Wrapping Up This Week's <b> <i> USA Today </i> </b> Ebook Wrap-Up
With News from Shelfari & A Report from an Android Reader
The iPad was just one of the crowd of ebook readers included in USA Today's Wednesday wrap-up and overview of ebook reading on Wednesday by Bob Minzesheimer.
Chock full of revealing but anecdotal reports of how various people read books using various devices, the main story covered owners of Kindles, Nooks and iPads, iPods and iPhones.
The story covered the “traditional” e-ink, black-and-white world of Kindles and Nooks, and lumped them together with the triad of multiple-use devices from Apple. Fair enough, if your only talking about reading books--traditional books--on an electronic device.
But the larger issue is becoming less and less about which device is best for reading traditional books and more about how the definition of "book" will evolve in response to the newer technologies. All the forecasts in the USA Today report don't factor in device sales or ebook sales in a near future where a "book" is a multimedia event.
The iPad, iPod and iPhone are multi-functional devices already capable of going beyond presentation of long strings of words into paragraphs, chapters and whole books.
The iPad, iPod and iPhone are multi-functional devices already capable of going beyond presentation of long strings of words into paragraphs, chapters and whole books.
Connected devices—from Kindles to iPads—are suddenly turning up in the happy hands of “new adapters” of technology, the second wave behind the “early adapters” who take the high-risk plunge into new technologies first.
In fact, Planet iPad friend Dick. S in a useful coincidence (for this reporter) used his computer and Skype in an airport in Arizona to contact me today. I had recommended the free Amazon Store book Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, which he was about to finish. He'd read it throughout a business trip from the East Coast. He wanted another recommendation for a freebie ebook to accompany him on the long plane ride home. GET PIC BILLY BOYLE
He'd read Billy Boyle on his new Android, liked the experience, and wanted another. I recommended
Henry Chang's Chinatown Beat, pulled out of one of the daily Planet iPad free book listings. Dick, a mid-60s exec in the publishing in the insurance industry, says he adapted very quickly to reading a full-length book on the Android.
And that's one more anecdote to add to the pile, all tales of various individual book lovers taking to the ebook revolution in their own unique ways.
The multiple-use character of iPads, iPhones and Androids—so far—suggests strongly that an “ebook” is not what it once was just a few months ago.
The still undefined “Enhanced Book” lurks just around the corner in the future. A peek at the “Enhanced Book” beast was given on Wednesday in an email blast announcement from Shelfari. The email touted that “Book Extras” are now integrated into the latest Kindle apps for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
The Shelfari email linked to a place that included helpful images for readers to wend their ways to find the Book Extras on the Apple products and on Amazon's Kindles and the Kindle for PC app. Shelfari is a social network collaboration of contributing members and readers, and is a division of Amazon.
Book Extras are “curated factoids” by the Shelfari community that give readers “helpful information” such as lists of characters in the book, character descriptions, important places, popular quotes, themes, and so on. “Curated,” according to Webster's Dictionary, means to “select, organize and care for” a collection of something, as does the Curator of a museum.
Curiously the example Shelfari gave, Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, evinced places to insert “curated factoids,” but no factoids in place that this writer could locate.
Shelfari's being “curated” by “the community,” is apparently a fancy way of saying the factoids will come from users in much the same way that Wikipedia is curated by its users and contributors.
And in yet another report out today “enchanced book” features figure largely in a Huffington Post: “'7 Ways Electronic Books Will Make Us Better Readers,” by Steve Leveen, founder and CEO of Levenger, seller of “Tools for Serious Readers.”
But the future shape of the Enhanced Book, whatever it may prove to be, doesn't change the comparative reality of ebook readers as most are today. And that is the venue for the USA Today story on Wednesday.
The usual pros and cons of ebooks—the physical experience of enjoying a printed book generally versus the ease of getting books without trips to libraries and book stores—showed up in the coverage of more than a handful of readers who are changing their ways thanks to ebooks.
For the author's point of view, the paper talked with Stephen King for his take on it all. He says a third of his reading is done on his iPad or Kindle, but cautions that consumers “tire of new toys quickly.” That may be a scary story line from the master of horror, but the big-picture numbers in the story indicate today's toys may just become another artifact in life, as common as—uh—books.
The story pegs ebook sales at about 9% of the total, but notes sales are nearly double what they were a year ago (up 193%). More telling, perhaps, are anecdotes from many of those quoted that they are not only buying more ebooks, but their total number of books purchased is higher because of ebook readers.
On some bestsellers, the paper quotes HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray, ebooks are outselling print versions of the same book.
That's happened before, most notably (at least in the media) with Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. It logged a number of days, early after its release, when ebook sales outstripped print book sales.
In all of the leading indicators quoted in the article—from King's forecast that ebooks will account for nearly half of all book sales by 2012 or 2013 to Forrester Research's projection Americans will own 29 ebook reading devices by 2014—it would seem the ebook surge is on the rise for the near future, at least.
In a companion article, USA Today reporter Carol Memmot test drove five ereaders—the iPad, a Kindle, the Libre, the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, a Nook. She compares her experience as a brand new, never-did-it-before ebook reader. She read different chapters of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom for the project.
And as for the Enhanced Book, so much discussed by the publishing industry earlier this month at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it would seem that the iPad currently has the edge with its ability to serve up “printed” words, color images, video and sound.
How 5 ereaders stacked up
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