Idea Center

Being an ardent bookworm myself, I have always been interested in the evolution of reading and publishing as a whole. There is a generation who believe that the printed book and the printed paper cannot be substituted with anything else.

I love collecting and reading books, but here is the present problem I face:

• Books are getting costlier on the shelves owing to rising costs of Paper and Printing
• Paper is getting costly and is not really environment friendly
• Storage of books require space, which is something that not everyone can afford
• Conventional books are difficult to search; locating a book with a particular reference can be difficult, if you haven't been reading it recently
• Carrying books on a long trip is diffficult, as even paperback and pocket versions weigh considerably
• Books have fixed formatting rendering some of them difficult for those with vision difficulty to read. They have to buy exclusive hardback editions with larger fonts just to read the same content.
• A printed book does not necessarily guarantee its authenticity that it has been written by a specific author and provided by a Publisher because of the ease with which they get pirated or copied.
• It is usually difficult to create references from books while doing research as books remain a conventional physical medium.
• Damaged books have to be replaced in whole; they have to be bought all over again. Damage usually happens because storage requires special care to avoid infestation and some protection from fire.
• Libraries, private or public have to be manually indexed allowing room for manual error.
• Books which carry a lot of photographs and illustrations use higher grade paper which costs a lot more and increases the cost of the book heavily.
• The availability of books to the average reader is restricted by Book retailers and Libraries who stock them. This becomes a blocker for new titles to be quickly available to the end-user or reader.
• Magazines are more readily available, but the time they reach their readership is restricted by logistics. As readership increases many magazines struggle to reach their readers on time.
• The prohibitively high cost of newsprint renders magazines and books with lower profit margins.

The issues listed above have been identified and many solutions to them have been sought after.  Here is what has been done so far:

• Digital Books have been created as an easier mode of distribution. Owing to the ease of copying different techniques including DRM are being tried to restrict the distribution and usage to the customers (some of which seem overboard.)

The content of the books becomes easier to search and shopping for the books becomes still easier with the ability to check out the content without having to browse the book as a whole.

• Blogs, Online websites with shared content have made it easier for the Authors to reach readers. Sites like Scribd are testament to this fact.
• PDAs and PDA Phones have been equipped with software capable of reading books and form a small yet considerable group of users.
• Projects like Gutenberg have taken up a volunteer approach to the task of converting older paperback and hardback editions of books to an open digital format accessible to everyone.
• Dedicated e-book readers have been created to carry multiple (upto 150 or more) books and read them. These readers have been using the e-Ink technology that allows them to use far lesser power than conventional Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) making them a usable companion. Here is a short list (courtesy Wikipedia.)
• eSlick by Foxit (2009)
• Digital Reader 1000 by iRex Technologies (2008)
• Kindle by Amazon (2007)
• Cybook Gen3 by Bookeen (2007)
• GeR2 by Ganaxa (2007) ^[1]
• Star eBook STK-101 by Star eRead (2007)
• Hanlin eReader by Jinke (2007)
• Sony Reader by Sony (2006)
• iLiad by iRex Technologies (2006)
• Librié by Sony (2004)

The e-Slick reader with a 7.4" size that hasn't yet made it. It's lighter than the Kindle and is more of a PDF reader.

Books themselves were an attempt to reach out to a larger audience in the Sixteenth Century when written material was restricted to the elite and only those who could afford it. The natural evolution of books would therefore have to make them more (not less) accessible to a larger population at lower costs to the reader and the authors & publishers.

So here is what the existing solutions miss out and would be areas waiting for answers

• Localisation and support for regional Languages for Digital Books and Digital Book Readers needs work. Many latinised languages have good support, while East Asian and African languages would require work.
• Buying books in a language one doesn't understand and having the Digital Book Reader do the translation is an expectation that hasn't yet been fulfilled. I would love to read some text in Old Latin with an automated translation showing up half screen, but that isn't yet available.
• If you could have a dedicated Digital Book Reader than can digitize documents or articles and store them for search, that would turn out to be very useful. The device could do this with the help of an external scanner (which is not hard to imagine in these days of convergence.)
• Publishers and Authors do not have a simple mechanism for feedback from their readers. Popular books do make it to enough forums that the Author might be following. However there are many volumes that lie in the dark and a single comment on them will never make it to the author. This level of interactive feedback could be sorted out in the future with Digital Distribution Channels.
• Backing up books is something that is possible for non-DRM books but not for DRM books. For DRM itself to work, there has to be provisions for the rightful owner of the book to create a backup for fair use.
• Those who've bought books have the habit of lending the physical copy of the book to someone, usually a friend or a relative. Many books get lost this way. Presently DRM enabled books cannot be shared, while others can be abused or pirated. This needs to be addressed with a good solution coupled with a policy.
• Books should provide some items from new technology like interactive puzzles, touch selection of words to find their dictionary meaning and an easy method to choose a paragraph, chapter or section of text for reference in one's own research work. Digital media has provisions for all these, but they haven't brought them out to the end-user.
• Open and Portal Document formats should be easy to convert a book to without affecting the status of its formatting of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) component. This is to ensure that books can be transferred from one digital reading device to another with no extra costs. Lack of such conversion makes a user captive to one specific type of reading device.
• Faster distribution channels should allow for the release of books to a group of reviewers before a book is released for public reading (if this is necessary.) Presently, proof reading books and sending them back to the publisher is time consuming. The Distributed Proof-Readers initiative from Project Gutenberg is a nice example, except that it cannot be done on digital readers.
• Digital Book Readers for those having impaired vision should now be possible. Digital Braille display and text-to-speech technology exists today.
• A suggestion of books that have similar content for those pursuiing research interests and the ability to search books that haven't yet been loaded from a Digital Book reader (with some connectivity requirements to a network) would be very useful. This isn't yet possible.
• A single device that can help one read a book and author using the same device should be possible given the state of today's technology. The keyboard in itself is slowly obsoleted. Faster text entry mechanisms including speech-recognition and improvised user interfaces are available. Integrating these into one solution could be the dream device for many a bookworm.
• Reading Blogs, Blog Racks, News Articles from a digital text/book reader should be possible. Many PDAs today offer the capability to blog and to read blogs. The main scoring area of a Digital Text reader is the size that offers easier readability with lesser eye-strain.
• Many have been complaining about carrying an "extra" device for reading books, but if there were strong features dedicated to Text/Book Reading and Content creation, people would stop objecting. This has been primarily due to the convergence of the Mobile Phone with a PDA, Web Browser, Music Player and Text Reader constrained by size and battery life.
• While battery life has been extended on many Digital Book Reading devices, charging them with Solar power or similar means hasn't yet made it. Reading a book in sunlight is something that manufacturers of devices have to ensure (which conventional LCDs do not support in full.)

Startups and many Hardware Device Manufacturing ventures have been focusing on creating the better e-book reader with tactile feedback, low energy utilization, lighter weight and a host of other goodies. They should also keep the Book Reader in mind while creating a solution that really makes a strong case for user adoption by features (those listed so far) and usability & accessibility.