02-01-2008, 09:55 AM | #1 | |
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Will cellphones save books?
Here is an interesting article from Mike Elgan of the Computerworld.
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02-01-2008, 11:05 AM | #2 | |
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Seriously folks, if that questions is representative of the intellectual level of his analysis, I'm not sure what to say, as all Mr. Elgan would hear is a whooshing sound while things keep on flying over his head. He's also trying way too hard for that participatory angle, IMHO. Furthermore, while I'm unsure whether books actually need saving or not, I can say with confidence that talking me into reading things on a postage stamp sized phone screen is not the way to go about it. |
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02-01-2008, 12:37 PM | #3 | |
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02-01-2008, 01:23 PM | #4 | |
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02-01-2008, 01:32 PM | #5 |
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Not an audio book fan, either. I've borrowed some for the kids on long trips (Harry Potter) but I always find my attention wandering when trying to listen.
Personally, I think the participatory model is a niche market. And if you have a windows, palm, or symbian phone you can already read ebooks on it by downloading and installing the appropiate reader. And if your phone is internet capable you can purchase books at ebooks.com and read (most) online. You won't catch me reading books on a cell phone except if I'm stuck somewhere and I forgot my reader or my Palm. |
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02-01-2008, 02:51 PM | #6 | |
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02-01-2008, 04:45 PM | #7 | |
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Next: Elgan, like Jobs, conveniently forgets that this country does read, voraciously... they have simply switched their reading to newspapers and magazines. Magazines are in every bookstore, in every grocery and drug store, in airports, in shopping malls, in convenience stores, and in gas stations. Newspapers are also in all of these places, and in kiosks all over town. If Americans weren't reading, you wouldn't see all of those mags everywhere, plain and simple. I'm not against e-books for cellphones. But Elgan points out that the people reading these are stuck on long, cramped public trains every day, with no room to hold open a book. I hate to say it, but you won't find a significant portion of America's commuters in that situation... most of them are driving their cars. So, until global warming finally drives Americans into the arms of public transportation, I wouldn't depend on it to create a demand for your product. That said, I've maintained that an attractive-enough device can bring more people into reading e-books, quite likely as an after-market to follow e-magazines and e-newspapers. If a cellphone proves to be that popular for reading content on the go (the iPhone or iPod touch, for instance), great. I'd guess at a larger device, at least the size of Sony's reader. But the important part is the features people want, combined with the content they want. |
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02-02-2008, 07:38 AM | #8 | ||
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02-02-2008, 10:20 AM | #9 |
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The percentage of people reading books (other than for school) has changed less than the sample error so it may in fact have gone up rather than down. It has never been that high in history -- from the early priests that kept the others "in the dark" to the modern day, reading has always been an activity of the upper educated (school or self.) If it was popular then we would have more square feet of libraries than we would of prisons.
In today's world a book represents an investment of time and mind, a magazine can be sampled on the run. If I read a novella in Analog it is classified as a magazine, if I read the same story as a standalone it counts as a book. Go figure. |
02-04-2008, 01:17 PM | #10 | |
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Your point about reading short stories and "serialized novels" in magazines is also well-taken: We have used labels like "book" and "magazine" for so long, that it can be hard to remember literature can be packaged and delivered in other ways, and those labels may be due for updating. Doing that might help to re-imagine modern packaging and delivery systems for literature. |
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02-04-2008, 01:39 PM | #11 | |
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02-04-2008, 02:42 PM | #12 |
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Pretty much. (e-tent and e-Lit might roll off the tongue easier...)
But the point isn't the name, but the packaging of content, that can be revisited. To an extent, simply adding links or live glossaries in books can qualify them as a unique package from a 20th century book. Adding multimedia can redefine the concept of a magazine. Making a magazine a customizable repository for desired content is a possibility: The magazine becomes more of a template for a particular theme, and you choose what you download into it, making it a personal collection of material (more of a "folder" than a "magazine"). Something tells me this threatens to go waaay off-topic... I guess that, in relation to the subject, I'm suggesting that the hardware won't "save the book," but the creative packaging of content might... |
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