Are Programmers Ruining Ebooks?

[murraypaul]

And you see one of the problems with open standards, they take too long too formulate and make available. Yes ePub 3 might do everything you need, but it isn't available. iOS/Android apps are available now, and KF8, which is the closed-format equivalent, is now available to start working on.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by bigtext

Do I expect this to happen to every book. Most definitely not. We do not have books-on-tape versions of all books and I expect rich media books to be an even smaller percentage of books than those converted to audio. Especially since many novels aren't going to work with this format.

That's a very good point. A combination of audio book and text version would be a natural evolution of the book as we know it today.

And a perfect model to take care our visually impaired brethren, text-to-speech tech is nowhere close to the real (professionally done audio book) deal.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Ankh

That's a very good point. A combination of audio book and text version would be a natural evolution of the book as we know it today.

I thought television was the natural evolution of the book as we know it.

And a perfect model to take care our visually impaired brethren, text-to-speech tech is nowhere close to the real (professionally done audio book) deal.

There are two issues with this, though. One is that a lot of visually impaired people prefer tts to audiobooks. The larger one is that adding professional audiobook capabilities to e-books will add a lot more to the cost.

And while it would be cool to sync e-book text and audio, I don't think that there is any real way of doing that with a professional audio book.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I thought television was the natural evolution of the book as we know it.

Uhm, that would be different medium. Audio book and text edition are the same thing, IMHO.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

One is that a lot of visually impaired people prefer tts to audiobooks.

I did not know that.

They prefer TTS to UNABRIDGED (forgot to emphasize that) audio books? Do you, by any chance, know why it is so?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I did not know that.

They prefer TTS to UNABRIDGED (forgot to emphasize that) audio books? Do you, by any chance, know why it is so?

I am not visually impaired, but I am hearing impaired, and I absolutely prefer unabridged audio books to TTS.

TTS just isn't at a point where it can inflect properly. Inflection is often the difference between understanding a "didn't quite catch the word" passage and not understanding it.

However, if someone wanted a pure experience without reader inflection AND they had perfect hearing, perhaps they would see what *I* value in audio books as a bug instead of a feature?

[bfisher]

Generally, I prefer to read a book in print, or on an ereader which gves me as close an approximation to a printed pages as possible, and I don't like gimmicks in a book. However, sometimes it is possible to do non-traditional things in a book which actually enhance the reading experience.

I am currently reading Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad", thanks to Robert Fulford's column http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/01...ut-the-timing/

Most of the book is presented in traditional novel format. However, an entire chapter is done as a PowerPoint presentation, and it works.

The only problem I found is that the PowerPoint chapter did not work well on an ereader, due to the small screen size and monochrome screen, but it worked very well on a laptop screen, so I can see where one might need occassionally to read a book on a tablet with a larger color screen

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And you see one of the problems with open standards, they take too long too formulate and make available. Yes ePub 3 might do everything you need, but it isn't available. iOS/Android apps are available now, and KF8, which is the closed-format equivalent, is now available to start working on.

There are also different types of open-standards to consider with. Android libraries, the Java programming language, the PDF specification, and so forth are largely defined by a single body. On the other hand, they are also open. (At least in the case of Java and PDF, where there are multiple implementations and support on a broad range of devices. I do not know how open Google is to reimplementations of the Android libraries.)

There are also various reasons why committee based open standards progress slowly. The failure to reach an agreement and even outright sabotage are big in the picture. On the other hand, you don't want standards progressing too quickly because a big point of standardization is interoperability across both vendors and time. For example: it is unlikely that KF8 will ever operate on first and second generation Kindle. Amazon doesn't care, because they want to sell new products. However, when interoperability enters the picture you do have to care and stable standards over long periods of time is the easiest way to do it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

For example: it is unlikely that KF8 will ever operate on first and second generation Kindle. Amazon doesn't care, because they want to sell new products. However, when interoperability enters the picture you do have to care and stable standards over long periods of time is the easiest way to do it.

