Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
For many if not most of us, e-books are digital versions of printed books. And they are just that. Others, on the other hand, believe that e-books should offer additional content and multimedia enrichment. Meet Bill Adair, Knight Professor for the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, who recently described his disappointing experience with e-books in an article published on Poynter's.
Quote:
I spent my vacation reading from pixels instead of paper.
I read e-book versions of “Bruce,” a Springsteen biography by Peter Ames Carlin, and Dan Brown’s bestselling novel “Inferno.” Both had great potential for extra audio and video that could have created a much richer experience. But the e-books offered no more than the ink-on-paper versions.
Well, of course. The potential for all the extras was there, but did you not know what an e-book currently is before you started reading it? Didn't you know beforehand that Bruce was not going to sing to you or reach out and shake your hand? What was it that you expected from it that made it so disappointing? It's not as if the e-book promised these things and didn't deliver. How could you honestly be disappointed in something you didn't expect? And if you DID expect more, WHY did you?
My disappointing experience offers a lesson for news organizations that are considering selling e-books because its shows how legacy media is still thinking like … legacy media. Book publishers still have an old-school mentality — like many newspaper editors.
How does your disappointing experience offer a lesson ... ? If you fell off a cliff while walking because you were looking at the sky, I can see that experience offering a lesson to others to watch their step. But it sounds as if you feel that news organizations, et al. should abandon e-books because YOU were disappointed reading 2 e-books because they didn't sing and dance for you as well?
Do you think e-books need to be "enhanced" with multimedia features for a richer experience? Or do you prefer the single-dimensional aspect of text, where any kind of enhancement could potentially be intrusive and get in the way with the story? |
If I misunderstood the actual meaning of this guy's words, I deeply apologize.
I read e-books expecting that they offer no more than the ink-on-paper versions, albeit in a much more convenient package. I'm not looking for a song and dance in the experience. If I was, I'd wait for the movie version.