Become A Robot

I was searching for an image of a broken Kindle to add to this post when I found this comic, which lead me to read about this The Twilight Zone episode, which lead me to wish I had seen more of the show. Now if only Netflix could stream The Twilight Zone episodes instead of forcing me to devote an entire out-at-a-time DVD slot.

(Photo used with permission of Flickr user danielhermes.)

I’ve had my Sony PRS-505 Reader Digital Book for a week now, and feel like I’m qualified to share some thoughts on it.

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It’s no secret I’m a big fan of ebooks, digital publishing, and electronic paper (E Ink) technology. My friend Nathan makes it no secret that he’s not a fan of these things (at least not as a direct alternative to real, paper books). It took me a little while, but I’ve come to understand and respect his appreciation for the heft of the book, the feel of the paper, and the turn of the page (not the smell though; sorry Nathan).  But I still think that for me at least, the benefits (and overall gadgety coolness) of ereaders outweigh for whatever experience enhancers come along with physical books (although I still see how ereader price can be a valid roadblock,and this isn’t to mention DRM which deserves and angry post all of its own).

And now I’ve actually bought an electronic paper device (a Sony PRS-505 to be exact) and I’m excited about continuing my love for science fiction as well as really starting to dig in to the classics. It took me a long time to decide what device was right for me (as well as to find a deal that would allow me to lower the high purchase prices).  I did most of my researching, pining, and venting at a wonderful community site called MobileRead.

And it was at MobileReads that I encountered a few people with a much higher tolerance for reading from a computer screen for hours than I have.  I once read an entire novel on my cell phone, and I’ve been known to spend a little down time at work catching up on an ebook already in progress on my computer monitor. But I’ve always wished I could be reading from a book or epaper device at these times.  There are people out there who haven’t picked up a paper book in years AND think the idea of epaper is ridiculous. They read books on their laptops or their iPhones or their netbooks for hours at a time, and never desire something a little less buzzing, visually nosy, or easier on the eyes.  I don’t mean to mock them here, for as long as they’re happy with the medium and enjoying the story, they’re doing something better than the legions of people in today’s world who simply have no desire to read. But the next time I feel a little like I’ve abandoned the purity of literature by shunning the simple pleasure of turning some pages, I’ll remember these digital warriors who are even less picky about how their words are delivered to their eyes than I am.

I was shocked to read that of 158 pulbishers at the London Book Fair, only 84 of them had any plans for publishing their content as ebooks. It would be nice to see a list of the publishers surveyed and see how many of these were big publishers or obscure ones.  Not good news at all.

Last Friday I ordered my first eBook. At work with a crashed hard drive and nothing to do, I decided to use my Palm Centro smart phone to buy an eBook edition of the novel I’m reading. I chose Mobipocket.com because

• It was the first store that came to mind
• It allows you to keep and read the book on as many devices as you want (PC, Palm, etc.)
• Assuming you have an Internet connection, it lets you buy and download books all from your mobile device (unlike many eBook stores that require you to buy the book on a PC and transfer it to your Palm device from there)

Downloading the free software to my phone was fast and easy, as was buying the $10 eBook and downloading that to my phone as well. It took less than two minutes to go from deciding to get an eBook to actually reading it.

My phone’s screen is big enough and the font clear enough (after I changed to white text on a dark blue background) to make for a reasonably pleasant reading experience. The Mobireader software is easy to use, and actually offers some good features (although I wish it gave you the ability to look up selected words on a free website like Dictionary.com instead of requiring you to buy a dictionary eBook separately).

Unfortunately, it would appear that eBooks aren’t inspected as well as their physical counterparts. After a few hours of reading, I noticed a page was missing. There’s no direct way to contact support at the Mobipocket website; instead of an email link or even a phone number, users are simply presented with a message board forum. I greatly prefer contacting support directly, but this strange support system is all Mobipocket offers. I posted my notification of the missing page Friday morning and received a response this (Tuesday) morning. The response said that the missing page was confirmed, the publisher had been contacted to request a corrected eBook, and that if I don’t hear back from Mobipocket or the book’s publisher in 5 days then I should respond to initiate a refund.

I have to admit that this complication has somewhat curbed my enthusiasm for buying eBooks. I was excited about how easy and fast things had been until I noticed the inferiority of the product I had purchased. If you can’t trust a book medium’s fidelity (“is this eBook corrupted or was that just a weird way to end the chapter?”) it’s hard to spend money on it.

Still, the Mobipocket format does seem to be ok for something crippled by DRM. The reader format can be used on a wide range of mobile devices (even the Kindle), although it’s foolishly not available for Mac or Linux systems. If you don’t mind the DRM (which essentially means you can’t convert your eBook to any format other than the Mobipocket format it comes in), and aren’t afraid of a strange, slow customer support system, you could do worse than Mobipocket. Assuming I can get a refund if the publisher doesn’t quickly provide a corrected copy, I’m likely to buy from Mobipocket again.

Update: Adding a bullet list for clarity.
For reading books on a computer screen, I recommend:

/ End Update

I started reading Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge this weekend. Not only did I check out a copy from the local public library, but I was lucky enough to notice a link to a free (and probably unauthorized) full text copy of the book as well. The last (and first) Vernor Vinge book I read, A Fire Upon the Deep, also had a full text copy to be found in a dark corner of the Internet. I read the paper book at home, and occasionally made further progress using my electronic copy at work while I’d wait for reports to generate or queries to return results.

But reading electronic copies of books without one of those nifty E Paper readers like the Amazon Kindle can be less than pleasant. For A Fire Upon the Deep, I opened the text in Microsoft Word, enabled the blue-background/white-text option, and switched to Reading Layout View. It wasn’t as nice as a real book, but it was a great way to pass the time until my speakers chimed to tell me my work was ready for me again.

Now that I’m reading another book with an electronic copy available to supplement my paper copy, I wanted to try to improve things a bit. First of all, I knew there had to be something better to use than Microsoft Word, and I found it in the free program yBook. It gives me to two facing pages like Word’s reading layout did, but being designed soley for on-line reading, it makes all the available settings more accessible and focused. I changed from the default settings to get a dark background with white text, as well as a larger font size to compensate for my high screen resolution.

I also searched for and found a great font for reading lots of text on a computer screen. Constantia was released as one of the new fonts bundled with Windows Vista, but there are at least two free Microsoft products that can be downloaded to get the font legally on Windows XP. I appreciate a good font, but I’m no typography expert, so I won’t even try to describe why I’m so fond of Constantia for reading books on a computer screen. I will say that you should give it a try if you have large amounts of text to be read electronically anyway.

I know sitting at a computer desk and staring at text on a screen is not the optimal way to be reading a book (although those who still can’t imagine it being anything but painful, it’s notable that white Constantia text on dark blue in yBook makes text so easy on the eyes that what’s painful is the switch back to default colors and fonts of other programs like Outlook). But when I’m in the middle of a great novel, and have stretches of time where I can’t be doing anything productive anyway but still need to look like I might be being productive, the lure of continuing my reading on a computer screen is hard to resist.