Enhanced Game of Thrones books

[pwalker8]

I got an email from Apple this morning pushing an enhanced version of the Game of Thrones. Basically the selling point seems to be enhanced maps, author's notes and illustrations. I suspect that this is similar to the enhanced Harry Potter books that one can get from Apple.

I can see where someone who became a fan of the TV series and has an iDevice might go in this direction. The books run $12 (the first one is $9). The downside is that this appears to be a iDevice specific book. I'm not sure it requires iBook, or if you can use it on a different reader if you strip out the DRM. An interesting experiment none the less.

[Katsunami]

Illustrations and such will never work in e-books. In 10 years time resolutions will be so high that your now-useful 1024x768 or 1600x1200 illustration will be a blurry mess. (I don't know if there are any e-readers that understand SVG... I've never seen an SVG illustration in an e-book either.)

Illustrated books are actually the only reason for me to still buy paper books now and again. I'd buy an illustrated paper version of ASoIaF or HP, for example.

[Sweetpea]

SVG tags are supported by current readers (at least, I know my kobo understands it, as I use that tag for covers). Problem still stays that your image will scale and be blown up. I have seen books with "maps" that are tiny in size and if you blow those up... (most maps are bitmaps...)

[John F]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...

Illustrated books are actually the only reason for me to still buy paper books now and again. I'd buy an illustrated paper version of ASoIaF or HP, for example.

The opposite logic would work for me. Since I can't zoom and scroll in a paper book, than an (modern) ebook would give me the same quality photos, plus the other advantages of ebooks.

Different strokes.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

SVG tags are supported by current readers (at least, I know my kobo understands it, as I use that tag for covers). Problem still stays that your image will scale and be blown up. I have seen books with "maps" that are tiny in size and if you blow those up... (most maps are bitmaps...)

If the original image is a bitmap then wrapping it in an SVG tag won't improve its scalability in any way, it just allows access to extra display features such as rotating the bitmap, displaying just a part of the bitmap, things like that.

But if the publishers were to include genuine SVG drawings instead of just bitmaps in their ebooks, then they would be perfectly scalable and could be blown up as large as you like without any loss of quality. That's what Katsunami is after.

Unfortunately the only time I've seen genuine SVG drawings in a fiction ebook (apart from embedded fonts, which are SVG of course) is for little decorations, such as used for scene breaks.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

If the original image is a bitmap then wrapping it in an SVG tag won't improve its scalability in any way, it just allows access to extra display features such as rotating the bitmap, displaying just a part of the bitmap, things like that.

But if the publishers were to include genuine SVG drawings instead of just bitmaps in their ebooks, then they would be perfectly scalable and could be blown up as large as you like without any loss of quality. That's what Katsunami is after.

Unfortunately the only time I've seen genuine SVG drawings in a fiction ebook (apart from embedded fonts, which are SVG of course) is for little decorations, such as used for scene breaks.

Yes, you'd only get a blown up bitmap. But I know epub supports the SVG tag to show bitmaps, so, I'll presume it supports SVG images as well.

Naturally, that leaves the problem of vectorizing all those bitmap maps

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by John F

The opposite logic would work for me. Since I can't zoom and scroll in a paper book, than an (modern) ebook would give me the same quality photos, plus the other advantages of ebooks.

There is an add-on for paper books that adds the ability to zoom.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by jhowell

There is an add-on for paper books that adds the ability to zoom.

That works for ebooks too!

[John F]

Originally Posted by jhowell

There is an add-on for paper books that adds the ability to zoom.

If the assumption was low quality images in ebooks, than I'll assume low quality images in pbooks.

Not to mention the terrible distortion you get with such a small magnifying glass.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Unfortunately the only time I've seen genuine SVG drawings in a fiction ebook (apart from embedded fonts, which are SVG of course) is for little decorations, such as used for scene breaks.

I've recently also seen .svg images appearing as the small link buttons for Facebook and Twitter. Isn't it good to know the Publishers' quality improvement initiative is being directed at the appearance of front- and backmatter Who knows, they might even get round to the actual story content eventually!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by John F

The opposite logic would work for me. Since I can't zoom and scroll in a paper book, than an (modern) ebook would give me the same quality photos, plus the other advantages of ebooks.

Different strokes.

Unfortunately, though, that's not the case. Ebooks tend not to include high-resolution images, because doing so make the file too big.

[John F]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unfortunately, though, that's not the case. Ebooks tend not to include high-resolution images, because doing so make the file too big.

The thread is about "enhanced" and "illustrated" ebooks, so I'm assuming these would want to emphasize the images, so I'm assuming high resolution images. I'm willing to accept that straight fiction ebooks are going to have low quality images.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Illustrations and such will never work in e-books. In 10 years time resolutions will be so high that your now-useful 1024x768 or 1600x1200 illustration will be a blurry mess.

You know, I wonder about that. There reaches a point where the eye can't tell the difference in pixels.

An enhanced ebook designed to look good on a current iPad will likely still look good on a similar sized device in the future. (Of course,now that I'm putting this in writing, Apple will release Retina2 and tell you those Retina screens weren't so great after all).

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Illustrations and such will never work in e-books. In 10 years time resolutions will be so high that your now-useful 1024x768 or 1600x1200 illustration will be a blurry mess.

Why?
Unless they drastically increase the size of a eReader the resolution is irrelevant. If the image is 800x600 it will show exactly the same on a 800x600 eReader and a 80,000x60,000 ereader.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Why?
Unless they drastically increase the size of a eReader the resolution is irrelevant. If the image is 800x600 it will show exactly the same on a 800x600 eReader and a 80,000x60,000 ereader.

Sorry, but that's wrong. Take the average map in a fantasy book. Make it 800x600. Now put that map on a 6" 300DPI Reader. It could very easily be hard to read and if you increase the size to make it full screen, it could easily be blurry. Take an map that's larger than 800x600 and put it on a Reader that's 800x600 (full screen) and you should be able to read it.

You need high resolution images for a high resolution eInk screen. eInk is not the same as LCD. So where you can be using high resolution LCD and be able to see a low resolution image, the same does not work for eInk.