Books have always held a fascination for a lot of people, and a lot of them,
being traditionally minded, feel that e-books will never take off. Can you, they
ask, curl up in bed with a good e-book on a cold winter night? They are right,
too. And for another thing, paper books are cheap, durable and easily available.
But in spite of the above, it is important to realize that e-books have a lot
of advantages over paper. For one thing, while paper books are available in
plenty, one finds several old classics perennially out of print. With a good
e-book, you can pick up an old classic from Gutenberg and read it. It is
possible even today with a PC, but a PC is not tailor-made for comfort reading.
Paper, while versatile, is cumbersome. You have to kill a lot of really nice
trees to produce it, and this makes it e-unfriendly ("e" as in
environment, not electronic). Also, it weighs a ton–I have two trunks of
books, and put together, I know that they weigh more than me.
Elders and others who might suffer from eye problems may appreciate an e-book
because it can be configured to display large print. I’m sure my grandpa will
really like this feature. And for others like us who have been blessed with good
eyesight, there are still a lot of good features–like the ability to search
(as Unix gurus like to point out, you can’t grep dead trees) and the capacity
for higher personalization–you can choose your favorite font and point size,
and read more comfortably.
While I definitely feel that e-books have a great future, I must admit that
the handling of this issue has fallen far short of the impressive. Instead of
ensuring that the right technology is in place, most vendors are adopting a
"let’s try it and see" attitude, which is what has given e-books a
bad name in the first place.
While the concept of e-books is great, people don’t buy great concepts.
They buy great products, which are cheaper or better–or better still, both
cheaper and better–than what they replace. Discerning customers are of course
willing to shell a few bucks extra for useful features, but even they tend to
hesitate if the product falls short of their expectations.
For e-books to take off, we need a device of the right form factor, shaped
like a medium sized novel. It should go easy on the power consumption, and have
a good display capability which makes it as easy to read as paper (I can dream,
can’t I?) It should be functional, possessing minimal features so that it
doesn’t confuse the non-techies among us, and have a simple design.
And most importantly, it should be cheaper in the long run–that is to say,
if I have a hundred books each priced at $10, the e-book device should cost no
more than say $100, and each electronic copy should not cost more than $3, which
brings my total cost to $400, as opposed to $1,000 with the "hard"
books.
Parthian shot
Quite often, one comes across solutions in search of a problem. In the case
of e-books, this is fortunately not the case. Care however has to be taken to
avoid feature creepism. Vendors should fight the temptation to add a chicklet-sized
keyboard to an e-book to allow users to check mail while they read the latest
John Grisham. This will never do–devices other than PCs should do one or two
things, and do that well. It is possible that e-books can be used to read your
daily newspaper, but let’s stop it at that. At times, perfection is achieved
better by the elimination of features as opposed to their inclusion.
And finally, when printing first became possible, many would have complained
that the printed words lacked the charm and feel of a carefully hand-written
parchment. But just as they switched to paper, we too will embrace e-books one
day. As Sherlock Holmes says in A Study in Scarlet, "There is nothing new
under the sun."
Balaji N
The views expressed here are those of the author