Reading E-Books in All the Colors of the Rainbow

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Ha! I'll eat my hat if colour eInk devices make it to market before next summer.

With or without salt?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Richey79

Would be interesting to see a poll determining how many people would be interested in a colour eink device based on current tech.

"Interested in colour" -- pretty much everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $50" -- less than everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $100" -- a lot less than everyone.
"Willing to put up with loss of bw contrast to get colour" -- again, substantially far from everyone.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"Interested in colour" -- pretty much everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $50" -- less than everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $100" -- a lot less than everyone.
"Willing to put up with loss of bw contrast to get colour" -- again, substantially far from everyone.

Yup. Interested is one thing, willing to pony up the price (in cash or readability) another.

[Latinandgreek]

I would be interested in colour, on a large screen reader, for reading comics. Would I pay a lot extra for colour? $50, yes. $100, I'd really have to think about it. Would I put up with a loss of bw contrast for colour? Nope.

[tneken]

I would be interested in a reader with a color screen, if the premium is not to big and the contrast doesnt suffer. For comics and tech stuff i dont mind washed out colors, because my needs woudn't ever justifying me buying an ipad or a similar device.

[Richey79]

Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton

What do you mean "based on current tech" ...

Poor refresh rate; no option to use that colour display to play video or animated diagrams; contrast acceptable using black type, but I wouldn't look forward to trying to read orange, light green, yellow; off-white 'etch-a-sketch' coloured background; less than stellar support for PDFs... .

For me, starting to design a colour ereader before fixing these problems is a bit silly. There are many other screen displays that, while I would prefer not to read a novel on them, are perfectly suitable for reading technical PDFs...

...and 'comics' - I forgot graphic novels (how could I have forgotten, Jeremy?). I would be really interested in an ereader that can display comics properly, but probably won't buy into the bleeding edge. As usual, I'll wait for others to finance tech developments until the kinks are all worked out (insert obligatory Ray and Dave calisthenics joke here).

[rhadin]

I'd be happy to pay an extra $100 for a good eInk color device. For example, if the new Sony 650 or 950 was available in a choice of monochrome or color and there was no degradation of the readability, I'd pay an extra $100 for the color version -- and I don't read comic books .

I think as publishers begin moving towards the digital book, they will be willing to provide illustrations and figures in color rather than b&w. Many of the b&w images in books today are color printed as b&w to save printing costs.

I also think having the color readers available will unleash book designers who will make use of the colors to make the books more enticing.

I can imagine a romance novel where we see a beating red heart (i.e., the word heart not a picture of a heart) when the heroine falls madly in love. I can also imagine a biography of John D. Rockefeller where the words describing his grab of monopoly money is shown in green. See -- a color reader could enhance the reading experience .

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by TrvlrsChick

I don't see them coming out before summer, either. And I still don't understand why people are so rabid to get them in color... the books I read are black and white text. Sure, the cover is in color, but that's it. And if the refresh rate is anything like the eReaders, you couldn't watch movies or anything on it.

Comic books. They're not just for kids anymore. Especially hipsters.

I was very saddened the other day visiting the library to see their comic book section was larger than their Science Fiction section.

[macminer]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"Interested in colour" -- pretty much everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $50" -- less than everyone.
"Willing to pay an extra $100" -- a lot less than everyone.
"Willing to put up with loss of bw contrast to get colour" -- again, substantially far from everyone.

I used to believe that colour in a book is really just a luxury till about a year ago when I started scanning p-books from my collection and converting them to e-books.

Most of them are non-fiction. First I thought that scanning in black-and-white mode would be OK for nearly all of them. Only later did I realise how many had diagrams, illustrations, maps etc. which turned out meaningless after converting to b-w. Decent 256 grayscale would really be a minimum for all those illustrations and for some (especially those from my wife's medical books) color is indispensable.

So my next e-book reader will either need to have color or at least decent (and fast!) rendering of grayscale images. But, obviously, there is a limit to how much I am going to spend. If there's a choice between rather sluggish device with e-ink for $150 and a fast one with color screen for $300, then I am willing to pay twice the price. (By "fast" I mean fast in every respect - rendering graphics, opening books, scrolling through the book list, turning pages, searching etc.) Ipad is relatively fast, but the price is too steep for me.

[HarryT]

That's why I always leave illustrations in colour in the books that I create, since that way, even though they display in grey-scale on eInk devices, they are then viewable in colour on colour devices. The Jane Austen novels I've created, for example, have beautiful watercolour illustrations which display very nicely indeed on the iPad.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Graham

Even history and biography books make occasional use of colour in maps and photos, so all else being equal I'd be happy to have colour available for those.

Graham

I could see it for a few things. But most maps can be done quite handily in a few shades of grey. And back in the old days, they didn't even HAVE color. Look at old pictures to prove it... (hat tip to Calvin and Hobbes...)

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

I could see it for a few things. But most maps can be done quite handily in a few shades of grey. And back in the old days, they didn't even HAVE color. Look at old pictures to prove it... (hat tip to Calvin and Hobbes...)

Yeah, but just because you can survive without it doesn't mean it isn't nice to have.

[OakIris]

Originally Posted by Graham

Even history and biography books make occasional use of colour in maps and photos, so all else being equal I'd be happy to have colour available for those.

Graham

Of course, you are correct. Still, color isn't essential for my reading preferences, but once eReaders with good color capabilities are available, I certainly wouldn't mind having one!

Holly

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I can imagine a romance novel where we see a beating red heart (i.e., the word heart not a picture of a heart) when the heroine falls madly in love. I can also imagine a biography of John D. Rockefeller where the words describing his grab of monopoly money is shown in green. See -- a color reader could enhance the reading experience .

Reaffirmed in the b-w reader for me, again!

[Maggie Leung]

Fail: Astronomy books in black and white.