Improve ebooks - fiction & non-fiction

[tomfyhr]

Do you have any suggestions for how e-books can be made more interactive and enganging, to possibly encourage people to read fictional och non-fictional literature? Nowadays e-books are usually only digital conversions of physical books.

Thank you in advance for the answer!

[maddz]

Why would you want to add bells and whistles to an ebook? Perhaps for a kiddies book (I am reminded of some Disney book & record combos I had in my childhood), but not for something that's being read for pleasure or education (unless you are thinking of embedded videos for manuals of one kind or another - but that's what Utube is for).

Integration with an onboard dictionary in your ereader, and perhaps the ability to make notes (and more importantly, to export those notes) is about the only thing you would need (and they are hardware/firmware issues). Frankly, anything else is superfluous - and involves stuff that's not available to many ereaders - like web enablement (not every ereader is connected to the internet all the time). The other big issue is most ereaders are e-ink devices and not amenable to high-end graphics, and such bells and whistles add to battery drain.

Of course, if you mean something like the old Infocom text adventures (Zork, etc) I'd be up for that!

[meeera]

The most engaging books for me are those with excellent writing. On a side note, I also prefer books that "get out of my way"; that don't have fiddly formatting that might go wrong on my ereader, or try to override my preferred settings. (Yes, I know how to override these bad design choices myself, but I'd prefer not to have to).

Stick to an unobtrusive but well-designed chapter sink graphic and/or scene break ornament if you want to make your book's formatting "original". An example is the cute little Aeslin mice graphic in Seanan McGuire's Incryptid books.

The best thing you can do for your book, apart from excellent writing and professional editing of course, is invest in a good cover.

[Sarmat89]

Hyperlinks, glossaries, character biographies, photo galleries, rich metadata, all those improves the e-text at no cost comparing to a physical book.
Sadly we are burdened with the 90s standards like EPUB that does not allow many of those.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by tomfyhr

Do you have any suggestions for how e-books can be made more interactive and enganging, to possibly encourage people to read fictional och non-fictional literature? Nowadays e-books are usually only digital conversions of physical books.

Thank you in advance for the answer!

Anyone who has watched a child play on a tablet knows that this content already exists. though It isn't often called a book. It may be called a webpage or a game or a video or simply interactive multimedia. And it has its place. But please, not on my e-ink reader. I just want to read.

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Hyperlinks, glossaries, character biographies, photo galleries, rich metadata, all those improves the e-text at no cost comparing to a physical book.
Sadly we are burdened with the 90s standards like EPUB that does not allow many of those.

On the contrary, epub and other formats allow many of these things. The reason why they are not often used in an ebook is that in most cases they do not improve the text but distract from it. The "books" that are suitable for this are much better packaged as a multimedia package for a tablet or even a computer. I don't want the world wide web on my ereader. I just want to read.

[DiapDealer]

If you can't engage with a well-written book (e or p), then you simply don't like reading. There's nothing wrong with that--watch TV, or play a game instead. Just stop trying to turn "reading a book" into a different activity than it is. If you envision "more than a book," then write (or buy) an app.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by maddz

Why would you want to add bells and whistles to an ebook? Perhaps for a kiddies book (I am reminded of some Disney book & record combos I had in my childhood), but not for something that's being read for pleasure or education (unless you are thinking of embedded videos for manuals of one kind or another - but that's what Utube is for).

Integration with an onboard dictionary in your ereader, and perhaps the ability to make notes (and more importantly, to export those notes) is about the only thing you would need (and they are hardware/firmware issues). Frankly, anything else is superfluous - and involves stuff that's not available to many ereaders - like web enablement (not every ereader is connected to the internet all the time). The other big issue is most ereaders are e-ink devices and not amenable to high-end graphics, and such bells and whistles add to battery drain.

Of course, if you mean something like the old Infocom text adventures (Zork, etc) I'd be up for that!

Originally Posted by meeera

The most engaging books for me are those with excellent writing. On a side note, I also prefer books that "get out of my way"; that don't have fiddly formatting that might go wrong on my ereader, or try to override my preferred settings. (Yes, I know how to override these bad design choices myself, but I'd prefer not to have to).

Stick to an unobtrusive but well-designed chapter sink graphic and/or scene break ornament if you want to make your book's formatting "original". An example is the cute little Aeslin mice graphic in Seanan McGuire's Incryptid books.

