(This is part of a series; the earlier posts are here.)
To make e-readers most effective, manufacturers and publishers have to make some improvements to their technology and to their business models.
Let me begin by focusing on readability. E-readers are still not quite as legible as paper. The Kindle 2 is a vast improvement over earlier readers, such as the Rocket eBook from about 10 years ago. Still, its dark-grey-on-light-grey contrast is not quite clear as the contrast on paper. Books on the Kindle 2 are readable, but at least slightly less so than paper.
Current e-readers also tend to reduce the size of illustrations, because of the smaller page size. [Footnote: The Kindle DX, with its fairly large screen, doesn’t seem to have this problem.] You can zoom in on part of an illustration, but that lets you see that part more clearly only at the expense of temporarily making other parts invisible. Either the screen has to get clearer, or the electronic versions of books have to break up the illustrations in ways that maintain the illustrations’ readability.
Second, annotating and highlighting is still considerably harder on e-readers than on ordinary books. On the Kindle 2, for instance, you have to hit a button several times to move the cursor to the words one wants to highlight. To write notes in the margin, you have to type your annotations on a small and fairly clunky keyboard. [Footnote: Cf. Jeffrey R. Young, How a Student-Friendly Kindle Could Change the Textbook Market, Chronicle of Higher Educ., May 6, 2009 (reporting that the difficulty with taking notes on a Sony e-book reader persuaded a university to abandon its experiment with switching to e-reader textbooks).]
Fortunately, it seems likely that a solution will not be long coming: a stylus-based interface, with which people can just touch what they want to highlight, and can handwrite whatever brief notes they want to jot down. Such interfaces are already available on other computers, so it seems likely that they will make their way to e-readers soon.
Third, current e-readers, and the ebooks that are sold for them, generally don’t include the same page numbers as the paper books. This may lead students to be reluctant to switch to e-reader textbooks while their classmates and teachers are still using paper books: When the teacher asks people to turn to p. 123, the e-reader users won’t know where to go.
Fortunately, this too should be easy to deal with. The Kindle software will just need to be able to display the current original page number on each screen, and to let people enter the page number they want. And publishers will have to insert the proper codes in the files that would indicate to the Kindle where each new paper page starts.
Fourth, e-reader search features are primitive — all you can do is search for a particular string. If e-readers are to become useful for large treatises, it would be helpful to allow a LEXIS-/WESTLAW- like set of search operators: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, and the like. Again, though, the technology for this is readily available.
ShelbyC says:
Stylus based interface? Isn’t that about like a quill pen? It’s all about the finger nowadays, right?
October 5, 2009, 2:06 pmTexas Lawyer in DFW says:
PDF documents preserve pages and such.
I should note that a number of “finger” applications end up with plastic pen casings being used as styluses. They tend to be quicker than fingers. My family, from the eight year old on up seems to have all been borrowing the gel pens to use as styluses for texting on cell phones with live screens.
October 5, 2009, 3:13 pmnewscaper says:
The biggest ‘technological’ hindrance is DRM, copy protection.
If I buy digital text, I expect it to be able to outlast the life of any given ereader h/w platform. I have 30 year old books I can re-read (and do every few years). The risk of having orphaned, useless data is unacceptable.
Particularly for reference works, I would want to be able to view the same purchase on both a laptop/PC *and* my more handheld device(s).
If not, screw ‘em
I say that as someone who has bought e few books for my old Palm TX, which did allow eReader DRM’ed ebooks to be read on the PC as well.
The other hassle is how hard many of the platforms make it for you to upload simple text files and RTF files to view w/o having to go thru some translation step, not to mention ordinary unlocked PDFs.
October 5, 2009, 7:45 pmVolokh on eLawtric books: Post No. 3Rea | Jason Wilson | Electronic Books says:
[...] on November 17, 2009 Continuing my response to Professor Volokh’s series on ebooks, his third post briefly raises some interesting technological issues for hardware manufacturers, and actually [...]
November 17, 2009, 10:57 pmManxman says:
Yes. I love it. Got a Kindle 1 when it first came out, and many books later, I now get annoyed when I can’t find a title in Kindle format. I learned to live with the well-known drawbacks. Kindle 2 fixes most of those problems. Not all, but this is certainly a good second version in such a short product cycle.
People who love to read get it.
Some pros for me
- small, thin and light. thin!
- no accidental clicks when I pick it up.
- more space. although honestly, I wasn’t out of space on my Kindle 1. I had about 6 pages of books on it. With the backspace fix for deleting, getting rid of samples and non-keepers was easy. Don’t people know you never really lose anything?
- looks great compared to Kindle 1 (as does almost anything)
- a little sharper display, a little faster page turns. Seems slighter easier to read at an angle
- great idea with the joystick
some cons for me
- no folders (maybe soon?)
- more menu items for the joystick would be nice
- screen could be bigger, even with the existing form factor.
- no color choices. not e-ink, but the device body.
- no color e-ink yet. not a big deal, I’m sure it’s coming
- an LCD or LED backlight one day would be nice
All of the cons are very minor to me. I really love the new form factor, and the bottom line is how much I like to read on the Kindle, not how much the person sitting next to me likes it.
I carried my Kindle 1 on every vacation and trip during its reign. The Kindle 2 is welcome upgrade.
Well, that’s my quick review. I’ve only had Kindle 2 a few days, so I hope it is as reliable as Kindle 1 has been for me.
Happy reading.
December 13, 2009, 9:44 pmVolokh’s great series on ebooks, legal texts, & the future. | Jason Wilson | Publishing says:
[...] 3. What Manufacturers and Publishers Need To Do To Facilitate The Move To Electronic Delivery of Legal … [...]
January 3, 2010, 9:33 pm