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The eBook Backlash
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that people who read ebooks on tablets like the iPad are beginning to realize that while a book in print is straightforward and immersive, a tablet is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity offering a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks. 'The tablet is like a temptress,' says James McQuivey. 'It's constantly saying, "You could be on YouTube now." Or it's sending constant alerts that pop up, saying you just got an e-mail. Reading itself is trying to compete.' There are also signs that publishers are cooling on tablets for e-reading. A recent survey by Forrester Research showed that 31 percent of publishers believed iPads and similar tablets were the ideal e-reading platform; one year ago, 46 percent thought so. Then there's Jonathan Franzen, regarded as one of America's greatest living novelists, who says consumers have been conned into thinking they need the latest technology and that e-books can never have the magic of the printed page. 'I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change.'"
Keep your tablets and Fire, thank you very much. I like the fact that a basic Kindle allows for NO distractions while you're reading. Even the ad-supported model will only show ads during menu screens, never while you're reading. The e-ink looks a lot crisper than anything on a conventional tablet too. And a single 3-hour charge can last for weeks. I imagine the basic Nook has a similar setup too.
The only advantage I can see with a tablet is for reading comic books or other books with lots of large, color-intensive graphics. Otherwise, you'd be a lot better off just spending the $80 for an actual dedicated e-reader. The text won't give you a headache, there are no distractions, and you won't be constantly recharging it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Self discipline is dead.
The only problem with e-books and e-readers is that they're clearly not made by readers.
Books, the good ones at least and most of the bad ones too, pay attention to typography. Paragraph-optimized justification, hyphenation, hanging punctuation, ligatures, etc. All these little things that you take for granted with a dead-tree book, but without them it's a significantly poorer experience.
You find books with left-aligned text, an ugly and jagged right edge carving out a large chunk of empty space on the right. Or worse, you get one that is justified. This is bottom-of-the-barrel justification, without hyphenation and very commonly leaving huge spaces between words.
I've owned a Nook since launch day. I've read a large number of books on it, and I love it. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. I shouldn't need to import my ebooks into Adobe InDesign to make a PDF with proper typography.
Because this whole "distraction" thing is complete and utter nonsense. If I want to read, I read. If I want to do something else, I do it. Nothing "distracts" me. The tablet is not a "temptress", lol. It's a machine, and it does what *I* tell it to, not the other way around.
And then there's that poignant call: "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience" As an owner of thousands of books, let me tell you what that "permanence" is... it's a spine that will crack when you open the book years later. It's the incredibly lousy, acid infused paper that has yellowed, and smelled-up, and eventually caused to crumble, the pages of many of my otherwise treasured reads. It's being unable to find the title because someone has put it back funny, or not put it back at all. Or folded the pages. Or spilled spaghetti sauce on it. Or their lovely child has ripped out the conclusion to chapter three. Or ask a college kid or graduate about the "sense of permanence" that is the reality of a backpack filled with heavy texts. Not exactly a pleasant experience, or a lovely fashion accessory. And it cuts down the amount of actual cool stuff you can carry.
Whereas the e-book experience... the litany is long and distinguished: You don't lose 'em; you don't misplace them; they don't age; you can read them in the dark (well, unless you went with e-ink, but then you can read in the sun if you're so inclined... me, I think reading in the sun is insane, but that's just me.) There are hot dictionaries, hot notes, hot highlights, sharing of same so you can see if what you think is interesting is what everyone else thinks is interesting. There is linkage to summary and statistical info on the book; YOU control the font size, and trust me, as an older guy compared to most of the rest of you puppies, that's a big deal; you can dim the thing and read late at night without disturbing your SO (you'll get girlfriends... really, you will. Patience.) You can read silently, page turns are noiseless. You can read with music, if that's pleasing to you. You can't lose your place -- an e-reader keeps track of what page you were on for every book you're reading, no matter how many that might be. As of recently, they've come up with a way to lend the book and you can't lose it, it simply "snaps" back into your library after the lend is up... you can self-publish without having to have an agent (that's me!), an editor, a publishing house, a marketing plan, and years of fruitless trying; you can carry your whole library with you, and I'm talking a LOT of books, so not only is all your fun reading with you, now you can always have your programming references and textbooks and so forth with you too... that part is just getting off the ground, but it was of direct help to me when I began to learn infrared photography and Apple's Cocoa so I'm personally sensitized to how great it is; and now, with the whole "its backed up in the cloud", you can't even lose your books if you drop your reader down the face of the Hoover dam. From the space shuttle. And the actual reality of that "distraction" is that your reader, if you so choose, can do a myriad of other useful and fun things for you.
But that was a funny article from a luddite. :)
Again speaking as someone involved with the publishing industry (I own a literary agency and I'm a published author, also the offspring of same), let me tell you why the publishers aren't so hot on e-books. The writer has ideas and stories, but surprisingly often, isn't all that great at telling them. The agency has agents on staff who can help -- a lot -- with that, and also (historically speaking) know which publishers are looking, and what they are looking for. An old boys network in the classic sense. Publishers can get the writer into print. And, if the writer is a GREAT writer, they might even throw in a little publicity work. But great writers don't really need publicity. If there's a new Ursula Le Guin or Michael Moorcock or Alan Dean Foster novel and you li
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Look, if you get distracted, that's a not a problem with the tablet: That's a problem with you. Notifications bothering you? Turn off the wifi, cellular... in the case of the iPad, just flip it into "airplane" mode. Can't stay off Facebook? Not an iPad problem. A "you" problem. Have to see tweets? That's 140 characters of you-fail. Don't go blaming technology because you fail to use it well. And don't clamor for it to change because you suck at coping. You change. Then you can benefit from judicious use of technology instead of letting it knock you around.
Hmmmm... this reminds of the old canard "There are no atheists in foxholes." That's not a flaw in atheism. That just demonstrates that foxholes are really fucked up. You dig? lol...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.