The best thing you can do for your book, apart from excellent writing and professional editing of course, is invest in a good cover.

Originally Posted by darryl

Anyone who has watched a child play on a tablet knows that this content already exists. though It isn't often called a book. It may be called a webpage or a game or a video or simply interactive multimedia. And it has its place. But please, not on my e-ink reader. I just want to read.



On the contrary, epub and other formats allow many of these things. The reason why they are not often used in an ebook is that in most cases they do not improve the text but distract from it. The "books" that are suitable for this are much better packaged as a multimedia package for a tablet or even a computer. I don't want the world wide web on my ereader. I just want to read.

All of the above.
Apache

[applesauce]

I love, adore reading. I also have MS which now has made inroads int my short-term memory. The ability to click on the names of a character and see the character biographies etc would be amazing, same for references to other books in a series. So I find the below comment offensive.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

If you can't engage with a well-written book (e or p), then you simply don't like reading. There's nothing wrong with that--watch TV, or play a game instead. Just stop trying to turn "reading a book" into a different activity than it is. If you envision "more than a book," then write (or buy) an app.

[John F]

Originally Posted by applesauce

I love, adore reading. I also have MS which now has made inroads int my short-term memory. The ability to click on the names of a character and see the character biographies etc would be amazing, same for references to other books in a series. So I find the below comment offensive.

Do you use the X-ray feature on your Kindle?

[maddz]

Originally Posted by applesauce

The ability to click on the names of a character and see the character biographies etc would be amazing

The problem with that is when you are learning about a character - especially in something like a bildungsroman where the story is about discovery. If you have a bio, either it's so uninformative to be pretty useless, or you're going to include spoilers. Otherwise, each time you click on the bio, you'd have to go to a different link each time that's effectively 'to date' in the story - which makes it unwieldy to code. Same with geographic data; you'd have to stick to what is general knowledge within the story.

In all honesty, that would (to me at least) end up so totally distracting it would be like disappearing into a Wikipedia wormhole.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by tomfyhr

Do you have any suggestions for how e-books can be made more interactive and enganging, to possibly encourage people to read fictional och non-fictional literature? Nowadays e-books are usually only digital conversions of physical books.

I guess I'm old fashioned. I just want books to be books (in whatever format).

[tomfyhr]

Children who have difficulties in reading or imagining using a normal book, may want pictures, sound effects, music and even voice acting to become invested in the fictional novel they are reading, which are all central components of most other entertainment mediums they are consuming in this digital age (e.g movies, video clips, video games, audio dramas, theatre etc).

Just like when children learn how to ride a bicycle, they might need training wheels in the beginning.

To what degree do you believe the ebook should provide all that, in order to help the children to learn and enjoy reading?

[haydnfan]

This thread reminds me of this old College Humor video:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/4025833/the-kindle-3

What is really funny though is how cyclical this is. Ever since the Kindle was introduced someone always claims that it is time for ebooks to be revolutionized and be more interactive... and nothing comes of it. Then a couple of years pass and someone else has the same brave, new idea and the cycle continues.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by tomfyhr

Children who have difficulties in reading or imagining using a usual book, may want pictures, sound effects, music and even voice acting to become invested in the fictional novel they are reading, which are all central components of most other entertainment mediums they are consuming in this digital age (e.g movies, videos, video games).

To what degree do you believe the ebook should provide all that, in order to help the children to learn and enjoy reading?

To no degree whatsoever. There is absolutely zero need for all of that to be part of an ebook. There are already many such hybrid products available for children as apps on tablets or web sites. They have their uses, particularly for young children, but they are not books. Elements of a book or even a whole book may be used as part of a multimedia product. But the product is a multimedia presentation, of which the book is only a part. Books in general just don't need this extra material.

[haydnfan]

Originally Posted by tomfyhr

To what degree do you believe the ebook should provide all that, in order to help the children to learn and enjoy reading?

Not at all, you're completely wrong. Children can only learn the joy of reading by discovering for themselves how much they enjoy a book that they read themselves and imagined through in their head themselves without any external aid. There truly is something special about reading your first book unaided.

And remember there are training wheels already out there... they are called childrens books.

Believe it or not I still remember my first book. The Phantom Tollbooth. My parents were supportive and had confidence that I could read it through myself. And that was what I needed. Not tv masquerading as reading. Not them reading for me. Just me reading it myself. What I needed was encouragement not a replacement.