the words, and the information they convey. Yes, it's all very nice having a nice new book smell, but if you start to fetishise that to the degree that it's becoming the most important factor to you, then you're doing it wrong. Go back 15 years and you'll see all the same sorts of arguments being trotted out against digital photography, how it'll never be the same etc. Now look at the situation. So yes, I bought a Kindle, and I absolutely love it. I'm reading more now than I have done for a long time, and I'm even reading more paper books than I have done for a long time as well. Yes, it's not the saaaaame as a paper book, but then I'm sure Mr Gutenberg's printing press spoiled it for some people as it was too artificial looking and not the saaaame as a nice, hand-written manuscript. Or that paper was just never as good as that nice crinkly experience you got with parchment. Or how parchment was just too flimsy and didn't feel as nice and solid in the hand as a clay tablet. There are plenty of arguments against e-readers and e-books, but I don't the fact that it's just not the same as what you're used to is a very good one.

Well said! That's pretty much what I say to the Kindle h8rs!

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[thaddeus6th]

Dornish First Sword, I agree with that. The e-ink readability is the big issue. There's no real need to make all screens that good (unless it becomes very easy/cheap to do so) but it's critical for an e-reader which, obviously, is intended for prolonged and intensive reading.

[LadyLara]

Originally Posted by Dornish First Sword

I think dedicated ereaders will be around for quite awhile. They have 3 major selling points over other devices at this point in time, these selling points are also technological sticking points. Battery life is quite fantastic, e-ink readability, and price. Until these things can be replicated on other platforms or more multiple use devices I really do not see them being ousted anytime soon.

I agree, it's just that I think these things will definitely get replicated on other platforms. Things like iPads will almost certainly come down significantly in price over the next 10 years, the battery life will increase significantly, and they will become smaller and lighter too. I can't be sure of any of this of course, but if you look at most other electronic devices and compare them to their counterparts from 10-15 years ago, it looks pretty likely. The screen is the only sticking point, but I think that either a) tablet PCs will adapt by having some sort of multiple screen set up (one on either side perhaps) or some new sort of screen technology that just performs better in all light conditions, or b) this won't happen because there's no demand for it: plenty of people (seemingly younger people a lot of the time) are prefectly happy to read their ebooks on phones, laptops etc as it is, so as the oldies die off there might be less demand for e-ink type screens anyway.

But I think it will be a bit odd to have one machine that does everything except act as an e-reader, and a seperate machine just for e-books. I can't see people wanting that.

[Dornish First Sword]

I agree that we will see the merging of devices as you said we are already seeing it with the availability of kindle "reader" apps and programs for pcs and other devices amazon themselves even provide a cloud reader now. Effectively these products already exist its just those advances need to take place and improve them, I do remember reading about alot of work being put into colour e-ink for the next generation kindle (I might be wrong there it may be another company).
The mild internet functionality of the kindle 3 shows that alot of thought towards merging technology has been given. There are however other benefits to a single purpose device, for me anyway it lessens my likely hood to be distracted. Were I to read solely on my laptop for example, I'd read alot less due to the ability to surf the net instead check emails and make posts on forums such as this.

[Daisy-Boo]

Dornish, you mentioned something that I think is a major plus with dedicated e-readers, viz. the lack of distractions. When I read on my phone, I'm often sidetracked by hyperlinks to related content. When I read on my Kindle, that's all I do - read. And I like that.

[LadyLara]

I like that too, just unfortunately I think most people seem to like checking their email every five minutes, 24 hours a day, and if 95% of people want a device they can do that on as well as read, and only 5% don't, guess which device will get made Which is why I'm glad I've got a Kindle now as I genuinely don't think such things will be around long, and hopefully mine will last me a long time.

[Vertigo]

I think I agree with all the above posts but...

I used to read on my laptop all the time before I got my Sony reader and whilst I love the really rapid easy dictionary lookup of the Sony, I do miss the ability to quickly and easily google something I want to know more about. Since I love hard SF this tends to happen quite a lot

It certainly can be a distraction but then it is less of a distraction than having to go find the laptop power it up and google something that's really bugging me.

A good example of this was Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind Up Girl where I had to keep googling his Thai, Chinese and Japanese words (why oh why he didn't put a glossary in I'll never know).

[Hypnos164]

Having read about a dozen books (mostly very recent titles) on my Kindle now I have noticed that there tends to be more errors of layout and such than I'm used to in a paper book.

e.g.

