Is the ereader dead?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by barryem

I have to agree that the thickness of the remaining part of the book is a first rate progress indicator but a percentage read is as good an indicator and maybe better. Even if the thickness is more intuitive, would you really want your kindle to get thinner and the cover to get thicker as you read?

I read paperbacks all my life. Now I read on a Kindle and sometimes on my phone. Both are better in a lot of ways than the paperbacks. I'd miss them if I had to go back to paper.

Ereaders are the third great technical advance in reading. The first was the move to paper books from scrolls. The second was the printing press. And now there's the ereader.

Oh wait! I left out what might be the most important advance: the inserting of spaces to separate words. If I recall that happened about the 10 century.

Barry

I think the first great advance was in the setting down of books on clay tablets myself. Though they probably were a bit heavy to carry at least the words didn't change from one person to the next. And now we are back to reading on tablets again, though of a bit lighter sort. lol.

[nicolas161]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Here's some oldish charts on ereader sales, pbook sales, etc.

https://www.janefriedman.com/the-sta...y-in-5-charts/

https://www.janefriedman.com/5-valuable-charts/

https://www.janefriedman.com/myth-print/

And then, there is this:

https://www.janefriedman.com/dont-im...shing-stories/

mainstream news sites such as The Guardian, Vox, Huffington Post, and others. While such outlets may be respectable and have the ability to get most stories right

haha nope

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by barryem

I have to agree that the thickness of the remaining part of the book is a first rate progress indicator but a percentage read is as good an indicator and maybe better. Even if the thickness is more intuitive, would you really want your kindle to get thinner and the cover to get thicker as you read?

We could have a kindle with a compressor engine and a cover that has a front and back that can be inflated and deflated, related to book thickness on each side. (If you put anything by Brian Sanderson, Tad Williams or some such on your Kindle, it'll probably explode.)

Well... maybe it isn't such a good idea

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by sjfan

My Kobo has a couple of options for this:
1. Turn on a single line at the bottom that says “Page 182 of 426”
2. Leave it in full-screen mode, but set the menu to the progress bar. The text is full-screen, but tapping the center of the screen pulls up the progress bar and tapping again dismisses it.

Some of the patches give you fine control over exactly how #1 is formatted and presented (e.g you can change it to just “182/426” if you want).

Maybe my Touches don't have this ability. Or maybe I need another patch. I've got the Full Page patch installed and use it, but when I click on the bottom, I just get the normal bottom Menu, plus a clock, battery, etc., indicator on top. After a second or two, the clock changes to percentage read. I've changed "Display progress for: Entire Book" and "Display progress as: Page Number." Does this setting require a Keypub book to work. (I guess I could check that really quickly ... no, behavior is the same with Kobo ePubs.)

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Maybe my Touches don't have this ability. Or maybe I need another patch. I've got the Full Page patch installed and use it, but when I click on the bottom, I just get the normal bottom Menu, plus a clock, battery, etc., indicator on top. After a second or two, the clock changes to percentage read. I've changed "Display progress for: Entire Book" and "Display progress as: Page Number." Does this setting require a Keypub book to work. (I guess I could check that really quickly ... no, behavior is the same with Kobo ePubs.)

If you pull up the progress indicator (the <-> arrow on the menu) then it stays selected. So then when you center tap, you get the progress bar immediately without having to re-select it.

At least that's how it works for me.

(There's another tweak to alter the timeout on the clock/percentage thing up top, as well.)

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by sjfan

If you pull up the progress indicator (the <-> arrow on the menu) then it stays selected. So then when you center tap, you get the progress bar immediately without having to re-select it.

At least that's how it works for me.

Okay, I see what you're saying now. One more question (sorry this is probably way off topic), is there any way to go to a specific page number in a Kobo?

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Okay, I see what you're saying now. One more question (sorry this is probably way off topic), is there any way to go to a specific page number in a Kobo?

You can slide the slider to wherever. I've never looked to see if there's a spot to type in a precise number, I just slide over until I'm close and then swipe a page or two to zero in.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by sjfan

You can slide the slider to wherever. I've never looked to see if there's a spot to type in a precise number, I just slide over until I'm close and then swipe a page or two to zero in.

Okay, that's what I thought but I wasn't sure. That's one thing I would like to see added at some point. I like that feature a lot in my Sonys, Nooks and EZReader as that's how I sync these various readers. Maybe Kobo will add it at some point.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The one thing I find irritating about e-readers is that they don't have a physical way of showing you the progress you've made by becoming thicker on the left and thinner on the right...

That is the hidden secret behind the odd form factor of the Kindle Oasis. Hold it is your right hand when you start a book and switch to your left hand once you reach the halfway point for a proper book feel.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The one thing I find irritating about e-readers is that they don't have a physical way of showing you the progress you've made by becoming thicker on the left and thinner on the right (or otherwise around should you read from right to left). That's the one thing I still like about paper books

(Some e-readers have progress bars, or page number-like progress, but in full screen mode, the KA1 shows nothing but a wall of text. In non-full screen mode where it can show progress, it wastes half the screen with whitespace and headers and footers...)

I use kepub on my Kobo and have the slider set to show progress in the chapter rather than progress in the book. The clock changes to show the percent read and that's good enough for me.

The Glowlight 3 does show 'page 90 of 145' at the bottom and I do like that. The slider that comes up shows how many pages are left in the chapter.

[billthrow]

They shouldn't be dead. They are battery charge last weeks lonliger than tablets with same size screen. You can buy a great Kobi. I can't find batteries for working Sony T anT!.

[sebibeck]

I personally really like e readers and think that a lot of other people do too!

[pittendrigh]

Most in this thread are missing the embedded video point. Video will become increasingly important as book reading habits evolve. Are you reading about Bonobos on the Congo River? A few well-placed video clips would be attractive to me. Embedded video is too big to download and store on a dedicated device. They will need to work more like browsers where video is streamed and not stored.

Dedicated devices as they are do their best to mimic the paper technology experience--which shackles the technology as a whole. Ebooks are more powerful than paper. If and only if they act like browsers.

[Synergi]

I think they are flat sales wise, they won’t blow up again until color is introduced.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by billthrow

They shouldn't be dead. They are battery charge last weeks lonliger than tablets with same size screen. You can buy a great Kobi. I can't find batteries for working Sony T anT!.

Most Android tablets I've used tend to have crappy battery life.

That said, I can easily get 10+ hours of reading on a 7.9" iPad mini 4 which honestly doesn't seem to be much lower than what I get with the Paperwhite 3.

Frankly, I think the half an hour for 6 weeks quoted for the Paperwhite is a bit too optimistic.