Amazon have said, however, that their book creation tools will be able to create both a KF8 book and a Mobipocket book (which will work on older devices) from the same source; they are thus providing interoperability at the toolset level, rather than the output file level. I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of Amazon books will continue to be in Mobi format - KF8 provides few benefits for novels.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Uhm, that would be different medium. Audio book and text edition are the same thing, IMHO.



I did not know that.

They prefer TTS to UNABRIDGED (forgot to emphasize that) audio books? Do you, by any chance, know why it is so?

I think it has a lot to do with TTS being "neutral," while narrated audiobooks have a good bit of the narrator in them. It's also common for many visually impaired individuals to listen at 2x speed - this might also play a role.

(Yeah, I would have never guessed this if I hadn't been told, though. I'm a fan of audiobooks, but not TTS at all.).

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I think it has a lot to do with TTS being "neutral," while narrated audiobooks have a good bit of the narrator in them. It's also common for many visually impaired individuals to listen at 2x speed - this might also play a role.

(Yeah, I would have never guessed this if I hadn't been told, though. I'm a fan of audiobooks, but not TTS at all.).

I can see the 2x thing. "Proper" audiobooks are slowly paced for the limits of the narrator's voice and the hearing range of the listeners. If one had good hearing and wanted to "listen faster" TTS would make a great deal of sense. Good point.

[CazMar]

I think if I was reading the latest John le Carre adventure or a piece of literature then plain, clear monocolour text is the only way to go. But some of my ancient history books or textbooks with lots of illustrations would work very well with interactive content (think medical text book with 3D renderings of bones or muscle structure). My ideal would be a colour tablet for more interactive or illustrated content and a dedicated ebook reader for purely reading. I guess people who mostly read magazines might just go for a tablet, but the ebook reader who reads a lot (and a lot of MR members would be like this) probably prefers plain text and e-ink - and both if they can afford two devices!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

This is a very silly argument. Multimedia apps don't "threaten" books any more than TV or radio does. It's a different medium, that's all.

How often have you had an image (in your head) of the way things look in a book based on the author's descriptions but then that all changed after you saw the book made into a movie? I bet quite a lot.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Amazon have said, however, that their book creation tools will be able to create both a KF8 book and a Mobipocket book (which will work on older devices) from the same source; they are thus providing interoperability at the toolset level, rather than the output file level. I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of Amazon books will continue to be in Mobi format - KF8 provides few benefits for novels.

I have read lots of books that would benefit from a true blockquote. So even just that would make these books better on Kindle.

[sonofpendragon]

Say this on the KDP forums, then a coachload will travel the globe to hunt you down. But I feel a bit safer here! Yes, despite the whole ebook thing being a monster, it is far far far from being problem free, and I do think the programmers have to take the lion's share of the blame. I know we can look it all as 'early days', and maybe they are. But let's look at the (now humbled) TV but from a few years back to make the argument. Many models, cheap, expensive, this and that, but in essence they all did the basics very well. Well, this is not the case in the world of ereaders, yet. It's like full access to many protoypes, except they ain't prototypes in the true sense because, being circular I know, they are available to all. I suspect though, time will sort this, to some degree.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sonofpendragon

Say this on the KDP forums, then a coachload will travel the globe to hunt you down. But I feel a bit safer here! Yes, despite the whole ebook thing being a monster, it is far far far from being problem free, and I do think the programmers have to take the lion's share of the blame. I know we can look it all as 'early days', and maybe they are. But let's look at the (now humbled) TV but from a few years back to make the argument. Many models, cheap, expensive, this and that, but in essence they all did the basics very well. Well, this is not the case in the world of ereaders, yet. It's like full access to many protoypes, except they ain't prototypes in the true sense because, being circular I know, they are available to all. I suspect though, time will sort this, to some degree.

With TV (and radio before it) there were (mandated) standards for signals, transmission, display, etc.....