Deep State by Walter Jon Williams had terrible layout issues with its use of some Turkish characters resulting in sudden multi-line gaps in the text as an incorrectly scaled bitmap was used to display the character. (no Unicode support on Kindle?)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - every time the letter combination "fi" appears it is followed by a space so finally would be "fi nally" which sometimes has annoying text flow effects.

I guess there isn't the money for an e-book proof reader in the publication process and any problems with just dumping the text into the appropriate format are ignored.

(This is with recent titles, not even stuff that has obviously been poorly OCR'd)

That said Kindle has replaced paperback purchase for me whenever its an option, and I may go back and buy paperback price e-books for some of the massive hardbacks that are staying on the self due to being very unweildy to read ... looking at you Dance with Dragons and Anathem

[Vertigo]

That is intensely annoying I agree and I sincerely hope they are going to get their act together on this before long. I guess it might eventually end up the other way around with the ebook thoroughly proofed and the paper book poorly so.

One bright light though is that if there are errors that later get fixed you may get an email notification like I recently received from Amazon:

We are happy to announce that an updated version of your past Kindle purchase of Perdido Street Station (ASIN:B003GK21A8) is now available. The version you received had duplicated text that have been corrected.

If you wish to receive the updated version, please reply to this email with the word “Yes” in the first line of your response. Within 2 hours of receiving the e-mail any device that has the title currently downloaded will be updated automatically if the wireless is on.

You don't get that with print errors in a printed book

[Metryq]

I think some of the typographical and layout problems with recent books are due to the "sudden" popularity of ebooks. Old-timers may not be as efficient with what is essentially HTML layout. Other problems might be OS-related. For example, the "fi" error Hypnos noted above may be due to the use of ligatures—special typographical symbols combining two letters. You've probably seen them in print books and never known it. Some ereaders are more refined than others. So to be on the safe side, the layout artists cater to the lowest common denominator.

I don't think print books will suddenly start looking terrible. If an ebook is laid out properly, a rasterizing engine to turn it into print should have no problem. (e.g. the PDF format)

[Vertigo]

Well yes that is true, I guess they need to turn things on their heads and should be producing the eBook first and then use that as the basis for the printed book, which actually makes a lot more sense in reality.

[chrispenycate]

[quote = DFS]I think dedicated ereaders will be around for quite awhile. They have 3 major selling points over other devices at this point in time, these selling points are also technological sticking points. Battery life is quite fantastic, e-ink readability, and price. Until these things can be replicated on other platforms or more multiple use devices I really do not see them being ousted anytime soon.[/quote]

In the comparison between dedicated reader and a general purpose device (whether sit apparatus started its conceptual existence as a cut-down lapptop, a telephone, a personal organiser or a pad) is multifaceted.

Firstly, size. We all have jackets with pockets the right size for a mass-market paperback, obviously (of about two hundred pages, not one of the doorstop monstrosities that seem fashionable nowadays) or equivalent space in a handbag or backpack; part of being a reader. And we're accustomed to that size page. Not that we can't reaccustom, but habits are warm and comfortable…

A dedicated reader can closely approach the experience, while a phone or organiser has a lot fewer words at a time, (or teeny little ones) and a webbook won't fit into anything smaller than a briefcase. This is no criticism of the designers. A general purpose device has to have a more sophisticated interface (well, punch card readers possibly- but I'm not convinced) and the ASCII keyboard is so established in the minds and fingers of users that replacing, or shrinking, it would require as much reeducation as changing the musician's piano black and whites.

The generalised apparatus would mean I could use it as a mobile writing machine, as well as just reading, in exchange for not being able to put it in my pocket – an exchange I've not yet decided if I want to make.

eInk, with a zero refresh cycle, is easier on the eyes and the battery than conventional (Uh, conventional? How long has it been around to acquire that label?) LCD technology, but less impressive for colour, or anything that requires animation.

The pads (no, I've no real experince with them) seem at first sight to be too big to fit into a pocket, while too small for a decent keyboard, while using battery power like their full-scale bretheren.

Multi-purpose machines always seem to accumulate junk which slows them down. In theory a dedicated eReader would only collect books – lots and lots of them – while the operating system would remain clear of cookies, junk mail, spam cans…

So, it should always be using the same minimalist software, and always work as well (or as annoyingly) as the day it was delivered. A software which is only for text display can be made almost virus proof, low CPU use (which means slower clock rate, and in turn still longer battery life), aqnd the communications protocols and standards converters required should not, hopefully, degrade this too far.