Music has gone from vinyl records to MP3 files. Movies can be downloaded easily, and 35 mm film cameras are now almost wholly digital. One of the last holdouts to this analog to digital trend has been the book.
These analog to digital transformations are usually driven by the emergence and acceptance of a "companion" device for the new digital media—a device so simple and compelling that the technology disappears and allows the content to shine. For music it was the MP3 player, for movies it was the DVD player, and digital cameras now dominate the market.
In the past few years books have been undergoing a similar change with the emergence of mainstream electronic book (e-book) readers. Electronic books are not new. For example, Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) has been digitizing books for years. The issue has always been the reader. Sure, you can read an e-book on your laptop or PDA (personal digital assistant), but these are multipurpose devices not engineered for easy reading.
The Emergence of E-Book Readers
In the United States, two devices have dominated the market: the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle. Both devices have the same gray-scale screen size (roughly 4 inches by 5 inches), read a variety of formats (more on that later), allow annotations and bookmarks, and are about the size of a half-inch-thick paperback book. Each device is closely allied with a major bookseller: the Sony Reader with Borders Books and, of course, the Kindle with online bookseller Amazon. Both sell for about the same price—around $350.
Both devices use technology called electronic ink. Electronic ink is a proprietary display surface that consists of millions of tiny microcapsules; each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. A negative charge moves white particles up where they become visible. A positive charge moves black particles up where they are visible. By controlling this process, electronic ink can produce a sharp, highly readable text or image. Once created, the resulting text or image requires no energy to be sustained on the screen. It is in effect, printed. For now, electronic ink is only available in 256 shades of gray.
Neither device has emerged as a market leader and, indeed, both are battling for dominant market share. The result is a wealth of expanding features and declining prices.
Uniqueness
Where this current crop of devices gets interesting is in their differences.
The most stunning difference between the two devices is the wireless feature on the Kindle. Inside the Kindle is a Sprint EVDO broadband data modem that allows books to be purchased and downloaded wirelessly. It is almost too easy to buy a book.
Sony has closely allied its reader with Adobe's computer-based e-book reader Adobe Digital Editions. This allows the Sony Reader to use electronic books that have been electronically checked out from a library. As you would expect, when the lending period expires, it can no longer be read.
The Kindle has subscriptions for magazines, newspapers, and blogs. For instance, if you subscribe to the New York Times, it is automatically downloaded ready to read every morning.
The Sony Reader has a touch screen, and pages can be turned with a swipe of your finger. It also has a backlight that makes reading in suboptimal light easier.
The Kindle comes with a copy of the New Oxford American Dictionary, and word definitions can be looked up without leaving the book you are reading. The Kindle also has a Web browser and can play MP3 files.
Formats
Like any new electronic device in a competitive market, there is a struggle to provide the dominant format. Like other format wars of the past (VHS vs. Betamax, 8-track vs. cassette, Chevy vs. Ford) it comes down to a plethora of e-book formats: epub (a public domain format similar to MP3 for music), azw (Amazon Kindle), lrf (Sony Reader), PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format), txt (plain text), mobi (Mobipocket), and more. Both the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle can read many of these formats beyond their own native file formats.
Epub is the likely winner in this contest of formats as it is an open XML-based standard, which allows publishers to convert from differing formats easily, and it provides digital rights management for secure publishing.
However, in the land of desktop and laptop computers, Adobe's PDF is the lingua franca for electronic paper. While both of these e-book readers handle PDF files, most PDFs are formatted for an 8 inch by 11.5 inch or A4 piece of paper. To fit on the smaller e-book reader screen, the PDF text must be able to "reflow." Indeed, there are a few ways to convert PDF files to this new format but none of them reflows perfectly. The result is a readable, but sometimes badly formatted, document. The simplest solution is a bigger e-book screen so no formatting will be necessary.
Also, Amazon has an e-mail service that allows you to e-mail Microsoft® Word files, PDF files, and other file types to Amazon and Amazon will convert it and send the resulting document directly to your Kindle. This conversion service is available for 10 cents per document, but it also has problems with text reflow.
Future
Size—The screen size of this current crop of e-book readers is best suited for book reading. However, the business world runs on standard formats: letter size or A4 paper. In order to succeed in business, these readers must grow larger. Indeed such readers are already slated for release next year. The British company, Plastic Logic, has developed an 8.5 inch by 11 inch flexible plastic display that will be built into its e-book to be released in 2010. A letter-sized (or A4) display will solve many of the above-mentioned PDF reflow conversion problems—no size conversion will be necessary.
Academic E-Book Readers—Given the weight and expense of textbooks, perhaps the biggest market for e-book readers will be college or law school students. While some textbook and legal casebook publishers are now offering electronic versions, there currently is no e-book reader designed specifically for students. Amazon is working on a student version of the Kindle, and it is rumored to have a larger screen that will be better suited to larger textbooks.
Wireless Libraries—There is a certain spontaneity in hearing about a book and then looking it up and buying it immediately. You can do this today with the Amazon Kindle (and perhaps later this year with a new version of the Sony Reader). Perhaps someday this immediacy will also be possible with your local library. And why not? Many large libraries and business libraries already offer e-books for electronic checkout to your computer. Doing it wirelessly to an e-book reader cannot be far behind.
Color Displays—To paraphrase Henry Ford—you can buy an e-book reader that shows you any color you want, as long as it is 256 shades of gray. Full color displays are the logical next step for e-book readers. Expect to see full color electronic ink displays within the next year.
Summary
Today an MP3 player can carry 1,000 or more music albums. Our phones can stream movies wherever we are. Our cameras can take a photo and upload it to the Internet for all to see. Now after centuries of being paper-bound, books have some new advantages. The ability to carry a library of hundreds if not thousands of books and download more on demand is powerful. Such advantages will inevitably drive change.
For e-book reader technology to truly succeed, the technology needs to disappear into the background. The real shining star will not be the technology, but the story or information provided by the author of the book. When the reader can become immersed in the reading and forget the medium, e-book readers will be successful.
For many die-hard bibliophiles, an e-book reader is electronic blasphemy and represents a change for the worse. Paper books will be around for a very long time. E-book readers are not the death of paper books; they are merely the evolution and rebirth of books into a new and extremely advantageous form. No matter what medium, the content should prevail. The best advice is from the 19th-century British politician and historian James Bryce: "The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it."
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